Scam

Scam happens everywhere in our life, such as telephone scams, e-mail scams etc.
One of the common scam in our life would be the sms scam, a text message that inform you about millions of cash that you have won and you will be asked to call another number to claim those rewards but it often turn out to be fake rewards.

Scamming is unethical even in MMORPG. Players spend time and money in acquiring some particular items or weapons. In some online games such as Chibi Online or Mo Siang Online, some items are rare and even impossible to obtain unless one puts a lot of effort and hard work or throwing real cash into it. Such as,

A Rare Gold Enchanted Weapon in Chibi Online

An Un-Obtainable Weapon in Mo Siang Online

Despite all the hardworks and cash money that players invested, it is an accepted part of the game that players are strongly encouraged to protect themselves from being scammed. Even the game's developers and company have acknowledged that corporate infiltration, scamming and hackers are just another part of the harsh criminal underworld for MMORPG. In most MMOs, acts of theft could earn the perpetrator a permanent game ban, which means they cannot play the games anymore.

Types of Scam in MMORPG: (based on personal experiences and word of mouth)

- Item Scam -
also known as illegal gains where scammers gain items from other players without paying or giving anything in return, games' developer tends to overcome this problem by creating a system where items and weapons bind to the owner only. Players are unable to resell or buy any binding items or weapon.

- Gender Scam -
In some MMORPG such as MapleStory where there are wedding system in the game (where male players buy cash item and propose to female players and get married in the game), male players often invest real cash and find himself a wife in the game. However, all these can turn out to be a male players married another male player in disguise. These scammers create fake Fakebook account and give fake information and scam the other players' cash.

- Cash Scam -
There are players who use real cash to trade with in-game players, this is the most risky trade as it require both honest players participating in the trade. Some players might use Digi/Celcom/Maxis's Reload Card as an offer to buy anything in the game and if the offer is attractive, players will answer the deal. Once both players agree on the trade, cash player will reload for the in-game player and the in game player will hand over the stuff to the cash player. However, there are cases where in-game players log off directly after receiving the reloads.


Before I end this thread, there is something which I will like to ask,

" Is scamming in MMORPG a crime in the real world ? "

17th December 2009, China jails 11 over online games scam, 11 people are jailed for up to three years for their roles in online gaming scams that netted them around 140,000 Dollars. These people wrote or somehow created a Trojan Horse viruses and steal 5.3 million user names and passwords from online gamers, which were then used for "illegal gain".

http://www.france24.com/en/node/4950332

Readers are welcomed to ask anything about this post if it's too complicated or add in information for us if you have any personal experiences. Thank you.


References:
http://www.massively.com/2010/09/11/eve-online-player-steals-45-000-worth-of-isk-in-massive-investm/

http://www.france24.com/en/node/4950332

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090901183709AAvtZle

Our Research Objectives

1. Identify various type of business in online gaming.
2. Penetrate into the strategies of how online gaming business implemented.
3. Challenges of online gaming business currently facing and how they overcome it.
4. Factors affecting of why people spends time in online games.

For Fun =)

Short clips of South Park in WoW (World Of Warcraft)

Reasons why people spend time in mmorpg

If there is no market, there is no business; If there is no demand, there is no supply.
For mmorpg business it is the same, if there is no such huge amount of mmorpg enthusiast, then there will be no vast mmorpg business out there.
Back to the origin before talking about the strategies of how to operate a business in mmorpg, first we need to study about the mmorpg enthusiast. WHY THEY SPEND TIME IN MMORPG?

According to onlinemassivemultiplayer.com, one of the reasons why is because it could help people to escape from reality, which mean if one has no money in real life, but inside the virtual mmorpg he/she could be a well-known tycoon; or, if one who is an anonymous person in real life, but inside the virtual mmorpg he/she could be a prestigious character, which mean all gamers inside that particular game know him/her well!

So, it means if they put effort in the mmorpg, whether they want to be a hateful character or honourable character, they will have their desired outcome in the end - which is fun. (what i mean here is, in reality you might put a lot of effort in one thing, but in the end you receive nothing back). For example, in the virtual world, if you want to be a hateful character, like simply killing other newbies, or disturb others from completing their quest, you won't be arrested, unlike in real world, if you commit crime you would be arrested.

The second reasons is 'Connect with friends and family online in a fun and entertaining way that is relatively low cost.' For example, you can explore the virtual world together with friends, choose your favourite character (Like Silkroad online, you can select either a Hunter, Trader, or a Thief), form your own guild or clan with your friends and also recruiting other players, participate in-game events, or have clan wars and dispute with other clan and etc. So, it is relatively cheaper to entertain yourself. Even if one playing him/herself will not be alone because he/she can meet other players all around the world, which is real people.

In my opinion, it in fact bring benefit to me instead of wasting my time like what we always heard from others, but to be fair, it has its pros and cons of course. The benefits like learn and share experiences with each others which are not just game-related topic, for example, I remember last time before Skype or any team-speak software became popularize in local, I had already knew what is team-speak software all about from some Western gamers inside the mmorpg (Silkroad online, they are cool, they made the software themselves). Besides that, socializing and knowing others in mmorpg can widen one's vision because they can meet different peoples from other countries. Anyway, there are still a lot of hidden benefits in the experience of playing mmorpg.

We are pleased if you guys can contribute other hidden benefits of playing mmorpg! =DD

References:
Benefits and Drawbacks of Less or More Time Playing MMOs during an Economic Depression | Online Massive Multiplayer.com, 2010 Online Massive Multiplayer.com, viewed 17th September 2010.

http://www.onlinemassivelymultiplayer.com/rants/benefits-and-drawbacks-of-less-or-more-time-playing-mmos-during-an-economic-depression/

SEAgamers

For all the gamers out there, you might heard of this name before or you might not. Yes, it’s South East Asia Gamer Mall (also known as SEAgamers).

The South East Asia Gamer Mall was established in August 2007, as a professional website seeking to provide game players with gaming related and value-adding services. From the humble beginning of nil, this organization growth has been sky-rocketing in the past six months among the numerous South East Asia online gaming trading websites. They adopt B2C (Business to Customer) in dealing directly with gamer worldwide.

Since its official introduction in 2007, South East Asia Gamer Mall has been gathering precious experience and sufficient progress. Recent business includes a number of online games, ranging from Power Leveling, Games Currency, Game Points and various gaming products.

SEAgamers get involved in more than 40 famous online games, mostly MMORPG. Other than that, your Facebook Farmville and Texas Poker got their own employees in there to change your real cash into game cash.

Just like any other service providers, SEAgamers got their own live support customer service. Customers get to choose to contact them either in Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger , Skype, email or just phone call anytime from 8am to 1am.

Their customers mainly go for their currency exchange service whereby I’ve mentioned bout real cash trades for game cash. SEAgamers provide information about the games and the current currency for each server. I will use MapleSEA as example:

MapleSEA servers: (Mesos is their currency in the game)

Aquila’s

= RM 16.50/ 100m Mesos

= SGD 7.00/ 100m Mesos

= USD 5.80/ 100m Mesos

Bootes’

= RM 17.50/ 100m Mesos

= SGD 7.50/ 100m Mesos

= USD 6.10/ 100m Mesos

There are many other servers in MapleSEA online but if I list it out one by one followed with Philippine’s or China’s currency, this blog is going to be so lame. And the payment method can be found from their website www.seagm.com. (Basically, servers work like dimensions; in different server you will meet different players.)

How did SEAgamers advertise themselves for the gamers worldwide?

SEAgamer has their social media group such as facebook and twitter. However, it is useless if gamers do not realise about the fan group. Therefore, SEAgamers use one fantastic way of advertising. The strategy is called SPAMMING, and yes it is the most annoying strategy ever but it is effective in online gaming businesses.

The organization got a lot of power levelling players and they dominate and scatter all over the online gaming world. Usually they will stay in a place where many other online gamers hang around, or a place where we called market. Then, they will start spamming every few seconds introduce the seagamers website, or the currency offers.

This is effective because there are some newbie players who doesn’t know the tactic of levelling in online game, therefore they will go and visit the website and become SEAgamers’ customer if the offers are attractive or worth. However, the organization who owns the games really hate SEAgamers’ employee and often banned their accounts.

Effective strategies always attract scammers to gain benefits but how did they do it? We will try to demonstrate it in our next post. Stay tune.

References:

SEA Gamer Mall | Your One Stop Gaming Services Platform, 2007-2010 SEAGM.com, viewed 11th September 2010. - http://www.seagm.com/

Buy MapleSEA Mesos | Sea Gamer Mall, 2007-2010 SEAGM.com, viewed 11th September 2010. - http://www.seagm.com/gold/buy?game_id=8

Garena

Garena itself is not a MMORPG but anyway we would like to share it with you guys because it is famous among all gamers as it provides the service where it links players from different location or different IP addresses together and play the LAN game online. Like what in the first post I mentioned there are still other MMO other than MMORPG which includes: MMOFPS, MMORTS, and etc. that gamers often used to play it in cyber café to play with each other, in multiplayer mode.

Now, by using Garena, certain famous games like Call Of Duty 4 and DotA* are able to play with other players online. For me, Garena is like a gaming social community, because players can join Malaysia room, Singapore room, Thailand room, or Philipines room (other regions are also possible but it will lag) to meet different country players, and to play and compete with each others.

*DotA is RPG not MMORPG.

So, how do Garena earn money? They sell Gold Membership!

10 Shells = RM 7

20 Shells = RM 14

50 Shells = RM 35

100 Shells = RM 70

1 Month(s) 19 Shell(s)

3 Month(s) 55 Shell(s)

6 Month(s) 105 Shell(s)

1 Year(s) 190 Shell(s)



Yes. They earn from Gold Membership, but it is optional, it is up to players whether or not to become a Gold Member. Garena is a freeware so normal membership users are still able to use the application, but without Gold Membership, those players might lose their gaming experience. For example, during peak period like weekday’s nighttime and weekends, especially weekends, the servers will become so full that sometime you need to try your luck to enter into the servers/rooms.

Here’s the example:

Look at the picture above (click to enlarge), this is how it irritates those normal membership players during peak period. Hahahaha!! So, for those who are impatient they would surely buy the Gold Membership. Imagine if you want to refresh the server status you need to sign out and then sign in again to refresh, and keep repeating this action until you can successfully go into the room!

References:
Garena, Connecting World Gamers, Garena Online, viewed 10th September 2010 - www.garena.com

MOL Point in Online Gaming

Have you ever wonder, why did gamers,
either guys or girls invested real cash into games?

Years ago, I always thought of this as something very laughable, investing hundreds to thousands of real cash into a game. But this can be explained in another sense, why are girls buying heels and cosmetics over and over again? Why are the guys investing in car modifying? The answer comes to self satisfaction.

Popular online games such as World of Warcraft, Ragnarok Online 2, Dragonica Online, Maple Online and XDO are categories as MMORPG where they got their own avatar in game, the moment they created a character, that will be the character they play every time they logged in. With high graphic gameplay, one's character can look extremely good with real cash item.

In order to gain profit other than monthly subscription, game companies introduce MOL Point (also known as Money Online), where gamers buy game cash using real cash. MOLPoints is an online micropayment system developed and operated by MOL AccessPortal Berhad (MOL). This payment system enables consumers nationwide to purchase online games, products and services through localized portals and pay for purchases over 540,000 physical, online and mobile channels in 73 countries worldwide.

Belows are pictures of normal gamers and cash gamers,
cash gamers refer to gamers who invest real cash into games.

Dragonica Online

Cash Gamers in Chibi Online

From the two pictures above, we can see that cash players' avatar is more fancy compared to normal players. Other than that, Cash players can gain more benefits in MMORPG, such as faster leveling and higher success rate in doing anything in the games. In the following post, we'll introduce two successful companies in this market, Garena and SeaGamers.

Brieft Introduction!

The topic we choose is about the business of online gaming. Generally online game can be classified into:

(i) Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG),

Prius Online

(ii) Massively Multiplayer Online First-Person Shooter (MMOFPS),

Call Of Duty 6: Modern Warfare 2

 (iii) Massively Multiplayer Online Real-Time Strategy (MMORTS),

Age Of Empire III

 (iv) Massively Multiplayer Online Sports Game (MMOSG),

NBA 2K10

(v) Massively Multiplayer Online Racing (MMOR) and etc.

Need For Speed: Shift

Among these we are going to discuss MMORPG. MMORPG is the role-playing style whereby every gamer has their own avatar/character inside the virtual world. Those gamers treat their ‘avatar’ as one of their ‘assets’, so this is how they are willing to pay for it.

During last time most of the online games were pay-to-play (P2P) whereas now most of them are free-to-play (F2P), the way they earns money also changing, for example, during last time game companies were earning from the ‘monthly subscription’. Whereas in F2P, there is no monthly subscription but players are tempted, or attracted by the unique or awesomeness of the in-game items which are optional, in which they are required to purchase point card (known as Mol Point) to obtain those unique items.