How to massively reduce RMT

How to reduce RMT in Everquest.

1. Create a system where only people that participate in a kill have a chance to loot the items dropped from that mob.

2. Make all gear non tradeable outside a handful of crafted gear.

3. Fix the way MQs work with Epics and other quests so that people have to do the quests themselves rather than pay someone to do a turn in.

4. Create a similar Krono system like WoW has with their WoW token. IE cannot trade Kronos from person to person rather have to put in on a trader at a set price based on what DPG thinks the price of a Krono should be compared to the amount of plat in the economy. Anyone with a knowledge in Probability and Statistics knows that this is not hard to do.

5. Require two step authentication and secret questions for all accounts on creation and current accounts.

All these Ideas will not stop RMT completely but it would sure hamper down hard on it. Which in turn would create a better game atmosphere in my opinion.

Let's see how many RMTer's get upset with these suggestions.

I think this wouldn't change that much at all. I assume most revenue buy "ingame businesses" in generated by powerlevelling and loot right sales. They would just ask for tons of plat instead of krono and then convert that plat into krono and then sell those for real money on web sites.

But maybe I am totally wrong and it would help way more. I think account-wide kronos are a bane. They should be server specific to not overly economy. People are botting on live servers 24/7 and then sell those kronos on TLPs.

Invite people to group/raid. Agree upon loot rights price before mob is killed. If item drops, person pays and gets the item. If not, they move on. Have a person ready for loot rights for most, if not all, items on target mob's loot table to maximize profit. Your solution(s) to a "problem" was solved after 30 seconds of thought process.

I guess they can do that? Going to take some coding updates and unsure of the amount of effort it would take. Probably not worth the effort.

Why would anyone use this system over the current krono system? This would do nothing but waste dev resources.

As an infosec engineer, I like this regardless of it stopping RMT or not.

Not an RMTer.

Yeah powerleveling is one that is seems hard to combat, I have not been able to come up with a solution for that. but the loot right sales is easy. just make it to where they would have to be apart of the kill (attack the mob) in order to loot it otherwise it cannot be traded. It wont stop people selling loot rights altogether but it will surely make it harder whereas they would have to let them in the group before they kill the mob.

How to massively reduce RMT in EQ; simple shut servers down...done.


Anything less than that isn't going to make any difference. People that come up with these seem to think RMT wasn't rampant prior to Kronos. Only thing Krono did was shift some of that money from 3rd party sites to DPG's pockets (maybe was still Sony when Krono came out; don't remember exactly).

Interesting thought.

Things would have to change greatly in how loot is obtained from mobs. Half the reason RMT works in EQ is the time sink required to obtain certain items/objectives.

It's one thing to run around and collect items from NPCs, do turn ins, gain faction, get a series of lootable items all in the name of finishing a quest.

It's quite another when you have to sit in one spot for a day, or more, waiting on a certain NPC to spawn to have a have chance at a turn in (while fighting with other players for that chance), or sit around and kill the same NPC/Placeholder over and over waiting on a 'rare drop'. And then repeat that process a dozen times for multiple steps of a quest. Bottle necks in quests would have to be eliminated completly, not simply made "more palatable".

That is the BS aspect of the game that no-one enjoys, and it is half the reason RMT exists.

Close the only thing you need to do for accounts to stop the worst form of cheating and bad behavior is every account needs:

• Name - Verified
• SQ/SA - required on every account new or old
• Payment Source - required for every account - verified by billing address
• No krono allowed to start any new account

The ability to setup dummy accounts for a krono just leads to easy abuse.

Then again these type of methods are under the assumption that they want to ban cheats, abusers and RMT.

Which they don't from past experience. You can try this yourself, setup an automated toon on a new krono only account and have all your friends submit tickets just see how long it takes. Did this way back when and it took forever to even get a short few day ban.

Sounds like you want to remove the free to play ability if you require a payment source to create a new account.

Lies! You didn't whole heartedly agree with OP ergo RMTer!

Dang it, you gave me away! Now I can't afford my basement rent!

Every one of the restrictions listed simply enable the RMT crews to create more bottlenecks that will be used to monopolize in game items and services except for enforcing 2FA on account creation and even that can be abused

Never said you had to charge a free play account on that verification.

Whats so bad about RMT though?

Part of the reason for krono as a payment source for subscriptions is because not everyone has a credit card that can be used for verification. The purpose of krono is to allow for people who don't have/want a credit card to be able to play the game.

1. No tradeable Krono.
2. Limit 1 character online at a time from an ip address.
3. No tradeable items, must be in party to loot.
4. Give an allowance of x amount if platinum per ip address/account per expansion to buy spells with etc. If someone wants to waste their limited amount buying loot rights they can at the risk of not being able to afford the necessities (spells etc).
5. Nothing sells for or drops additional currencies (cp, sp, gp, pp).
All this = EQ the way it's meant to be played.
The people that play with spouses etc. can make their way over to the other TLP server.
Had to repost here because it's just genius and would make for a great server for those of us that want to earn our own stuff and want everyone else to have to do the same.

So the real problem is people not having fun the right way?

A server for single players or those who have multiple internet providers?

single players who want to play a game with no economy whatsoever.

Also no jboots cause no one would have 3500gp

No RMT = DPG makes no $ on TLPs = no more TLPs. By all means, bite the hand that feeds you.

You take it the wrong way. The best way to fight RMT is to stop feeding the RMTers.
Only equip items you actually looted. The game will also be more fun that way.
Kind of utopian, I know. But most of the time, do we really need those FBSS or GEBs to enjoy the game and be efficient?