A not-so-cleverly disguised insult is intended to make us all watch an amateurish homemade video of one man's opinion? Interesting...

The thing is though I think CB Jackson is trying to say that older MMO's, like UO, had way more world interaction then modern day MMO's and it astounds me that people argue that less is better....

Also that never happened in UO because the items would decay over time so after trying that tactic once to block players from vendors or whatever you quickly learned that was a complete waste of your time not to mention the gold you spent on the items you wanted to use to block players with.

Yes, free gold. Another issue. Unless junk items are made either worthless or tough to steal, then what devs would essentially create is a gold well, which means inflation. MMO's need as many gold sinks as possible to keep their economy from going berserk, and things are not made easier by the modern reluctance to have item degradation (essentially your gear wears down over time and needs to be constantly repaired). If players can just waltz in NPC homes and steal a bunch of valuable stuff, that equals free money, which is not good.

Yes, it could be considered kind of "harvesting" for thieves, but that brings in a whole range of other problems, like for example what mvallas said - what if you find out the town has already been cleaned out or camped by an army of thieves? Does that mean we are going to see player thieves at every corner, constantly burglarizing NPC homes? Where will they sell that stuff? To vendors? What for? Usual resource harvesting requires crafting or at least other players to make use of them. Does that mean thieves are going to get to have an instant money making machine directly turning their loot into gold? And so on and so forth.

As I said... the only way this could work is if junk items are either worthless, cannot be dropped in the world, or are somehow tied into the ingame economy (melt them silver forks and make a silver sword sort of thing). Plus thieving would have to be appropriately difficult.

I doubt they'd be so foolish to create an infinite gold source like that.

1.First-Person Done right - if the game offers 3rd person - it will be preferred for every non precise action as more view of the battlefield = more chances to win
2.Controls like skyrim - what is so special about that in MMO? Direct controlling is growing trend and is nothing new.
3.Stealing and Manipulating Items - oh my, we are gonna steal so much... If there is no stealing from other player than its just a cosmetic activity.
4.Voice acted Dialogue - nothing special here, MMOs mostly resigned from this due to higher costs and hdd space requirement, and players tend to not read it anyway...
5.No cooldowns - truly epic change, we will see how nice it is in future when mages will spam most powerful spells, running out of mana quickly, yes, but decimating whole battlefield in the process... or else they would just increase charging time with spell power...
6.Stealth for everybody - I am just curious how they gonna make it work versus other players and team of players, just curious
7.Combo Attacks - nothing new
8.Gorgeous Graphics - at last! but believe me, if any, ANY of that georgus graphics is gona even slightly affect battle in negative way - sliders gonna go down - been there, seen that
9. Tamriel as a Whole, I just hope its gona be huge, single player of last 3 TES games had quite small area of game, it was just smartly designed so it just seemed bigger, MMOs tend to have small gameworlds, I really hope this one gonna have huge one.
10.Faction Warfare - almost as common in games as leveling itself...
11. Classic TES Freedom - nothing new also (object manipulation? tell me how long ware you fiddling with stuff in Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim altogether and what was your total play time in those games... exactly). It is nice RPG element, a little thing that ( makes you a participant, not just viewer). It is nice that they are putting it in. But it is not really something that will keep game running.
12.Books to collect - so no more achevements?! Hell yeah if Im not gonna see any of this sh*t again! Game of the year instantly. I dunno who invented achevements - he/she should be hanged in public! Achievements like a statement - "this game is boring and repetitive so we need meaningless unlockable statuses so You would unlock them while keep lying to yourself how this game was worth your time and money", the more the game exposes achievements the more this statement is true. iI just hope they are gonna put something extra in it the stories (like a hidden random info about some quest that can be obtained only by reading text carefully. Games need randomization and personalization so much...
13.The Classic TES compass - so if its gonna mean only compass and simple uninteractive map, then I'm in for that - it would be a little challegne every time you go somwhere, If the map gonna be interactive then nothing revolutionary here...
14.Lean UI - we will see if this will be advantage or disadvantage, probably will depend on player, hard to say...
15.Intelligent AI - I hope it is, because if it is just adaptive then its just gonna piss a hell of a mass of people
16. Self-Defined Classes - well about time, I hope it is and will be that way, because I am pretty tired of all those fake "classes" and "professions" that prevented you from using this or doing that, it is really what MMOs need, hope others will go that way also
the TES way is the best - bonus from race, and almost unrestricted way to customize you char is like a trademark of TES, any changes to this is just broken lore and just a step to see called "generic MMO"
17. Any weapon & Armor - I also hope that will be the deal, because c'mon devs of varius MMOs - why cant I wear armor that I am capable of wearing but just not experienced enough? WHY?! My char is [censored] or something? - so I hope no restrictions besides eventual strength requirement here, I like it - I wear it! If that is the freedom You are referring to in point 11 then that is the freedom I am willing to pay for! I just hope mages in full plate gonna have some drawbacks - because c'mon be reasonable.
18. The mega server - its a YES and NO at the same time. Yes - well obviously easier to find players like-minded, No - division on servers was due to either limitations (like if there was 5000 max players on the same map at any given time, and average online was exceeding 4000, devs would just open new server so some would drift to it; other reason was due to regionalization - East EU server, West EU server, Japanese server, Korean server, Russian Server, American Server, etc - to organize players that are either close to each other (low pings) or have similar game habits. For me most important is ping - I would like to play a server I have the smallest ping as a lag and big ping are the most fearsome beast in the online gaming world, they are the fatemasters of any pvp battle, if that is their wish, you will loose any battle no matter how good you are at controlling your character. We will see how it will work out. I can already say its gonna be either blessing or cursing for archers - depends how games reads hits, from attacker side, server side or victim side.
19. Like-Minded gamers - will not work, it will be just pain in the back, players have their habits, fav channels (if game have channels/fases/whatever-its-called its not really MMO, its just MO as there is no Massive in it... 200 is not massive, not anymore, maybe 10 years ago, now its just a skirmish)
20. Epic Large scale battles - also nothing new, MMOs tend to such events, I have seen over 2000 players fighting in battle and I was not even close to the biggest online battles... and see point 19 - 200 is not massive
21. Kill Cams - so it is gonna have a kill-cam that we know nothing about, but it is enough to say this will make game great? Seems legit to me.
...however see point 8.

My suggestion for all of you out there - DO NOT EXPECT SKYRIM ONLINE!!! You will be disappointed!
While Skyrim was excellent game that brought nice profit, altho was a tiny bit disappointing Elder Scroll game - online games have their own laws and rules that are different form single player/coop games.

Just be reasonable.

Manipulation of such items will be instanced like killing npcs.
U can kill npc, and it will stay dead for you, but for everyone else it will be pretty much alive. I presume same thing with world objects of insignificant value (no crafting/enchanting value). Also dropping 100 items would mean dropping items one by one, as dropping 100 with one move would probably just drop one stacked item. I presume grabbing and relocating (without putting into players inventory) would be instanced even if t was for example crafting material.
Devs are not stupid - they know players would exploit it the worst possible way if it was not instanced.

Erm, that is actually my point really. The guy thinking he's clever by collecting a 100 kettles over a few days and throwing them all on top of a vendor in an attempt to cover him up from other players is simply throwing away all that gold and has wasted all his time... because I'd be taking all his stolen kettles and selling them instead.

EDIT: I was, in no way, implying that was some kind of "infinite gold exploit".

What he meant is, what is stopping that guy from selling those kettles to a vendor? Then just rinse/repeat the whole process. That's a gold well right there and it is a big no-no in an MMO. So the only way to prevent that is to prevent players from selling stolen loot to vendors, instead forcing them to either do something with them (melt them down, for example) or sell them to other players who will process them for crafting. That then turns stolen loot into just another harvest node and thieving into a more interesting version of mining.

What's stopping them from selling those kettles to a vendor?

Easy... time!

Time, my friend! The TRUE value of every piece of currency in the world!

In the time it takes him to farm 100 kettles for 100 gold, he could've run 1-3 dungeons with friends and not only walk out with 10x more gold than that, but also some rare items he could probably sell to somebody else for more profit.

That's something I run into when playing Skyrim right now. I love looting/stealing stuff from homes and selling them, but at this point it's an EXTREMELY inneficient way to make gold. I can take the time to loot an entire house, locate a vendor and sell said items to vendor for a 100g, - or in a fraction of that same time I could simply walk out and kill two bandits for 100g... or even less time to buy a weapon from a vendor, enhance it, and vendor it back at an easy 2,000-5,000 gold profit.

Time... it's the great equalizer when it comes to money, as we all have 24 hours in a day. Trust me, there's a reason the phrase "Time is money" is so revered today.

Heh, you must be new to MMO's then? To your average MMO player, time means zilch. If only time is required to get something, then it is often considered "free". Just ask any space miner in EvE Online why the prices of freshly mined minerals are so low. Because they're being dumped on the market by players who only spent time to get them and thus consider it free money.

It's not about efficiency, it is about difficulty. You have to kill 200 monsters, some of then quite difficult, maybe even wipe a few times to get through a dungeon - he just has to spend more time burglarizing houses when NPC's are alseep. In his eyes, you have to work for your loot and he gets it for free - regardless if it really costs him way more time.

Quit focusing on kettles. Just imagine stealing everything of value above 0 from a single home. You will fill up your pack, sell all the stuff and make 100+ gold. Then go into the next house, and just take EVERYTHING again and do it again. The risk vs. reward is too unbalanced to the reward side.

It takes time to quest, but it's easier to just steal. The only reason you don't just do that in Skyrim, because it is boring. But in a MMO the goal is to get a bunch of money so you can buy something nice. Why quest and risk damaging yourself and costing yourself money when you can just steal your way to thousands in the same amount of time it takes for someone to go off on quests to earn money.

Risk vs. Reward is the true scale for MMOs. It is not Time vs. Money or any graph of how much money time is worth.

The problem is not time nor profit. You see, selling a rare item to another player requires a transaction between two players - one is richer while the other is poorer, but the total amount of gold between the two players remain the same. However when it comes to vendoring goods, money is generated by the world, and the total amount of gold in the world increases. Similiar to real-world economy, when the amount of currency increases (assuming all other matters remain the same), the value of goods increases and the value of the currency decreases due to the increased supply of money (aka inflation). MMOs tend to have many "gold sinks" which counter this problem to some degree, where money would disappear from the world, some familiar examples are repairs, respecs, epic mounts, or expensive vanity items like an 8000 gold ring. Sources which commonly increase money in the world are, for example, dropped gold, vendoring trash items and quest rewards. With the introduction of manipulation of items in the world, there is now potentially another very powerful source of gold creation (not earning) in the game world. It may be nerfed so badly that it will be completely meaningless, or it may disrupt the economy very painfully in the long-run. It's possible that a balance can be sought, but we all know how difficult it is to find "balance" in MMOs.

You must be new to MMO's if you believe that!

To use the WoW annalogy... I didn't say running end-game raiding was where they make money. These are human beings playing a video game! You think they'd consider making tons of gold via HARD WORK and time-sinks!? Particularly when those vicious raid zones require tons of flasks, reagents, and expensive repair costs!

To use your anology they "burglarize" 5-man dungeons raqeatedly, netting them green items to sell, gold, some crafting mats - and extra bonus perks like satchels or special points to spend on other stuff they can sell. Just ask any honor-point farmer in the battlegrounds and they'll tell you. Netting yourself the highest yeild of points via doing the simplest of repeatable tasks only works if it's within the SHORTEST amount of time. Stealing kettles has, in no way, been shown to be profitable for the time investment needed to break into things. Smaller dungeons in ES:O will probably have killable trash mobs that probably drop loot and gold equal to at least half a house full of stuff. Hell, in Skyrim it's not even profitable - how are you expecting it to be in an MMORPG!?

Of course the REAL way to make gold in an MMO involves you not running dungeons at all (and was eluded to my comparison to Skyrim Blacksmithing)... what you do when you have enough gold is to simply purchase crafting materials from the AH instead of wasting time farming them... then you go and craft up some specialty high-demand items for a great profit in less than 3 minutes!

Son, trust me - I know my way around the financial sector of an MMORPG. And one thing somebody has never done, and that's become rich by farming and vendoring cheap copper ore they found in the starter zones.

...that's a whole lotta "maybes".

As the other person above said... they're not going to make it so that you can farm kettles and overbloat the economy in a week, a year, or even 5 years. Do you know just how much EZ loose farmable stuff is in Warcraft right now? Friggin herbs and mineral ore alone is littering the place... Sure, their economy bloats - but they also implement massive gold sinks in the end-game for very wealthy people to sink it in.

It's called "balance" - and I'm sure Zeni/Beth are going to be aware of that (or at least they SHOULD be when designing the game).

Trust me... I'm seriously doubting anybody is going to get rich in ES:O by farming kettles. If they do, please send me a message here and I'll admit you were right.

Herbs and ores do not cause inflation, they cause deflation. Lots of Chinese bot farmers have been driving the price of those resources down near vendor price. That's a whole separate issue by itself too. Kettles here is just an example. Manipulating objects in the world and directly vendor them is very different from farming herbs/ores, which are traded to other players.

A good example is SWTOR. At launch, one of the professions is called "Slicing", the key trademark of this profession is that rather than spotting/farming herbs/crystals on the map, a Slicer can spot chests filled with credits on the map. It very quickly became the most popular profession, even though trading via herb/crystal should be more profitable. The reason is simple - people are lazy and would rather directly get their hands on money instead of through trading. Manipulation of objects may fall into the same category. The devs may not have designed stealing stuff to be anywhere near as profitable as proper professions, but due to simple laziness its popularity may enlarge the problem.

Son, I come from EvE Online and I was a big time market player there, so I am quite familiar with "gold making" (and by the way, crafting is not the optimum way of earning ingame currency, market trading is and always will be in any game with a player driven market).
The point you are missing is what GhoXen explained already - it doesn't matter if you can get rich by selling junk to vendors. What matters is if preventive measures are not taken, people will do it and when enough people do it, there will be inflation, which is the real problem. Think of vendors as a sort of virtual money printing machines. They always have a supply, which is created from thin air (sort of like the Federal Reserve Bank, notice similar problems?). It doesn't matter if a player can get only a few coins for their loot, those few coins have entered the game world and increased the amount of money in circulation, thus decreasing the value of ALL money currently in the game economy, including yours.
So you say, what's a few coins, right? Well, what if several thousand players generate a few coins each, every hour? That's a whole lot of coins. And the value of ingame money keeps dropping.

As I mentioned, the only way to prevent this problem is to simply prevent players from directly vendoring their stolen loot. Instead, that loot should be treated as just another resource to be used for crafting, and tradeable only on the market. Turn the thief into a glorified harvester, and you solve the problem, since now they need to get their money from other players, or in other words, from the money supply already existing in the game economy.

Let's just hope the devs are aware of this. One would think developers are aware of such things, but I have seen them make obvious mistakes time and again, so you can never be quite sure...

So why are you even arguing my point? My point was I'd just vendor a bunch of kettles if somebody used them to block a vendor, and I'd say I'd just vendor them.

Why are you guys dragging this out into a bunch of theoretical nonsense about nothing that's been confirmed?

1) EVE is a completely different type of MMO than most MMORPGs... especially compared to ES:O. EVE is a game that is ALL about custom crafting! Duh!

2) Market trading IS Crafting in my book. I trade minerals/goods to make stuff, and trade those on the AH.

3) Both our ways are technically moot... as the REAL way to make money in an MMORPG is to throw out your morales, and just buy/relist rare items on the AH with an extra zero attached to the price tag. Or conversely have a bot program just buy low/sell high items (I myself will never do it... but know three people who have, and they literally own the AH after a year).

I agree eve is a completely different type of MMORPG, it strays off

Some good info. Although the narrator is tad bit opinionated and biased towards certain points then he needs to be IMO.

If you steal an item it is likely marked as stolen like in Skyrim, I doubt you are able to sell stolen items to vendors, making it impossible to create a "money well" out of item snatching.

That feeling when a thread on a hype style youtube video strays as far off topic as to land on " stolen kettles"....

#3 IS market trading (minus bots because that is just cheating) and has nothing to do with "morals" man. Buy low, sell high, that's what market is for, otherwise we could all just do bartering. The more complex and vibrant the ingame economy, the better. MMO type doesn't have anything to do with money sinks and wells, if an MMO has an ingame economy, those things apply.

And Valkar, this little discussion is directly related to one of the points made in the video. If you want to debate the ridiculousness of killcams and how pretty much everyone will turn them off, go ahead.

Lol is it really? I remember him talking about the high level of item interaction in ESO and stealing and Sweet-roles but I didn't hear any mention of kettles. Clearly I'll have to watch it again.

Nope, Sage mentioned stuff you can interact with is going to be phased for you so other people wont be able to "steal" your stuff to be stolen and you definitely wont see persisting player placed object in mmo, I can guarantee that