Recently, Korean World of Warcraft(WOW) players introduced a very interesting spontaneous auction system that circumvents the logic of the game design.
As you already know, there are a lot of restrictions on equipping items in WOW. Attribution of items to a specific player makes the usage of WOW Gold narrow. So, it is one of characteristics in game systems that lessen RMT in the game. But, is this invincible? So-called "Gold party" named by Korean WOW players is rising as a means to bypass this restriction. The "Gold party" is unique contractual raid team organizing for in-game non-official item auctioning on the spot.
When a team finishes the boss and an extremely valuable item comes out, the auction would start. The auctioneer is the head of raid team. The process is almost same to the ordinary auction. The highest bidder gets the item auctioned after paying his Golds to the auctioneer. After this, the head should divide revenue among participants of raid except winner of the bid. If there be no item that any participant want to bid, only division of resource earned is implemented without auctioning as usual. If a player want to get specific items in this "Gold party", he should have enough money to bid. An article(Korean language) in a Korean game journal reported that a weapon was won at 9,000 WOW gold in a "Gold party." The price amounts to about 270,000 KRW(1,000 KRW=1 USD).
If you have enough Golds ready to bid, now you get more probability to equip better items. So, there is a possibility to revive RMT restricted by game system. According to a longtime WOW player, "Gold party" is a kind of side effects resulted from the wide spread of raid play. So to speak, some raids turn easy enough to finish with some 'customers/bidders' accompanying. These raids are often called 'picnic' among Korean players. It's a sort of contractual breeding system with incentives that sprung up spontaneously.
I've looked into the trend of transactions on WOW Gold at Itembay. As details cannot be investigated, it is obvious that the volume of trade is increasing. The WOW's ranking of trade volume at Itembay during last 3 months is #7, but that during last 1 month is #5. There seems to be no significant impact of "Gold party" on the RMT price yet. the price has been fairly stable for last 3 months. It is too weak metrics to judge the effect of this spontaneous in-game trading practices. Anyway, "Gold party" is one of intriguing behaviors that are to be observed only in MMORPG.
hey eric, take this to terror nova. let's see what dibbell, malaby et al have to say about it. or i will.
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