Entry 67: "A Quarter for Your Thoughts..."

Yo!


Happy (belated) Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!*



Well, I'm up late tonight....



In continuing the last post's nearly undetectable focus on collecting money (virtual, but still currency), I want to shift slightly this week to something a little more real.



As you coin collecters know, this year, 2008, is the final year of the United States Mint's 50 State Quarters program! As most of you already know, the backs of all quarter-dollar coins circulated since early 1999 have, instead of the tried-and-true eagle design, a distinct gallery of images usually showing the state bird and/or plant and/or the usual "E Pluribus Unum", differing depending on the specific state, a new quarter being unleashed on the semi-unsuspecting public every ten weeks.



This is actually a first (okay, maybe fourth) for this blog... Unlike most of my other posts over the last two years of writing this stuff, this is one topic I actually don't have anything really negative to hop up on my soapbox about. It's educational, sort of (I don't know about you, but before November, I certainly didn't know this month would be the 112th anniversary of Utah's statehood), it's cheap (a quarter. 'Nuff said.) and there's no American History exam at the end of this (thank goodness; it was actually my second-worst subject bak in skooll)!

Yeah, that was a silly joke, I know...



Bottom Line: Get your hands on these puppies while they're nice, shiny & new to add to your collection, and if you haven't been collecting them so far, I'm sure there'll be a lot of 5am Comedy Central paid infomercials popping up in 2010 that'll be glad to sell you $12.50 in quarters for $19.95 (plus shipping & handling, limited time offer including a lovely U.S. Mint duffel bag autographed by Edmund C. Moy but only for the first 15 minutes, so act now). The first one for 2008 to look out for is that of the "Sooner" state (Thought I already saw that Mark Wahlberg movie), better known to avid map users and fans of Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals as Oklahoma. Here's the design to look out for:

...and here are the last four for the year, and all time, in order of scheduled release:

State quarters... They were fun while they lasted...
...But that's just me.

See you all again soon.

-D.



Post-Script: Oh, and by the way... did you know that the quarter technically has more copper than the penny? Try to find a use for that information someday without coming off as a know-it-all.... HERE's the info, straight from the Mint.

Entry 66: "RuneScapegoat"

Yo!

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking... Welcome to 2008; I hope you had a pleasantly confortable trip... Please remain seated until the blog has come to a full and complete stop. I'd also like to remind you that we know you have many choices out there in the field of internet comedy reading and we at BTJM would like to thank you for choosing....

Okay sorry, that joke's over now.

As I start off this post, I want you all to keep this quote I stumbled upon today in mind:

"When people grow wise in one direction, they are sure to make it easier for themselves to grow wise in other directions as well. On the other hand, when they split up knowledge, concentrate on their own field, and scorn and ignore other fields, they grow less wise — even in their own field."
~Isaac Asimov

I know, it's a sort of mindbender but just bear with me here.

This week I want to say a few things about online role-playing-games, or specifically massively multiplayer online ones, or MMORPGs for the acronym-happy people out there. In recent years, there has been a quiet controversy brewing about these MMOs, which have literally millions of players from around the globe trading items, battling each other and completing quests to advance their online characters, and certain websites running around selling money for the game... for real-world currency... and what's to blame & how to fix it.

The one game I'll center on here is a game some of you may have heard of called RuneScape, which launched its current form, RuneScape 2, in early 2004. Since then, a string of "money-farming" websites have sprung up claiming to do the same thing for this game: Charge you remarkably low amounts of money (usually 6-8 bucks for every million coins) and one of their operators would meet you in the game to give you an extremely one-sided trade offering up the designated money you paid for, with no in-game items in exchange, since you would have already "paid" for the money. RS isn't the only one though... Star Wars Galaxies, GuildWars, Diablo II, Final Fantasy XI and of course the king of all MMOs, World of Warcraft, among others... All have money-farming sites out there running similar schemes to get players' cash. Warning: serious and slightly complicated game terms lie ahead. I'll try to explain as briefly as I can to get to my overall point faster since I'm sure most of you readers haven't played this game, but this is one of the most complicated topics I've ever blogged about.

Jagex Ltd., the UK-based Java internet games company that runs RuneScape, has taken various actions over the years to crack down on this with a variety of security countermeasures such as account banning and IP address tracking & banning (meaning you can't use your account or create a new one on your computer ever again), along with player reporting, sending out "moderator" players, actual Jagex employees who run out undercover on the game to bust cheating players, and even creating random events, special pop-up tasks that occur at completely random times which require human interaction to do and which cause bugs and problems with macro programs some cheaters use to do repetitive tasks involving LOTS of mouse-clicking (cutting wood, fishing, etc.). Yesterday, they installed the most desperate one yet: removing unbalanced trades.

Here's what they said:

"Today, we have made a change to the planned 3,000gp trade margin for today's release. Instead, we are basing your trade margin on the number of Quest Points [rewarded for completing quests, obviously. Usually 2-4 points at a time] you have, giving you more flexibility when making balanced trades. Having read your Forum posts and noted all of your feedback, we have come to the decision that you should have a margin of up to 30,000gp [Gold Points]! Originally, the total value of any items being given in a balanced trade would have had to be within a margin of 3,000gp of the items being received. Instead, we are increasing this margin according to the number of quests you have completed. As an example, a player who has 150 Quest Points will be able to receive items with a market value of 21,000gp above or below the items they are receiving. No matter how many Quest Points you have, it will take 15 minutes before your gp limit resets. Any individual trade is limited by the lower of the two players' limits. For example, if a player with 100 Quest Points is trading with a player on 30 Quest Points, then both players will be limited to a 3,000gp difference every 15 minutes.

The table below will give you a rough idea of the value that applies to you.

QuestPoints - Trade Margin
200 or more - 30,000
190 - 28,200
180 - 26,400
170 - 24,600
160 - 22,800
150 - 21,000
140 - 19,200
130 - 17,400
120 - 15,600
110 - 13,800
100 - 12,000
90 - 10,200
80 - 8,400
70 - 6,600
60 - 4,800
50 or less - 3,000 <---[As of this typing, I have 43 QP; I know, I don't do that stuff much]

Your limit increases for every Quest Point that you gain. As more quests are introduced, with more Quest Points, we may decide to increase the above values."

Yeah, I'm still wrapping my brain around it, too. I'm not sure if Jagex is preventing cheating or putting their players on trial for something with all that wording that takes several readthroughs to proccess, but all I know is, wherever it was, the one-armed man did it, I swear! The fuzz ain't got nothin'!

...Anyway...

I will hand it to Jagex, they pulled out the stops for this one. But as some in-game player protesters (yes you read that right) would point out, this actually hurts the game economy more than it helps. Yes it eliminates the money-farming sites' transferring millions of coins (aka "gp" for Gold Points) for nothing in-game, but most of the players, including myself, get most of their money by selling to other players for fluctuating street prices:

"(My RuneScape username censored): Sellin 100 antipoison vials!"

[Thanks to Jagex, the game now says a full antipoison vial is only worth 210gp, but I personally have sold and been selling sometimes this item for 1,000gp successfully because of factors like the location of the sale, if it's near venomous enemies my customer wants to fight or if they just want some extras quickly and it's not available at the nearest item store. Sometimes people sell for 800gp each, sometimes people offer to buy for 2,000gp each, again because of varying factors dependent on the PLAYER, not the moderating company.]

"JohnnyEverynoob wants to trade."

At this point, I can theoretically charge "Everynoob" 80-100 thousand gold for the whole lot, but that's like SO 2007, and all. Thanks to the new system, I can only charge 21,000gp (100vials x 210gp each) with a margin of ±3,000gp so, needing the money, I have no choice but to sell an easy 85-90 grand worth of surplus antipoison for only 24,000gp, once every 15 minutes. Something I doubt Everynoob'll be complaining about anytime soon. Basically, the way this new system works greatly helps out people who are buying things because let's face it, everyone loves a bargain-basement deal. But it stinks big-time if youre a seller trying to make some money and you now have to sell based on what Jagex feels an item is worth, eliminating the very essence of supply-and-demand economics all for the sake of removing what Jagex feels are unbalanced trades. As Asimov might say, when players are free to fluctuate things for themselves, the economy can be affected in varying ways in different directions [just like stocks on Wall Street]. But when fluctuation is removed, forcing players to market their items only one way, well eventually everyone loses.

Getting to the Bottom Line, I understand this real-world money exchanging is a problem (legitimate players feeling their gold-earning is going to waste since it's easier to just put that priceless stuff on your MasterCard, and the rich players who buy so much gold the game becomes so easy, they get bored and quit playing), but as a player affected by this "legislation," I can't help but think of the battles video game companies are having with homebrew software hackers right now... Protecting the companies' own investments versus consumers getting the most versatility out of the hardware for their money. One side always implanting newer, crazier precautions to snuff out the threat, with various Dark_Alexes ready to spring up and overcome these measures usually very quickly no matter what the companies do. It's no different here. I found out that the money farming sites have changed things too so now after you pay them, they also want your account name and password so they can generate the money legitimately through your account manually and email you when they're done and logged out so you can get into your account (since Jagex's IP tracking system forbids the same username from being active with two different computers) which I think means in the coming months there's gonna be a MASSIVE identity theft problem in the MMO gaming world, especially among the money-farming types.

...But that's just me.

It's good to be back.

-D.