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Tekari

Selling Accounts - Curse or Blessing?

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On a macro level, selling accounts is good for the overall community.  Highly skilled crafting characters stay in the economy and keep prices low.  Also if someone wants to sink 800 dollars into a character to build massive buildings or craft their own 90+ gear, great.  More power to them.

 

As a crafter and someone who developed his own skills, I really dislike it.  It really does flood the market with high level crafts-people. 

 

Sure, some high level crafting characters may very well become truly inactive, but, honestly, if a character is worth over a thousand dollars, who in their right mind would not sell their character if they plan on quitting?  It is pretty safe to say any truly valuable character will be kept in the game one way or another.

 

I don't know if there's a real solution to this.  There's no real way to enforce it.  Maybe perma-bans for accounts known to be traded? But determining, without a shadow of a doubt, if an account has been traded or if the owner moved or something is very difficult.

 

Maybe a skill cap for selling accounts? No characters with a master title can be traded?

 

I'm just a little bit sad knowing that, day by day, the "value" of my skills go down as skill-creep continues to march forward.

 

The value of my skills will only really go up when there's no interest in buying high skilled characters--but that's no comfort.  At that point, the game would truly be dying.  And who wants to be king of an empty server?

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If you've ever bought bricks, mortar, dirt, logs, ore, whatever, it's the same thing, you did it because you would not or could not do the mundane tasks of gathering or making the mats.  It was a time saver to buy what you needed and you paid for the convenience. I see no difference.


 


If everyone did not choose to buy and instead only used things that they could make themselves, there would be no economy. That's what an economy is. Paying someone else to do work for you.


 


In my first career I was an aircraft mechanic for 20 years before retiring and moving into the IT field. But when something is wrong with my car, or it needs maintenance, I pay someone else to do it rather than do it myself even though I am more than capable of doing so. Why should I do it myself when I can pay someone to do it? My time is valuable. Don't be the pro athlete who makes millions, be the guy who signs the paycheck for that athlete.


 


I have bought a few toons.  I have never bragged on their skills as being my own. Anyone who knows me has been told that I am not a grinder, it's just not in my make up, though I do work on my skills for my own toons as well. I try to work smart not hard. I value the toons that I have bought and the time it took to get them to where they are and therefore am willing to pay accordingly according to what the going market is.


 


But the toons that I have bought are a merely a means to an end and a time saver to accomplish some goal such as imping tools for my villagers, or helping someone out on a project. They also help me to be in multiple places where I cannot reasonably get to in a timely manner.


 


Now maybe if one could teleport between deeds and servers.....


Edited by Fineal
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As a crafter and someone who developed his own skills, I really dislike it.  It really does flood the market with high level crafts-people. 

 

Sure, some high level crafting characters may very well become truly inactive, but, honestly, if a character is worth over a thousand dollars, who in their right mind would not sell their character if they plan on quitting?  It is pretty safe to say any truly valuable character will be kept in the game one way or another.

 

You may well believe that no one in their right mind would refuse to cash out and sell their high level characters but I can assure that I would never sell mine. Possibly there are a few others as well who would not do this for various reasons. There are always those odd balls around who will not voluntarily sell out their principles for a few k pittance. So no, some few of these characters will not be kept in game, so at least those who refuse to sell theirs will have some satisfaction from keeping them out of others hands.

 

Anyway, this easy mode skill advancement diminishes the efforts of those who actually earned them initially, as well as the intent of the game design. Of course the real culprits are the ones who sell those accounts in the first place, for without their participation none would be available to purchase. This will always be allowed, so no fear for those who wish to purchase them in the future, as most will gladly sell theirs when the interest wanes or the opportunity of profit arises.

 

=Ayes=

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I don't like it, I think in general it is a curse. But I do not think it is possible to stop it, if people want to buy/sell they will do regardless. 


 


What this game lacks though is some evolving skills, it's very rare that new skills comes out and those same top tier accounts stay top tier year after year. Look at other MMOs, a top tier account is suddenly an average account the minute a new expansion comes out. This is why this curse affects Wurm a lot more than other games. 


Edited by Torgrim

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A difficult question indeed!

Not everybody is playing this game for the sake of grinding skills. In fact, we should always keep in mind that one of Wurm's most important characteristics is that it is a sandbox - in every respect. That means that it gives us a lot of freedom concerning our play styles and the many different ways in which we can enjoy the game. We should try to avoid every attempt to impose *our* way of playing (and enjoying) the game upon other players!

 

For example: one player starts with a fresh newbie account and spends the following 4 years grinding skills until he owns a really amazing character with most important skills at 90+. If this is his way of enjoying the game it's perfectly ok - and it is also understandable when he is proud of his achievements. A person like that would probably not want to sell his account, and would not like others to do so.

 

But, another player may have very different ideas about how to enjoy a sandbox game. Maybe he hates grinding skills for years; instead he likes some of the other aspects of this game a lot more. Maybe he wants to act as a great architect, a landscape shaper, a hunter or an explorer - without senselessly having to craft 100,000 kindlings, 500,000 frying pans or 1 million knife blades first. So, what can he do? He may be better off buying an account which satisfies his needs.

 

Thus, in my opinion we cannot answer the OP's question once and for all. It really depends on the way people want to play this game.Some of us love grinding, others don't. Just like some of us like fighting, while others like building or farming. Since everybody has the right to enjoy this game in his own way (as long as he does not compromise the rights and the fun of other players, of course) we should accept and tolerate every possibility the game rules give us.

 

At the end of the day, the possibility to sell/buy accounts is neither a curse nor a blessing - it's just another legitimate way to play Wurm Online. We may like it or not.

 

Note: Please replace every occurrence of "he" by "he/she". :)

Edited by Yaga
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It's clearly a curse.


 


We live in a world of immortal craftsmen who's personalities occasionally change but they never vanish from the world. They just continue to get better from person to person and those playing catch up will always be second best to those who can invest a little more money than the next guy. With a stagnant economy filled with master craftsmen churning out the same goods for lower and lower prices it makes grinding away to become a better craftsman for the "other" guys borderline pointless beyond being able to supply yourself.


 


With no new tools, weapons, armors and associated different skills to utilize them the new comer has no way to compete with the ancient immortal crafters unless he's willing to put in several magnitudes more effort than them for less than what they can easily churn out. Even then, it's not exactly going to be something anyone can endure long term and it's certainly not going to be fun.


 


Wurm needs to stop character sales at some point (even though it'd be really hard to enforce) and needs to introduce new skills and stuff to produce before trade and commerce becomes a completely devalued game playing motivator.


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A difficult question indeed!

Not everybody is playing this game for the sake of grinding skills. In fact, we should always keep in mind that one of Wurm's most important characteristics is that it is a sandbox - in every respect. That means that it gives us a lot of freedom concerning our play styles and the many different ways in which we can enjoy the game. We should try to avoid every attempt to impose *our* way of playing (and enjoying) the game upon other players!

 

The question is:

Is it really still a Sandbox?

 

It is easy to say that a Sandbox game gives everyone the freedom to play the game the way they want it to.

But in the end the freedom of one is restricting the freedom of another, isn't it?

 

Economics:

When I started to play it was possible to sell 50QL tools for a fair price and there was demand for it.

Nowadays it is nearly impossible to sell 70QL stuff because the market is completely saturated.

 

It is even worse with enchants if you ask me... today a CoC or WoA 75 counts as mediocre. If you don't slaughter the prices

you have a very slim chance to sell those. But is it really mediocre?

Those who play a Vyn priest know it sure isn't. It takes quite some skills, characteristics and other beneficial circumstances to

have a priest that will cast an average CoC 70. And if you wanna raise a priest to that level you play at least a year if not two or more.

 

So today new players don't have the slightest chance to ever sell a single tool. The only options they have are

to either make bulk stuff and sell it or to keep their nose out of economy completely.

And by completely I mean no selling AND no buying from others. Because what they do is paying for other peoples game.

 

 

The Grind:

When it comes to buying a skilled toon because one doesn't like the grind and just wants to be able to build what he/she

desires I as well think this is the wrong way.

 

I think we all can agree that it is pretty easy to get to 50 in whatever skill you want, right?

Now if a player doesn't like the grind he/she could invest a little time and a few bucks for silver and buy a set of 90+Ql tools with enchants.

 

This would leave him/her the chance to do whatever he/she pleases mostly at a fraction of the costs and in reasonable time.

All within the game mechanics and completely supporting the economy.

 

If this is still too much work or too slow or the castle to be build has to be even larger then I'm afraid...

 

...Wurm might not be the right game for them.

 

Because that's what makes Wurm stand out among all the other sandboxes, crafting and world building games.

 

It's tough, it's hard, it's time-consuming and sometimes boring.

And because of that it's extremely satisfying and rewarding once you've made your way in it.

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I like selling accounts. Building them is fun. I would never buy one though. Creating and building up your character/deed is I would say the only point of the game to me, even in pvp. Once everyone reaches the max skills, pvp is stale and boring. The exciting times are when you can build your account faster than everyone else and you can dominate them, untill you reach a hard cap and everyone catches up. Thinking about it, I guess thats why I like league of legends, which is basically a very fast version of that.


 


So yea, blessing, but I would not buy myself.


Edited by Judicator

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The question is:

Is it really still a Sandbox?

 

It is easy to say that a Sandbox game gives everyone the freedom to play the game the way they want it to.

But in the end the freedom of one is restricting the freedom of another, isn't it?

 

Economics:

When I started to play it was possible to sell 50QL tools for a fair price and there was demand for it.

Nowadays it is nearly impossible to sell 70QL stuff because the market is completely saturated.

 

It is even worse with enchants if you ask me... today a CoC or WoA 75 counts as mediocre. If you don't slaughter the prices

you have a very slim chance to sell those. But is it really mediocre?

Those who play a Vyn priest know it sure isn't. It takes quite some skills, characteristics and other beneficial circumstances to

have a priest that will cast an average CoC 70. And if you wanna raise a priest to that level you play at least a year if not two or more.

 

So today new players don't have the slightest chance to ever sell a single tool. The only options they have are

to either make bulk stuff and sell it or to keep their nose out of economy completely.

And by completely I mean no selling AND no buying from others. Because what they do is paying for other peoples game.

 

 

It's tough, it's hard, it's time-consuming and sometimes boring.

And because of that it's extremely satisfying and rewarding once you've made your way in it.

All you mention on the economics is not due to selling/buying accounts, its due to wurm being a hostile game to new players.

Rolf regularly goes out of his way to remove QoL out of Wurm. Every small thing that's added by other devs is constantly overruled by another small thing (like the recent mooring rope thing, but there's more examples, like Rolf's suddenly taking offense over having the answers to meditation questions on the wiki, the hardcore grind, etc)..

As a result of this the community doesn't renew, every new player i've met (and i've recruited new players for a deed i had for a long time, giving them full freedom, not using them as slaves) ended up quitting after 3 months at the best, usually a couple weeks.

 

What that causes is that there's more and more people with higher and higher level skill (due to stagnant pop) and no renewal of lower skills, so basically low end items aren't wanted. So you end up with higher and higher standards for crafters with the same constraints on time and skill... Basically making it even harder for new players, because 2-3 years ago a guy with lvl 60 skill could start seleling stuff and getting 2-5 silver was easy through armor smithing and whatnot... Now you need ql 80-90 to get the same prices you had 3 years ago for ql 70 stuff. Because no one wants ql 70 stuff, because there aren't enough new players to use it.

 

Basically what you have is everyone at top level, with no renewal. Sure the accounts sold add a bit to the problem, by keeping those top tier numbers. But for each top tier that is sold, another 1-2 go into a "break" or the owner quits without selling.

What you don't have is new costumers. People that will find useful a ql 50 set of stuff.

 

What you say at the end is true. But the problem is many, if not most people within the "target audience" for Wurm already have a day job. And wurm behaves as if its intended as the same. Without pouring 4-6 hours daily AT LEAST into Wurm you won't get anywhere if you're starting fresh. Not in a rate that people will find entertaining...

And that's what Rolf (and many players) forget. This is a game, its ENTERTAINMENT, and when ti gets to the point when playing 3 characters simultaneously, isn't enough entertainment and you still need to be watching a movie or playing a second game at the same time (and i found myself at this point). Then the game failed its purpose, and its obviously time to move on.

 

Its sad for me to find myself in a position of saying this, specially after years of trying to lobby against this stagnant position of wurm, but yeah. Wurm is on its Death Rattles. And hearing that Staff is being laid off (even though if you discount the volunteer staff, code club has a handful of employees), then you know. Management isn't working. You know game development isn't working either, because the game's core issues are still there after years, only being masked with bandaids and cosmetics.

You know there's a ton of games out there that already are promissing on doing what wurm does, with better graphics and combat, and a fresh start.

And Rolf just piles on new servers like that's improving something.

So yeah, its not selling characters or anything that is pulling wurm down. Its heads buried in the sand.

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The quintessence of what you're talking about is absolutely true. As sad as it is.


 


To really say how much recycled accounts have an impact on the economics we would need numbers though.


For example how much of the of the toons with one or more skills above 90 are first hand toons, how many second/third...


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The more high crafters that remain in game, the more competition and easier for new people to feel like they can get gear to be competitive.

 

I think if there weren't character sales, Wurm would be down to a few hundred prem accts today.

 

That's what I said?

 

But on the flip side, there's no market for those new people to sell gear.  A new person with 50 blacksmithing might take a couple hours to imp to 60 QL.  They'd have to make at least a silver off their item to make it worthwhile.  If not, they're better off making bulk goods for sale.

 

What about a level 95 blacksmith? 60 QL? Done in a few minutes.  And most of that is waiting for the item to heat up.

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Selling accounts is why I never truly got into crafting for profits.. would kill the enjoyment trying to compete with ancient accounts and it would certainly rub me the wrong way if I DID secure a customer base only to have a 3 month old account buy a carpenter account and undercut me since, not having gone all the way to 90 carp himself, finds the act of making tools that quality trivial and is way more focused on recovering his investment as fast as possible.


 


I'm not even gonna crosscheck names or I'd have to open an "insult people badly" thread, but anyone who's opposed shop fluff like for example seryll lamps (<---- random example from thin air) because it's "pay to win" then support/carry out account selling is a hypocrite and an idiot.


 


A year ago it used to be badly overpriced stuff on P&R, then Xanadu opened and in between then and now a lot of people quit for different reasons so not only did demand drop, but many .. MANY.. high end crafter accounts got sold and now the undercutting's so rampant that while I do enjoy the low prices, I sometimes feel like I'm screwing the crafter in question.


 


In fact, been doing it for a while now but gonna start being specific about it to make a point, only gonna buy from commercial crafters still being held by their original maker.  Nothing personal against the account buyers for having bought it, but the excessive undercutting must stop.  What's this %#!"% about 8s knarrs?


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I think its a personal preference. Its not cheating since there is nothing comming in the game by cheats. Some one is just quiitting selling the account and another guy buys it and uses it like it was before.


 


Nothing about the eco system to be hurted just a new owner. 


 


It has been this way and its not gonna change as far as i can see. 


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In fact, been doing it for a while now but gonna start being specific about it to make a point, only gonna buy from commercial crafters still being held by their original maker.

 

That's a really cool concept.  It'd be pretty interesting if more people got on board!

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As a 77 Carpenter, I can't even GIVE away carp products locally. That's how crappy demand is. There simply ARE no new players to take advantage of it. When I first started, I found a 30ql mallet on an abandoned deed and thought I'd hit the Wurm lotto.


 


As long as high end crafting accounts never die and keep getting sold and recycled, no new player will EVER have a chance to compete.


 


Heck, I've been playing for a year and a half. And I STILL can't make anything with my main skillset to be competitive. There's a problem there. Like, elephant in the room sized problem.


 


When a skiller tool with 50 CoC on it is considered 'crap' by a player that's been playing less than a month, because that's what they've been told... there's a problem, folks.


Edited by Belrindor

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I think we are too focused on only one variable when in reality I believe there are several to consider as follows:


 


1) Tools never really disappear so no market for replacements. Once you get that one good tool with great enchantments when, if ever, do you replace it?


 


2) Mailboxes allow for global markets so one high end crafter can be the goto person for everyone rather then local markets. How many crafters make more silver via local merchants instead of COD sales?


 


3) New people have the same reaction to 30 ql tools as belrindor described in his post. Problem is, not enough new players to make a viable market for lower grade tools


 


4) Items like ships decay too slowly so the imping market for ships is very small. In the days of sail ships did not last anywhere near as long as they do now. Same with carts and wagons. How many wurmians have had to replace their wagons?


 


5) No new skills to really pursue. The impact of a new skill would be the opening of a new market. Continuing to stick with only existing skills means there is never a time when a new person could suddenly own a market without playing years of catch-up


 


Of all the things to consider, I suspect the easiest one to level the field and provide opportunity is to expand the skill tree further. Some new skills would force people to learn them and in so doing a new market would be created provided that the new skill creates items of real worth.


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When you have a grindy high end market item game like Wurm selling accounts does not matter as there are more than enough lifers to fill any void you would lose if one dropped out for awhile.  The Problem is not the accounts at all, but the endless creation and storage of high end items without very much loss.  You might have someone blow up a tool at 90 CoC, but you will have 10 of those to take its place every day from the amount of people casting spells.  Wurm has an end game of stagnant high end items and as time goes by it gets higher and higher and higher.  Not enough players come and go to buy off the items to make them needed except for the very hardest to get, make and top qlty.  


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At the end of the day, account selling makes Wurm pay-to-win. Those who either don't care about or deny the existence of the competitive sides of Wurm might not see it that way, but it does have an impact on those of us who do.

Speaking purely from a PvP standpoint for a minute, there are only a few super-high-end accounts that have only been owned by one person. The rest of the upper-tier accounts are sold the moment the owner gets burned out. So rather than these accounts dying a natural death like they would in any other game, they just keep getting stronger and stronger, and the skill floor for the rest of us gets higher and higher much more rapidly than it normally would have. Throw Valrei abilities, SotG, and windows of opportunity into the mix and suddenly you have a pretty wide gap between single-owner accounts and multiple-owner accounts. As a result, "legitimate" players are under pressure to either A) work much harder than they would normally have to in order to be competitive or B) buy an account themselves. It's at the point where some returning players just quit altogether because they are so far behind after selling their accounts the first time.

Edited by Fawkes
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I think its interesting that players can get some money for time they spent playing the game.


 


 


imo, the problem with market has more to do with 1) a player can do everything nemself so there are few reasons to trade 2) you can essentially play premium content for free if you make enough silver. Further, It gets to the point where people only charge enough silver so they can profit enough to pay premium and deed upkeep.


Frankly, this is one of most liked aspects of Wurm for me. 


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i dont see problem with this... everyone have right to buy toon and save himself time :D  bigest problem i think is low price of accunts so everyone could buy some decent skilled toon in range of 200€ easy.

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Banning the sale of player accounts has never worked well. Seen this over and over again in every mmo since Evercrack and Ultima Online. In fact many of the mmos that use to ban such, not only allow now, they even work to better facilitate the transactions.

Now if the objective is to put some kind of limit on jack-of-all-trade characters, things like classes, skill point caps, and etc work okay. Personally my issue with those is they don't allow for real indepth customization an open skill system like Wurm offers.

Wurm even use to have a way to limit high level accounts. If a skill over 70 went unused for some time (usually a week; though, the higher the skill, the less time needed), that skill would start to "decay" or go down. The skill's maximum level would remain, titles would stay, and just like losing skill ingame by other means (death, etc) there was a x3 regain rate.

Unfortunately this had a very adverse impact on players who had to be offline for long periods of time: military, oil rig workers, occasional long vacation, etc. To help retain such players, Rolf eventually removed the skill decay entirely for the previously stated reason. This was several years ago. Personally the same could have been achieved by halting the decay when the entire account hasn't been logged into for some time.

Edited by Klaa

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I say limit the quality of character that can be sold.  Nothing with a master title can be traded.


 


Enforcing it would be a pain in the butt, though.


 


But a character with a few 70+ skills is plenty for anyone who wants to delve into the sandbox portion of the game or make their own tools.  Nothing to dominate the market place.


 


It's also a reasonable starting place for a person to continue to grind his or her skills.  It saves them a lot of set up time but also forces them to work a bit to appreciate his or her skills.


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Its all fun and games until you realize we're trafficking in people...

Then its back to the fun and games.

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Truth be told, given the market price on everything except a few oddities like rare ships is plummeting..... Only other market that seems to be holding are commodities and raw materials because they get consumed.


 


Nothing short of an in-game Grand Exchange that sets base prices (which one can freely change within a certain set of limits) and strong antidumping regulations (that would be fun to see and even more fun to enforce) is gonna fix Wurm's economy the way it keeps burning itself out further and further with the recycling of high end accounts and the general recycling of high end items.


 


Also bad for new players to realize that their dream of becoming a lv90 carpenter and blacksmith to make some ingame profit are gonna be preeeeetty silly and will only become more so as time progresses.


 


I'm sure other "analysts" will have their own figures, but by my own "analyst" estimates, we need the playerbase to increase by 300-400% for crafting to be a viable market goal to anyone but old players and account buyers.


 


Got 90+ carp here and a couple friends with priests to enchant stuff, can absolutely not be bothered making even merchant fodder to be honest, I can make money 5-10 times faster washing cars for $1.50 around my block.  Before Xanadu opened, at least on the P&R side, car washing would have made me the same money about twice as fast, so was still worth the balance of income vs amusement factor.


 


My 2 cents on why account trading rather sucks and won't get any better anytime soon.  Take them or leave them, they'll get you a q50 tool these days =P


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