IDOCing and the value it adds

[Riyana]

IDOCs aren't the problem.

The current state of IDOCs is a symptom of the way UO has systematically favored, encouraged, and rewarded greed for years now at the expense of gameplay and community. Lack of any meaningful TOS enforcement--particularly in regards to RMT--is the problem. A pattern of making changes that ostensibly are to reduce cheating and misbehavior (like the 5/10/15 hour change to IDOCs) but that actually make it worse exacerbates it. And here we are.

EM event disruption, multiboxing, scripting, IDOCs... these are all things that people frequently and justifiably complain about, and the biggest offenders almost invariably share the common denominator of RMT selling.

Could the right adjustments help? Maybe, to some degree. But if the root of a variety of problematic issues is not seriously addressed, then the issues will just return in another form. The problem is runaway RMT and lack of TOS enforcement. The current state of IDOCs, and indeed a great many recurring complaints people have about the game, are symptoms of a common problem.

When I came back to UO after several years away, I was shocked at how pervasive the RMT advertising in game was. It's a real turn off, and makes it look like the game isn't under control at all. I don't expect all of it to ever be flushed out entirely in any game, but I don't think it unreasonable to expect to be able to walk through Luna or Britain without stepping over a trail of ad books, or sit in the help channel without having to keep setting a bunch of spambots on ignore, or participate in content that isn't hijacked by multiple accounts of a small handful of people looking only for a payday.

RMT is tangible, RL incentive to push out others, monopolize content, and cheat any which way possible, and with no consequence that is exactly what has happened, what is happening, and what will continue to happen in every aspect of the game until meaningful action is taken to slow it down and make people think twice.

 

[Riyana]

Cant blame Mesanna on this one ether believe me she would love to nail them to the wall... flame thrower in hand too.
But she has to go by EA legal guidelines..
Ah lawyers the Great Whites of the land...

Respectfully, Lady Storm, you frequently present this kind of statement as fact. Can you point to a source? I have never seen Mesanna condemn RMT. I don't doubt that she may have; I simply would like to see it coming from her. Otherwise the appearance is very much that you are putting words in her mouth with your repeated "she wants" and "she thinks" statements.

What EA legal guidelines do you refer to? Is she not allowed to send a cease and desist letter to the big sites, or ask EA legal to do so on UO's behalf? And how do you know this?

I agree that real cash being involved is bad for the health of the game, but to be fair, it was always like that... it's just more noticeable now because there are far less players. In the old days there was still all this real cash stuff, it was just drowned out by the huge player base and more gold for item transactions.

It is more noticeable because it's completely unchecked and open in the game. The difference when I quit UO many years ago and when I came back was unbelievable.

 

[The Craftsman]

Lets be honest tho, Albion and UO are nothing alike. Albion you buy the game and basically you can play it free forever. So them banning you forces you to buy the game again giving them more money, whereas, uo is month by month currently without any other options. If UO was like Albion they would be banning kids left and right because they know most of us would pony up the money to buy the game again.

Youre wrong.

Firstly 99% of players who play Albion run a premium account, which is a monthly fee. Also premium is per character (with many accounts running the max 3 characters) so in banning they are ending up to 3 paying subscriptions with a single account ban. Its not about the money ... dont judge all developers by EA's standards.

Secondly, buying a new account after a perma ban is another perma ban if detected. Same with scripting. Permaban at first offence. Same with zoom-hacking. Permaban at first offence. Whilst it would be possible to bypass the detection for buying a new account, you'd be starting from scratch (losing all progress made), and the moment you script, hack, RMT its another permaban.

Quite simply they dont want cheats in their game and certainly dont want those cheats coming back on another account. This is the way it should be for all games.

 

[Smoot]

So true Captn Norrington...
E bay was a big RL cash maker and it was let free for too long before EA did anything to stop it..
Gold, houses, accounts... pets even.
Money bought a lot .
Which means people make a lot off UO too.
Oh yes the population hid some big deals that went down... for eye raising RL cash amounts.
TOS being in force is still active but the critters who cheat have become harder to pin down ... you might say OH I see then wny not you???
Well there is a right way to catch and a wrong way....
Cant blame Mesanna on this one ether believe me she would love to nail them to the wall... flame thrower in hand too.
But she has to go by EA legal guidelines..
Ah lawyers the Great Whites of the land...

EA didnt stop ebay sales, ebay did because there was no way to tell if a seller got the item or way to track virtual purchases.

Also interesting to note that cash sales were allowed here on stratics untill around 2010. (not sure exact year)

It was also very interesting to hear Richard Garriott and Starr Longs postition on virtual sales at the 20th anniversary. Not going to type out exactly what they said, but it was basically the same as this interview from back in 2011.

So the position on RMT comes down to legality. they did not want to be responsible for any legal problems, so were officially opposed to it, with no legal need, or personal desire to enforce that stance.
Official Soulrift Website

We anticipated that when we sold players deeds to this virtual property, we sold it for what I'd call dozens of gold coins which we thought was an incredibly exorbitant price, but quite quickly players began to trade them for hundreds and then thousands of gold coins and then the gold coins weren't sufficient so people began to move almost all their trading out onto things like Ebay where they would trade... within the first two months we began to see screen-sized plots of real-estate selling for many thousands of US dollars.

Wow. That's interesting because I noticed that, in the early stages of MMOs, the position of designers on real money trade changed rather significantly. Whether or not they allowed their stuff to be sold. What was the official policy in Ultima Online at launch? Did that change while you were working on it?

Yes it did change, and I still think that it's a complicated enough story that I have mixed feelings on it even to this day. Officially, we had no stance on the subject. We didn't really mind it. The only thing we knew early on was that we shouldn't get involved in the actual transaction ourselves because we knew that if we had hosted the transaction, we would somehow be responsible for the transaction. And since we weren't a bank, we weren't keeping our data at any level of protection, we knew that we did not want to get in the middle of it. However, over time, it then became clear that there really was what I'd describe as quite a serious black market that came in to being around gold to where not only were you supporting potentially organized crime or at the very least sweat shops in third world countries to generate gold, that you'd begin to be concerned about what I'd call "FBI-Level" issues we would have if money laundering occurred in any significant way in our games. So official our stance became against it. That being said, even though our original policy has been against it, I will easy confess that when I was a WoW player, I had no trouble buying as much gold as I wanted to online because it saved me time and my time value/money is very high.

*laughs*

And what that told me in the long run is that I'm a big fan of real-money transactions. I just have a difficult time seeing how to cross the gap. But if we really did do an Ultima Online type game with foundationally supporting RMT, I believe it would allow people who I would call "creators": player creators of really good content, whether that's play or art or newspapers within the game, if they could get paid with currency that they could ultimately cash out from the game back into real money I think that the player contribution in the world would go up dramatically. But its still a very difficult thing to support without real serious legal trouble.

So do I owe you ten thousand gold for this interview?

*laughs* Not at all. If you found a way to publish it in the game, we'd find a way to send YOU ten thousand gold!

(end quote)

There are many games that embrace RMT, many that have no stance, and those that actively ban those players who do it usually have a reason too. Most the games that ban is because they are selling "currency" themselves, in the form of items that can be exchanged for currency. These games are also all new, so the player economy is fresh and they dont want RMT effecting it. For example The Secret world just re-launched, and banned hundreds of accounts. However, you cant say these games that ban third party RMT traders arent "RMT games" because (especially the ones that are banning) its because the third party sellers effect their own in game cash stores.

For UO, the cash shop has only come into play late in the game. at this point people are too used to third party sellers, and realistically the econmy is 20 years old, even with the UO store, and new or goldless player is at a huge disadvantage compared to if the game were new, or only a few years old.

In the end, with video game players becoming older, with more Real life money than time, RMT is becoming a needed and expected aspect of most games, especially MMOs. whether or not those cash transactions take place between the game company and the player, or player to player.

My opposition to IDOCs has nothing to do with the existence of RMT, but rather the real fact the population is much lower than even 5 years ago, and those 20 years of items is an overload, which actually promotes third party RMT, or UO store RMT because items gained from actual gameplay are worth less because of this overabundance.

I would support RMT / cash shop sales by Broadsword of housing plots in a new land specificaly created for housing. It would be a great way for the devs to make a couple extra hundred thousand dollars, easy to implement, and im sure it would be very popular.

 

[Lady Storm]

Smoot back in the early days being bought and sold was in a way a great promotion for the game and brought more players looking at the UO.
Yes E-bay did stop the sales of UO and other game virtual property.
As they couldn't trace the sold items and the bad element that buy and trade in the e -bay world were doing the claiming they didn't get said item which led to them getting their money back and the item from the seller... Yes they still do it...
Riyana
I tend to pay attention to what's said by the Lead Producer.
She is the main person to listen to in re guards to all things UO.
I attend just about every Meet & Greet including the Asian meets.
The statement you used : She said & She wants.. is the proper way to pass on what I heard and read.
But your right, You should show up and read and listen to the meetings she holds and get the same information I do.
Much is very interesting and you would get the same feeling I do of how much players pay attention to what is said.
If you put the info many get from these and hold on to in memory it could fill a tiny tea cup!
Plain and simple most let it go in and out their eye balls/ears and tend to ask the same things over and over.

**As a side note to this: Being a pushie loud point driver will not get you enamored by the Dev team, and might hurt your case more then help.
Honey and sugar is not needed to get a good idea across, but even a good idea may not be possible.
This too I have seen too much of. Anger gets you no where.
Players tend to get very vela mint over things they feel should be done...
Any of you who attended the party got a small taste of the work it took to get things off the ground.
Keeping it there is twice as hard.
Riyana I pay for a good deal of accounts per month.
I own 60 accounts, 54 have been active in the last few years and I do have on at any one time 46 running.
Please do the math... that's a good chunk of cash I put out.
Now you tell me WHY I SHOULD NOT pay her any attention?????
She runs the thing I spend a lot of money on.
Like EF Hutton She speaks I listen.

I myself have asked every meet for her to drop the bulk order book item count to one, no matter the number of bods in the book... recently she has said no.
It would be great if she would and I think its a mistake to not do so.
Just so people could work them more and be more happier for the room they would clear up if done so.
Has she ?
Nope.
Do I expect it....
By her words no
But I can hope...

 

[The Craftsman]

I would support RMT / cash shop sales by Broadsword of housing plots in a new land specificaly created for housing. It would be a great way for the devs to make a couple extra hundred thousand dollars, easy to implement, and im sure it would be very popular.

Nice post and a well deserved like from me.

I’ve only quoted this last bit though. Why do people assume that the Devs, broadsword, or even UO would benefit financially from shop sales? More likely than not the money goes straight to EA and the game or Devs don’t see one hot of it.

 

[AtlanticRealtor]

I’ve only quoted this last bit though. Why do people assume that the Devs, broadsword, or even UO would benefit financially from shop sales? More likely than not the money goes straight to EA and the game or Devs don’t see one hot of it.

was said before somewhere:
The things BS sell at the ingame store , they receive a Higher Percentage of the Money than things sold at EA. Yes I understand that the Sovereigns come from EA as well, but EA charges a percentage according to the product sold.

 

[Revenant]

It's your own fault that you lost house and stuff. No one elses

I never said otherwise.