Buying in-game items or money from other players, using real money?

[Why?]

This is a GREAT idea. I personally am prepared to sell startracker ships for $1000 each. Meet me in NY orbit. Gimme your credit card details now. I also know a guy who will sell you justic mk1 guns for a mere $250 each.

Honestly. Where do people get these ideas?

Well this one is easy. You go on any MMO, like Guild Wars or WoW and you can find someone selling almost anything for real cash if you don't want to take the time to get it.

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Hmm, where have I come? Why does it seem so familiar to this one?

[centauri5pirate]

I assume that this is not allowed, but I triple-checked the rules and ran a couple of searches in this forum and can't find any prohibition against it. The closest thing I can think of would be that it might be considered playing "out of roleplay" if someone asks for, say, $5 US dollars instead of $20,000,000 credits for a certain item or weapon when offering it for sale in system chat. But on the other hand, since OORP chat is not forbidden in private conversations, I don't see how it could be illegal if it's negotiated in a private channel. If a newbie to the server privately offers a veteran player real-life money for in-game credits, is that really punishable?

Has this ever come up in the past? Like I said, I did some searching, but I didn't find anything.

Call me crazy but it's called DISCOVERY Server for a reason. How about "DISCOVERING" new trade runs to finance a new ship or new weapons for a great loadout? How about "DISCOVERING" new minable fields for a decent profit?
Here's an idea, how about someone selling their hard-earned knowledge of the systems, jumpholes, and wrecks, cool weapons, uber armor, etc. and instead of keeping the money, have it directly deposited into the PayPal account for funding of better equipment for the server? That's the ticket laddie...selfless donations for the better of the community, not the lining of one's own pockets.
By the way, I have Lv 8 armor for fighters and bombers for sale. The cost is $5 U.S. dollars towards the equipment upkeep or the purchase of new equipment for the server. I'm sure we'd all appreciate it and you get your name in the donation list too!!
Here is the account:
Donation (PayPal) account remains: discoveryserver@gmail.com

I think my idea is a great one...please feel free to kudos or flame the hell out of me.

---

You ask me why Im weary, why I cant speak to you.
You blame me for my silence, say Its time I changed and grew.
But the war's still going on dear, and theres no end that I know...
And I cant say if were ever...
I cant say if were ever gonna be free.

[notyourbroom]

... I still feel like I'm being attacked a little bit. Maybe I phrased my original post badly, but I was not saying "It it okay if I do this?". Rather, I was trying to say something more like "Wow, this is something that I would expect to be outlawed, but even though Discovery has a pretty mature and well-developed set of rules, it's not mentioned anywhere! What gives?"

I can see now that I touched on a serious nerve here by bringing this up, and I'm sorry that I got some of you riled up. But seriously, I don't want to be remembered as "that idiot who wanted to sell credits to newbies" or "that n00b who wanted to buy weapons because he's too lazy to play" or any other such thing you can make up, because they're not true. I wanted to know what the admins' positions on this issue were just in the interest of having the rule (or rather, the lack of a rule) clarified, not in the interest of doing anything about it.

So let's just let this thread calmly die now, maybe. D:

[pim]

NOT COOL ! This isn't a massive multiplayers... We're all friends united by a single game together and online. We are NOT merchants that do stuffs all over the world to make money !
You can transfer credits from your trader to yours and buy things with these... There is NO need to add Real money and spend it to ONE of your amusements instead of something more USEFULL ! (as an other game for example, or something else) !
I think you will be allowed to do that when there will be 200000 players around, but before, that's WASTE !:nono:

See, there has been lots of troubles in WOW because of this... Please, don't spoil this server with such THIS KIND of things !..

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OK for gentle RP, OK for gentle PvP too. What do you prefer ?
Hurk hurk hurk...

[\JG/]Pim (mercenary, ex-IMG)(Raven's talon, New London and New Berlin mainly)
John Smith(independant trader, ex-contract killer on Manhattan)(Heavy Tanker)

[Angelfire]

Northern Song.. er.. do I call you North or Song?
It's good that you speak of things you notice, don't let the negative responses bug u, most of these fellas mean well:)

Strangely enough I played on a wow private server a while back where you could buy rare items from the admins for 'donations'. They did it very cleverly though, it would be specific items that you could not get anywhere else, like a purple Gryph or a massive axe etc. with the same stats as a normal one, it just looked cooler than normal is all.

I was one of the fellows who originally suggested the idea for fundraising purposes and it actually worked very well for a couple of months.


I enjoyed being able to swap my real life work time by being able to 'buy' gear that would take me too long to get solo... so I could hang out with the rest of the guild on their raids etc. without being the weakest link.. (I was da uber healer:))

But then...

The uber pwnzer 13 year old daddies credit card characters started showing up.

In no time the server was 'home to the horrible', ooc central... and we started losing our RP lovers fast.

It attracted flies, thats the kindest way I can put it.

'I pay for my stuff so STFU I can do what I want!'

anhyhoo... that was my experience... not to mention the enterprizing players who started spamming the game and the forums with stuff that you could buy straight from them ingame with real cash.

They even spammed us in PM's... hahaha.

Even the Admins had issues... The private server was only legal as a non-profit scheme and having these kids spend so much money gave them (the kids) a kind of blackmail power. It was all a mess.

So yeah... what originally was a cool idea turned to a fly magnet!

methinks even trying something like that would require an intricate and well thought legal game entrance agreement, this way there would be no room for 'blackmail' or exploitation.

Even so, it would definitely not get my vote.

it's good that you brought it up though, I think there would definitely be people who were wondering about this subject.

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The Chronicles of Angelfire

[Athenian]

Didn't mean to snap, Northern Song. I know you were just asking. I don't hold you accountable for the nonsense people engage in. I teach kids who come to school hungry in a school that is very poorly funded, so I find the idea of money being squandered on virtual possessions kind of offensive and disgusting.

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Former member of "the most paranoid group of people in the community"
Discovery Community Forum Rules

[pim]

Thank you Angelfire : When I said "spoil this server", I was actually thinking what I said...

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OK for gentle RP, OK for gentle PvP too. What do you prefer ?
Hurk hurk hurk...

[\JG/]Pim (mercenary, ex-IMG)(Raven's talon, New London and New Berlin mainly)
John Smith(independant trader, ex-contract killer on Manhattan)(Heavy Tanker)

[sinned-40]

Nothern Song
Is that enough facts and passion for ya?
ma oppion is that HOOD and AngelFire summud it up in good fassion.
without Roughing you up.
Rember when you ask BIG Questions to keep Flame suit handy,they
can be Purchased for 1,025,000 at the nearest Wepons dealer, and Grab your own Disco Flame thrower to.:P

-----redELF

[MrCynical]

This smells a lot like metagaming, which I'm sure the rules say is a Bad Thing

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No longer active online due to a dwindling amount of non-PvP (trading, pirating, mining, etc.) fun in the new version.

[Patriot]

My god


Please its a game afterall,and if you need to pay RL money becaue ur too lazy to create ur how character ur better dont play here