Diablo 3

Diablo is not MMO game. It does not have any common economy system nor any persistent world.

Unless your MMO has actual static content, an actual limited amount of resources, for example it has a limited amount of gold in circulation, the iron ore never gets over a certain amount, etc, then it's not different than Diablo. The number of players in a single instance at once is not applicable. In Diablo, they could all access the auction house, so you could say the auction house was it's own MMO.

But you can't claim that being able to buy things with real world money will not give advantages to players that do so

I just mentioned this only in sense that any player could reach the same things without money. So, in general, paying player will not have more power than non-paying player. But anyway, it depends on other mechanics and design of the game.

The number of players in a single instance at once is not applicable. In Diablo, they could all access the auction house, so you could say the auction house was it's own MMO.

Ok, I see your point, thank you!

If you think you will be able to create a safe place for the trades to take place I recommend you take a looooooong hard look at Steam and its trading system. How much it has changed, the massive security they have bolted on to it to protect against scammers and the like and how many scams still manage to slip through. This is a big wealthy company with suitable resources to throw at the problem.

If you are a single person then I get the feeling you will not have the resources to throw into user support, security and related nightmares that a popular game could bring.

If real world money available you will get people who are only interested in if they can game the system and where all the weak points in the security are. For example, if items are "worth" real money then trying to hack your servers to steam/create items is now a way to make money.

Years ago I had software for sale that was cheap and fringe stuff, so not huge circulation. I had keys tied to users to unlock all features. Within days of release there were keygens online for it where people had reverse engineered the code for fun.

After many years of inactivity I have just recently over the past few days started looking around this forum again. Its quite a coincidence that this topic was posted just yesterday as it was a major part of the project that I wanted to get started when I signed up at this forum. I'm currently trying to figure out how it could maybe work without the real money economy.

- rant about legal issues you can ignore if you want - (After reading up on the legal issues (I live in the US) I decided I didn't want to risk getting all my assets seized as the kingpin of an illegal criminal enterprise under the RICO act and to go to jail for violation of the bank secrecy act of 1970 and the unlawful internet gambling enforcement act of 2006 (these are the repercussions of the federal government ruling that virtual currencies like bitcoins are real money). There is a book I bought on amazon that sort of covers this topic and mentions second life and entropia quite a bit (before the ruling on virtual currency by the feds) called virtual law navigating the legal landscape of virtual worlds by benjamin tyson duranske if your interested in it.) - end rant -

I am very familiar with entropia universe as I played it quite a bit around 2006 - 2010 right before they went to cryengine. It pretty much ruined my ability to enjoy online games anymore as it just feels pointless and boring without real money being involved. I was one of the few people that never got lucky with a big loot, never put in a large amount of money, never scammed anyone and still managed to make thousands of dollars playing it (it would have been $10,000's if I had started with a big deposit). Then cryengine was announced, it became a money pit, and I quit.

In terms of game design I think a game like this will not appeal to most people however there are enough people that are interested in it that you could have a successful game.

I don't quite get how you say it wouldn't be pay to win though. I mean it is not the typical pay to win where you pay the developer, instead you pay another player or players to "win" or at least get some advantage (unless you only plan on having cosmetic items tradable). I do think this is a better system though. I would rather pay another player who got lucky to get something rare or spent his time to grinding some boring gameplay to get loot I need in a trade then to just pay the game developer but that's just me.

As for in-game economy issues just take a look at entropia. I haven't really looked at it much in years but I remember the massive inflation ($20k+ for a gun, $35k to heal yourself) and the players that cheated early on that have insurmountable skill levels that you can never compete with. At the same time some loot items and mined materials just kept getting cheaper and cheaper until it was tt food. It would be very difficult if not impossible to have a stable economy in such a game but then again I don't think its a requirement either.

"Should such game try to make any protection from out-of-game trading between players?" I would think you legally would have to due to international anti money laundering laws on top of the fact that if your income is from taxing these trades you don't want people not paying you.

If you ever do end up starting a project I would love to be kept up to date on it. If you live outside the US I don't think you will have many legal issues in most countries. Even in the US you would probably go by completely unnoticed but I wouldn't want to risk it.

is your definition of 'real money' being money you can Get Back Out Of The Game

years ago (ie- before the in game gambling was eliminated) Second Life had something like that (allegedly - I never found out if the company actually carried through with that 'pay out' working).

I do recall that collaboration ( for content creation which that game was supposed to largely be based on) between players was stultified because of the mercenary aspect (voluntary improvements had no motivation or were overridden by unrealistic expectations of 'cashing in')

is your definition of 'real money' being money you can Get Back Out Of The Game

Not exactly. The game itself mostly know nothing about those real money. The trades are just between players. Game, in these terms, are just an "online-market", as the eBay.

So, players can't "get money back from the game" since they can't put money into the game. They can just buy or sell something from/to other players.

About Second Life, AFAIK, it's a bit different. Players can sell some assets (a real-world goods such as 3D-models, which was made in real 3D-modelling software, etc...) through the game. I'm talking about strictly in-game things, which could be earned only via in-game mechanics.

Also, in my case, all that stuff it's not a core mechanic for the game. It's just an addition which, I think, could make the game more interesting and attract more people.

Anyway, I'm mostly trying to understand here how such mechanic could affect the in-game experience, that's it.

"Also, in my case, all that stuff it's not a core mechanic for the game. It's just an addition which, I think, could make the game more interesting and attract more people." -

Ignoring the potential legal issues I agree that it would both make the game more interesting and attract more people. You could leach quite a few people off entropia pretty easily and start off with a bigger player base then you would otherwise be able to get with almost no effort. I know I would and have tried out ANY game with any sort of RCE mechanic in it even if I thought it sounded terrible and the screenshots look horrible.

"Anyway, I'm mostly trying to understand here how such mechanic could affect the in-game experience, that's it." -

I think the biggest and easiest to predict impact compared to having the same game without real money trading will be that the most in demand items will be nearly impossible to buy without real money. Depending heavily on numerous other factors this could be anywhere from a very good to very bad thing. Many people will hate this and have no interest in the game but they are not your target market so I wouldn't worry about them.

Some games have items that are basically untradable because the currency has no real use and is so deflated that people ask for billions or trillion of it when it could take an hour to get 1,000. It would be much better to just use real money in that case (at least for the seller). Even if the currency actually has a use I think it would be good for people to not be hoarding large amounts of it to trade for an item (use real money instead).

I could definitely see an economy in a game like this where some rare items get bought for outrageous amounts of ingame currency or other lesser items by players quitting the game who then sell that rare thing off for real money in order to "cashout" of the game. Kind of the exact opposite of how many entropia players end up trading down to get lessor items that are easier to sell for cash.

There would likely be a lot of traders in the game that profit by knowing what they can buy for how much ingame currency and how much real money they can then turn around and sell that item for and then what they can buy to get back more ingame currency or real money then they started with. There probably will be a lot more scammers ingame too if there is potential to make real money. There also would likely be a lot of autoclickers, bots, gold farmers if enough money is able to be made from them.

the most in demand items will be nearly impossible to buy without real money

That's pretty important thing, you're right, thanks!

profit by knowing what they can buy for how much ingame currency and how much real money

It's possible, but there will be a fee/comission for each real-money trade, so it's good for the game developer :-) Also it will add more activity around the game, which is good as well.

Bots and so on – it's the main issue, right (after legal stuff). Not yet sure how to protect from this.

Although you said -- twice -- that you're not so much interested in the legal implications (which you deem not so much an issue, it seems) allow me to point out that you are heading for massive trouble. By all means, do not do this. Actively supporting money laundering and supporting the founding of terrorism are only two of the rather major "issues" that you will have to cope with. While that sounds ridiculous, it's very real. Let's not talk about insignificant peanuts like logging and reporting cross-border transactions, tax, or complying with banking regulations. Unlike the ones in the previous paragraph, these are not "end up with a sack over your head" issues, but merely "pay painful fine" issues.

Actively supporting money laundering and supporting the founding of terrorism are only two of the rather major "issues" that you will have to cope with. While that sounds ridiculous, it's very real.

That is a HUGE thing, actually. IF someone that has dirty money to launder finds your game, expect a ton of activity starting to go on in your game, and you raking in serious cash... 5 years later, expect some FBI or Interpol agents to come knocking at your door asking many inconvinient questions.

You will find yourself in court, and most probably sentenced to some years in prison if the police finds out that money laundering was going on in your game. And from the way you describe your idea, it would be terribly easy to do, with some years before the police becomes aware of your game and forcing you to close the loophole (which would practically mean "shut down your real money system immidiatly"), and probably your game going offline after an actual money laundering case in your game having been found (with you probably ending up in jail).

And I am not yet talking about financing terrorism and crime, which your game would also serve as a platform for.

Basically, your game would end up like a Bank, without the regulations (highly illegal). Or an online casino, if you are lucky (if we call that lucky now, seeing how the unregulated gambling around CS:GO exploded into serious trouble with the law lately).

Just... don't. Find a more traditional way to monetize your game, I don't think what you have in mind is really worth the trouble (unless you want to employ a big legal department, have tons of finance and math experts to tune the system, and tight security to find loopholes and ban abusers immidiatly).