Sol Invictus
Joined: 19 Oct 2002
Posts: 9618
Location: Pax Romana
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 Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2005 3:57 pm Post subject: |
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| PennyAnte wrote: |
That goes for many products though. Nearly all cars don't keep their worth, they plummet in value every year. Milk isn't worth much after it's rancid a week after you get it. Rotten meat anyone? But before that people were paying $3/gallon or $3/pound. Not much stays valuable or grows in value in perpetuity (precious metals, etc.) |
You're comparing milk to virtual items? Hey, look, when you buy milk you're not likely to spend more than 5 dollars and that carton is sure as hell gonna last a few glasses. When you spend 2,000 dollars on some stupid virtual sword, there's really not much you can do with it besides use it for a couple of months and even then, what kind of retarded investment is that? You're not gonna get laid with your 2,000 dollar sword, and you're sure as hell not gonna impress anybody with it, much less some 14 year old kid with too much time on his hands who could probably get a sword that's 5 times more powerful than your sword just from playing a lot during his free time.
Normal people would spend a lot of money on a good car for a few reasons:
1) Cars are real
2) Increases your chances of getting laid
3) Be the envy of all your pals
4) It's prestigious. You're more likely to impress potential business partners or finalize deals when you're driving a good car instead of taking the subway. People look at your car and say, "Hey, that guy can afford to drive one of those. He must be good at what he does." And no, riced 800 dollar cars don't count.
5) It's comfortable to drive. Real comfort, not virtual comfort.
6) You have something to show yourself for all your hard work. Feel proud of yourself, dude, you've earned it!
Idiots would spend a lot of money on a virtual item for these reasons:
1) They don't have lives and spend all of their time in an MMORPG that only a bunch of other losers play.
2) They like to impress other losers and they THINK they impress casual gamers when they say things like, "I SPENT 500 DOLLARS ON THIS WEAPON!", and some 13 year old kid comes up to them and says he found 2 of them during the weekend.
3) They're idiots.
| Quote: | | I would just say here too, that this applies to most products. The pressures of supply and demand, and price competition, are what drives every market everywhere. |
Yeah, but it's a different reality that drives the automobile industry. It's driven by cost factors like fuel, technology, manufacture and production limits. Cars like Ferraris are made in a limited number for the very purpose of alotting them with a higher status than regular cars. It's the same way that race cars like Hyundai Tiburons are nowhere as mass produced as your common-as-shit Honda Civic. But what kind of market drives the cost of virtual items? Stupidity, that's what. Now, were someone to buy a Mercedes Benz he'd be able to drive it around every day, but if he bought a sword for 2,000 dollars he'd only be able to use it for as long as he played the game, and once the next MMORPG comes along (e.g. WOW > EQ) it'd become completely worthless. That is not so with a Mercedes you might have bought in 1990, or even a vintage classic. I've never heard of items in games becoming vintage, have you?
| Quote: | | And virtual items are actually worth something. They're like a film or TV show. They provide entertainment and eventually go out of fashion. |
I might consider buying a virtual item for a few dollars, as long as the game itself was in fashion, and popular with many (50k+) players, but what's the point of buying a virtual item on some server in which only 3,000 or so players are on? For the 200 dollars you spent on items on some shitty server you could just as easily buy yourself a nice expensive jacket or a couple of fashionable shirts to wear on dates, or anywhere. Heck, you could treat myself to a nice dinner with a good bottle of wine, and hell you could even get laid. That's not gonna happen in the game.
| Quote: | | They may not have as much potential as a film to become classic and be beloved through generations, but films like "It's a Wonderful Life" are rare. |
How can you compare in-game items to It's A Wonderful Life?
Utimately, MMORPGs are a tremendous waste of time. For the money you spend 'investing' on items in an MMORPG to sell, you could just as easily be working at a real job and earning 2 times more than what you earned wasting your whole time in the game. If you buy items without the intention of reselling them, you're an even bigger fool. For the time you spend playing an MMORPG you could spend it reading and educating yourself, playing sports and becoming fitter, spending time with your friends and socializing and expanding your web of influence, playing chess, doing crossword puzzles or strategy games for increasing your logic while having fun at the same time, or heck, even playing CounterStrike and improving your dexterity and hand-eye coordination. |
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I wish you good luck. It's gold mine that is only began being excavated. May you emerge with you share of gold nuts 
