Real Money Trading Banned On Shroud Of The Avatar Forums

I saw a story on MassivelyOP last week about a game named Shroud of the Avatar. The game, developed by Portalarium, was billled the spiritual successor to Ultima Online, complete with the involvement of Lord British himself, Richard Garriott. With a Kickstarter held in 2013, the game fully launched in March 2018.

The reason for writing this post is the unusual decision Portalarium made concerning real money trading. RMT is allowed in Shroud of the Avatar. The developers posted their reasoning in a forum post at the end of January 2018.

Greetings Avatars,

Since the very beginning of online games there has been what is known as Real Money Transactions (RMT). These are activities where players exchange real currency (US dollars, Euros, etc.) for virtual goods (in-game gold, in-game items, virtual property, leveling services, etc.). The first big news of this was with, of course, Ultima Online in which a castle sold on ebay for thousands of dollars. At that time 20 years ago we made the decision to not prevent these exchanges for multiple reasons, but the biggest one was our assessment of the resources required to enforce the policy versus the impact (virtually none) it was having on the player experience.

Fast forward to our current game Shroud of the Avatar and we decided to treat RMT exactly the same as we did 20 years ago for many of the same reasons:

• RMT will happen no matter what we do to enforce it

• Enforcing RMT prohibition will consume enormous resources (i.e. large amounts of backer money) which means less resources to make the game itself

• RMT prohibition will just move RMT transactions to hidden places, making it harder to find and enforce real issues like exploits and farming

• RMT allows users who have spent money on the game, but are ready to move on to new experiences an option to divest themselves without requiring Portalarium to refund their money. More importantly, there is no time limit to this option (as there will/would be with any refund policy).

• Shroud is an instanced game with multiple play modes so there is no competition for resources in shared spaces

So our position is that all RMT activity (gold, items, services) is allowed in Shroud of the Avatar, as long as it follows a few simple rules:

• It does not use any exploits / botting

• It is worth noting here that all botting / exploits are bannable offenses anyway regardless if they are used in relation to RMT, so technically this was already covered elsewhere

• It can only be advertised in the Player Marketplace section of the main website forums. Never in game or in any other section of official community areas (including the game’s Discord channel, social media pages, Steam, and other areas of the main website and forums)

• Portalarium (and our partners) are not liable for any of the transactions

• All goods can be delivered immediately (i.e. don’t sell stuff that will be made later like Episode 2 content)

I can see why during development Portalarium did not want to divert funds from making the game to fighting RMT. I should point out that allowing the trading of real life money for virtual currency and items isn't exactly cost free. The company that purchased SotA in October, Catnip Games, didn't take long to make changes to the policy.

As mentioned on streams and posts before, we are ending ALL real money transactions here. Starting on January 1, 2020, roughly 2 days from now, no RMT (real money transaction) will be allowed in our private forums. Existing posts for RMT will be deleted. New posts will be deleted. Repeat offenders will be moderated or banned.

This does not mean that we will not allow RMT, simply that you can't use the forums to do. As discussed in multiple places, this is a support headache for us and gives the wrong impression of the game to new players. You may post a link to a website that does RMT but please do not call out the RMT nature here. Also, please do not "Bump" your post or spam post it. Once a week or less is acceptable.

Ok, and after having to lock the thread due to some people angry they won't be able to RMT, I just want to remind you that you will be able to RMT just not HERE.

The decision to allow real money transactions on the official game forums were "a support headache" and "gives the wrong impression of the game to new players". Those are real costs. The "support headache" meant additional customer support costs that the new company either could not  or didn't want to incur. The wrong impression to new players is important. From that, I gather enough new players were turned off by a game allowing RMT that lower retention rates were noticeable.

While I don't like RMT and think the practice brings problems to games, the game belongs to Catnip Games. If they don't mind RMT, who am I to argue? What I don't like is the deception inherent the the post. "You may post a link to a website that does RMT but please do not call out the RMT nature here." In other words, "Let's not let the new players know about the buying and selling of items for real money until they get hooked on the game." 

Oftentimes I write a post to go back to. With so few game companies allowing secondary market RMT, I try to make a note of them. Besides, turns out trying to accomodate RMT wasn't so harmless after all.

Predictions For 2015

The end of the year is upon us.  Time to once again fulfill the requirement to look back at the year past and fearlessly gaze into the future.  That's right, time to see just how badly I did on my predictions for 2014 and make a fool of myself looking ahead to 2015.

First, how did I do in 2014?

The Subscription Model Is Not Dead Yet - I predicted that both Wildstar and Elder Scrolls Online would remain subscription games until the end of 2014.  I was correct on both points.  I didn't make the prediction that ESO would make an announcement would go free-to-play in the first half of 2015, which proved that discretion is the better part of valor.  I'll come back to this in my predictions for 2015.

PLEX-Type Systems Mixed Reception - With as much as I write about RMT, my predictions were spot on, right?  Yeah, right.  All my predictions were wrong.  I predicted that Jagex would announce that bonds would not have the desired effect on RMT within Runescape in 2014.  Wrong!  And that's a good thing.

What about Wildstar's C.R.E.D.D.?  I predicted that Carbine would trumpet some success concerning their PLEX-like object.  That didn't happen, at least to my knowledge.  I also predicted that a MMO in development would would announce it was developing their own version of a subscription plus PLEX model in the last quarter of 2014.  I was close, but World of Warcraft doesn't count.

Finally, what about my prediction for EVE of a final PLEX price of 660 million ISK?  Ha!  On Saturday, the average price sold in Jita was 782 million ISK.  Unless the prices drops through the floor, I'll count that prediction as a fail.

World of Warcraft Does Well, But... - Okay, I got most of my WoW predictions wrong.  I predicted that WoW would get back up to the 9 to 10 million subscription mark based on 2.4 million copies of Warlords of Draenor sold in the first week of release.  Instead, players flocked back to Azeroth and the expansion sold 3.3 million copies the first day and the number of subscriptions exceeded 10 million for the first time in three years.

I did, however, get the major hacking attack in 2014 prediction correct.  I'm not even referring to the major DDoS attack that occurred at the launch of Warlords of Draenor.  A trojan was released at the beginning of January that allowed hackers to bypass the WoW authenticator.  But as far as I know, Blizzard did pretty well the rest of the year, aside from the DDoS attacks that plagued the entire MMORPG industry.

Guild Wars 2 Expansion - I got my prediction correct about ArenaNet not publishing an expansion in 2014.  However, I failed on the announcement for an expansion for 2015.

CCP - Unfortunately, reality was worse for the Icelandic game company than I predicted, and I did not predict a good year.  While CCP is a private company and no longer releases subscription numbers, I am going to consider my prediction of a subscription loss in EVE Online in 2014 as coming true.  I also predicted that CCP would not release a "Jesus feature" in 2014, and I do not consider Thera to qualify as such.

I predicted that DUST 514 would not close in 2014, and at Fanfest that appeared seriously in doubt.  I was correct again with the prediction that DUST would not break the 7,000 PCU mark, and the game never came close.  I also predicted that CCP would not announce that they planned to migrate the game to the PS4.  Correct again.  I also predicted layoffs in the Shanghai office.  Unfortunately, I got that prediction correct, although just about every CCP office outside Newcastle suffered layoffs in 2014.

Finally, my predictions about Valkyrie didn't come true, but not because of CCP.  The Oculus Rift was not released to the general public in 2014.  I still think that CCP will have Valkyrie ready for release when Oculus Rift is ready for release.

Star Citizen - I made three predictions about Star Citizen in 2014, all of which turned out wrong.  The first was that Star Citizen would reach the $65 million mark in funds raised from players.  That amount was surpassed, with the total as of Sunday at $68.3 million.  No major RMT scandal interrupted the cash flow, although stories about Star Citizen's grey market did emerge throughout the year.  I also predicted that CIG would announce a release date for the full game for the second half of 2015.  Instead, 2016 was announced.

Biggest Surprise - My final prediction concerned Landmark.  I really thought the game would emerge as the surprise hit of 2014.  Although the game, from what I saw from tweeted screenshots from the devs, is beautiful and players in the beta can produce amazing things, the game never took off with the general public.  Then again, I expected the game to launch in 2014.  Instead, the last patch of the year introduced PvE, turning the game from a strictly building game like Minecraft into a more MMORPG sandbox builder.  Perhaps in 2015 Landmark will get some well deserved recognition.

I counted 22 predictions in the above, and I only got ten correct.  Nostradamus I am not.  But that won't stop me from making some predictions for 2015.  Here goes.

World of Warcraft RMT - One of the biggest stories of 2015 is whether Blizzard carries through with plans to introduce a PLEX-type instrument to the game.  I predict that WoW will see PLEX introduced in either Q2 or Q3, and that the price of illicit WoW gold will decline by 25% by the end of the year.  As a way to measure the progress, I will track gold prices for the Horde on the Earthen Ring realm.  For those unfamiliar with gaming podcasts, that is the home of the Alea Iacta Est guild associated with The Instance podcast.  If AIE sounds familar, their EVE offshoot, AIEU, is a member of the Brave Collective.

Currently, the low price for 30 thousand gold pieces on Earthen Ring found on Player Auctions is $17.38, with the median price offered at $21.71.  I'm predicting that will decrease to $13.04 and $16.28 respectively.

Guild Wars 2 Expansion Plans - One would think that after three years, Guild Wars 2 deserves an expansion.  However, don't expect one in 2015.  However, I don't see how ArenaNet avoids announcing an expansion for the first half of 2016 sometime during the upcoming year.

Elder Scrolls Online Goes B2P - I am predicting that Zenimax will announce that ESO will go buy-to-play in 2015.  With the game launching on consoles sometime during 2015, I think that Zenimax will want to have the same pricing structure for both PC and console gamers.  I don't think that console gamers will accept the subscription model, so I think the PC game will change.  I'd suspect the change will occur during Q2.

Wildstar Remains A Subscription Game - Perhaps the craziest prediction in this post, but I don't see Wildstar going either free-to-play or buy-to-play in 2015.  That would require NCSoft to cough up money for the conversion to begin.  While the Aion conversion to F2P went well, NCSoft is the company that cancelled Tabula Rasa after 16 months.  Then again, I don't think Wildstar will close its doors due to the news that Giant Interactive plans to publish the game in China in late 2015 or early 2016.  I get the feeling that converting the game for the Chinese market will take precedence over doing a F2P conversion for the West.  The Western market will probably see the F2P conversion sometime in 2016, so an announcement to F2P is possible sometime in 2015.

CCP Stops The Bleeding - I won't predict that CCP will have a banner year, but after 2013-2014, next year will look rather good.  On the financial side, players will get their hands on CCP's 2014 financial report and discover that the company did better in the second half of the year than the first.  Then, our enterprising players will get their hands on the mid-year report and see that CCP made a profit for the first half of 2015.  I also predict that CCP will remain a privately-held company.  No IPO in 2015.

Next, EVE Online will basically finish 2015 with the same activity levels as 2014.  I predict that the average concurrent user mark for the week of the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday in 2015 (23-29 November) will slightly exceed the ACU for this Thanksgiving week.  That number, as recorded on EVE-Offline.net, was 25,734.  I expect the number to fall between 26,000 and 27,000.

EVE may also receive a "Jesus feature" in 2015, depending on the definition of the term.  No, not player-built stargates.  Look for a shake-up of the incursion system, with Sansha's Nation either partially or totally replaced by Sleepers.

On the planetary side of New Eden, DUST will not sunset in 2015.  However, expect CCP to announce that Project Legion will launch a beta version with active DUST players receiving invites either in Q4 2015 or Q1 2016.

The only prediction I'll make on Valkyrie is that if Oculus Rift is ready for mass sales in 2015 that CCP will have a game to ship along with the VR headset.  Expect a Metacritic score of 85, plus or minus 3.

One last prediction for CCP.  No layoffs.

2015 Will Have Better New Games Than 2014 - At the beginning of 2014, 2015 looked like a quiet year for MMORPG releases.  Then ESO, Wildstar, and ArcheAge launched.  Now those small little games may outshine this year's big money AAA games.  Let me give five games that I believe may break out in 2015.  For prediction purposes, these games will all at least hit open beta, if not launch, in 2015.  Also for prediction purposes, these are all games that will get good reviews.

Landmark - My pick for surprise game of 2014, I really think once this SOE F2P game hits open beta that word of mouth will make the game fairly popular.  The game is currently available on Steam Early Access.

Shroud of the Avatar - Okay, I'm more of a science fiction guy, but I'm interested in this Richard Garriott effort.  But will the game reflect the Ultima Online Richard Garriott or the Tabula Rasa Richard Garriott?  I'm predicting the UO version.  While I probably won't have time to play, the game is available on Steam Early Access.

The Repopulation - Another science fiction sandbox game?  The game is available on Steam Early Access and I seriously considered purchasing the game the minute I laid eyes on it.  The game is just finishing alpha and I hope it officially launches in 2015, which makes that a prediction made with my heart, not my head.  I think that the game will fill a bit of a niche and receive some nice reviews.

Skyforge - After Wildstar, I'm not so sure about theme park sci-fi MMORPGs.  But I am going to keep my eye on this game.  I'll make the prediction the game gets a better Metacritic score than Wildstar.  The game currently is not on Steam.

H1Z1 - I'm not sure the zombie survival game qualifies as an MMORPG, but I'll predict that when the game finally emerges that critics will compare it favorably to DayZ.  While I don't play first person shooters, this is a game I'll follow with interest.  Also, I hear SOE plans to make the game available on Steam Early Access in January.

That's my list of predictions for 2015.  I'm sure someone will point out how crazy I am.  Then again, seeing how I did in 2014, my predictions are pretty much wild guesses.