This news has gotten a lot of attention so far, and justifiably so. China has been one of the countries at the forefront of gold selling and their presence has certainly been felt within LotRO at one point or another. If this law adhered to and enforced, essentially all virtual “black market” sales for items, gold, etc. will be officially against the law. I think this best sums it up:
“The virtual currency, which is converted into real money at a certain exchange rate, will only be allowed to trade in virtual goods and services provided by its issuer, not real goods and services,” the Ministries said.
I’ve noticed that obvious gold spamming in LotRO has gone down a lot over the last several months. It used to be that any given day you’d run into several of these sellers within Bree, in particular. It didn’t matter what server you were on, Brandywine or otherwise. Sometimes you’d find farmers as well, who were generally pretty obvious because they all wore the same thing, ran in suspiciously tight groups and had similar names (Xihu, Xiho and Xiha, for example).
I don’t know that it’s for lack of trying, though. Turbine has tools to report gold spammers (although those weren’t always in place), but I think the main difficulty for sellers has been what I perceive is a general lack of interest in these offerings from LotRO players. I could be wrong, but the benefits of buying gold in LotRO just don’t seem as strong as in some other MMORPGs. The game, overall, doesn’t suit that mind set … particularly when many of the best things in the game (and thus, most desirable) can’t be bought or traded in the first place.
Obviously defeating selling in China also involves defeating buying as well. I don’t know that this can be understated, given how much of the population in the country actively plays MMORPGs. It’s a huge market and this will be a major blow for these companies. Richard Heeks at the University of Manchester estimates that around 80% to 85% of gold sellers are based within China.
This is actually very well timed with LotRO’s upcoming launch in China. Hopefully it will help things go a bit more smoothly.
Rediculous.…as long as there is a market for it.…it’s not their business. Let supply and deman d settel thins and not some nonsense law.
First off, Before you start calling things nonsense, look at what you type..
Second, It is their business. Government controls everything in China. Everything down to what they are allowed to view on the internet. I agree that if there is a market it should be allowed. At the same time I see this law being more helpful then hurtful.
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