vbGore Free Online RPG Engine

Ive been reading some articles on MMORPG.com regarding topics discussed at the indie mmo dev conference. while the articles themselves arent exactly great reads they do bring up some interesting points. i may open up some threads to discuss the other topics as well.

right now i want to see what everyone's feelings are on the typical EULA of an online game.
http://mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/loadFeature/1859

if you read through some of the comments over there, a good chunk of them are idiotic. like expecting to be compensated for the time you spent developing your character.
one thing i do see worth talking about is ownership of the virtual property. obviously the developers do and should own all rights to the game itself, and certain measures need to be taken to cover their asses, but what are everyones feelings on what kind of rights the player should have to his character?
typically a games eula says the company owns the character, all items, gold and what not and you cant trade/sell them for anything outside the game world.
what would you think of allowing the players to have more rights over the possession of in game property, while the devs still retain ownership of the property itself, allowing players to freely sell in game goods on the real world market?

obviously in most games things like gold farming and character selling will get you banned, but would there be any truly adverse effects to allowing that to happen?

take for example a game with a good crafting system. you, as a high ranking crafter, are one of the few players that can make an extremely rare item. would it be so wrong to allow you to exchange that item in game for real world money?

Many judges get confused when making a decision on virtual commodities, but if a company allows it then it is likely that they will be in some trouble. Most companies do not enforce many terms in the EULA tho.

well in 1 way it brings you to this:
"money owns the world"

if you have some rich 6 year old, hes the best. fact. O_o

however, as people say:
"time is money"

and if the items arent hacked or duped or something,
it would probably like people coding games and selling them

it depends on the customers.
if they pay sooooo much for items, bleh

thats a point wher the dev must counter-act farming!
check ebay for diablo 2 or hellgate london

you can buy HGL money like hell.... xD

i'm not entirely sure where i stand on it but part of me says it really might be beneficial to the players.
you could try to make a more dynamic economy so gold would be harder to come by, but i'm thinking of it in more the items and crafting aspects. so sure the rich little kiddies can buy phat lootz with their momy's credit card, but the items would still be available in game to the average player.

farming as inevitable, just like power leveling. botting does need to be dealt with by devs though.
you can buy gold for every single game on the market, and it's against the eula of all of em but it's still going to happen. so what if it were to be embraced instead?
as long as you can limit the amount of money available in gamem it wouldnt have any negative effects on the game world economy since the money is already there. it's just changing hands.
you look at all the top mmorpg's where they ban people for this saying it's ruining the game, but then look at something like Second Life where people actually make a living selling virtual property. take in to account all the games that have item malls as well. if the players can already by an endless supply of items directly from the devs, what harm would there be in alowing the players to sell for themselves?

alot of legal jargon would be needed to cover your own ass though, something saying you're allowing to charge a fee for the service of gathering and trading in game goods, but you still have no ownership of it and the devs are not responsible for loss of virtual property.

well in secondlife they have a real economy/exchange where on the main site you can exchange linden$ to real $$$. And people have made millions hiring 3d programmers to create virtual clothes and such (even virtual prostitutes lol), and then selling them.

Hah, i created a object on second life once. It was just a giant cube that was attached to my head though...

I think that taking the virtual world into the real world is crossing a line that really shouldn't be crossed. It's ridiculous to spend "real" money on virtual "items" or what-not. And being able to do this just brings in the element of laziness (not earning what you have) , and also if someone is rich in real life, they of course will be better than everyone else, because they can just buy and buy and buy...

But I do think that trading and markets using "in-game" money is a great idea.. just don't bring real money into the picture!!

And as i'm typing, I realize that there isn't really a way to prevent this from happening unless there is moderation both in-game and on the web...