The Forum Community

The Forum Community
On game issues... Their Relevance... And their Impact…


Mobiusgames.net Community Forums (version 2.7) is a friendly environment where you can discuss ideas, exchange game play advice, role-play, and converse about any other aspects of mobiusgames.net content with other players. It has been an outlet, a medium for players to vent out their issues and ideas about the game.

Mobius Forums (in this version only, which started March of 2007) has a total of 11,603 registered members, and have made a total of 459,346 posts by February 27, 2008. Don’t get fooled by this staggering number, though we may have this insane amount of posts, our active users are only at about 80-120 daily (may depend on weekends and holidays). Most users ever online were 348 on Jul 2 2007, at 07:49 PM. With an average of 3,000+ daily CCU on MU Phil, our forum community is only a fraction, a small cut in the “pie” as we say.

With these numbers, can we really say that our forum community has an impact on the MU community as a whole?

My answer is a big YES! Some of these “forumers” are the movers and shakers of the MU Continent. Guild masters of huge alliances gather up in these forums to talk about issues, plan strategies, and discuss ideas. Some of the players that frequently visit our forums are in-game celebrities in their on right, any information they can gather in our forums can be quickly disseminated in-game. Noobs listen to them, as they listen to GameMasters. Important issues discussed in the halls of the Mobius Community Forums are in no doubt given great importance by the Admins and the MU players alike. There is nothing puny with their number, that I can tell you!

PHP Trading

PHP Trading

An Issue/A possible solution

Almost 90% of MMORPGs revolve around a Secondary Market, a trading done outside the “game”; some may know it as Real Money Trade. Here it is locally known as PHP Trading. The question being asked is [1] Why is this an issue? [2] How does the trade affect the balance of the game? And [3] how does trade affect the culture of the game?

According to our Mobius Recovery supervisor, almost 40-60% of Hack cases are composed of Illegal trading. These hack reports are automatically deemed as first-hand hacking since our Game logs shows that item/s were traded to the other account with no valid trade. Hence, the “buyer’s” account will be blocked and the “seller” will re-acquire his item/s plus the real money given to him by the “buyer”. This has been one of the most talked-about issue circulating both in-game and in our Forums. Some players affected by this have either quit, or pissed-off one of our GSS agents. Though some may say that RMT is natural for MMORPGs, it has definite effects on the game economy. If we let players keep doing this it may devalue the game for other players. On the positive side, vibrant secondary markets not only motivate gamers to keep their existing accounts, but they can ultimately provide a more stable in-game economy.

Mobius Recovery policy states that trades done using illegal items, “PHP” trades, cross server trades, Cash transactions for items and similar trades, will not be entertained. I believe that this policy should still stand, but this may raise another important issue, which is, “Consideration”, for those other players that may not have other options. [1] Can we have solutions for this kind of trading? [2] Can we consider other methods of proving that “this” kind of trading really did take place? I have a suggestion:

· Can we consider semi-legal documents as proof that an actual trade did really happen? I’m thinking of two people as signatories in that document (the buyer and the seller), the seller would be required to provide and scan at least two valid IDs attached in that document that can be send as proof. Now, the signature on the valid ID must match the signature on the said document. This can be contested, yes, but it could be revised until we reach to a certain point that loopholes are patched.

· Additional security in our MobiusOnline e-pasa option, were customers can only use e-pasa after verifying/inputting another security code. In this way, PHP traders may use this option as part of their trading. This may be used as additional evidence that an actual trade did happen, plus the fact that in can increase the usage of our payment system.

Pros and Cons for PHP Trading when using our e-pasa system:

Imagine a single player out of lets say hundreds per server involved in PHP trading, that single player can convert a minimum of Php5,000 into our Mobiusonline ePoints for just 1 item that he’ll buy. To date, our Recovery team has processed thousands of hack cases were PHP trading is involved. Imagine if players then were using our payment system in their trade, imagine how much php have been converted into ePoints.

A Rare Visit

Today was a rare opportunity for me to visit Titan and Ion in-game to check on the community and chat with some players. I've been so busy working on the Cash Shop since May and the Titan-Bahr Merge/Database Purge since June that today was a rare chance for me to visit our beloved MUtizens in-game.

Titan is still the largest community we have, and I met some players there. Though navigating through Lorencia and being mobbed by players and sellers, I was still able to make myself visible as a GM and reassure players that we, GM's, are still patrolling the game.

Ion is rather sparse in players but hopefully with the plans I have for its near future, new and old players might be interested in starting to play there.

I don't want to spoil too much so I'll write an entry soon.

Happy gaming!

Welcome!

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We welcome all MUtizens of past and present, casual gamers, serious gamers or anyone who's interested in reading about MU.

Happy gaming!