dear people who buy gil with real money

[emitsu97]

The reasons for some of the rules can be subject to debate as well. The most beneficial reason for the no selling/buying gil rule would be for a level playing field. However it can also double to increase profit for SE because of the immense amount of time it takes to gather any worthwhile amount. It's a business based not on usage but rather time. They sell time in their world. The more time you need to achieve/obtain something, the more money they make. I understand that if gil were too easy to obtain it would be a boring game that most ppl would have beaten by now. I understand the game needs to be spaced out and is more enjoyable that way. But the balance between story line progression and virtual resource aquisition seems way off kilter. It's almost like paying to see 5 minutes of a movie everyday until the movies completion. >.<

[Omniblast]

If you lead a man to gil, he will buy it.
If you lead a man to bot, he will have gil for an eternity.

Oh I dunno I just got tired reading from page 3 and on. I have no idea what's going on. ^_^.;; sorry!

[csBahamut]

Onte, from what reference point are you refering to about gil buying? I never said ALL forms of gil buying are wrong. I really wonder if you're even paying attension to what I'm saying sometimes. Also, I still don't see a concrete reason as to why I should stop refering to that link. It's not that the link has the same opinion as me, but that after reading it, I it changed my understanding of the situtaion. That link doesn't hold any opinion. It's just facts. It simply states what is, and it refutes common missconceptions and excuses that players and companies use to justify one side or the other. No where in that paper does it say gil buying is wrong(or anything similar). Though, if you had read it, you'd know that.

Both examples would be morally wrong by today's social standards because many RL ppl would be affected. This is a game and although your virtual alter ego MAY be affected(hasn't been conclusively determined in this specific scenario), the RL you wouldn't lose a job, a loved one, suffer a horrible future from a crappy job, etc., etc. It wouldn't appear on the 11 o'clock news, nor in the New York Times. It didn't for other MMO's, and this one seems to be that much better equipped to handle this kind of thing.

Have people not gotten divorced because of Everquest? Have kids over in Asia not died because they physically exhausted themselves from playing a game for too long? Just because the game takes place inside a computer doesn't mean it can't affect the real world. It can, and it will, once the vitual world fully matures. What one player does to another WILL affect that person. Just like a kid who get's made fun of all his life will tend to be a social outcaste, so too will a kid who spends his/her free time in a virtual world and has problems there. What happens in a video game isn't any less real the the computer sitting in front of you. Cause and effect don't have to be defined by physical boundries. Mere ideas(non-physical in nature) can have profound effects. It was Hitler's IDEAS that helped bring about WWII. It was Karl Marx's IDEAS that Lenin used to make Russia a communist nation. physical things aren't the only things that need to be worried about.

How many times have you gone over the speed limit?

Only a few times. Usually when I'm distracted by a rider. Of course, what relevance does this have to what we're discussing besides pointing out the fact that so many people get away with breaking the law? The law is the law. There are no varring degrees of breaking the law. Here's an experiment to try:
Take a piece of chalk. Draw a circle around yourself on the ground. Now, try leaving the circle, but without crossing the curve that defines the circle. Can you do it? No. You can't get outside the circle without crossing the line.
It's the same thing with laws. You can't do an unlawful act, without breaking the law. Whether or not the law is enforced is a whole other matter. If you are caught speeding, do you think you can still get away with it by claiming, "If they can speed, then so can I."? No, you'll still have to pay your ticket.

The point is, so what? He gets his degree, how is that affecting you? So someone got his degree by using a method frowned upon, in the end, if there is a job opening, and you both are trying to get it, who will earn it? Hopefully the person who spent 4 years getting the degree, but maybe not. Just because the person bought the degree doesn't mean he doesn't deserve one. He could be 10 times smart/more skilled than the person who worked 4 years in college... (passing college is not even that hard)

No, the point ISN'T so what. Colleges have a reputation to keep. How do you think part of your education is paid? It doesn't all come from you and the government. A good portion of a college's money comes from research paid for by third parties, like businesses. Also, if college would just had out degrees like that, nobody would trust a degree from that college. Every so often, engineering schools have to be ABET accredited. It means, the students that are earning degrees REALLY must have knowlage in the field of their degree. Here's another example:
Say, I am one month away fromgraduating from the University of Idaho and it's discovered that 80% of the people who graduated from Idaho in the past 10 years have been paying for degrees and haven't had to learn anything. As soon as I graduate now, my degree is going to be meaningless. I'll have studied and worked my butt off to get a piece of paper that companies won't recognise anymore. I would have just wastes 4 years of my life, AND I would still have to pay back all the loans, nor would I get back the money I invested into my education. I would be screwed for the rest of my life. And of course, there'd be all the other students at that university with the same problem. Then, there would more than likely be a government investigation into other schools to see if any of them are doing the same.

[Faust]

If I come up as sounding "Holier than thou," then I apologize if that's the vibe you were getting from my posts.

I think I've said it enough times. I don't feel i'm any better than anyone else in the game. And cheating does NOT measure one's skill or performance in the game. I DO NOT, however respect the playing ability of people who cheated to get where they are. Sure, they could be much better than me in playing the game. I still don't respect how they got there, having worked hard and staying within the rules set by SE when I play.

So playing ability is not even an issue.

I also agree with your thought on morality being based on the social acceptance of behavior within a set group. Which leads me to a somewhat disheartening thought...

Since when did breaking the rules and cheating at gameplay become a socially acceptable behavior?

[csBahamut]

'm sorry if I come up as "Holier than Thou" as well, but I REALLY UTTERLY ABHOR cheaters. It's also because I'm a good-two-shoes. I don't play a paladin because it 'looks cool.'

The reason that things like cheating and speeding aren't seen as morally wrong is because society has come to accept it, and even expect it, to happen. If you lived in an area where someone was murdered every hour for 10 years or more, you would become accustomed to it as well and wouldn't think of murder as immoral.

Morality of an action varies person by person. Whether or not it's moral or not for SE to add gil buying to FFXI doesn'need to be discussed. It's the morality of breaking the ToS to buy gil from a third party that should be discussed. Of course, it's really hard to defend a standpoint that sits on both sides of the 'law fence'. Any kind of morality issue is really hard to dispute because a large part of defining moral and imoral is based on emotions, religious beliefs, and society.

In the true hard-core gaming communities, cheating is not accepted. And by hard-core, I don't mean the majority of players. I'm refering to the players that love something so much, they follow every rule to a 'T'. Just look at Diablo II again. A majority of the community accepted botting, hacks, cheats, etc. But the hard-core community still played the game within the bounds. A lot of these hard -core players sought eachother out and ONLY played with eachother. There were whole PvP guilds dedicated to allowing only 'legit' players to play. They went so far as to make even more rules for players to follow. If cheating, like buying gil from third parties, becomes generally accepted in FFXI, I'd expect to see 'legit-only' Linkshells to show up.

[emitsu97]

In terms of MMO's and RL, yes, there have been crossover reactions from virtual to reality. My point wasn't regarding videogames and their direct influence on life, more so on their indirect influence. Lets say your average Joe who plays when he can, hangs out with his pals, is on his HS basketball team, and really isn't a fan boy of any sort, places a bet with one of those PC's that run the Dice Roll gambling. He loses 1000 gil. He doesn't lessen his chances in going to college. He doesn't damage his credit standing. He'll still pass a drug test, assuming he wasn't doing any in the first place. It really has no direct influence on his life whatsoever accept for maybe changing his mood slightly. Even that depends on him as an individual. Those individuals that do have a direct response are the ones featured on the news, usually due to the extremely odd/rare medium from which the reaction was prompted. People meet and get married every day, just not many over the internet. Ppl die everyday, just not so many related to playing videogames to an unhealthy extent.

Double standards poke holes in an argument's defense. You can be one, or the other, or a little of both. Just clarify the stance, and most everything else will make sense and discussion more agreeable.

[csBahamut]

emitsu97, I'm just pointing out the extremes. Yes, it may not affect one person directly right then and there. But it could as time passes, or it could not. Laws are written because things *can* happen, not just because they happen often. How many times do you hear about somebody dying in a car accident because they weren't wearing their seatbelt. Not many. Considering how few car serious accidents there are compared to the number of people that are in the U.S., a person's chances of being in a serious accident are slim. Yet, there's still laws that require people to wear seatbelts.

I dislike third party gil buying because it *can* cause a problem, not because I think it *will* 100% happen.

I think Murphy's Law sums it up pretty well, "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." If there's a significant chance of something happening, then it must be accounted for.

[Onte]

With all the halfassed, wacked-out analogies I've read in this thread, I think Law's speed limit analogy is the best.

If you've broken the speed limit, you're an evil cheater and deserve to be cast out of law-abiding society.

Seriously, you're bitching over something ^^^ that ignorant and stupid.

[emitsu97]

cs, I absolutely agree, Murphy was a smart man, although, thinking about some of the stuff he came up with, someone else most likely documented his laws cause he probably died while playing horsehoes on a Thursday from a piano falling from an airplane. I don't agree with people abusing weakness cause they know it exists. Doing something just for the sake of doing it or maliciuosly because you think you're the shiznit, yo! is blatant disregard for ones responsibilty to upholding standards for society. Not ALL ppl who buy gil fit this mold. Just like not ALL speeders speed just because they can or they wanna be bad ass Brian Spilner. I don't wanna see this game go down the tubes. I don't believe gil buying should be as much a concern as botting. At least ppl who buy gil hopefully buy it to play the game. Not to supply their bots with equipment. But if that was the case, they could just bot farm anyway.

[csBahamut]

Originally posted by Onte
With all the halfassed, wacked-out analogies I've read in this thread, I think Law's speed limit analogy is the best.

If you've broken the speed limit, you're an evil cheater and deserve to be cast out of law-abiding society.

Seriously, you're bitching over something ^^^ that ignorant and stupid.

If that was the law, then so be it. Kick me out of real life. Of course, I could also move to a country that doesn't have that law. It may look stupid and pointless to you because of the lack of enforcement and harsh punishment, but that doesn't make it any less of a law. A rule is a rule. A law is broken no matter if you are punished or not. Also, you've been desensitized to things like speeding by society, so you could care less if someone speeds. It also has a rare likelyhood to involve you. I'm sure you'd care about speeding if on ran into you because they were driving too fast.

You break a stick, it broken. It can't be put back together. You can try taping it, but the stick is still broken. Same thing with laws. You can break it and get away with it, but it's still broken.

Oh, and you still never answered my question Onte. Which side of gil buying do you support?

[csBahamut]

cs, I absolutely agree, Murphy was a smart man, although, thinking about some of the stuff he came up with, someone else most likely documented his laws cause he probably died while playing horsehoes on a Thursday from a piano falling from an airplane.

Hahahaha, poor Murphy. He probably did die according to his own law.

I don't agree with people abusing weakness cause they know it exists. Doing something just for the sake of doing it or maliciuosly because you think you're the shiznit, yo! is blatant disregard for ones responsibilty to upholding standards for society. Not ALL ppl who buy gil fit this mold. Just like not ALL speeders speed just because they can or they wanna be bad ass Brian Spilner. I don't wanna see this game go down the tubes. I don't believe gil buying should be as much a concern as botting. At least ppl who buy gil hopefully buy it to play the game. Not to supply their bots with equipment. But if that was the case, they could just bot farm anyway.

True in that most people don't do it just because they can. It's the bandwagon effect that causes the real problem. People see other people get away with speeding, so they start to care less about watching how fast they drive. Besides, most people have more important things to worry about when driving, like how to explain being late to work, or how they're going to tell the kids that the dog died. Similar matter with cheats and exploits. The people that start doing it start because they can, because they don't care about the concequences, because they don't think they'll be caught, or for whatever rational that they think up. These people tend to be few in number. It's the 'lemmings' that are a problem. They see a good oppertunity that is norally bad and don't do it. but when they learn that it can be easily gotten away with, and nobody is doing anything about it, all their friends do it, so they decide it can't be that bad to do(or form some other rational). How many times have we all done something because our friends or peers were doing it? Smoking and underage drinking are prime examples of this. It's this bandwagon effect that worries me, not the small groups that will never change their ways. Humans are animals, and they are prone to do stupid things when in a group. Just look poor lemmings. One get's pushed off a cliff, the rest go follow him(not likely for people to do, but it get's the bandwagon point across).

[emitsu97]

Let me begin by saying....

We rock!! The last several pages have been nothing less than inciteful discussion, a rarity among any discussion forum.

With that said...

You're wrong, he's wrong, she's wrong, you're all wrong....except for me cause I'm always right.

J/k it was the obligatory retarded reply that the past few pages have been missing.

Yes, the infamous bandwagon effect (bandwagonus effectus maximus). That in itself is a whole other discussion but of course wholey related to this one. People acting out of reaction and not reason. They do becasue they see so many others achieve but without true understanding as to why the journey started in the first place. Without understanding and respecting the reason nothing is learned from the experience. Why can't ppl just be individuals. Have their own thoughts, beliefs and standards? Or they do, they're just all the bad ones. Honestly almost all of these probems require the equivalent of a social meteorite to begin anew the reprogramming of socially accepted behavior. The ideal is what we all want. We all want the time to get gil. We all want to enjoy the game. We all want to play by the rules. Unfortunately the human factor is a negative one. There's people that were born with God's blessing on their forehead, and there's people born with Satan's smack on the ass. From my count, it's seemingly easier and quicker to smack someone's ass on the way out.

Oh, and the ppl who really need to read this never will. We're like 18 pages out of their attention span. (Believe me, I know, I did EcoWarrior with them >.<)

[csBahamut]

Unfortunately the human factor is a negative one. There's people that were born with God's blessing on their forehead, and there's people born with Satan's smack on the ass. From my count, it's seemingly easier and quicker to smack someone's ass on the way out.

I believe this saying would fit as well:
"It take more effort to create something than it does to destroy it."

I'm glad some of us are begining to agree on some points. It's the sign of a good discussion. Too bad those that need to read this probably won't

[LawDawg]

you're all wrong!!!!!!!!!!!:mad:

[Damiega]

wtf why are there so many pages for this... I hope every1 is reading every singles forum members opinion on the matter (sarcasm) ...and if they dont couldn't some1 who posted something on page 18, post the same thing some1 on page 5 did. How boring! Im not here to flame it just seems like a taboo subject that no one really cares about...but then again there are 20 pages....

o ya i didnt read any1 opinons im just calling it how i see it...