It seems that in the end, money rules and no one really cares whether or not real-money-trading ruins games or not.  Sony Online Entertainment was the first to allow item and account selling for Everquest and Everquest 2, but shut-down the service in early 2008. Probably because of the enormous fees they charged and sellers decided the blackmarket was better for them.

Yesterday Diablo 3 launched with it’s own RMT auction house, even though Blizzard has been railing against RMT for years. It seems the real issue wasn’t that it ruined their games, but they weren’t getting a cut of the cash.

Blizzard has been adamant about their game accounts, stating time and time again, that they are the owners of the accounts and not the players, but by allowing players to buy and sell accounts to each other, isn’t Blizzard indirectly conceding they really aren’t the owners?

What Blizzard is trying to get away with here is renting you an online account, while making you pay for the game. If I paid for the game and the game requires me to make an online account to use it, then you can’t say I don’t own that account.  Otherwise I cannot gain access to the game which I paid for.

Having said that, it would be reasonable to say that since I purchased the game, and the game requires an online account, then I own that online account. Going a step further, I should then be able to sell my account to anyone I want without using Blizzard’s auction system.

Where do you guys stand in the new RMT world? Is what’s good for the goose, good for the gander? Does Blizzard have any leg to stand on when it comes to RMT and players selling their accounts and items privately? Or do you believe that RMT still ruins games?

Champions have the ability to transform into a Runic Robot, which allows for additional magic and ability attacks and makes the champ very effective at taking damage.  Being a Dwarf, the Champion will have access to their blacksmithing skills, allowing him to equip powerful weapons and armour. Armaments embedded with runes offer even more protection without forfeiting mobility. The Champion is at heart a tank class, but with enough damage output to hold his own in attacking.

The Warlock on the other hand is a range attacker who is able to sap strength from its enemies.  Overall the Warlock is a support class who can aid allies with buffs, but if need be can take the role of a ranged DPS class.

Lore: Ao Kuang, usually spelled Ao Guang, is the destructive god known as the Dragon King of the East Sea. During his early years, Ao Guang reigned terror on man through the forces of nature. Droughts, storms and other natural disasters were his weapons of choice and his destruction continue unabated until Nezha, a protective deity, intervenes. After suffering a humiliating defeat at the hands of Nezha, Ao Guang seeks vengeance by kidnapping Nezha’s parents.

Hit the jump for the rest of Ao Guang’s story, how he’ll play in-game and further reading.

A common antagonist, Ao Guang is actually responsible for helping Sun WuKong achieve his most powerful relic, the transforming staff known as Ruyi Jingu Bang. Unsuspecting that the staff, which was holding down the ocean, would react to the Monkey King, the dragon-king teased the diminutive figure to attempt to acquire the heavenly weapon. Upon approach, the magical weapon reacted to him, confirming that he is the rightful owner. The sea, now unconstrained after Ruyi Jingu Bang’s removal, went into turmoil, wreaking further havoc that was attributed to Ao Guang.

In-Game: Despite the back lore (and misspelling), Hi-Rez Studios is currently tailoring its incarnation of Ao Kuang as a wind serpent. The character is a classic ranged spell caster, featuring wind-based attacks and little crowd control.

Further reading:

• Ao Guang on Wikipedia
• Chinese Mythology on Wikipedia
• Journey to the West (PDF)
• Investiture of the Gods (WikiSource guide)

Head over to SMITE: Demigods, Deities and Gods Explained for details on all of the playable characters.

SMITE isn’t just another DotA knockoff. The developers at Hi-Rez Studios has put its own massive spin on the genre, aside from cherry picking from previous legendary lore. The title will be familiar, featuring lane pushing, towers, creeping, item building and personal spell selection. The major change is the camera. The camera will not be presented in the typical isometric view, like most MOBA games, but locked behind your player in a third-person perspective. This allows for complete ganks – no need for weeds to “hide” in – forcing players to keep tabs on blind spots and use them to their advantage.

The full list of characters and their titles are after the jump along with a video interview by iTZKooPA with a more comprehensive introduction to the title from COO Todd Harris.

New additions to come every Tuesday and Thursday.

Chinese

• Ao Kuang (Guang) – Dragon King of the East Sea*
• He Bo – God of the Yellow River
• Sun WuKong – Monkey King

Egyptian

• Anubis – God of the Dead
• Bastet – Goddess of Cats
• Ra – The Sun God

Greek

• Arachne – The Great Weaver*
• Hades – King of the Underworld
• Zeus – God of the Sky

Hindi

• Agni – God of Fire
• Kali – The Dark Mother
• Vamana – Fifth Avatar of Vishnu*

Norse

• Hel – Goddess of the Underworld
• Odin – All Father
• Ymir – Father of the Frost Giants

* Currently untitled by Hi-Rez Studios.

This closed beta package will not only give you access to the closed beta, but reward you with the following items and bonuses.

Closed Beta Package (All 7-day items):

• Champion Feng (Hero)
• Feng Exclusive Card: Activate this hero and gain the following effects: Gain extra 50% of Battle Score when winning, deducts 50% less of Battle score when losing. Choose hero 5 seconds earlier.
• Skyboard mount: Mounts can be chosen at Hero selection.
• Double EXP booster: Gain double the usual amount of Experience Points after a match.
• Double BP booster: Gain double the usual amount of Titan Soul after a natch.

“I heard about a star falling in New Tristram. The dead were rising; was this what I searched for? A foe worthy of my blade?

As I walked down the road towards the village of New Tristram I saw a dead body on the side of the road, nothing new for me, but knowing that the dead rise in these parts I kept a close eye on the body. As I kept traveling this road I saw the first of these risen dead; it attacked me on sight, my axe flew fast through the air and struck the creature, killing it. I must watch out though, because I see more of these creatures in the distance.

The road was filled with them, feasting on other dead bodies, I deal with them like any other Barbarian would, with steel. After a bit of a travel I arrived at the gates of New Tristram which were under attack by these dead creatures, but the guards handled them with ease. After the combat ended, I asked the guard captain about the fallen star. He told me that it fell on the old Cathedral and there was only one survivor, Leah. All of a sudden the creatures attacked again, but now they also had me to content with. I helped the guards dispatch of these creatures, one thing is sure, New Tristram isn’t safe, but then again isn’t that what I wanted?

The guard captain, Rumford he was called, praised my combat abilities. He must not have seen a lot of Barbarians I guess. He told me I could find Leah in the Slaughtered Calf Inn. With this knowledge I walked into the village with  a feeling that this journey was not going to be dull, but that’s just the way I like it. When I was making my way to the inn I noticed two men of the militia as they took care of the bodies, it seems to work if you burn it, so simple and so easy, burn the body so these creatures won’t have a body to walk with.

Before I arrived at the inn I was stopped by a madman, he kept talking about this being the end of the world. Doomsayers always seem to crawl out of the woodwork when something bad happens, I gave the man no attention and walked towards the inn.

When I entered the inn I noticed that the people inside this inn were scared, the doomsayer must have gotten to them. I asked around about Leah and I was pointed by one of the villagers to a woman dressed in a red shirt and who had a bow on her back. I asked her if she was Leah, the one that survived the fallen star? She told me that she was, but her uncle, Deckard Cain, was struck by the star and was pulled into the depths of the cathedral. She tried to search for him but to no avail, as the dead began to rise she was forced to get away. As if some god was playing a sick joke on us the wounded inside the inn started to turn themselves. I quickly dispatched of them fighting together with Leah. After the battle Leah warned me that the dead will overwhelm them unless something was going to be done. This is what I was looking for, a challenge, a fight. I told her I would deal with these creatures. She was grateful and sent me to the guard captain, because he could tell me what needed to be done. So I set out again, out of the inn towards the guard captain.”

Check back for further tales of Torak the Barbarian.

The first beta weekend is over for Funcom’s The Secret World and if you happen to be one of those gamers that didn’t receive a beta key yet, you can step away from the ledge, we’re here to help

Lorehound has received five beta keys to give out, one of which was given out yesterday on our Facebook page, with the other four being handed out this Friday, just in time for beta weekend #2.

So how do you get a key? Simply head over to our Facebook page, like us, and tell us why you’re excited about The Secret World.  We’ll select our four favorite comments early Friday morning and send out the keys via Facebook.

Good luck to everyone.

TERA’s political system was not technically delayed shortly before the title’s launch earlier this month, but En Masse Entertainment hasn’t done anything with the system since. Until now, that is. The politicking will begin in earnest this Friday, May 18, for those interested!

The political system is a one-of-a-kind feature enabling high-ranking members to wield untold power over the direction of the realm. For better or worse, the reign of prosperity (or terror) will only last three weeks before another Vanarch is elected. Once elected – more on that in a second – a Vanarch is able to mandate and collect taxes and select which special vendors to open for business. Both the powers of community-elected officials and the process itself are set to mature with the game.

Like any real political system, you have to work at being an electable official before you can be elected. Thankfully, millions of dollars aren’t the only requirement. Players must be level 50 (experience), be a leader of a guild of level 3 or higher with 20+ members (leadership) and pay 3,000 gold and 100 Catharnach Awards (currency sink) to get on the ballot.

If you’re interested, registration begins this Friday, May 18, followed by a week of voting. If you’re not interested in the responsibility, you can vote for a candidate of your choice once per continent per server per account.

Time to go work on my soapbox speeches.

Stay tuned on the latest election happenings by visiting the Election Calendar.

"And your wallet shall tremble..."

Last time, we looked at how the fees for the different auction houses will affect trading in Diablo 3. Today, I’d like to look at it from Blizzard’s perspective and understand how the company selected the fee structure, what it will be paying attention to, and how it might treat the auction house in the long-term.

If there’s one thing Blizzard learned from Diablo II, it’s that there is a huge demand for functional in-game economies. Where Blizzard did not provide, players and companies emerged and established methods for trading and valuation. Both Diablo II and World of Warcraft have shown that there is a huge demand to use real money to purchase things, like characters, items, and gold. Blizzard took a staunch “no-RMT” policy for World of Warcraft, as expressed in the game’s Terms of Service, and does not hold back in banning accounts used to sell items or gold. If you haven’t seen it yet, it really shines a light on how serious Blizzard is about preventing RMT in WoW:

Blizzard has acknowledged that WoW gold purchased from third parties is “most commonly” obtained through compromised accounts. Blizzard has also acknowledged that third-party sites in Diablo II were often the source of credit card fraud and often did not provide a high level of service. It also promoted spam, bots, and hacking. It makes sense for the company to offer this service to players directly and built into the client: it provides a better experience and Blizzard can skim a bit of cash as well.

What do you get from using Blizzard’s service instead of a third-party service?

• A single, convenient, and unified player-driven market
• Security in transactions: only Blizzard processes your payments.
• The ability to get paid without intermediaries
• Reliable customer service in case of disputes
• A long-term reliable economy: Blizzard will have access to lots of data to make decisions and better records to track down botters and fraudsters.

All of this is done relatively cheaply: the flat $1 per transaction is worth the convenience and peace of mind you’ll get from using the auction house for big-ticket items. However, it is not without its drawbacks. Here are some of the big ones:

• Paying 15% to payout to PayPal and requiring it to be done on-the-spot are slightly more inconvenient and expensive methods than they could be.
• Selling cheap items on the real-money auction house is not very economical, nor is converting the money from the gold auction house.
• There is a floor and ceiling price on the real-money auction house ($1.50 and $250), and if items exceed that amount, players will have to make complicated arrangements to part with them.

I think that Blizzard might have underestimated the second point a bit. With micro-transactions taking gaming (and other markets) by storm, lots of players are willing and conditioned to pay very small amounts for things, potentially many times. The success of mobile phone apps and digital music sales asking users for $0.99 and becoming billion-dollar industries over-night are a testament to this. As we saw in the previous part, the realized profit for sellers for cheap items is very low.

Blizzard has an obvious and huge interest in ensuring that the Diablo economy is a success:

• Of course, Blizzard is certainly cutting a profit from the transactions fees despite the services and security offered.
• The ability to sell items through the auction house is a compelling gameplay feature that is a great selling pointfor the software.

By introducing and effectively managing a new digital currency – the “Battle.net credit”, Blizzard reaps significant rewards:

• Since Battle.net credits are created solely by players depositing money into the accounts, players holding Battle.net credits equates to a free money forward for Blizzard – money that can be invested and turn a profit before the player spends it and the company has to pay out real funds for it.
• By making it more expensive and less convenient to cash out to PayPal – the company is encouraging the use of the currency and allows for the purchase of some of itsn(digital) products using the currency. This will undoubtedly yield increased sales of these digital items.

The most curious thing to me is that the items that you can buy from the Blizzard store is so limited. Here is a list of what you can buy from Blizzard with the Battle.net balance:

Battle.net Balance FAQ  

• World of Warcraft Character Services
  • Appearance Change
  • Faction Change
  • Name Change
  • Race Change
  • Realm Transfer
• World of Warcraft Guild Services
  • Guild Faction Change
  • Guild Name Change
  • Guild Realm Transfer
  • Guild Faction Change + Guild Name Change
  • Guild Realm Transfer + Guild Faction Change + Guild Name Change
  • Guild Realm Transfer + Guild Name Change
• World of Warcraft Digital Upgrades
  • WoW: Battle Chest to Wrath of the Lich King
  • WoW: Battle Chest to Cataclysm
  • Wrath of the Lich King to Cataclysm
• Other Digital Blizzard Games
  • Diablo II
  • Diablo II: Lord of Destruction
  • StarCraft II
  • StarCraft Anthology
  • Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos
  • Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne

The most conspicuous digital items missing from this list include World of Warcraft game time and WoW pets, as well as WoW itself. They are listed in this blog post as future additions, but why they aren’t available on launch is a mystery to me. It might be that they are not yet easily reversible in case of incidents. Blizzard has done very well to “cross-pollinate”, with the WoW Annual Pass giving World of Warcraft players a copy of Diablo III and ensuring that they continue to subscribe to WoW for a year. I imagine that Blizzard is concerned with the Diablo and WoW cannibalizing each other’s player bases, and it seems to me that giving WoW players the ability to pay their subscription fees by playing Diablo III is a no-brainer. Giving Diablo players a chance to easily dip into WoW can only increase game and service sales.

With all of these amazing methods for Blizzard to profit from the Battle.net Credit, why would they even want players to use gold? Blizzard does not directly profit from the gold auction house: the 15% cut from the auction house does not go into their pockets. It does provide for a “gold sink” that scales with the size of the game’s economy, but is it worth precluding transactions in Battle.net currency? While it is clear that a gold auction house should exist for convenience, as gameplay features will require the acquisition of lots of gold (and gold is freely generated, if Battle.net Credits were instead, they wouldn’t be able to peg them to the dollar), we saw in the previous post that there are lots of situations where the real-money auction house will fail to provide a good solution for trade, particularly for very cheap items. For this reason, the gold auction house will be preferable for players in many circumstances. I can’t imagine that Blizzard would prefer players to use gold over Battle.net Credits when possible, so I do expect the fee structure to change to better incentives using a Battle.net balance. More on this in the final part.

Another burning question for potential auction-house moguls is: why not offer a way to “cash out” your Battle.net balance? We answered this a bit previously – having players hold that balance gives Blizzard a profitable cash advance. Even if it means that players hold a few dollars or cents left over from not completely spending their balance, it can add up to a lot of money that would otherwise be completely depleted. However, I really wonder if Blizzard will eventually rescind the decision. Players can, with the help of a friend, use their balance to buy their friend’s item and cash out to PayPal, again paying the auction house fees. This is ultimately what gives the Credits a close-to-real-world value: situations where you can use them or real-world currencies, with the other party receiving their choice of currency. I imagine that many players would be more comfortable using the Battle.net balance and treating it more like a real currency if they were able to cash out. Perhaps implementing restrictions on cash outs could provide a win-win situation for Blizzard: a more expensive fee than the on-the-spot transaction, say 20% instead of 15%, and the stipulation that it can only be done once every 90 days or so. The benefit of receiving credits at the AH in both the current and this theoretical scenario is that you don’t have to pay the 15% cash out fee is you are just going to spend the proceeds on in-game items anyway. Providing an alternative cash-out method might incentives more players to consider using the real-money auction house, and use the convenience factor to close the buddy-system loophole for cashing out after the fact.

The last big regulation that I’d like to consider is the 10 auction limit per account. Every account can only list 10 auctions per mode – that is, 10 auctions in softcore (the “main” mode) and 10 auctions in hardcore. It seems that this limit applies across gold and the real money auction houses. A clear reason for this limit is that auctions are free – there are no fees for listing or failing to sell an item. Without these fees, there is no reason not to “spam” the auction house, which makes it more difficult to navigate, more expensive to manage, and harder to maintain a functioning market. Additionally, it makes it much more difficult for botters to realize profits from farming or even from directly botting on the auction house. In order to have a real impact, several game licenses would be required, each of which is very expensive and would outweigh the cost of dealing with the botters. If a botter can’t make $60 before getting banned, they aren’t going to bot. At the end of the day, they provide the tools for the average player to buy and sell, and enthusiasts have some freedoms for expensive and larger operations. This isn’t going to be a platform for botters or speculators to make massive amounts of money – the fees and structure of the auction house prevent these sorts of activities.

In the last post in this series, we will look at the in-game economic welfare effect of Blizzard’s policies and whether third-party services can thrive. Stay tuned!

And of course, my favorite topic – The Secret World! The open beta! Yes, it’s here at last! I have a ton of screenshots that I’ll be posting up later as well as a preview. I’ve been spending way too much time with this game, wanting to squeeze out every possible moment while the servers are up. I think I was up playing until 5am, my eyeballs feel like they’re about to fall out, but I’m still looking forward to later this afternoon after I’ve finished up my errands when I’ll be able to play again! Here’s a screenshot to keep you all entertained until I’m able to put up the full review:

And now, on with the show!

• LoreHound has a MineCraft server! Today we’re holding a stress test, so if you like MineCraft and like LoreHound, then head on over and join Mordil! Here are the downloads you’ll need to hop into the fun.
• iTZKooPA has a follow up interview with Todd Harris of HiRez Studios, about the launch of Tribes: Ascend! Want to know about female models? Check it out!
• Diablo 3 is on its way, and Heartbourne provides a nice analysis of fees and market strategies. Interested in making a killing playing video games? Or just making enough to pay for your World of Warcraft subscription? Heartbourne has you covered.
• Like closed betas? Realm of the Titans just started its closed beta. Head on over and give it a look!
• There’ve been plenty of games that have claimed to be “WoW killers” but are they? Unless they can beat 10.2 million subscribers, I’ll have to say no.
• I love dancing in my MMOs. I’m that girl in the skimpy clothes doing the shimmy while I wait for absent groupmates or am afk. If you’re like me, you might be interested in the pandaren dance that was recently discovered on the World of Warcraft beta servers.
• It’s the time! The Secret World First Open Beta Weekend! Nope, I can’t help my fangirl excitement from showing through with exclamation points! Lots of them!!
• We’ve got a Twelve Sky 2 item giveaway! Who doesn’t love freebies in the games they play?
• Curious what EA has to say about their declining SWTOR subs? Mike gave out the details.
• There was drama in the world of E-Sports, when Starcraft 2 e-sport team Evil Geniuses gave a team member the boot.