I think the crucial difference there is that in real-world sports extra money only affords you better players. It's not like an underfunded baseball team has to play with a wiffle bat, while a grossly overfunded team gets to use a bazooka to pitch.

You're attempting to refute, but if you look at your debate logically his counter-point successfully parries your refutation.

Him: Access to downloadable ROMs reduces the potential of a game on the virtual marketplace by reducing the number of potential buyers.
You: Access to downloadable ROMs makes these games popular, thereby increasing the number of potential buyers.
Him: Nintendo can make those same games popular without downloadable ROMs. Therefore, any popularity gain from downloadable ROMs is effectively nil, and the net loss in potential buyers remains.

I don't believe he misread anything.

If you can get a group by doing it in your current zone, then I'd agree that it's fairly intuitive and obvious.

The point I was making was that if you have to constantly shift between shards and canvass for a group it stops being intuitive or obvious, and it definitely is no longer a trivial effort.

Let's assume that you're right, that there are plenty of quests to be had if you retread old areas. I can't say because I don't play Aion, and I'm not the GP.

What is there, if anything, to tell players that this is how they should play? What indication is there to let them know that there might be some quests available for them back in that village they haven't seen in 10 levels?

If the player is supposed to just figure this out on their own, I posit that Aion wasn't designed well (at least if it intended to attract WoW's audience). Even if Aion gives some indication, the game might benefit from some system by which the player can know for sure there are quests for them to complete somewhere. That way players don't have to be the kind that can pick up every last secret and item from a game like GTA or Zelda from memory without looking at an FAQ.

I think the idea of retreading zones has merit, but only if its properly supported.

Actually, the GP seems very aware of your points. He himself notes that even if an individual could get a Carrier on their own, they wouldn't live for long despite its power, let alone rule the universe.

The key difference here is that anyone can feel like a hero in WoW. In EvE, as you said yourself, in order to be a hero you have to "take risks most players won't". That may be part of the appeal and thrill of EvE, but at the same time it reinforces the GP's point.

There are a few fundamental problems with your idea.

First and foremost, real world demand for resources such as banks, grocery stores and the like is generated based on where people live and work, and the routes in between. In real life, the busy places are those which sit near or on a nexus of these routes and locations. Because only so many people can be fit into a single area, the distribution is largely even, and where it's not competing business will naturally split things up.

In order for the same to be true in most MMOs there would have to be radical changes to very nature of how people travel and live. As it stands, in WoW players bind themselves to a particular Inn and this becomes their home. There is effectively only one inn per faction per neutral city, so all players of a given faction are filtering through the same home. Thus, it doesn't matter how many alternative bank or other resources you spawn, as long as all players enter the city through the same home it doesn't change which resource is closest to home. This resource will always be the busiest no matter how bad it gets.

In order to avoid this you'll have to spawn additional Inns, but this presents its own problems. Players will filter on their own to new Inns, but this requires they're aware of them and willing to put up with relearning where the local resources are positioned. Moreover, the population can quickly expand again, requiring a new inn and players to once again move and relearn their bearings. This continual displacement is neither fun nor productive.

Another issue are the unique locations that can't be duplicated without stretching disbelief. A memorial for an important lore character, the citadel containing the leader of the city, an important dungeon or lore location, all of these things can not be duplicated. Thus, you have to provide a method for players to instantly transport themselves to these vital locations in the city or face the natural inclination of players to plant roots nearest to these important places. The game can keep spawning new inns and resources to its heart's content, but players will avoid the outermost edges like the plague if it increases their travel time these pivotal points.

It's not an impossible problem to solve, and an MMO implementing something along the lines of your suggestion could be interesting, but it isn't a complete solution as it stands.

It's fair to say they're going about it the wrong way, but that brings up an important question: Is the *right* way intuitive, natural, and seamless?

While the method you suggest may certainly be effective, it doesn't strike me as being particularly obvious, intuitive, or easy. The average player's first thought will be "Why do I have to constantly shift like this? I should be able to talk to everyone!" The unnecessary barrier will deter some number of players, those who'd rather just keep playing than spend half an hour shifting around trying to piece together a group.

This is coming from someone who looks up and whispers random strangers through the wowarmory in order to fill group slots when no one answers LFG or Trade chat. While such methods are very effective, the effort involved is more than many players care to invest. You might say "too bad", but developers have to take notice of such quality of life issues.

But this happens in real life too, though for different reasons and not in the same volume and scope.

Consider a going out of business or store relocation sale. Almost all goods, except those most easily transported, will likely be sold at a technical loss. The gain, however, is the vast savings on transport costs even if it's just down the street, or even the administrative costs/maintenance costs if it has to be housed in a warehouse.

For similar reasons, you can't assume that just because someone is listing something below the supposed cost of materials, doesn't mean they aren't still making a profit.

Oddly enough, the next patch is moving regular mounts down to 20, epic ground mounts to 40, basic flying to 60 (while making it faster than epic ground), all while making them cheaper.

So yeah. Casual play is a huge money maker for them.

But it's a chicken and egg situation. Blizzard didn't have 10 million players' worth of revenue to spend on advertising when WoW launched. They can afford a much larger budget now, but you have to account for the fact that they didn't start with so many. At some point, Blizzard had to put money into advertising that wasn't backed by domination of the market.

You're talking about a company that recently patched an 11 year old game to be playable without the CD.

Because Battle.net costs money.

You're talking about a company that currently has 11 million people paying them money every month to play a game that was initially released 5 years ago.

Whatever you may think of WoW or Blizzard, I have to scratch my head when someone suggests they don't care about customer satisfaction post-sale.

This argument isn't that compelling anymore. 5000g was a hefty sum in BC when initially there were only 2 daily quests and questing wasn't as streamlined. In Wrath, you can stumble into that sum if you just keep questing past 80 or do dailies for rep grinds. It's just a matter of avoiding frivolous purchases, no AH savvy or intense play required. Not to mention mount costs are being reduced next patch, and non-epic flier speeds will be nearly tripled.

Now 1000g an hour I can not do, but remember that you're buying tainted goods. 99% of the gold out there is obtained from hacking accounts, fleecing them, and leaving the unfortunate player to deal with the leftover mess. I don't think anyone's time is worth putting another person through that.

Would you care to go into details as to why it's so stupid to launder money through video games, or as to why a regular software company would be better? Those of us who aren't in finance would like to know.

Smart businesses don't think in raw, bulk numbers like that. Not all subscriptions are created equally.

Consider why people get banned from the game at all; it usually involves something that negatively impacts the play experience of other players. Sure, Blizzard loses $15/mo if they ban Player A, but they stand to lose many times that amount if they let Player A run around being a jerk to Players B through Z. One account termination due to the actions of Player A costs the company the value of his subscription.

The same essentially applies to gold farmers, in a more indirect way. Early in WoW's history gold farmers impacted other players simply through economic inflation and crowding out resources. Some resources were almost impossible to farm for yourself because of the ubiquitous presence of farmers. Blizzard banned these farmers because of these negative impacts alone, and the money it cost them to do so was likely saved in preserved subscriptions and reduced support costs.

This argument is far more pointed now. Gold farmers still inflate the economy, only they do so through ill-gotten gains obtained by hacking accounts. The support costs are many times greater than before, and are far more likely to result in account termination. Losing one's account, even if you can get it restored, is the single most frustrating event that can happen to a player in a game where progression is a foundational goal.

So Blizzard is saving a lot of money by working to prevent gold farming.

Also - the big question - why would this become illegal? People do what they want with their money. If Blizzard was smart - they'd offer Gold at a price matching the market and get a cut on this. They've already ruined WoW four times over. Anyone who's played since the beginning can tell you how much more enjoyable it used to be.

It's disingenuous to claim that "anyone" from a category designed to exclude people who might disagree with you will agree with you. It's also demonstrably false, as I fit into your category and find that the expansions and patches have markedly improved the game.

Your second disingenuous argument suggests that having already ruined something, there's no reason to avoid ruining it further. This is frankly silly, as the mistakes of Star Wars Galaxies can attest.

More importantly, it's impossible to price match a black market. I've tried several MMOs which allowed RMT transactions, and was not surprised to find that even there the black market currency farming/selling still thrives. Even if Blizzard/other companies offer their currencies cheap, someone will always be ready to offer it cheaper.