Caswydian

That's nice and all, but irrelevant. You're saying that because product X is better than product Y, people who've tried neither will somehow pick product X because they know it's better than Y?

Jalathan

That is because it isn't as trackable, but yes, if you sell a baseball card for more than you paid for it, it is (by tax defination) a capital gain. anything you sell is. And right now, the IRS HAS been looking into this very thing and Second Life as already gone under some scrutiny. Ebay has also been getting some scrutiny over this over the past couple years, they haven't moved on it yet but it is only a matter of time before they do as they continue to see the 'unpaid' taxes from this kind of transaction increase, they will eventually come in and get their cut.

The real question is how will they classify it. That is where the impact will come from. If they classify the earning of plat as capitalized profits, then it will impact everyone, if they only classify the selling of that capital as taxable, then it will only impact those who participate in the transaction.

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Paladin of Antonia Bayle (or will be soon anyways)

TANGARTH

To check out wow and halflife becuase they play great and come out completed. Polish doesn't just apply to raiding, there's lots of FPS games I don't play becuase they came out broke and got patched later. Word of mouth is a big thing in gaming, and it seems like people with good things to say about sony are few and far between

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OBAMARAMA IS RUNNING WILD

Duress

I had the suspicion that Blizzard's success (where it's a "success" compared to, say, EQ2) wasn't what these companies hope for, which is why I added that little caveat, "Unless this isn't scratching the surface."

See my comment above. And it was 3.5M in China, not 6. The unlabeled 1.5M is from around the world, presumably. So even worse!

Besides start-up prices, different how? They're doing something (more) right (than EQ2), I would think. Then again, this gaming biz shit isn't my day job... ;)

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aduros

Advertising and word of mouth. Even if then, if your product sucks people will leave, and you'll never sustain the numbers you originally had. Just look at EQ2.

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Caswydian

So now we're moving towards more social factors like advertising and word of mouth.

I wonder what WoW's churn rate is? Is it substantially better than other games in the industry?

TANGARTH

you don't move to word of mouth, your game is good or it isn't. This is going to make people quit and leave.

You can advertise a game without putting in a change that fucks the whole system

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OBAMARAMA IS RUNNING WILD

Cuz

Ummm.... yes. Isn't that how most products work when the price is relatively the same?

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Most of us promote responsible testosterone dick waggling. - Evangel

methulah

I'm going to chirp in now, because it's almost related. The first million or so played WoW because it was Blizzard, and because it was Warcraft. Some of them were MMO veterans, some of them were new to MMOs. I know a guy for whom WoW was his first MMO who got a worldwide first named kill in Molten Core. WoW was popular because it was a Blizzard title, drew in a *lot* of new players from Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo backgrounds; and was marketed very, very well.

Why is it popular now? Word of mouth, really. Everyone knows about WoW. Everyone knows someone who plays WoW, generally multiple people. If all your friends play it, why not give it a shot? I know I jumped at the chance to play an MMO with my real life friends after all this time of playing that Everquest game that no-one knew about.

So yeah, I played WoW. I played its group content, I played its solo content, I PVP'd, roleplayed and did all the other things I would do in an MMO. I payed a lot of money, too, prepaying three months, quite a bit out of my savings, to tell the truth. I quit after two weeks, I was so bored. Nothing to do, nothing to do.

I've even raided in WoW expansion. Yes, it's free of issues. Well pointed out. All the encounters work as intended, apart from the occasional glitch (corrupted blood, anyone), and it's all very polished and functional. It's also fuck boring. One of my buddies is in a decent raiding guild, compare it to one who had Emerald Halls and TNT on farm status before Kunark dropped, but never really contested an avatar.

When they're doing lower tier raids to gear alts and shit, I've played his toon for him. I just sit there, the UI mods tell me what to do, and I click a couple of buttons over and over. Yes, there are no issues, but there are no issues. If the tank drops, that's it, we wipe, run back, and pull it again, this time with a druid who was DPS healing, or something like that. If a DPS class drops, they stay dead. There's no juggling, there's no "stabilize MT group!!" Sure, it's no glitchy, but it's clinical and dead.

Sorry, I got carried away. I just wanted to dispel the assertion by aduros that if you were to raid WoW, you'd love it.

sarafan

They don't even have to go that far Rinion. Just roll a toon on the Bazaar or just go look at the Station Exchange website. Where are all those phat lewtz up for sell everyone here keeps talking about? Oh wait they are all NO TRADE and can't be sold. And the market going up? Items costing 100s of plat due to RMT on a server? Strangely everytime they ever allow characters from all servers to copy to a "test" or "beta" server and bring all the items they have on the broker all the items from people from the Bazaar seem to be lower priced than the items from other servers.

I personally have never bought an item or plat off the exchange. I came to the Exchange when it opened cause I knew it would be a low pop server without much issues of competing for spawns and such. Every item I have was earned and I don't see people running around in better gear because they have more RL money than me. If they have better gear they have done content I haven't yet, just like any other server. Yes they can buy a fully decked out toon from some raid guild full of stuff they haven't earned but you know what, the knowledge to play that toon at the lvl needed to obtain that gear doesn't come with it and it shows. In short the NO TRADE on items keeps things in check and the ability of buying plat doesn't affect gameplay at all.

As for all of you crying "I'll quit", quit now. RMT is already all over your your precious "non-exchange enabled" server. Go to any plat selling site written in any form of broken english you prefer, select Everquest 2, and see if your server isn't on the damn list with any amount of plat you desire avail to be delivered in 30 min or less.

All you are arguing is who your money is going to. So you're saying you will still play if the RMT money on your server is feeding the Sweatshop plat-farmers who spam us all day long or IGE but if it goes to SOE you quit? Fuck this "hear no evil, see no evil" shit and pretending it doesn't happen on "your server" IT DOES. So if you are truly so goddamn rightous about RMT make good those threats and quit or just shut the fuck up and take all that money you saved not buying plat and buy yourself a fucking clue.