Sony Online Entertainment a.k.a. SOE, the publisher of EverQuest recently launched Station Cash, the new virtual currency that gamers can buy to fund a virtual wallet and it can be used to purchase in-game items.

I used to think that game publishers have a strong anti-RMT staunch. Real money transactions or RMT exists when virtual economy meets real world - when real money is used to buy game currency or game items, etc. Gamers that want to spend time playing the game instead of spending countless hours farming would often buy game currency from third party sellers like IGE. This practice is frowned upon since it’s against the EULA and it also give an unfair advantage to gamers who have the resources to buy currency.

Some of the steps taken by game publishers to discourage such practices are that if caught, gamers would have their accounts banned from the game, or their purchased items stripped off. Yet, some would still take the risk and continue to engage in such “black market” trade. RMT is a multi-million dollars industry and game publishers are still a long way off in combating such practices.

When all have been said and done… I guess if you can’t beat them then… Join em!

Gaming especially MMORPG does not only appeal to the teenage market. In fact, most gamers out there are working professionals who enter this world of escapism.

Take World of Warcraft for example, the game economics has been designed in such a way that it would take some time to earn ample amount of in-game currency to progress. Aside from that, as one’s character increase in level, maintenance and repairs also gets to be more expensive. Most of these gamers are working professionals who don’t have the luxury of time to just sit and fish in one place in order to earn gold. If you have an hour or 2 to play, of course you’d also want to go to where the action is.

Let us say you have the weekend off, would you rather spend it mowing the lawn or having fun? Of course, if you have the extra $50 bucks, wouldn’t you like to hire your next-door neighbor’s kid to mow the lawn for you?

I guess there is no dilemma here when asked: “to buy or not to buy?”.

I know this kind of question would spark a debate regarding the legality of such transaction and I don’t want to get into that…

If given a chance to exploit a game bug, would you? Are you a goody two shoes that would report it directly to the developers or are you a sly devil and exploit it until the developers find out and release a new patch to fix it.

I recall a time when a friend of mine was playing Tantra, he was a die hard fanatic for the game! If I didn’t know better I would have thought he was being played by the company to play and campaign for it. One day I saw my friend playing at a computer shop and there was a commotion among the players. Apparently they found a bug that would allow you to upgrade your items and would guarantee a 100% success! My friend being the fanatic that he is was warning the other players not to use the bug, minutes went by and despite my friend’s warning the other players continued to exploit the bug. Realizing it was a lost cause my friend stopped warning the other players and continued to play keeping to himself in his station. Hours passed and the bug spread like wildfire! Now a lot of people were using the bug, even the veteran players who respect the game rules and followed it obediently. Like a demon tempting a poor soul I saw my friend abandon his honor and approached the other players and asked them to teach him how to work the bug.

Moral of the story is when there’s a wily will there will always be a wily way. When players find a bug, they will exploit it. As Morpheus once said, “some of their rules can be bent, others can be broken“.