The Daily Grind: Veni, vidi, Visa
For many Westerners who have been involved in MMO culture for any length of time, you'll recognize this as a perenially evergreen topic; the role of RMT in gaming. Of course, with the recent news regarding the attempt to create a "legit" service whereby players can purchase game gold for their favorite MMO, we can't help but throw this out to be chewed on.
Personally, while I understand the allure (after all, who wouldn't like to save the hour farming and instead enjoy an hour playing) the problem to me is a question of the structure of MMO culture. In the Western arena, MMOs are largely perceived to be a meritocracy, whereby those who perform the best, have superior forethought and tactics/strategies "win." They get the gear, they hit endgame, and while I would say that not all will necessarily raid everything, they will at least generally get their feet wet. (RL permitting, of course -- I know several folks who would be brilliant raiders, save for those priority things.) The idea that someone who has zero clue about how the game is played but can purchase an endgame character and enough money to kit it out rankles on a few levels:
It is not fun to be "passed" (even in the most casual fashion) by someone who was dropped off at the finish line and who expects to have their "achievements" ranked on an equal standing as someone who put in a large amount of time and work to get to a certain point.
Now while it is not always the case, more often than not, purchased characters are detrimental to the groups they are in. Just because you purchase the character does not mean you even begin to grok the skills involved in playing that character. When you're in a raid situation, your $15 a month and your credit card bill just won't stack up to the other $135+ a month that thinks you are a flaming waste of space.
It takes some of the sense of achievement out of a game. Sure, you can get someone to run your character up to whatever level you'd like, but at some point, there's grind involved. Grind is inescapable unless you pay someone to learn raid progression content for you too. Even if you study your class, learn from the best, and actually know what you're doing, you are only enabling yourself to reach a different level of grind, all the faster. This also devalues your entire gaming experience in denying you shared history. Part of the fun of these games is making friends as you level up, and those experiences (like how my guild still laughs about wipes in EQ, CoX, and WoW we've experienced together) give you a sense of community; an experience that you simply cannot buy.
While, yes, it will be better than dealing with hackers, griefers, and campers to have "legit" ways for people to be able to get gold if the companies are willing, I cannot say that I think it will be a good idea. The other side of this is that nobody in their right mind is going to believe that IGE and their ilk are going to look around and say "righto, we'll bugger off now and let you have all this money." This is a multi-million dollar international industry, and they've got a fairly good lock on it.
That said, what do you think? Do you think RMT is going to be socially acceptable in the Western market? Like Raph Koster and Gamasutra, do you see some other angles than what is presented above? Do you think that it is acceptable for folks to pay someone to "skip through the tedious parts" of a game like Mike Musgrove of the Washington Post did? (Should they get banned for it?) Or does the Western market just need to accept that RMT, and the slippery cousin -- the Microtransaction model, are the way of the future; simply new ways to monetize content? Would you be okay with the concept of purchasing gold if those who wanted to do so were kept to their own servers like SOE has done? Should it just be built in from the word go instead? How about if it meant the end of annoying spammers using common in-game chat channels to advertise their services? Where do you draw the line?
