RMT - Real Money Trading - Research help needed please...

[martin_rsch]

Hello everyone,

I've been a player on MMO's for ages now in a number of games so I figured I might pose a question to my fellow MMORPG gamers:

Basically I'm doing research for my university dissertation on group influence regarding the decision to engage in Real Money Trade for games like Warcraft, SW: Galaxies, Second Life etc and I therefore need some people to answer a word document based interview so I can construct an analysis of the general opinions of how group influence impacts the decision - if that makes sense

There are only 7 questions and the whole thing shouldn't take more than 20 minutes I would think, it's all completely confidential and anonymous no details would ever be passed onto anyone else (which is why I ask participants not to put their names on the document) - i wouldn't cheat my fellow gamers like that! Responders will never be revealed on this forum too to ensure complete anonymity.

If you'd like to take part please ping me and I will send you the word doc. I'd really really really appreciate it, it'd help me out so much.

Ideally you will have had experience in the Real Money Trade else the questions probably wont make any sense to you, however if you know people who could be interested please let me know as well.

As an incentive, i'll paypal any participant £1 for their time to fill it out. Not much I know, but I'm a student and I can't afford to pay loads.

I don't want to offend or anger anyone posting about such a touchy subject - the whole interview is designed to be completely impartial so players who are positive about the idea of RMT and those who are negative about it are invited to participate, although those who are negative about it I must admit may have to answer questions hypothetically.

Thanks for your time! I really appreciate it.

Please ping me if you are interested

PS - I'm aware this is my first post but I've been watching for a while and enjoying the banter

[Tygerwoody]

so much money

[martin_rsch]

I know, totally! Haha, I can't afford this epic capital outlay but it's gotta be done

Fancy helping out?

[Son Goku]

If this is at all related to those WoW gold like sites, people selling Diablo II items on Ebay, and the copious spam that gets put in general chat, in game PSTs, and in game mail (such as from Peons4hire), these people are annoying. Annoying enough that if these spammers ever showed their faces in the game, I wouldn't mind either sicking Ikarus (my pet raptor, Takk the Leaper) onto them, else my cat (formerly Broaken Tooth, now Rak'Shiri); while shooting arrows up their back side, all whilst using the "enrage pet" talent

In the meantime, I'll just settle for refrusing to answer my mail from them, so after 29 days of sitting in the box, WoW.net will return their spam to them as undelivered; and unfortunately there's no answer to the chat spam as a /ignore always turns up (character name not found) for them. If only enough people didn't answer/delete the mail so it could all be returned to sender, these people would eventually end up spamming themselves to the point their own inboxes could be effectively rendered unuseable.

Too bad our email from ISPs doesn't work that way, or getting all the spam returned to sender could become a real deterent

[Ninjaman09]

Might I suggest attaching the word document (or a link to it) to your post? I'd be interested in helping out (you can keep the money by the way) but I'm hesitant to hand out my e-mail address to a complete stranger.

[martin_rsch]

ninjaman09 - i completely understand your concern! I'll ping you a link to my site with the doc for you to have a look at - it's got my email address on it too. Cheers


Son Goku - do you want to take part? It's pretty clear what your opinion is lol but you're more than welcome to take part - you just might have to answer questions hypothetically...

[nrdstrm]

RMT is crap...If your going to skew your report stating otherwise, I doubt you will find many people here willing to participate. I know you've said this is for school, but I've heard things like that before...Sorry to be skeptical, but I've seen alot of people burned with things like this...

[martin_rsch]

Who said anything about me saying it's a good thing?

It's completely impartial.

Be skeptical if you wish.

[Ninjaman09]

It's an interesting topic regardless. I know plenty of people who've paid cash for ingame WoW gold (in some cases hundreds of dollars) and they have yet to say they regret it. Personally I'd never do it, if only because it removes the sense of satisfaction in earning your items/etc by yourself. I don't see anything morally objectionable about it, though.

[NaitoSan]

Originally Posted by Ninjaman09

It's an interesting topic regardless. I know plenty of people who've paid cash for ingame WoW gold (in some cases hundreds of dollars) and they have yet to say they regret it. Personally I'd never do it, if only because it removes the sense of satisfaction in earning your items/etc by yourself. I don't see anything morally objectionable about it, though.

I used to be big time FFXI player and once I went to college, my time was reduced for FFXI. And my friends / linkshell were advancing so quickly with all fancy items so I felt pressure to catch up because lack of time. I went ahead and brought some gil to allow me obtain certain, expensive items to keep up with them. I do regret for doing that, because a month ago I quit and focus on my real life and school. I have lost several hundred of dollars just for some stupid, priceless items.

For next time if I ever play MMO again, I vowed myself that I will never do that again. It's hard if you don't have time to actually earn rare items or whatnot. You do feel pressure and want to be part of "cool" people and hope they accept you. I hate that.