Fascinating note on the Register about complaint’s from players of Sony’s Everquest role playing game. Sony’s going to arbitrate the sales of character powerups etc. – it’s a booming trade.
But swarming, monopolistic capitalistic tendencies are diminishing the actual playability of the game:
“Most Far Eastern sites are thought to employ cheap labor working in concert to reach large amounts of treasure swiftly, working in their chosen roles, ganging up on loners and ruining the game for lots of other players. The more successful this is, the fewer places gamers can find to play genuinely among themselves.”
And interestingly, one of the problems is the lack of skill development of such rapid ‘power ups’:
“… the purity of the game is altered by novices coming in at such an advanced and powerful state of play…”