Heads up: the news here is real and sourced. The read on what it means for the unannounced Riot MMO is ours, and speculative where labelled. RuneGrove covers everything through one lens: what it tells us about the MMO.
Source: the official forum announcement, reported by Shacknews and Warcraft Tavern on October 14 and covered by PC Gamer, GamesRadar, Icy Veins and MMOHuts.
What Happened
Blizzard can now freeze an account's trading while it checks for bought gold, and it says the system may flag innocent players while it is tuned.
The hold
- The new rule. Blizzard, which has run a World of Warcraft gold market for two decades, can now freeze suspect accounts in Forever, the new version of the original game.
- Who announced it. Kaivax, a Blizzard community manager, posted it on the official Forever forums on October 13 under the title "Temporary Economy Holds For RMT".
- The target. The hold covers RMT, the buying or selling of in-game gold for real cash, and applies to accounts suspected of "either the selling or receiving of illicit gains".
- What freezes. A held account has "restricted use of trade, mail, guild banks and the Auction House" while Blizzard investigates.
- The aim. Kaivax wrote that the goal is to "aggressively shut down the flow of suspicious gold before it has been transferred or put into circulation into the economy".
- How it ends. The hold lifts automatically if the activity is cleared, and an account found to be involved in RMT faces account action.
- False positives. "There may be false positives while things are fine tuned," Kaivax wrote, adding that a hold alone leaves no permanent strike on the account.
- Every version next. Blizzard says the systems will reach "all versions of World of Warcraft if proven successful".
The crackdown before it
- Beta bans. Josh Greenfield, a Blizzard senior game designer, said on the official Forever podcast that Blizzard had shut down more than 2,100 gold-buying accounts and almost 1,600 selling or botting accounts.
- Too lenient. At a developer Q&A for the beta launch, Greenfield said, "Being frank, we've been probably too lenient on gold buyers."
- Buyers too. Dexerto reported that Kaivax said on September 28 that players who "knew or should-have-known" their gold was illegitimate could also face account action.
- No GDKP. GDKP, the raid format where loot goes to the highest gold bid, is banned on Forever servers, as Blizzard said at its September 17 developer Q&A.
- Guild loot first. 80.lv reported that Greenfield's concern was GDKP overtaking guild loot systems, rather than mainly real-money trading.
2,100Buyer accounts closedMore than, during the beta
1,600Seller and bot accountsAlmost, during the beta
Nov 4Forever launch
The dates
- Open stress test. On October 19 anyone can log in to Forever with no subscription, Game Time or beta access, from 2:00 p.m. PDT in North America and 19:00 CEST in Europe.
- Beta, then launch. The beta ends October 21, and Forever launches November 4.
- Wiped after. Every character, name and guild made during the stress test is deleted afterwards.
What Riot Has Shown
Riot has announced no trading plans for its MMO, but a job listing describes a player economy with trade in it, and its anti-cheat team is hiring.
- The listing. A Riot listing for a "Principal Game Designer, Progression and Economy" on an "Unpublished R&D Product" in Los Angeles asked for someone to "build and maintain a thriving MMO player economy".
- Trade is named. The designer would "connect the many elements like progression, skills, resources, goods, and trade", plus "lifeskills, crafting, professions".
- Gold flow too. The role also covers the "inflow and outflow of resources" in the economy.
- An old post. Mirrors on gamejobs.co and Built In date the listing to about a year ago, and it was gone from Riot's careers site when we checked on October 16.
- Anti-cheat hiring. Phillip Koskinas, Riot's director of anti-cheat, posted five open roles on October 14, among them a "Staff Applied AI/ML Scientist, Anti-Cheat".
- No MMO named. None of the five roles mentions the MMO. Orlando Salvatore, a senior engineering manager on the Riot MMO, reposted Koskinas's post.
- Nothing announced. Riot has said nothing about economy, trading or real-money trading rules for its MMO.
What This Means for the Riot MMO
If Riot builds the player economy its listing describes, it takes on the gold sellers Blizzard is still fighting.
- New ground for Riot. None of Riot's current games has an auction house or lets players trade items or currency with each other.
- Sellers come early. Blizzard closed about 3,700 buying, selling or botting accounts during the beta, before Forever has launched.
- Freeze, then check. Blizzard picked speed over fairness, the trade-off every MMO economy team has to make.
- One shared market. Forever runs "essentially one megaserver per rule set", MMORPG.com reported from Blizzard's PvP podcast, so bought gold lands in one market per rule set.
- Rules are design. Forever decides who gets loot by rule, from the GDKP ban to group quest drops dealt out in turns.
- Riot's tools. Riot already runs its own anti-cheat, Vanguard, and catching bots and fraud is the work a trading economy needs.
- Not revealed. How freely players can trade, and how hard Riot polices it, is a design call the MMO has not revealed.
Our read. Riot's listing asks for a "thriving MMO player economy" with trade in it, and Forever's beta shows gold sellers go after a market like that before launch day. Riot will need its own answer before its players can trade at all. Whether it keeps trading open and polices it hard, or limits trading instead, hasn't been shown.
What to Watch
Your Take
Reader poll
Should Riot's MMO let players trade gold and items freely with each other?
Reported from Shacknews and corroborating coverage. The MMO read is ours and clearly speculative. Analysis by RuneGrove.
