A brief history of RMT
 

Hello all, I thought I would stop by and take a second to highlight the insanity that is "the war on RMT", as well as illuminate a little into why it occurs, just how lucrative it has been to those involved, and perhaps we may even chance a quick glimmer into the root of it's existance; human greed. A good starting point would be to gather data and try to figure out what happened on live and why. Below should be a good starting point:

http://www.azzor.com/article/2006/05...-gold-industry

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IGE

http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualw...urrentPage=all

Fast forward a couple of years (2009) and we have P99 developed and opened up to the public. It takes a couple of years for items and plat to accumulate but eventually someone realizes that with a ratio of dollars to plat that is 2.5 to 1000 making money should be fairly trivial. How much money do you have in your P99 bank account? 20k? 100k? 400k? On the current market 500k would be worth roughly $200. If people are duping items valued at $200 by simply creating server lag, roughly how much real money are these individuals making?

This has been going on for 2-3 weeks now, and even if they were duping 1 AoN a day (not likely) for 15 days they would still be on pace to make 6k this month alone. For no more effort than causing the server to lag. Even if they are caught and banned, that money is still in their bank accounts and the damage to the server is done.

How long before the next guy comes along and figures out a better way to do it? Couple days? Couple weeks? It doesn't matter because as long as the current strategy to fight the war on RMT continues, things will not change. It is simply to lucrative not to attempt to exploit and game the system. Where there are buyers, there will always be an entreprenuing individual willing to sell. It's not going away anytime soon.

Good post.

ya shits fucked up. GM said on live twitch tv he doesnt care about what happens to the server.

hence wipe

I know someone who made $6000 in about 2 months RMTing a relatively small amount of money compared to PlatLord. Platlord, given his inventory when his spreadsheet was turned in could have been making 6 digits annually.

The best outcome wiping could have on the situation is to setback the RMTers a couple of years, until platinum and item stock is re-built and goods can move liquidly between players*.

RMT is not going anywhere, and people looking to make money off it aren't going to just leave the server alone.

The strategy needs to be rethought.

*Wiping a server every couple of years is not a sustainable plan. Too many people would be alienated from ever playing on the server again, and that appears to be the exact opposite of server staff's plans and ideas.

i have no reasons for knowing anyone who RMTs. whats your reason for knowing a person who made 6k off P99? huh?

You don't "know" anything. Go the hell away, no one wants to deal with you anymore.

There's just no way there's that much of a market for RMT here...I could see 1k a week tops but how can there be people dumping that much money in with 1k population Max at a time?

I won't speak for Systolic because he seems like a scumbag, but I know people who have made more, admitted to it, and still to this day play on the server.

Often people are not openly RMTing and they hide their intentions until some big event occurs (think IB leaving the server). I think if everything were transparent it would be shocking just how many RMTers you know, game with daily, and consider friends.

That goes for everyone.