Sometimes when you receive a comment, there are so many things you want to say that you cannot say any. You can do little but regard it with wonder. As with a poem or a koan, the discussion would be far longer than the original. Rather than leave the lantern beneath a bushel, in the spirit of Warrior Wisdom Fridays, we present the pronouncement of jon:
RMT proponents are so amusingly shallow emotionally (hence easily manipulated by game devs). You people deserve to be parted with your money.
The “directs your efforts away from the unemployed†quote illustrates the mindset of RMT proponents quite a bit. Continually frustrated by their own perceived inability to compete with fellow MMO players for virtual status, they champion a form of meta-gaming where money, instead of merit, can buy status within the community.
While they would have people believe their desire for RMT based games is simply about enabling them to enjoy the game in their own unique flowery way. it’s really about finally being able to show up the “unemployed†guy. Ironically the unemployed guy (who never really existed in the first place), bored by MoneyQuest™ goes and plays something where achievement is rewarded, leaving the RMTers high and dry with nobody to show off to.
This RMT fixation indicates self-esteem and confidence issues to me. Take a break from the XP potions and zombie pandas. Use the extra money for a session with a therapist.Long live fiero.
: Zubon
So who really is the looser here? The person who believes that they have somehow accomplished some great feat within game that shows that they have “earned status” through their “achievements” in some virtual world; or the person who uses real money gained through some effort and achievement in a real world to gain “virtual status”? The real issue is that either side cares somehow what the other side has done. People should simply play a game for their own enjoyment and surround themselves if they wish with like minded individuals with the same in game goals. Those that can often offer their services to those that can’t for a price while taking pride in knowing that they can and not caring that others will have what they have simply by being able to afford the cost of mercenaries.
Would you play chess if your opponent gave the chessboard manufacturer more money to convert all his pieces to queens? Competition exists in all multilayer games, even if it’s indirect.
No western MMO sells power, as that would indeed be idiotic.
But achievement in MMOs IS power, essentially. Competition in traditional western MMOs is based on achieving things – be it random kill xxxxx critters or gathering the raid sword of doom, whatever. We consider ourselves successful only when we measure our successes in comparison with our peers – that’s simply human nature.
Essentially, advancement and achievement are only meaningful when measured against others’. That’s why even people who play MMOs primarily solo, or don’t socialize more than required, still wouldn’t play an MMO single player, if that were possible.
Besides, what is power in mainstream MMOs but time? All things are achievable by essentially every person, should they have sufficient time to invest. RMT, at it’s very best, is an attempt by people with less time to buy their way past people with plenty.
Oddly, EVE is the only MMO I play. Not only is RMT perfectly legitimate, people can essentially buy huge and direct advantages of me. In this case, however, I have no problem with it. The advantages they can get are nothing that couldn’t be achieved with sufficient investment of time – but PVP isn’t (or shouldn’t be) about time, it’s about how well you play, and therefor I’m essentially unaffected.
“RMT proponents”
A homogeneous, monolithical, hive-mind like group of drones if there ever was one, right? Because all RMT is equal.
Where can I join this hive mind? I am intrigued and would like to subscribe to your newletter, or work on your carob farm. Do I have to pay a fee? I can’t really mortgage my house since its value has dropped.
There is so much wrong with the quoted comment I am almost beyond words. The inference that anyone who utilizes RMT in a game is only doing so to enhance their own epeen is just ridiculous. I can only paraphrase his own statement. “RMT opponents are so amusingly emotionally shallow…..”
Just to clarify I have not ever spent money on a game other then the purchase and monthly fees. Would I ever? .. hmm.. I dunno,those new WoW pets are pretty damn cute.
Methinketh someone feels a wee bit threatened.
I can’t help but feel there’s just a bit too much thought being put into this. Just as there are types of people in a demographic, we have far too many subsections to generalize. Just as a country has provinces, people affected by geography, we have dialects built into them, culture and counter culture mixed in, minorities and majorities and those third party individuals, there’s kinds of RMT players, just as there are in the subscription problem.
The only thing we have to fear, are the continually muddying waters as we start to hybridize the models with optional subscriptions and RMT and mandatory subscriptions with account management and RMT and shave your goat for only 200 poin-
Whoa, whoa. We all have our standards, and when we do this we just start to piss players off, and its impossible to make one more “right” than the others, (though the population opinions may vary) some people like subscriptions and others like the optionals or the RMT, but then we take the “hard cores” of both ends, they can only butt heads, and that’s the real hell.
Segregation isn’t -always- bad, at least if we’re divided by what we agree upon.
I think Julians facepalm pic of Cpt Picard was the best way to sum up my thoughts and possible longish replies to his kind of viewpoint. :>
I don’t really agree with it but it’s a hell of a piece of comment writing.
It zings!
More popcorn over here!
So I went to a restaurant for lunch today. I’ve been trying to cut down on my expenses, so I just had the special — a chicken sandwich and a soda.
But there’s this guy four tables over — *he* buys the lobster dinner, complete with all the trimmings. *And* he orders dessert. That bastard! How dare he ruin everyone else’s lunch like that? (Sure, he was off in the corner booth, but you just know everyone was watching him. I mean who couldn’t help but stare when they brought out that big, red, succulent lobster?)
So naturally I go over and start explaining to him what an emotionally shallow person he is for ordering the lobster. And I’m explaining it really well, in my usually witty way, when, get this, the manager comes over and tells me to “Calm down” and “Stop shouting” and “Act like a reasonable person.”
And then he has the nerve to throw me out of the restaurant!
That guy must have real self-esteem and confidence issues.
I’d argue that taking any game this seriously “indicates self-esteem and confidence issues”.
That quote is so sad. Here’s a guy that is sure that it is pathetic to participate in RMT, when in fact it is more pathetic to be so narrow minded that you think that people that spend money on subs, expansions and double accounts are somehow not spending real money for virtual things.
Also, he obviously thinks that MMO’s are nothing but a competition, highlighting his need for attention in virtual spaces.
I might be reading it wrong, because I’m half asleep, but that guy needs to quit playing games so much. What a chump, and how sad that he needs to “show off” to strangers on the internet to make his day. So, he thinks that “achieving” something in a virtual fantasy world is somehow more complex, deserving of praise, or heroic than spending 10 bucks on a cute pet? And he says THEY need a therapist? Nerds like him really make it hard to convince people that we’re all not really angry white kids.
Beau
Burnsssssssssssssssss………..
Never let me get on your bad side, Beau!
I might have to go buy some of the new WoW pets, just to spite this guy. I haven’t checked them out yet though. What is there? Are they really cute? Cuter than the penguin for converting? Cuter than the Emerald Whelpling that my old main bought before everything got so damn expensive?
To be fair, I suspect the original comment is more rage over his perception and fears over what RMT may be in the future, rather than whether or not you can buy a pet in WoW. He seems to be worried that people will simply buy their way to the top, completely destroying his sense of achievement, and it’ll be accepted and justified in the name of an equal playing field with a the straw man ‘unemployed guy’.
You can mock him for feeling protective of his achievements, or for caring at all about virtual achievement in an online game – but I suspect there’s a lot of hypocrisy coming out here. MMOs are all about achievement – from measuring and rewarding killing 10,000 rats to winning the loot roll after the 9th time doing the same raid. Fact is, achievement is what sets MMOs apart from other games.
Competition gives achievement meaning. Even indirectly, the ability to show your achievement to other players, is an example of this. If you play MMOs and do not care about achievements or showing them off, your lying to yourself or you won’t be playing long.
I had more to say, but I keep getting my thoughts turned around.
I’m not lying, but I don’t play *any* game for long. I have no interest in dev-defined or socially acceptable Achievements. I make my own goals in games, especially open ended ones. MMOs are just big playgrounds for me, and the petty sociopathological concerns of the other players are utterly unimportant to how I play. (Though they do have game design ramifications, and I can’t help but look at these things as a designer.)
It means nothing to me that Leeeroy Jerkins has 15,000 Achievement points, or gets his jollies by making his avatar preen in his Tier 12 Shoulderpads of Airspace Violation. If he’s not actively contributing to my fun, I’m likely to completely ignore him like any I’d ignore any other ostentatious NPC. I truly couldn’t care less how he came by those things that he finds precious. It’s none of my business. He’s happy and not bothering me, carry on. I’ll do my thing, thanks.
Competition with other players does nothing for me. I only compete against my own schedule and my own lack of skills. If I’ve made progress in my own mind, I’m happy.
But the point is, this is exactly *why* you don’t play long. MMOs, like any game, only offer so much in terms of actual gameplay – but people play them long after they’ve done all that’s offered exhaustively. People grow attached to what they’ve achieved, and their characters as a symbol of it. If you don’t, you quit after you’ve taken all what a game has to offer – just as people do in single player games.
Indeed, but there’s nothing wrong with that. ;)
The notion that we enter a “relationship” with a game that *doesn’t end* isn’t healthy in my mind. I play for as long as it’s fun, then move on. That’s what I do with other games, too. The addiction/commitment factor of these MMO things strikes me as a Bad Thing.
You can measure performance against others in any game, even single player. That’s what happens on social networks, internet forums, when you talk to your friends, and why achievement points are used in xbox live. That’s always been the case even when you had to have your friends over to play Atari. People do it all the time for everything, not just in MMOs. MMOs just made it easier to compare but that’s changing fast.
In real life you see the same phenomenon, people with cheap bikes who are better riders complain about the people with expensive bikes who are worse riders. Why do they complain? I don’t know, but they say the same things as the comment above. They are making assumptions and those assumptions say more about the people making the complaint than anything.
The only time it really intereferes is if the person competes at a higher bracket than they should be based on ability. Like driving at a higher bracket than they should because their car qualifies for it but they aren’t good enough drivers, or going on a difficult raid when they just bought the character and don’t know how it works yet. But that is not the issue that the comment is raising.