My predictions:
Early game
Bots takes time to develop, glider bot won't be directly applicable to a new game. Crude macro bots will exists due to keybinded looting, but players will easily spot these. This will help keep the supply for gold low.
Gold will be worth more than later relative to real money. Gold will have a hard time finding an equilibrium, between relative supply and demand. Supply will be low and demand will be high.
It's hard to predict the relation between demand and supply for Gems as we would need information about the games demographic and willingness to spend money. What I do predict is that if you wish to buy gems with gold you will make the best deal early in the game relative to time invested farming that gold. It will however set you back in other aspects of the game.
Bots will in time come if for no other reason that some enjoys the challenge of writhing them. We might see bot-farmed gold later in game, but I predict that it will be a minor problem. A far more pressing concern is gold from hacked accounts and legal implication from stolen gems.
Providing a legal outlet to meet the demand is a valid approach to reducing the illegal market. Aggressively swinging the ban hammer by itself will not stop RMT. They cant catch everybody that trades for gold, some will always slip through their detection net and aiming for 100% will produce so many false positives that its either infeasible on their end to manage or honks off too many customers that did nothing wrong but got banned due to over draconian measures. Even with a high chance to be baned there will always be those that are willing to take the risk, particularly if there is only one source.
On the flip side if there is an easy and completely safe path to trade RWM for gold or whatever in game many people will use it. Even if its more expensive folks will pay for that safety rather than risk geting banned. Couple this with aggressive, visable banning of illegal RMT offenders and the gold sellers will need to sell for significantly less than market value to tempt people to take the risk of buying from them. This will cut into their profit margins one way or another. Will it be enough to stop them altogether? probably not but it could potentially make the practice unprofitable enough to not be worth maintaining on any great scale.
Either way the point is not to stomp the practice out altogether, that's frankly asking for the impossible. As long as the demand is there someone will find a way to provide the supply. The point is to shift that supply and profits out of the hands of the illegal companies and into the hands of Anet and the players where it can be controlled.
Who is John Galt?
This also gives ANet a way to directly "compete" with the RWM trading companies. If they find out that a majority of players end up purchasing gems for ridiculously cheap from other players (they probably don't have a way to detect whether it's an actual player, of it's a company that tries to do gold-selling, beyond bulk-purchases, which could be seen as draconian), they could easily lower the price of the NPC-bought gems to the point that it's only slightly more expensive, if not equal or cheaper.
I hope you haven't forgotten my role in this little story. I'm the leading man. You know what they say about the leading man? He never dies.
If you give in to your impulses in this world, the price is that it changes your personality in the real world. The player and character are one and the same.
I would not be surprised if whatever system for tradeing gems to gold or whatever through NPC's had a supply/demand system much like the materials vendors in GW1. If more people are selling gems to turn into gold the value of the gems drops, if more are converting gems into gold the price raises. That is asumeing there is such a system at all. That blog post had some statements that could be taken that way but its still somewhat vague on specifics.
Who is John Galt?
I hope you haven't forgotten my role in this little story. I'm the leading man. You know what they say about the leading man? He never dies.
If you give in to your impulses in this world, the price is that it changes your personality in the real world. The player and character are one and the same.
You have to be blind not to see that this will lower demand on RMT. It may not remove it completely, but it will make a fair dent in the market.
As demand for RMT goes down, so does the profits. It's all about the time it takes the RMT's to aquire the gold vs how much they can sell it for. At some point, it's not worth doing.
1. ANet (or players rather) will straight off set the max roof for how much RMT's can charge for gold. This directly cuts into profits, as RMT's as any other business try to charge as much as possible.
2. ANet offer a safe alternative to RMT. You can't be banned nor hacked by using ANet's service. This means that RMT's will have to lower prices to compete, as they cant offer an as good a service.
3. ANets service is easier to use. You have it right there. You don't have to search for deals. Again, to compete RMT's will have to lower prices even more.
In the end you have a very low profit margin, which means that fewer RMT's will bother. Why sell gold for GW2, when you can make 5 times the amount of money by hacking WoW accounts instead?
Don't think this is how it works? Look at Eve.
Before PLEX was introduced, the game was full of ISK sellers. They were bloody everywhere. Spam was rampant, hacking was commonplace.
PLEX changed all that. Yes, there are still a few big players on the ISK market that can make a profit from the very low profit margins, but without any actual numbers, i'd say atleast 90% of all ISK sellers went away. It was simply not worth the effort anymore, as it was too much work for too little profit. Only the giant ISK sellers survived.
I hope you haven't forgotten my role in this little story. I'm the leading man. You know what they say about the leading man? He never dies.
If you give in to your impulses in this world, the price is that it changes your personality in the real world. The player and character are one and the same.
can I see some sources on those 'billion dollar' buisness to confirm it.
nevertheless - it will come down to the time and profitability. if the item that anet is cheaper and easier and legal to get than say for a farmer to spend 3h to get same item and only be able to undercut it by little, then people will opt for safer more legal way to go for it.
say the gem will cost 1 buck, that gives you say 1000 gold. it would take you 3-5 hours to get 1k gold, and if you will try to undercut it even by 50% - people would still buy the legal stuff. if you would try to offer more gold for same value then it means ud have to spend more time to get it - which would cause delays etc etc. In other words. RWM is not meant to stop them, but definitelly reduce their efficencie...
"Bill Nye: So Todd I got an offer for you. You and me. Any time. Any place. Debating science mano- a-mano. I'll bring the facts, and you bring the Vaseline. Because your ass is gonna fucking need it when I'm done whipping."
Mr Eames: "You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling"
The comments reguarding the tradeing post were a bit unclear. I'm not sure if thats just what they are calling their auction house now or if its a seperate mechanic. Personaly I took it as you couldnt trade gems for gold through NPC's but a friend of mine thought it you could so kinda need more info before we can be sure who's right. Not sure what I prefer considering it would make a decent money sink if you can turn in gold for gems and a sort of auto balancing could occur if it went both ways with a supply/demand algorithm.
Who is John Galt?
You can buy black market cigarettes a lot cheaper than legitimate ones. But how many smokers do?
How convenient is it to buy gold from a gold seller?
It seems like it would just be so much easier and safer for players to use gems. Plus, I would think that players will be more aware that they can use gems to get gold.
If they can reduce the amount of business gold sellers get, then it will be easier for the gms and customer service to make a significant dent in the ones that remain.
"Please find my dear friends.
Dead or Alive" -redmakoto
No offense but how can cigarettes be a black market item.
Not to mention, cigarettes are more for a personal taste. They can be cheap, but if the person thinks its not good they wont buy it again.
Gold is the same no matter where you buy it.
A best way to compare this to would be illegal gambling, it's safer to do it legally yet illegal gambling makes MUCH more money.
The most important thing to realize is, no matter what you experience you are never alone; no matter what you are struggling through, there is always someone who is more unfortunate.
It's Ok to Be Takei (Rank 35/ Fractal Level 22)
Except when blizzard does a mass ban, and suspends/bans 100-500k accounts at once for illegal activities. Just because you don't see anyone or know anyone that has gotten banned for it, doesn't mean that they don't get banned/suspended. I've known 2 friends that we're banned for trading, and one that was wrongfully suspended. I've known a few others that we're suspended then banned for botting.
And yes, it is illegal to purchase gold from 3rd parties in most games. It's usually in the agreement you click on during patch days and when purchasing games.
Yes, a lot of illegal businesses are HIGH PROFIT. Look at drugs, drugs are illegal but I guarantee you that the profit margin is beyond a few billion a year. Where there is a demand there will always be a supplier and vise versa. Just because they make a ton of money off of it doesn't make it legal
Read this. Namely, the one about cigarettes.
---------- Post added 2012-03-21 at 08:07 AM ----------
Aren't you living in Australia? Don't they fine you for not wearing a hat on exceptionally sunny/ UV high days because of your public health care?
Sentinel PVE Basics for the two Specs that matterOriginally Posted by SW:TOR
That and "evil smokers" are a soft target when it comes to the government raising a bit more revenue.
---------- Post added 2012-03-21 at 11:20 PM ----------
The cost of healthcare is just an excuse the government likes to use.
Their own figures say the total cost of smoking in Australia (2005) was $31 billion dollars.
That's made up of:
$318.4m – Health (paid for via taxes)
$5,749.1m – Lost production in Workforce (meaning wasted work hours, like coffee drinkers)
$9,843.1m – Lost production in the home (meaning what? people not watching TV?)
$136.4m – Fires (paid for via taxes)
So the real total cost to taxpayers was – $454.8m
Revenue collected via tobacco taxes – $2864.1m
Last edited by Mif; 2012-03-21 at 01:20 PM.