” They had to pay him a lot of money for it because he could have sold it on eBay”

I thought everquest was one of the games that they do not actually let you sell your account and items and will delete your account if they find out what account is doing it.

Blame George Bush.

“Blame George Bush”

I was merely mocking everyone who DOES blame the president for everything. Bitch.

A fool and his money are soon parted.

The old saying continues to be true.

“If the game’s server crashes and that thing of value is lost forever, someone (the server admins) are responsible for that loss”

How is that fair? Unless the admins blatanly ignored the condition of their servers they should not be responsible when one decides to spontaneuosly crash. Computers and servers are still not very reliable and if they’re doing everything in their power to save it and it still crashes that isn’t their fault. Some computers and servers can’t be saved.

As for the bank issue: Still a little confused, did they put real money into the bank or the game money? If it was game money then what is the big deal? I game an awful lot but when I lose game money due to an error i make, an ingame element, or someone else ripping me off I don’t call the police and raging on about how I was just ripped off by a video game, hehe.

If virtual “theft” is treated as a real-life crime then video games should stop being made all together. The reason is that the lawyers of the monsters killed would start popping up, you’d bearrested for murder, assault, (technically) grave robbing, and being a public nuisance.

Where would the line be drawn?

I think you folks don’t read the linked articles or you would understand we are talking about ebay’d equiv of over 100,000 USD.

Any in game item or structure takes time and effort to build. Just like having to work for your paycheck or hammer together a chair. It is the effort that someone puts into the item that gives it the value, which is why an antique hand crafted ebony chair has more value than a normal black plastic chair at ikea that you put together yourself. That is how value is assigned.

So, following that logic if someone puts months of time into building some virtual castle and then wants to sell it to another human who does not want to expend the effort to build it themself, they can come to some agreement on the price and make the transaction. This is no different than a craftman selling his goods at an auction.

The arguement here is not whether or not people who play video games are cool or not, it is how should these transactions be allowed and protected. Just because some people choose to value going out in the real world as being a better human, does not mean everyone agrees with that. Some people do not do well in the real world, while others can do both very effectively, but insulting people for having a particular hobby will not help this argument at all. People collect stamps, they run marathons, they play sports, they watch TV, they watch movies, they play video games. It is no one’s right to imposed some ranking of real life value of those activities on each other and in doing so you just sound like a biggot.

In my opinion these games SHOULD have some in game mechanic to deal with such transaction and thus protect against scams and frauds. As someone already said these in game items do have intrinsic value, both to the seller and to the buyer. This makes them valuable just like anything else.

This article was trying to point out that because of the lack of these in game mechanics, the players are foced to use black market methods to trade and barter these items which opens them up to scams. Who is responsible? The game makers are. Just like when the government imposed laws agains drinking. Did this mean everyone gave up alcohol and moved on, calling all that continued to drink alcohol idiots? No, in fact a HUGE underground organized crime regime was formed to continue the sales of alcohol, costing that same government huge amounts of money to track down and punish. We all know how that ended.

This is a valuable discussion because lots of money that flows through our economy is based in these virtual worlds. Companies like Blizzard (creater of world of warcraft) make over 50 million a month in revenue from said games and even more money is spent in black market trades that happen outside of the game to sell items, characters, and even full accounts. Just like the prohibition, its time for the authorities of these worlds to choose which is a better solution, policing and punishing the offenders, or allowing these transactions and taxing them in order to fund protective services to help the community.

I am remembered of a topic once discussed where in content was based on the use of sarcasm in text. Clearly I know how to use the spell check on my computer as is you will see a lack of any misspellings, and the ones I use are purely intentional.

So by this logic using “oxi-moron” I too was using text sarcasm to call you an Oxi (using term to make note of your oxi pad face) and a moron; for using, in any since justified or not, the words Virtual and Exists in the same sentence to describe the same object. So in conclusion of this retort, I respond to your school yard antics once again calling upon the power of text sarcasm with… You “Lay Person” are a poop head stinky face pants head.

With a follow up 8p

Seems as though, some of you have forgotten that, it’s just a game, and when your panties get in a wad, then you get all upset, chunkin’ keyboards at the wall and all, and you’d want to find any kind of retribution that you could……..

If the game f%@ked you, then go play another MMORPG. Beside gil-sellers, there have been no complaints about FFXI, and they do an awsome job of fixing exploits. Tried and true. I play games for fun, which is why games were origianally invented. They were not invented for business. I could in part blame the software creators for this. They should have a disclaimer…

“By playing [the game], you understand that all items, monies, landmasses and structures are property of [the software company]. You further understand that any off-world profit making should comply with [insert country] laws, and you will not hold [software company] responsible for any bugs, glitches, crashes that may occur in [the game]. In otherwords, YOU RUN THE RISK B!TCH. Press OK to continue.”

If all the MMORPGs fallowed that path than why would we play them if WoW is still around?

I like the idea of a game being that open, and if that means that I have to guard my pockets just like in real life than so be it.

you could argue without fear of valid counter point that all reality is virtual.