3.0 Market
Market is the place to trade the virtual items, where players meet to sell and buy. Economy is based on ms gold. Market price can be examined here. For new players, the first thing to do is to go explore the market place. Much information can be found.
3.1 Game
Players can buy and sell virtual items at the town area. In MoSiang, they grouped together at the centre of crowd, which is Chang Ann channel 1, KaiFeng channel 3, and LanZhow channel 1. These 3 places are popular as the players flow is high due to repot convenience and ease of navigation. Sellers can choose to enter into selling mode or buying mode. In buying or selling mode, they set the price and others can take it or leave it. Therefore, if the sellers want the stock to be sold out, they have to predict and estimate the price which buyers can accept. It cannot be too high or too low. When buyers set high price to collect materials, they can collect ingredients or item immediately as many players are willing to supply them. The situation is like this.
Seller's interface
When the item is sold to another player, the MS gold on buyer's backpack will directly be deducted and credited to seller's backpack.
Buyer's interface
Buyers can check the price by pointing to the item. The level 46 cape displayed above is selling at 2.5m MS gold. The charater above do not have enough gold to purchase the item. She only have 18k gold with her.
Another way of buying and selling is through the use of item mall call "Lion Roar". It is a communicating channel where every channel online can see what one trying to express. It becomes a convenient tool for players needed either money or certain items in urgent. In order to "roar" a sentence limiting 100 words, players need to purchase the "lion roar" in item mall from official website. One lion roar can be used once only.
Using roar to sell items are common in game.
Using roar to buy a bracer with characteristics stated
Note: If S in front means Sell, B means Buy. PM means personally message the person who roars.
Using this method sellers can get money and clear out their stock fast by negotiating real time with interested buyers. Buyers can also survey the market at different period of time to allocate the lowest price offered for the item they acquired. Later they can arrange a convenient spot to meet and trade privately. This trading method requires minor cost (purchasing "lion roar") while selling in market requires 0 cost, only time is needed.
The market provided imitates the real economy of operating a business. Suppliers in order to earn money must understand the psycology of players (must study some statistic also). In real world businessman buy in stocks and sell them at a mark up price. It is exactly the same in the game, suppliers and professionals in combining or power up weapons and armors in game will create the goods and sell them at higher price, according to the demand.
Of course, there are plenty of players who lose money, in a way that they buy in items at high price then sell it at lower price. Normally these players just play the game for entertainment. They have same characteristics like do not mind using real money to play the game and just want to play conveniently and easily. Those who earn real money (or those who are clever in multiplying their wealth in game) actually earn their money from this group of players. It is not very easy to earn money too, even in game. The economy provides a foundation of market understanding to do business.
3.2 Discussion Forum
MoSiang is a quite complicated game. There is much knowledge to be studied especially on the creation of virtual goods and services. Even many experienced players played for almost 4 years (since launched in Malaysia), they also cannot logically explain a good method to combine the goods successfully. Therefore, many discussions about the game including methods to farm rare items, method to power up a good quality equipment, strategy to win guild war and even share screenshots about special moments in the game. The official forums of MoSiang in Malaysia is on9g.com, available in both mandarin and english version.
A subsection in the forum just for trading the virtual items. (Marketplace)
There is a sub section providing a marketplace for players in the game. Players can sell and buy id, rare items, nicely combined or power-up equipments. The advantage is they can negotiate the price and there is no exact time limit for the topic. Buyers can survey the price by reading through all the topics they are interested in. For instance, the picture down there shows some topic for discussion. The topic will normally show the items they want to sell or buy. For example the picture shown below:
Buying id for new players can be discussed here too. For example, the BunnyZai in the forum do not want to waste time training a new character from level 1 to 70 again. Therefore, the easiest way to be strong in the game is to buy id from other players. Buying of pets, rare items can be posted here to find ways to get it. Sometimes discussion going on and there might suddenly be lucky occassions. Player who owns the item who are not interested in selling the item might suddenly needs to quit the game for certain reason. They can give the chance or priority to the needed ones.
3 comments:
Virtual market consists of customer-to-customer (C2C) and business-to-business (B2B). Related to your topic, you had stress out on online game marketing, which is quit interesting for me. Why not, now, by playing online game also can make monies. Although I’m not involve directly in online game, but I do learn something from my friend which expose to this area.
The common question, is their any real currency involve? What the benefit to collect virtual currency?
Currency flow from C2C perspective is that the players able to make trade among each other. What kind of trade is was? Take example, the junior player could trade with the senior player for virtual currency. As we know, usually, senior player had accumulated virtual monies and posses rare; the purpose of trading virtual currency is to boost their (junior player) avatar performance in the online game. They usually, pay it with real currency, the price could be negotiate, usually; the value of virtual currency will be less that the real currency. It looks like kind exchanging currency in real life. Example of online game: Cabal online.
On B2C perspective, online game is much similar with other type of online company. They gain profit from the subscription fee. As we can see, not all of the games in the net are free. Or, sometime the entrance could be free but to obtain certain virtual items (usually kind of item either to boost the power of weapon or just for accessories); the player had to buy it. The payment could be done through credit card or PayPal.
Sometime I wonder, some people who addicted to the virtual game does spend much monies on it, just to ensure their avatar had enough in everything. It seem like, you ensure you yourself had everything need in the virtual world.
Magdalene,
Ya, of course there are real currency involved, if not online games won't be so attractive. Players invest money into playing the games, in the game they buy and sell goods. When they earn revenue more than what they spend on cost, they earn profit already. They can sell virtual currency for real money. Not necessarily everyone will lose money in playing online games. You can read further on my post today to understand more. =)
Other example includes, Kenneth Michael Merrill, he is one of the famous people who earns real cash just through supervising the trading of virtual currency at Gaming Open Market(GOM).
In my example, MoSiang Online, it is a lifetime free online game. Players have to buy virtual items to enhance themselves so that they can be outstanding (or strong) amongst other players.
The payment method to purchase the cash items is through mol point, online money. Players must first have a mol point account. Online monies are credited to players account when they used reload coupon bought from 7-11 shop or cyber cafe. Then players can use the online money in their account to buy virtual items. Most of the MMORPG games accept online money transfer from mol points. The website for Malaysia's mol point is http://www.mol.com/v2/default.aspx.
Hope I explained your queries.
The feedback of the players or the customers are the most important as they are the main income resource of the company. It will be influence the market in the online game. The forum has been set up not only to give the chances for the gamers to interacted within each other but also to give the first hand information to the gamers such as the discussion forum that is mentioned. The company can receiving the comment from the public and helps to improve their commercial products.
I am not involved in the MOSiang, so I can’t make any comment on that. However, I know one of the online games; MapleSEA that is quite similar with MoSiang. MapleSEA has broken numerous performance records including an online community that was awarded Singapore’s most popular website in the gaming category. They open some discussion topic about the bugs, technical FAQ, Account support and the Abuse report for the gamers to speak out their problems. In the bugs report, they are discussing about any bugs that the gamers have encountered while playing the MapleSEA and the company will try to solve the problems as soon as possible to make sure that the gamers are able to enjoy the game all the times. Besides that, the technical FAQ is to help answering all the problems related to the game, drivers, graphics and any other kind of technical problems while playing the MapleSEA. In order to make sure that all the gamers are playing the game in a fair and square environment, the company had set up a abuse report thread together with a team of members so called Game Manager(GM) who helps to make sure that no hacking, scamming or harassment cases occurred in the game. Anyone who against the rules will be banned.
It can be conclude that they would be able to produce the gaming system that is widely accepted by the gamers within the discussion forum. In addition, it can benefit the gamer of the MoSiang since they can find much information about the games and it can encourage the market such as the players can sell and buy the thing that they want through the discussion forum.
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