RMT

I spent some time reading the comments about that article on mmorpg.com about RMT.

The first thing I remembered is the reason why I don't spend much time on these forums... And then I remembered over 10 years ago playing Magic: The Gathering... Some were able to buy very expensive (and overpowered) cards while I was playing with an elf deck and still had fun.

Not sure there's more to say beside that Magic has probably been a true gold mine for Wizards of the Coast since 1993...

I played SWG for about 2 years. At $15 per months, that makes $360 (and at some point I had 2 accounts so let's say a bit over $400). I have never spent that much money on Magic cards, even when the online version came out, and always had fun playing it. And then I know of more than 1 player that paid way more than $400 for a jedi account (and even non-jedi accounts).

So I'm not quite sure why some are thinking RMT is so new and that "the majority of players are against it". Seems like some thousands and thousands of players didn't mind spending way too much money into a cards game. What would make MMOs any different?

Surely there's better ways to handle this than others, very much like anything in life...

edit: One funny fact about my experience in SWG. I never could get the best weapons because I wasn't spending enough time going after the big loot and was always counting the few credits I had until a friend of mine quit the game and gave me all his stuff and money.

That day I bought some very powerful weapons that I was never able to buy before. So you could say that I gained "an unfair advantage that I didn't worked for" yet nobody complained about it.

If SWG would have been a free game with RMT, I could have spent the $400 I spent on subscription to buy directly these big guns and the results would have been the same in the end.

Anyway, I was still bad at combat with my big guns so I guess that's why people didn't bother about me getting free stuff.