Runes of Magic US / AU

I thought everyone would find this interesting. GW2 is claiming to be using a system exactly like RoM's: buying a currency and allowing it to be controlled and bought/sold in-game by players.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/03/21/…icrotransactio/

*I apologize if this is deemed against rules.* Deletion of it will insure I don't do it again. Thanks.*

I would love to see diamonds reinstated into the auction house. It was one of my favorite things about RoM.

I know it's way too much speculation at this point, but to nitpick. It does say "account services" and "time-saving, convenience" items.

I think it's arguable that purified fusion stones and many other items in RoM's cash-shop fit this bill. It's a bit harder to defend jewels that provide up to plus-12 and plus-16, but it will always be in the eye of the beholder. On a technicality, paying money for puri's is a convenience to gear up faster than waiting and buying them with Phirius tokens.

And, even the plus-16 jewels are defendable because players can buy them with gold, through the unique system that GW2 is also saying they will adopt.

Bottom-line, for me, is that's all a lot of marketing speak. I'm curious about where the value is. In Second Life, the value is on skins. That means, skins are what people want. Getting the coolest skins is top-equivalent to wanting to be top in combat in another game. Is Guild Wars 2 gonna be this way? They do already say that gear is inconsiquential. That is, it doesn't mean as much or won't mean as much to players as gear in other games. That's value. Combat, power and gear is just a way that value is expressed.

If Guild Wars 2 is going to change that value, combat and power won't even be comprehended or mean the same thing as in other MMOs.

People don't want pay-to-win because the value is on gear and armor and power, but there will always be value on something. In SL, that's cool skins and animations for your avatar and it's different in other games. If you take it away, you don't remove pay-to-win, you can't. You shift where the value is, because value must be there. It will be there. People will find value.

That value could be in being the coolest looking. That means people will desire to look cool, because the game is set up in a manner to place high-value on doing that. And if the items in the cash-shop go toward that, then that's what people will want.

pay-to-win doesn't stop, can't stop at combat. That can be what's always most important for some people, the same as fashion is what's most important for some, right now, but pay-to-win reared its head because that's what a lot of people deemed to be THE goal of the game, the ultimate achievement or the most important thing.

If that most important thing becomes fashion or crafting, then it's simple: vanity items will be most important and be applied to the pay-to-win mantra.

On the other hand, if players are already saying that combat will be most important to them, when going into Guild Wars 2, they will either be disappointing, find that GW2 has married all features to equate them in a nice way, hid them behind many various activities or people will love the game and what the game tells you has more value through playing it - just liike combat. Combat exists in Second Life and other games, but because of the unique game-design, it's not most important. If it's not most important, people won't think they're "winning" so "pay-to-win" won't be applied to it.

It might be exaggerating, but GW2 did say that the gear and "power" is going to be of less value to players because everyone will be on the same playing field all the time, but value will appear in some form. It has to. Will that value be in wanting to look cool? Crafting? or some other new form.

I think if an MMO does away with treadmills or mixes it with a lot of other activities, instead of concentrating on only 1 or 2 ultimate activities, then try and equate all those activities, you might find a nice balance.

Time will tell.

I understand and for all intense and purpose, I agree with you. People love combat, it matters to them, but a game doesn't have to have combat as it's focus, then what? Then whatever it's focus is, will become what's important and what can help players toward that new focus will be "pay-to-win".

Fashion can arguably have clear win/loss scenarios, and a clear scenario need not happen, anyway. Combat is the sneaze, value is the cold that you catch. There are many people right now, that don't care or operate on the behavior of trying to achieve any kind of status in an MMORPG, so for them there is no pay-to-win.

Isn't pay-to-look-cool the exact same thing, if it becomes what's most important? The only reason there's a term pay-to-win is because people see that as winning and what is winning? If people didn't feel beating another person up in battlegrounds meant anything, they would start looking for what they thought mattered in the game.

And if they actually really didn't do that. Instead, they really did only care about beating someone up and they didn't care that the mega-world-vs-world was more important, so they didn't even bother, then they wouldn't be using the term-pay-to-win, because they didn't care that siege war or the hardest dungeon in the game meant anything... but they do think it means something. They think it means they are winning something.

Your last paragraph is spot on! Dancing could be what is most important. Guild Wars 2 or any MMO could readjust the game-design to focus value on something else like dancing, crafting, etc.... Then if, say, fashion is what's most important, what does that make vanity items now?

One reason I don't like the term is because the use of it is very "convenient" for people to switch the definition whenever they choose. Say, tomorrow, everyone is running around wanting to obtain a brand new kind of "win" status in GW2 because, let's make it up: a dynamic event proves to be the most important thing for many players. Suddenly power items don't matter but another items does. Well, those people will all the sudden just start saying this new item is pay-to-win(and it won't be power or strength related, which many focus on today).

And some aspects of gameplay will be less clear. Actually a lot of stuff really isn't that clear. Is it really clear who is winning in RoM in anything? If they can beat you, they won? if they have 10 pts more power and 10 pts more defense, they "win"? Even right now, there really is no clear win/loss. It's really not clear who will always win Siege or who will always win in some fights. It's all about what you and the game values. Today that is combat, tomorrow it could be something different.

Some might think the current situation of paying-to-win is clear, but anywhere you look people can't agree on any specifics, it's just a general idea that others are stronger than you, hence they can beat you. And that can easily translate to anything.

I'm just nit-picking the technicalities. I agree, we can brush off the technicality by looking to the side and saying "but the token shop is a joke" but that doesn't make the technicality incorrect. The tokens are there and technically do provide that integration.

I agree, it takes too long and that is my contention with cash-shops: the time it takes and if that time is fun in playing the game, whether you get a reward or not.

Value is value. Value doesn't have to be combat. Combat is what anyone talks about but value is the source.

I don't like terms like "viable" either, and I try not to say anything like that, because I don't mean that. I am saying it is not viable, but that does not go against anything else I've already said.

I'm saying "value" is the source. Businesses want to sell you what they have and what you value. Once we realize "combat" is not the source of the water, we see that the game can be different.

If people are still very concerned about combat: it seems like it is because they want power and that's important to them. then that seems to suggest people care that much about power and someone else being more powerful or being more powerful than others, and if GW2 gets rid of that value, how could pay-to-win exist? Even if it did sell armor and weapons? They're all capped. It presumably doesn't matter and because the source(value) is changed, even if what people currently think of as pay-to-win items go into the cash-shop, they will be worthless compared to the value they'd hold in other, more linear, treadmill games.

I don't care about viable, pay-to-win or any of the other tropes repeated all over the place, because I know the source of them all is value, and value does not have to be combat. All you have to do is look at another game that doesn't focus on combat to see that.

What may be very interesting is if GW2 found a way to separate gameplay without segregating players. I suspect they did this largely through many hidden caps and limitations. Limit how you can fight, limit what armor you can use when, limit how powerful you can become compared to the next person, limit which currency can be spent where.

I think this could be a good formula, but anything needs to be done well. We'll see.

I'm hoping the other part of the equation is that they dilute value across many activities. Until now, MMOs have been getting smaller and focusing more on one or two activities so the value on those activities go up. If GW2 added more activities and tried to equate them via the level caps and separation of gear and currency, it will be harder to tell where most of the value is placed. Most of it may not be placed anywhere.

It becomes GTA3 where you have some sandbox gameplay. There are quests and missions and an end, but there are so many activities and those activities have many different ways to approach and participate that linear power doesn't mean near as much, but the activities are insanely fun.