(Reposting from my old blog Jaliyah's Journeys - original post date 10/28/11)
Micro transactions are always a hot debate among gamers. As far as I can tell there seem to be five different philosophies concerning them, some of which are better from a collectors standpoint than others. The five are:
- No micro transactions whatsoever
- Only character changes (sever change, name change, etc)
- Character changes and vanity items
- Everything but "pay to win" items
- Anything goes
As far as the first one is concerned, I'm not 100% sure the people claiming this philosophy are being serious. It seems odd to me that people would be against letting others change which server their character is on, but maybe they see that as a tool for trolls? I know trolls have been known to switch servers or change their name after the server gets wise to their follies, although I'm not sure how common that is. If trolls are indeed the reason for this belief then I can't say there is anything wrong with this viewpoint. In my experience though people who say this often are not including character changes in their definition of micro transactions, so they actually mean number two.
As someone who has never had occasion to change anything about my character through micro transactions, I'm not quite comfortable saying there is no need for them. I'm an altoholic so I have no problem re-rolling if my server dies or whatever, but I recognize some people detest the leveling process and make good use of these services. Since I don't want to take this ability away from those who use it responsibility this is my personal point of view.
The most popular belief I've seen is that there is nothing wrong with selling vanity items, as "that doesn't take anything away from the game" or "those items aren't competitive". I personally find this to be a very ignorant point of view. Some people seem to find it hard to empathize with people who have an alternative play-style. For those who are completionists it does take something away from the game. It forces people to spend more real world money to play the way they want to. They either have to sacrifice having the whole set or give in to paying the micro transaction fee. This I have a real problem with. Concerning TOR, I also have a problem with the CE Store for this very reason. I understand why games include one in game item in the CE, as a way to represent their real world items in the game, but one item really ought to be enough. I wouldn't have an issue with it if the items were BOE rather than BOP but that is not likely to be so. That would also have it's own problems as CE owners would then have an in game advantage when it comes to earning credits. Either way I think the CE store was a bad idea and I hope they move away from similar things when it's expansion time.
The forth idea includes everything the third does, plus other helpful items that can also be found in game such as health potions. The idea behind this I suppose is that those who have more time have the advantage over those who don't, and this evens it out a bit (as long as those without time also have extra cash). This I can understand. It's something I could actually get behind as long as all the items in the store, including vanity items, are replicas of those found in game. This would help out those who just want Shiny Pet X without forcing completionists to spend real world money. Sounds like a pretty decent compromise.
The "Everything Goes" mindset is one I think most people hope will stay confined to the realm of F2P games, but there are a few who don't mind them in subscription based games as well. Quite honestly I'm not sure what their reasons are so I won't comment on that. Since I don't care about progression this is not something I'm ideologically opposed to, as long as it follows the "everything in the store is available through other means in game" rule of the forth idea. However I recognize that people who do care about progression are against it so I would not support it.
