Didn't think the heritage crate change through did you?

First, you example is not an apples to apples comparison of the situation here. If the slot machine spit out a $5 plastic army man on every $5 pull, that would be an accurate comparison. And in the case where you got a $5 toy for every $5 pull, it would not be gambling. The State & Federal regulators as well as the courts have weighed in that that is not gambling. You have to gain less monetary value than you put in. In the case of Heritage Crates, LoN Prize Cards, and most Loot Boxes, you get as much or more monetary value than what you put in. Some items have more value, but none have less.

Yes, Pings Potion Pack of Invisibility is worth the 499.5 DC. All of the rewards are easily worth the prices. The items that people have the most of are the ones that just worth $5 or $8 depending on if you are talking about an LoN Prize card or a Heritage Crate. There are however several items which are worth several times more than the $5-$8 prices. So you get the same or more value. That is not gambling.

I would gamble that 95% or more of EQ players would disagree with that statement.

Your premise is invalid.

Just because the company claims something is worth X doesn't mean that the players can actually get X for it when they try to trade/sell it to others.

You buy a lottery ticket. You know you will be getting a lottery ticket. You own that ticket. BUt you have a chance to get something you really want the prize. Same as the chance you get the rare item you buy a loot crate for. You dont wnat the other stuff you want the rare. Its gambling... whether or not it needs to be regulated is another matter.

Nothing wrong with arguing just for the sake of it as long as you realize that is all it is and winning or losing the argument is meaningless. Without that there would be no posts on the forums .

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56614281

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43906306

https://thecasinoenquirer.com/gambling-information/are-loot-boxes-considered-as-gaming-or-gambling/

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2...es-should-be-classed-as-gambling-says-commons

https://www.windowscentral.com/belgium-wants-loot-crates-banned-europe

Loot boxes give you a chance to get an item and you pay for that "chance" to get the item you want. Loot boxes are gambling but it ONLY makes a difference if its considered gambling for the purposes of local law. Some countries consider gambling laws to affect loot crates and some countries don't "for the purposes of law".

All possible outcomes are known in any type of gambling. Do you know any form of regulated gambling where all possible outcomes are not know?

You thinking something does not invalidate my premise or disprove anything that I said.

The secondary (resale) market does not determine the value of an item, the primary market does. So what you may or may not sell it for is not comparitive. Further, there is no conversion from DC to plat. you might finagle some 3 or 4 removed conversion, but then you have issues with price manipulation.

They aren't, but feel free to pretend that they are.

All of those stories, and the countries which they are from have ignored the traditionally legal meaning of gambling. They have all also specifically changed the definitions of gambling legally to make them illegal. They had no problem with the exact same systems for centuries before now. Under their current definition of gambling all collectible cards that have ever existed have been gambling. But you don't see them cracking down on Magic the Gathering or Pokemon do you?

That is the market that matters. It doesn't matter if the company selling the loot crate says the prize is worth $10 if none one is actually willing to pay more then $1 for it that is what the item is actually worth. As these are all digital items the company can put any price on them that they want. A good example of this is the golden armor that is currently for sale.

Loot crates are gambling but that doesn't mean that every part of the world treats all forms of gambling the same.

Changed them because the times have changed? When a lot of the laws written around gambling got created before the concept of digital purchases came about?

Sure it does. Put the Ping Potion Pack of invisibility in the Daybreak Store for $5-$10, depending on the sale, and see how well it sells. Only a complete idiot would purchase one.

No one gets one from a loot box and says, "Woot, I got the value from that box I paid for!"

Your premise is invalid.

Digital purchase make zero difference. By your very arguments here, what makes it gambling has absolutely nothing to do with whether it is a digital or physical purchase. If purchasing packs of collectible cards is not gambling, then LoN prize packs and Heritage crates are not gambling.

Again, nothing that you said in any way invalidated my premise.

It makes a big difference because you are talking about a product that you can never physically own and it will go away as soon as the game shuts down. It is considered gambling because you are going to get a random reward with no clue as to what the value will be.

No, it doesn't make any difference legally. Online games have shut down countless times with people losing all that they have invested in the game over the last 25+ years. The courts have already sorted this kind of thing out. You are not intitled to the value of what invest into a game outside of that game. If your argument here was to be used legally, then anytime that an online game was to shut down, then the company would be liable to its customers to refund the value of the digital items which they had purchased. The courts have not found any such arguments to hold any weight. You owned it for the purpose, which was for, when the game ended, that purpose ended. You had the opportunity to convert it at any point in time but chose not to do so and then the game ended.

Further, the game shutting down down and your digital asset losing all value is wholly separate from the value of the item at the time that the purchase was made. Now, if the game was to be shut down with no notice, or unreasonably short notice, then people who purchased the prizes or crates would have cause for legal action because the company would have had knowledge that they would be shutting and selling something that they knew would have lost all its value the following day, week, or month later would likely be criminal. But you buying something and then the game shuts down two years later, you are not going to be recooping anything. Plus, this again has nothing to do with the value of the item at the time of purchase, which is the only thing that actually matters.

So your position is that all sales of Pokemon cards, Magic cards, other CCGs, Baseball cards, Basketball cards, football cards, or any other collectible card pack is now and always has been gambling. Because in every such case you get a random reward with no clue as to the what the value of what you get will be.
Further, the value of those cards have a considerably easier to determine trade value because the packs as well as the individual cards were both purchased and sold using the same currency without need for conversion and the values for the purchase of individual cards was routinely less than the value of the whole pack, at times with the whole pack potentially not being worth the value. The courts in the 90s and early 2000s weighed in as there were several cases brought forth accusing that Pokemon and baseball card packs were gambling. But the courts all did not accept the arguments being made, which were the same as have been made in this thread for heritage crates and LoN prize sets being gambling. And in the courts findings they even acknowledged that the purchaser of a pack could receive a set of cards with a total value on the secondary market that was less than the pack itself. The courts said that the value was not decided at the moment it was purchased not after the purchase when the buyer discovers what items they got. When they spent the money they got exactly what they expected to, which in our case would be 1 to 2 random items from pre-determined lists of items that the buyer is easily capable of knowing, as long as you got that it isn't gambling.

Yes, it does make a difference as what happens to property ownership in digital versions was never factored into the laws that got created before digital property was a thing.