If you’re unfamiliar with what Microtransactions are, they’re items you buy in a virtual world that you pay for with real money, not virtual currently. Today via Kotaku, they stated that EA’s upcoming Star Wars MMO might be microtransaction-based.
Rather than asking for a monthly subscription fee, ala World of Warcraft, EA boss John Riccitiello has strongly hinted that the game will instead be “microtransaction-based”.
Depending on how you’re thinking about this it could be good or a very bad thing. Good if the items offered are not critical to the game, such as clothing, different types of mounts, basically anything that doesn’t have an direct effect on your character. However if this means that I’m going to be paying real money to buy armor, weapons and/or skills then this could change the way MMO’s are played.
Buying virtual items with real money is nothing new however, people have been doing it on Ebay for years. That was until 2 yrs ago when they banned such auctions, however new sites have popup since, such as MMOBay.net to replace them, so you can argue that it won’t have a big effect on the gameplay. But in my opinion you can never underestimate the greed factor of publishers.
MMO’s such as Second Life have been selling virtual goods for real money since the start, however the items being sold are purely cosmetic and player created. Now EA and other companies such as virtualgreats.com are stepping in and trying to get a piece if not the whole pie for themselves.
If you’ve ever played the card game Magic or I guess Yu-Gi-Oh for the younger readers, you know you cannot be competitive without shelling out big bucks to create your deck. I fear the same will become true of MMOs. While it would be nice to play MMOs for free, I don’t want to feel like I’m playing a gimped version of the game because I can’t afford the $100 sword for my character. I think the key here is to make the gamers that aren’t buying these items to feel as though they’re still getting the full game experience and still have a fair fighting chance in PvP and PvM as the players who are buying the top of the line equipement.
However another aspect to think about is crafting. If EA decides that armor and weapons are fair game, how will this affect the in-game economy and craftsmen? I can’t see it having a positive effect on it. I’m not against the move away from subscriptions to microtransaction, I’m just worried that publishers greed will get in the way and that ephasise will be on making money in-game instead of making games better.
One thing is we Westerners tend to look at Eastern games with item malls and point fingers. The games themselves are pointless shallow grinds, so we automatically say F2P sucks. Then they add item malls and we assume that means we’re buying all our gear and we’ll be “gimped” (compared to who?) or we can’t “keep up” (compared to who?) or can’t “compete” or “win” (the only winning is in PvP) without spending hundreds of dollars. A non-raider might consider himself “gimped” to a raider in a subscription game. Some people refuse to start older subscription games for fear they can never “catch up.” So what’s the difference in those respects? It’s mainly our fear (often based on inaccurate assumptions) that item malls *always* sell gear (armor, weapons, etc.) and we’re opposed to that.
I had to look for quite a while to find an F2P fantasy MMO that actually sold *gear* in the item malls. What they normally sell are fluff items — clothing, pets, etc. Other items such as teleportation scrolls sell well, so do +XP potions since the Asian F2P don’t have our “rest XP.” The only “normal” items I’ve seen that would give an “advantage” would be stamina-saver potions, so if you’re PvPing against someone who bought stamina-savers, you’re probably going to lose the fight. But then PvP in a subscription MMO against someone with max-rank PvP gear and you’re in lesser gear, and you’re going to lose, too. Six of one, half-dozen of the other.
The recent (and upcoming) crop of F2P FPS games all use the item shops to buy better guns, armor, etc. but I haven’t bothered to try any to see if the new stuff gives a legitimate advantage or if it’s more akin to the modern FPS like COD or Battlefield where you can rank up and get new stuff but a first-day noob can still take you out; they offer different advantages but nothing that gives you an auto-win by a longshot. If these FPS item malls *do* make paying members vastly overpowered then… that just sucks.
However, look at Guild Wars. MMO or not, it’s just about the only Western title that is free to play, and supported by microtransactions done in a way that is completely non-offensive to me. Buy the box. Buy the expansion or new campaigns. Buy new character slots. I’m fine with that way of handling microtransactions.
Yes, they are the future, thank dog.
I can’t keep track off all my subs…I had 6 going at once. More, technically, if you include the Station Pass.
It’s just like iTunes: let the player pick out what he/she thinks is valuable.
Beau
There are other way of doig micro transactions. Mythos (canceled when Hellgate brought down Flagship), was going to have a second currency in game. They called them Ingots as an example. You could buy these Ingots with cash. Some items would require ingots as part of the cost to buy, along with in game gold. The trick was, Ingots were also trade-able. So a non-payer, could trade his gold (or whatever) for ingots and still have access to every item in the game without ever paying. So long as somebody paid for an Ingot, it did not matter who used it. I imagine Ingots would be a big seller on an auction house.
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Flagship’s theory behind this: The non-payers and payers support each other. Without those that are NOT paying, the game would be too lifeless and no fun for anybody. Without those that were paying for the game in some way, the game could not survive.
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They could do this becasue of the economics of scale. It costs less and less per player to support the game as the number of players rises. The first 100k players cost X dollars to support, but 200k players costs less than the twice as much expected.
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Its not perfect by any means, but its much better than just excluding all the non-payers from a portion of the game. In reality, you could still buy $15 worth of ingots each month and it would give you access to Ingots (and the items bought with them), at the same cost as a normal subscription.
I see the same in the couple of F2P games I’ve looked at, where stuff from the Item Malls are tradeable. Some people will pay real cash for an item then sell it to other players for in-game gold.
If everything in-game is available to both those who would pay with time (sub) or money (RMT/microtransactions), the only question is whether or not people pay with time or with money. Either should be valid. Neither should be given an edge.
Micro transactions are not fair.
Not everyone has money as much money as others.
It is not fair for someone to pay real money in order to gain certain advantages. What about the other players, who are probably kids ? How da hell are they supposed to keep up with those idiots that waste money ? huh ?
In conclusion …. S U C K M Y D I C K you stupid mother fu-ck-ing gang bangers, because all you want is money, you stupid retards !!!
I miss the times when the chanches were fair for everyone …
SCREW YOU BITCHES !!!! And remember my words !!!
@not_fair
Hey, just so you know, the people who create the games that you play do it for a living. they need money to support a family, just like you probably do. what would actually be “not_fair” would be for them to have to produce free content for everyone. Now, that being said, they are under no obligation to produce ANY free content. In my opinion, if you dont want to pay, dont. but remember that it is the people who are paying that enable the game to exist at all.
Food for thought :)