Designers design MMO’s for people with large blocks of time to play the game. They reward those with lots of free time and punish those with limited play time — they do this through the mechinism of Raids. Raids are designed to drop the best loot in the game — loot you can only get by Raiding. Also Raids are inherently easier to design — especially those in EQ2 which in no way require the skill and tactics of the 72 man raids in EQ1.

Now I admit EQ2 tried to resolve the tme sink issue by making many raid of shorter duration — but raid are still Time sinks and require a lot of player time. You have to get to place X at a certain time on a certain day, you have wait for others to show up, ( that in itself is a huge time waster) and then you have the raid, and perhaps a corpe recovery and REZ cycle. But no matter how you change it, Raid are a time sink in and of themselves.

As long as you design raids to be the ultimate end game and drop the ulimate loot people who can afford will do RMTs. Alas the designers never see themselves as part of the problem — which they are. Designers never seen to design content which can be digested in small chunks of time — but yet are very difficult and require skill and knowledge of the class. These sort of quests should reward the player with just as good loot as the one with tons of free time.

It is the orientation of developers and designers who favor raid content ( I suspect because it is a lot easier to have waves of Uber mods attacking than to design difficult quest encounters done in small time chunks). Part of this bias is due to the fact that a generation of designers and developers come to companies having played in Uber guilds and see this as the way to go. The other part of it, is that raider are the biggest whiners on the forums if they see the supremacy of their raid loot challenged.

The effort to create more NO DROP loot in the end can “piss” players off as they see through the efforts of the company to control and limit itemization. I do not believe that any loot should be NO DROP — it is simply a form of cheating on the part of the designers who are using it as a way to limit RMT, instead of realizing that it is their basic design which is the problem.

Until a company comes along that has the guts to say that other content can be just as challenging and rewarding as raid content, RMT is here to stay.

Another part of what fuels RTM is getting around unwanted content (or requirements). Grinding levels, grinding status, grinding achievements. This also relates to botting, which can address the same, or provide fuel for RTM.

The only way I can think of to address these systematically is to eliminate any form of progress or rewards, in which case you’re left with no identity.
To say that each player must put forth the same level of effort to receive the same rewards is treading dangerous ground. Allow me to provide a few legitimate examples.

I knew someone in EQ1 who would spend much of his time in NFP trading and selling items. I was the leader of a large guild, had my epic and rather good gear through many months of raiding. This guy had dragon loot and a ton of coin with no raiding/farming at all. He had systematically created a vast amount of wealth through relatively little effort compared to Joe Blow with no negotiation skills who “earned” his wealth. Is that fair? Where is the line drawn?

Another example…my first EQ2 char was a dirge. He was fun. Didn’t make much money with him, levelling was pretty slow, but I played a bard in EQ1 and wanted to continue the tradition. Later I rolled a conj alt. Blew through the levels, farmed very easily, earned hundreds of plat, all in *much* less time due to the difference in tactical choices the class offers. My dirge could not have hoped to match his level of success. Is that fair? Where is the line drawn?

There are plenty of legitimate instances where differences in skill (class or motor skills), knowledge (whether it be of “the best hunting spot”, the spawn cycles and locations of named mobs to farm, or even “how to negotiate in the auction channels”), communication, and lifestyle will give one player a clear and distinct advantage over another player.

I personally don’t care one way or another, and tend to think that most players will remain apathetic as long as their game play isn’t directly impacted. In fact, I’ve seen way more complaints about the RNG named guy with 5 characters on autofollow hitting keyboard macros than I have ever seen about anything else, which is “legitimate” play. At least with RTM, both parties are consenting.

Ultimately, if there is a “market” for a “commodity” that you wish to control…you either have to *completely* regulate it or find a way to successfully ban it (and accept the heavy resources involved), otherwise black market influences will find a way into your environment.

A couple of things I can think of off hand that would help deter a banned behavior such as coin/item transfers: severely punish the recipient. Works for the IRS in dealing with tax evasion.

Another idea would be to create a relationship algorithm between a trading party and recipient to flag certain “questionable” transactions. A number of factors would be involved, such as minimum level of trade (focusing resources on bigger fish), whether or not there is an exchange involved (and if so, perhaps the tier of the item for comparison), whether or not the accounts are guilded, owned by the same person, or *have a history of interaction*. If player A transfers 20 plat to player B with absolutely no relation (guild, RL ownership, perhaps even IP), no previous interaction with the player (or even that player’s account in general), perhaps that transaction would create an item for investigation.

I also think that investing in some sting operations would probably work some wonders as well. That money has to come from somewhere, even if it was transferred among a few different characters before it was sent to the recipient.

Even with crazy conceptual theories and the rantings of those for and against RTMs…it just comes down to the facts. If an in-game economy exists, it will have a relationship to any other economy that exists as long as there is a medium of exchange between the two. The currency may be different, but the relationship will still exist, and there will be those that will attempt to manipulate this relationship to their own advantage, just like the guy in NFP.

If I take part in, or watch the Olympics I want that the athletes who spend their years of preparation time with training in a fair and legal manner. I cheer form them, respect them and are happy for them if they win medals.

Those who use illegal medical, chemical whatever substances to get an unfair advantage over the fair players should always be banned because they destroy the reputation and the meaning of the whole event.

On the other hand they are free to make a special event and call it Doping-Olympics or something. So you know what to expect and how to play if you take part in that.

Personally, I would prefer people level up the old-fashioned way, but if they buy themselves a character or some armor, what does it really take away from me as a player? Unless it’s the only item of its kind (and even then, what are the chances that I would have gotten it), it’s doing nothing to prevent me from enjoying what I came into that game to do.

It seems to me they’re just enjoying the game in an entirely different manner than I would. Like when my cherubs played Halo by killing each other to pile up the body husks and cover an entire room. That’s not “real” game play, but they sure as heck enjoyed themselves doing it and it took nothing away from anyone else playing that game.