Andrew Busey: My Musings

Well News.com has written a story:  Outsourcing your ‘Warcraft’ skills

I think the point is kind of missed in many places in this story, especially by the “long-time Warcraft player” quoted in the story.  People say this is lame and misses the point of the game, but I disagree.  MMORPG’s have an inherent problem:  they have to throttle forward progress.  There are always a group of people who can play almost 24/7 and get ahead.  So much of the stuff, including leveling up and especially making gold, are repeatative and often boring undertakings. 

I’ll admit I had fun leveling from 60->70 and that was generally fun.  Kudos to Blizzard for putting in enough quests and fun stuff to make it not feel like a hellacious mind-numbing grind.  But earning gold is.  Grinding for reputation is in many cases.  These things are just not fun, but they are throttles within the game.

If you have a job and a life, you cannot necessarily do these things at the frequency level necessary to be at the top of the game.  This is in no way a reflection of your skills and it in no way makes you lame.  If you like the game and you want to stay at the top I think it’s fine to outsource. 

It’s not like you’re having these services run instances for you - they typically are not capable of that.  But if during downtime you have them make gold for you (cheaper, but possible riskier than buying it), grind reputation, or level up an alt (alternate or second) character (so you can try something different), I say do it if you have the money.  Spending money on this is cheaper than a lot of other hobbies. 

I’ve done it.  I admit it.  I think it was worth it.  Anyway, there you have it. 

In World of Warcraft’s expansion The Burning Crusade you can buy flying mounts.  They are really cool and are also a requirement for many level 70 activities.  So if you play, you’ll eventually have to buy one.  There are two types:

• Normal:  60% faster than walking and they can fly.
• Epic:  280% faster and they fly really fast.

The epics are really cool.  I highly recommend them.  So here is what they cost:

Normal:

• Riding skill training to 225:  800g
• Basic flying mount:  100g
• Total price:  900g

Epic:

• Riding skill training to 225:  800g
• Riding skill training to 300:  5,000g  (requires that your riding already be 225)
• Basic epic flying mount:  200g
• Total cost:  6,000g (assuming you didn’t also buy the basic mount in the meantime for an additional 100g)

So for an epic flying mount (you’ll definitely want one) you’re in for 6,000g.  What is that in real money?  Well, I’m glad you asked.  So I looked it up today and found gold (on my server) going for $188/1000g - down substantially from a week ago when it was about $300/1000g.

At the new, lower gold price of $188 per 1000g the epic mount would cost $1,128. (Over a thousand dollars of real money!)

So your glorious new flying vehicle (which Blizzard declares that it own) is almost as expensive as a real vehicle.

Oh and if you want to know how much it costs in time, it is even worse.  My guess is that you can earn 1000g in 20-40 hours depending on how hard you try.  So figuring 30, it will take you 180 hours of gold farming (what fun) to get enough for your epic mount.  If you make over $30/hr in reality land that means the epic mount IS costing as much as a real vehicle at $5,000+.  Of course the fallacy of this argument is that you choose to spend your time here, so what is your leisure time worth?  I don’t know but this seems like it’s starting to get pretty expensive.

A quick warning.  On Kil’Jaeden (where I play) there is a new scan going on and I expect it is probably happening on other servers as well.

You get an ingame mail from the Argent Dawn saying something like:

Thank you for all your hard work killing demons for the Argent Dawn, please accept this gift as a small token of our appreciation.

The mail will claim to be from some Argent Dawn figure and will have an attached package - typically one of the various gift wrapped items (like the reward from those grudge-covered objects in Gnomeragon). 

The scam is that it is COD and it’s easy to fall for because it looks like you are getting a present and 100g/300g (whatever they send).  But really you are getting a present for 100g/300g COD gold.  So when you click you lose the gold.  Boom!

I got one of these for 300g and fortunately didn’t fall for it.  I’ve seen several people sending warnings about the scam in general chat.  So be careful, it would suck to have some random scam yank hundreds of gold from you.

/Alert

Article from News.com:  eBay bans auctions of virtual goods

Well this makes my weekly tracking report on account sales in World of Warcrat difficult to continue.  I was waiting to restart it once things stablizied, since the release of The Burning Crusade (the expansion) it has been unclear what the right metrics were.  There have been a few level 70 characters up on eBay, but not many.  So given this announcement I’ll delay the report.  I’ll start tracking gold again this week. 

This is unfortunate.  I, for one, think that being able to sell your account is a good thing.  It you put thousands of hours (like most level 70s) into this, you should be able to sell what you’ve accomplished.  It’s a shame a few purists think you should just have to throw all that away. 

Games are a big hobby for many people, most hobbies involve collection/building and generate some value (although are not often wildly profitable).  MMORPGs are no different - as you play you collect stuff for your characted and you build it up.  This has some value - no where near the time you put into it - and you should be able to extract that value if you leave.  It is unfortunate that some game companies do not take this broader view.

Please also read The Prince, The Pauper, and The Purist, if you are interested in this topic.

I’m a pretty heavy MMORPG fan, although somehow I’ve never played Everquest (or EQ2).  I started in MUDs, moved to Ultima Online, then Asheron’s Call, then a break, then to World of Warcraft.

Any objective observer in the MMORPG space can see that World of Warcraft has been a genre shattering success with around eight million subscribers.  Clearly this game has broken beyond the initial MMORPG and fantasy game playing crowd.  Since the biggest (non-Korean) MMORPGs were only at a few hundred thousand users this is a big deal.

World of Warcraft has been out for over two years.  On January 16th it’s first expansion, the Burning Crusade, will be released.  No doubt this will get everyone excited and re-energized about the game for some period of time.  

So, in pseudo-case study form, I ask:

You are the Publisher / GM / CEO / Studio Manager / Executive Producer of a MMORPG.  Your MMORPG has a little buzz in the hardcore fan community, but no one outside the most 10-20k most rabid game fans have ever heard of it.  You have two choices:

• Release on January 30, less then two weeks after the biggest MMORPG in history (by a lot) releases its first expansion.
• Defer your release by sixty to ninty days which results in you losing some revenue, but allows you to make the game better and more polished.

Ok, let’s take what we know about MMORPGs for supporting information:

• MMORPGs consume a lot of time.  They are typically monogamous games, meaning people play only one MMORPG actively at one time.
• MMORPGs have high switching costs.  If you have played World of Warcraft any length of time and are level 60 (or close), you don’t want to walk away from that.  Especially since now you can go to level 70.
• MMORPGs are expensive - often $50 for the game and $10-$20/month for a subscription.

Now, taking that all into account.  Let’s take a look at Vanguard (official site).  This game has been in development quite a while by some of the original team from Everquest.  Original it was going to be published by Microsoft, but subsequently changed publishers to Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) which publishes Everquest I and II and Star Wars Galaxies.

So I follow this market.  I remember reading about Vanguard a few times.  While writing this post I went back and read some other articles.  It looks like World of Warcraft with a little more capabilities for character crafted items and one big “selling point” which is player housing.  Fun.  So I looked at the screenshots.  They don’t look as good as World of Warcraft.  Oh and I watched the movies… which focus almost exclusively on flying mounts, which probably seemed innovative and exciting at the time.  But, woops, they are in the World of Warcraft expansion too.

This is a big problem for MMORPGs:  If you are making a persistent world MMORPG like World of Warcraft, you are going to have to get WoW players to play your game.  The first thing they are going to do is go look at your reviews, screenshots, movies, etc.  And if they aren’t at least at parity with WoW, what would make you think they would even consider shelling out $50 and a lot of time to try it? 

ESPECIALLY WHEN THE WOW EXPANSION JUST SHIPPED.

So since Vanguard doesn’t look as cool as WoW (at least from the screenshots and movies I saw, I’m probably not going to try it.  If the WoW expansion sucks (unlikely) I may be motivated to give it a try.  It’s possible I buy it and try it so I can blog about it - either as a review of a pseudo-major MMORPG release or as a follow-up to this post.  But thinking purely as a player, I would wait.  If it got really popular and people were raving about it, I might try it.  Otherwise my monogamous persistent world MMORPG relationship will continue with World of Warcraft.

Anyway, this seems like a dumb move.  Lecture 2 will be in a month - two weeks after this is out to see how it goes for them. 

Oh, one other thing…  A lot of user comments out there keep saying this game looks good but it isn’t finished.  Blizzard (the maker’s of World of Warcraft) are known for pushing game release dates (a lot) to make sure the game is finished and good.  This has made them a lot of fans and is at least part of the reason almost all of their games are spectacular sellers.  Shipping a game that competes against them and isn’t ready yet:  even dumber idea.

Some user quotes from Gamespot:

apanizo
Heh, they spent 4.5 years and the largest development budget for an MMO to make a bad WoW clone with Eq2 graphics. Everyone point and laugh at SOE, again.

Khimarhi
I am very disappointed in the beta so far. . was thinking about jumping ship from wow to Vanguard. . but not now. . this game is boring in everyway. . good graphics are nice but animations are poor . . and if they are still planning on releasing it at the end of the month then they are making a big mistake. . way too many problems. .

There were, to be honest, a few (not many) positive comments.  Mostly from the few people who don’t like WoW or have an overwhelming love for player housing.

Stay tuned for the next round.

WARNING:  Buying World of Warcraft (WoW) accounts on eBay or via Paypal is very dangerous.  This is the first in a series of articles on how to identify these scams and how to protect yourself. 

I previously posted that eBay should have a flag option like craigslist.  This would help.  So, in the interest of explaining how messed up this stuff is, I will show the anatomy of a really bad eBay scam.  (Well really, it is more like a scammer.)   The proliferation of fraud related to virtual items is a significant problem.  It’s perpetuated by three things:

• eBay’s stance on virtual items.  Which, to the best of my understanding is:  they don’t get any protection because they aren’t real.  I find to be really silly given that eBay is one of the biggest web companies and virtual items are a big, high value market.
• Paypal shares eBay’s position on virtual items.  I guess this isn’t surprising since eBay owns them.
• The game companies (particularly Bllizzard) perpetuate fraud by not allowing secure character and gold transfers.  Look, I know some of these companies are purists, but the reality is that people are going to buy/sell these accounts.  They can let their customers (people that want to play their games enough to pay) get ripped off or they can facilitate these transfers and make money.  They are in denial about reality.

OK, so now you know why these scams exist.  Let me show you one.

On eBay right now, I can do a search on “curulet2007″ (you have to do an advanced search with the box checked for Search title and description) and get these results:

• WoW World of Warcraft 8/9 Tier 3 Warrior + Thunderfury
• 10 x Nintendo Wii Consoles - Special Lot .BRAND NEW.
• WOW World of Warcraft 7/9 Tier 3 Priest - Full Atiesh
• World of Warcraft WoW 60 Rogue 8/9 tier3 Kingsfall r14
• World of Warcraft WoW 60 Hunter 8/9 Tier 3 - 70 Epics -

Now, you’ll see that there for world of warcraft accounts there.  Each has 7/9 or 8/9 tier 3 (which is very hard to get) and one of the best possible weapons for it’s class.   It would be impossible for one person to have created all these characters.  These accounts should be going for $1000-$1500 (if they were real).  Except in this case they are all the same guy using several  different eBay accounts.  You can look at each one, he uses the following ids (in the same order as the auctions above):

• scutumboy (1)
• lisar915 (34)
• lisar915 (34)
• powerjunkie68 (52)
• powerjunkie68 (52)

Only scutumboy and powerjunkie68 have any feedback that still links to an auction.  Scutumboy actually looks vaguely real since it has (1) feedback and that feedback is selling a $500 remote controlled car set.  Powerjunkie68 bought a “fake doctor’s excuse” $9.99.

This is another important way to detect fraud.  (The first being a seller listing several items that he can’t possibly have.)  I look at feedback and click the links.  If the person has just bought a bunch of < $10 items that look useless they are probably just racheting up their feedback for the big score.  It looks like this guy probably rotates accounts at a frequency that makes it difficult to spot what he has been doing.

Virtual goods are also difficult in feedback, because in some cases the seller can “steal them back”.  In the case of World of Warcraft accounts this is thanks to Blizzard’s policy since they do not recoginize account changes the original owner can just call up, request a new password, and boom the account is their’s again.  At that point you have limited recourse.  You can’t even go give the seller negative feedback if you already gave them positive feedback.  So they can just sell it again!

BTW, the same thing pretty much happens if they give you nothing - you don’t have a lot of recourse.  Although you can leave them negative feedback in this case, since they never gave you anything.

In some cases you can do a chargeback on your credit card which forces Paypal to refund your money.  This doesn’t work if your Paypal drafts from your bank.

Anyway, back to the fraud.  In every listing he says contact curulet2007@yahoo.com before bidding.  This is usually a bad sign.  If they don’t want to be contacted through the eBay channels, that is usually a big red flag.

There is one more thing that sets off the fraud alert in the case described above.  The 10x Wiis listing.  I went and looked at that as I was looking at all his listings (when spening money on virtual goods it is important to do as much research on the seller as possible).  So when selling Wiis and PS3s it is common (it used to be required, but I’m ont sure if it still is) to show a photo with your receipts and a written note with your eBay ID - to prove they were yours.  Well, the 10x Wiis here are listed under the “lisar915″ eBay ID and the picture has the ID “alexmichalas” in it.  Woops!  Run away.   BTW, a quick search for ebay member “alexmichalas” reveals he has been selling Wiis (in Europe) and has the exact picture in all his listings… with, shock, no mention of “curulet2007″.

So, here we have one scammer spotted and identified.  Of course, I can’t tell eBay about it or flag it.  So what should I do?

1. Write this blog post.
2. Stop people from getting scammed.

So I attempted to contact kotura (331) who has a current bid of $1,425 on the 8/9 T3 Warrior (first listing).  It’s the only one with meaningful bids.  BUT, get this, I can’t contact this person because I have had a transaction with them - I might be trying to rip them off.  Oh, the irony!

So I tried to keep this buyer from getting ripped off.  It almost makes me want to start a “verified” eBay listing or something.  Or eBayFraudAlert.com.  But really, eBay should be doing this.

 

We are two weeks away from TBC, the first expansion to World of Warcraft.  It’s a big deal, largely because, well quite literally, it will change the game.

The biggest thing:  the maximum level moves from 60 to 70.  Why is this so important:

1. People have been sitting at level 60 for about two years.  This means that level hasn’t been that important as a differentiator for a long, long time.  So since everyone has been stuck at 60 they’ve differentiated across different axes:
• Equipment:  There are currently 3 tiers of equipment that are dramatically different.  Even the people with tier 1 are dramatically more “powerful” than those in “tier .5″ or “tier 0″…   And there are very few with full sets of tier 3.  But basically all this stuff will be obsolete withing a few months of the expansion release (since people will be 70 and the level 70 stuff is better than even tier 3).
• PVP:  This has been fun.  The rewards, however, are all equipment.  So all the PVP people have been doing was a fun game, but all the “output” again gets washed away.  Start over when you get to 70. 
2. People haven’t “levelled up” in a long time.  Getting a PVP rank used to be comparable, but they took that out in Decemeber and it was crazy hard (like 80 hours a week) past a certain level.  So the feeling of advancing a level will be back, at least for a month or two, which will be fun and energize people.
3. New areas — there have been a lot of patches with new areas in the two and half years of WoW, but they were almost exclusively dungeons and battlegrounds.  There will be new dungeons and battlegrounds in the expansion too.  But, more importantly, there will be a giant new land mass.  This will bring back the joy of discovery and exploration.  I think it will be a lot of fun.
4. New races — this will appeal to the hardcore folks who want to try something new.  It might also be good for new people who now have some vague advantage to entering the game now (they get to be one of the new races).

So I think there might be a resurgence of playing, but I’m not sure.  I have not been to Outland (the big new area) in TBC, although I have played the beta.  I messed around as a dranei and a blood elf (the new races) and it was pretty fun.  But I couldn’t bring myself to level up to 70 only to have it wiped when the expansion is released, so I haven’t seen the high end stuff.  I’m looking forward to checking it out.

So this is an interesting post on how some Korean players are using a mod to enable bidding on items during a raid.   Interesting idea.   Frankly I’m surprised that no one has set up a commercial guild where you pay real money to go on the raids and get the items you want and the guild members split the cash (and still get the items they don’t sell).   Anyway, back the the point, this article points out that some items sell for as much as 9,000 gold which translates to about $270 (using the numbers in the article).  

In the U.S. the gold exchange rate is more like $100-$150 per 1,000 gold which would make this seem really expensive for a single item.   Also, the guilds in the U.S. that sell items (for gold) are selling them at much lower prices.  Here is a price list from Death and Taxes (one of the top guilds worldwide).  It puts the most expensive item at around $150. 

So, higher end items are between $50-$300 each.  These are items from 40-person raid instances so they are pretty hard to get.   Interestingly, these prices dovetail nicely with items purchased with the new honor system (discussed in several recent posts).   You can find an example of those prices here.  But basically, $200 gets you 21,000 honor points (not sure if this was before or after they reduced the honor generated).  But the best armor pieces and weapons in the honor system cost between 20,000 and 23,000 honor to purchase.   Amazingly all these prices align.

So whether you buy the items with gold or pay someone to get the honor for you, the prices are around $150-$200 per epic item.  You could also use that to calculate how much you are getting earning per hour played (although you cannot resell these items as they are all BOP - Bind on Pickup).  I don’t want to do that calculation though, because it will depress the crap out of me.

Red 5 Studios announced they have closed $18.5 million in funding from Benchmark Capital and Sierra Ventures.   Mark Kern was team lead on World of Warcraft.  I wish him and his team the best of luck on their new game!

They are using the Project Offset engine, which if you haven’t seen it yet - you really should.  It looks amazing and the videos are really impressive.

On last Tuesday Blizzard released a patch called Before the Storm which is basically World of Warcraft 2.0 (patch notes).  A large patch on Tuesday is not uncommon, they happen at least once a quarter.   So while the expansion (The Burning Crusade) got delayed until Jan. 16, they released most of it in the 2.0 patch.   It is missing the ability to go to level 70 (a big deal for those of us that have been level 60 for a year and a half), the Outlands (a whole new area with new dungeons that on the surface look like they will be a lot of fun), and Arenas (a new type of PVP - player vs. player - combat area that looks really cool.   

They did add entirely revamped talent trees for every class in the game - which allows you to change how you play and to plan for how you spend your points once you finally move past level 70.   Another, bigger change is the way the honor system works.  This is a big deal.

This is a big deal because the rewards you get from the honor system are equal to at least Tier 2/2.5 epic items (which require 40-man raids of complex dungeons) and just shy of Tier 3 items (Tier 3 items come from Naxxramas which is a very difficult raid that can be completed by only the best geared and most experienced guilds) in some cases.  So before this patch epics were kind of rare, the honor system rewards, called Field Marshal (Alliance) or Warlord (Horde) armor and Grand Marshal / High Warlord weapons were very rare.   To get them you had to achieve the appropriate PVP ranking which took playing a lot for 6-8 weeks, including a push in the end that required 80+ hours of playing and, often, multiple people playing your account.

Now anyone can get these armor sets and weapons quickly.  For a reasonably active, but not super hardcore player, it might be possible to get a single weapon or armor in a week and certainly is achievable in two.  (Some of the armor is cheaper.)   Already it is common to see people with the GM/HWL weapons and no other epics. 

So I guess they are succombing to making stuff accessible to the masses.  I think that’s a good idea for the game.  Having really powerful stuff to acquire in an understandable, attainable way (that doesn’t depend on either being in a 40-person raid or grinding 100+ hours a week in battlegrounds) is a good thing. 

I also think they are doing this to help people gear up for the new grind to level 70 that starts on Jan. 16.