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News Report: Tabula Rasa gold farming opportunities, UK initiative on RMT tax and Videos from VGSummit 2007
By PJ, Aug 08, 2007
Following up with last week's news report and interview with game designers. Gamespot interviewed a veteran game designer and creator of Ultima
series, Richard Garriott addressed the issue of gold farming in his new
MMORPG, Tabula Rasa.
Gold farming first originated from Ultima Online, gamers obtained large amounts of virtual currency and sold them for real money. Although Richard did
not approve, the activities were fairly common from casual gamers to gold farming start-ups.
This time, Richard will try something different, something that does not involve players grinding monsters for gold. From what we know so far, Tabula
Rasa will feature an innovative AI system that will constantly change the world so no longer can farmers camp around and wait for creatures to be
respawned.
In the interview, he admitted that it is a complicated issue and probably needs to experiment and learn from mistakes over time. With the subscription
based business model, the demographic group of customers will have credit cards, willing and purchasing power to buy gold for convenience and time.
However, Richard and NCSoft will definitely be trying to resist it.
Tabula Rasa is scheduled to be release on October 5, 2007.
Coming back to other news around virtual world and RMT industry, Virtual World News reported UK have started to look into the possibility of taxation on virtual transactions particularly in
Second Life ahead of the US.
Via Raph the videos from Virtual
Goods Summit 2007 are available on VGSummit website. Check them out for talks on
the impact of virtual goods, business opportunities, success stories and much more from the experts of the industry.
[Edited on 8/8/2007 by PJ]
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Other articles
By carebear, Jul 24, 2008 - 2 comments
How much money is there really in gold-farming and who's actually making it? A lot of very general estimates have been floating around since the
first time values were placed on the virtual currency market of Everquest. However, little information was available on the revenue of individual
sellers.
Read more >>
By PJ, Mar 27, 2008 - 12 comments
IGE is one of the largest virtual currency and service providers for MMORPGs. Until 2006, the secondary market had been dominated by IGE - ever since
they acquired MySuperSales back in January 2004. According to their website, the company is located in Hong Kong, but previous office locations include Spain,
Switzerland, US, and China, making IGE a true global player.
Read more >>
By PJ, Oct 31, 2007 - No comments yet
This week, we have a short update on the current IGE class action case. The official website for the case
reported a motion to stay was filed in order to put the trial on
hold while it is resolving the dispute with Blizzard. IGE claims that it is bound by the TOU and EULA agreement with Blizzard. If selling gold for
real money is breaking the terms in TOU and EULA then this has to be settled with Blizzard first. The arbitration will probably involve some compensation and will be dealt in
privacy.
Read more >>
By PJ, Oct 25, 2007 - No comments yet
A self-introduction email of Jeff Lyndon in the VERN mailing circulation caught our
eyes and we thought doing an interview with him would be interesting. So we catch up with Jeff to talk about what he thinks of the RMT industry.
Read more >>
By PJ, Oct 25, 2007 - No comments yet
Moving closer to the end of the year, we take a look at the economy and RMT aspects of the upcoming game, Hellgate: London.
Read more >>
By PJ, Oct 18, 2007 - 1 comment
Last week, Korea and China were apparently engaging in a Cyber War. Korea's RMT websites such as ItemBay, Item Mania and Item Play Forum were down
for most of the time due to some Denial of Service attacks from China, PlayNoEvil had this covered.
Read more >>
By PJ, Oct 16, 2007 - 1 comment
By PJ, Oct 12, 2007 - No comments yet
This week we focus on three interesting virtual currency sellers. Two of them are from Canada, Mmorpg-shop and Igsky, number three, Guild4Power,
operates from the US and China.
Read more >>
By PJ, Oct 10, 2007 - No comments yet
As reported in JoongAng Daily (via PlayNoEvil)
the RMT market in Korea was estimated to be worth around 1 Trillion (more than US$1 Billion) Won in 2006. The biggest auction website in Korea's RMT
market, Itembay last week set a new record with a 12.5 million Won ($13,678) transaction for a set of very rare swords and armor for NHN's R2 game.
The amount is enough to buy a compact Hyundai car.
Read more >>
By PJ, Oct 05, 2007 - No comments yet
In this report we took a closer look at a few more well known companies in the industry: Itemgarden and Withgames are Chinese companies, both
having front end contacts in the West. Presence in a reputable country and ability to communicate in English is one of key factors customers look out
for. Igxe used another approach: The company started in Hong Kong and in the US,
then later made their entrance into China by acquiring and consolidating a local company.
[Edited on 10/19/2007 by carebear]
Read more >>
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