5. What about all these fake PayPal transactions going on ? What should RedFox do ?
Kneel it like Blizzard did. We all saw how these people operates, but RedFox didn’t do a thing. They limited to ban a fake account and not link it to the real accounts of these people to be banned. It is their business, how can they expect to have more sales or build the game reputation among new players.
Blizzard since 2011 is doing this : they are filing complaints with PayPal to prevent the sale of the in-game currency through the online payment service. Gold sellers pose as players, but are really just in the game to sell their gold, characters and highly prized items.
PayPal sent the following notice to all affected parties:
"You were reported to PayPal as an Intellectual Properties violation by Blizzard Entertainment Inc. for the sale of World of Warcraft Merchandise.
"If you feel your sales do not infringe upon the intellectual property rights of the Reporting Party, please complete the attached Objection to Infringement.
"The completed form should be faxed to the attention of the Acceptable Use Policy Department at [number removed] or emailed to [email removed].
"Should you choose not to object to the report, you will be required to remove all World of Warcraft Merchandise from the website [url removed] in order to comply with the Acceptable Use Policy."
6. How do gold farmers influence the economy in a MMO?
They have players occupy the most efficient spots to gain wealth and items other players are forced to compete even more in order to obtain items and gold. In a MMO certain spots have monsters with a higher percentage chance to drop valuable items or that drop more gold then other monsters (or monsters that are easily killed and offer less potential gold, but many can be killed very quickly). Often groups of gold farmers will constantly kill all the monsters in these spots and wait for them to reappear, they are usually able to claim these areas as theirs and theirs alone. On top of that, by selling items and gold for real life currency, prices will rise because there is more gold in the market. This gives an advantage to players who are willing to spend extra money on the game.
Gold farming allows players with more desire to spend money a chance to increase their online status. It has gotten to the point where people are literally paying hundreds of dollars for codes.There is more for sale here than just gold and items. Just as people seek status in real life (cars, a fancy house, and other material goods) the MMO community seeks “material” wealth as well.
7. From inside the industry what can you tell us about the virtual and real world economies ?
We make lots of studies on both and how they impact the games. Overall, economic growth plays a major role in the overall structure of a country. It can help determine the standard of living, the unemployment rate, and overall, how well off a country is. Economies in video games are similar; however all they really do is determine how much digital gold it takes to buy an item. As the demand for digital gold rises, people begin to see opportunity to exchange in game currency for real life currency. As this happens, the virtual economies become more and more real, almost to the point where now they can be viewed as separate, unique real world economies. The structure of a MMO economy greatly mirrors that of a real world economy, and we can see several parallels between the two realms.
A strong market structure is vital for a strong economy, both in the real world and in game. The market structure is the basic foundation for how a market is set up and the factors that define a particular market. There are six determinants that define a good market structure: product complexity, offering size, data transparency clearing risk, liquidity, and regulation Video games possess most of these characteristics, but in a lesser way. There is definite product complexity, as most MMOs offer a huge array of items, with data available on these items with a click of a button. The offering size in a MMO varies. If an item is crafted, the number of willing crafters will determine the offering size. If the item is random treasure one gets from killing monsters the availability will be almost completely random.
As for liquidity, video games offer something that does not exist in the real world. Even if no other player characters want an item a player in a MMO can make a sale. In MMOs, characters (programmed by the game designers) exist that buy nearly any item, so liquidity is not a real problem. Regulation and risk of default on a transaction are hardly a factor in MMOs, as well. If a player truly feels they were scammed by another player, then they are able to contact GMs and often receive their gold or items back. Overall, MMOs follow closely to the traditional market structure.
In a MMO the economy serves a different purpose than in the real world. In the real world, markets and economies are designed to maximize efficiency, while in video games they are meant to maximize the “fun” people have while in the games. The difference in designs creates a need to regulate trading. MMOs are often fantasy games where players go “from rags to riches” and earn what they have.
8. In our long talks with the community in facebook and in discords groups, many players consider that GMs are involve with black market that is why they don’t resolve the problem. How do you see this from inside ? What should RedFox do to change this image ?
I think is false. Everything you do as GM leaves traces. You have an audit check on your account and community posts. Same with players. Some thinks are smart and GMs don’t see their VPN activities or all their accounts transactions. Many black market dealers also try make the false impression in the community that they are back up by RedFox officials because they give credits to game and you may not get banned if you sell/buy there. This is a false image, they are not.
RedFox just failed the community expectations and let the black market control the economy and the mentality, inserting ”dog eat dog” on players. This is asian type of game mentality. RedFox is established in US and we play on American and European servers. We are Americans and Europeans citizens, here order and law reign, not dog eat dog. Trading items on black market, buying/selling without declaring on fiscal authority is a crime and you can go to jail. Maybe in some asian countries is legal to do this, but here no. Law and order must be enforced on servers, ban hammer must be used to full extend. Players want a clean game environment based on fair competition and access to game resources. RedFox failed in this assessment and many players think is corruption. Another bad action from RF was to associate their image to someone from black market, bad move and the community exploded.
They had to take action after people started to make petitions, wrote letters to RedFox and pushed the topics of black market on the forum. Some players got scared after that and deleted from black market groups some of their posts, but they have no idea they are still in the world of the internet. Nothing is gone forever. Some are just history on the making. It is not community job to do this, but RedFox, RedFox is either skeleton crew and can’t do it or waits tips from community. They are wrong on this too. They should start with the action soon, before Hainan is out.
Black market is in distress right now, the prices drop a lot. People don’t sell cc at low prices or don’t sell at all, keeping for their own use, but black market people are still there abusing their resource and accounts and try force others with their methods, which I have listed to force others buy from them.
Black market now will need to sell level 7-10 relics so the future on KL bosses will be a fun one. The gangs will war each other because now the black market has been contracted. They will start sell now other types of items like Kunlun decos or bags on $. The ”little ants army” now will take the Kunlun map as a whole to farm other things. Bots and the other menu all will be included.
Community also must be aggressive with them, call them cheaters and follow their actions and after report to support. These people need to know that they are being monitored, to be afraid of the honest people in the community who give money to the publisher from their work.
The community must ask for an extended investigation like many Tao players already did on support on all accounts they trade large amounts of money or items that values over 30 bil in game money in a period of time or who are logged like 24/24 in period of time. They should give wave of bans on all those accounts, so the main one will be locked in the middle. RedFox should wake up and don’t tolerate the RMT mentality on american and european servers. RedFox must step up and come in front of the community and tell us what they did with these people.
9. What is the cost of the big bad virtual world ?
On black market the price is high to pay and is pay by game companies. These black markets don't make the gaming companies any richer. Game companies must declare these earnings in their tax filings. For players, however, the legal bridge between virtual and real economy is grey. While "in-game possessions sold for dollars" certainly qualifies as income, many players might not report such income. Game company/publisher obligation ends with declaring its own earnings. The black market is a nightmare for both the IRS and international tax agencies and in the future will be very well regulated. A player need only have a PayPal account to begin selling items in the in-game market, and many who meet that qualification likely are not considering tax ramifications when doing so. Income that should be taxed at the player level will escape the eye of the IRS.
Players also can report to IRS the black market accounts transactions with screens and ask for investigation on PayPal accounts where they made the trade. IRS don’t play nice and you may end up in jail. In 9dragons let’s not be naive, the big boss of black market and his network made over 150k $ from the game and will not go down nicely.
10. Let’s talk about Yin situation and the black market.
Yin is a low population server. We have some gangs that war over top resource to sell for $ or in game money. We have a structure : players who farms and pvp, dealers who place items, sellers and those looking for customers. Some are cross servers dealers. And there is the OS group who stays in the shadow and follow up.
What happens: they make a few tops characters on which they make pk to all players and enemies all over again and accumulate resources, putting a monopoly.
They make you buy from them to get on top. It is basically based on your need for esteem on server. If you die you are weak, if you buy items from them for $ or credits you will get up there and for a while they will leave you alone. Basically, they make a profit from the fact that they sell expensive and buy cheap, adding on top the monopoly. Those items clearly are not worth the money on the black market. They are trying to intervene to control prices in the economy by roaring prices from many characters or logs 20 standards with same prices or one lower, one higher. Practically you buy from same people.
The story from black market it is not complicate, it is dog eat dog in transactions : after they buy from you with paypal for $ they report to RedFox, so your account will be banned. If you are a US and EU citizen you don’t report a transactions because you show trust, but this is not working with these people. Dog eat dog mentality destroy the game and now can put an end to any game transactions.
Another thing that practically destroyed the game and server in time is the shared characters rule. This should be terminated by RedFox as soon as possible. This is against the common law in any country or state in US and EU because you share sensitive information on accounts, meaning your personal information. RedFox may be amended to allow this going on.
Ensuring a competitive environment, transparency in transactions, eradicating the black market is the duty of RedFox not the community, but over time they failed and did not do enough. Now the community is very angry because the black market guys took the fun of the game out.
I have plenty of screens and everything else to prove all, but let’s keep it for now. I know from a very trustable source there is a big investigation going on and the things are very complicated now. Things may end bad for everyone if the will of RedFox is weak in this issue and will keep associate the company image with people from black market group.
11. If you want to add anything else.
The past months things went very badly for the game as a whole. The community is bored of same content, the events don’t add up, are boring, no new content, the servers are in a mess and players are angry because of the black market guys and the way they make transactions. There is a lot of harassment and scheming of kids on game resources as griefing, doxing and swatting of some groups. These people abuse the kids and some need therapy in real life because RedFox could not enforce a good game environment.
A bomb probably will explode soon. It is actually a result of unresolved issues.
Black market should stay in the game like this only :
