Following on news from last week, via
Warcry, PlaySpan has officially agreed on an exclusive deal with K2 Network Inc. to facilitate an in-game marketplace for peer
to peer transactions. This development will allow a new stream of revenue to be generated from transactions between players. K2 Network operates F2P
online games with revenue coming mostly from virtual item sales.
While another operator, Square Enix banned more farmers in FFXI this month as
PlayNoEvil reports. 750 farmer accounts were among the 7,050 banned accounts, and 1,030 accounts
were suspended.
The major reason behind game operators banning gold farmers is that they alledgedly ruin the other players' experience of the game. Tobold clearly
explains this and calls it the
secondary
evil of RMT. RMT itself is subjective so it is difficult to judge whether it is right or wrong. But what makes the public despise RMT are the
"secondary evil" activities such as scamming, spamming, camping and so on.
In fact, PlayNoEvil considers RMT and gold farming to be
user
created entertainment and a measure of the game's success.
As more and more casual gamers are attracted to MMORPGs, RMT is likely to stay.
Mmocritic has given the issue some thought and pretty much sums up why the players buy gold: "Casual players simply do not
have the time, desire, or energy to play repetitive achievement orientated games".
