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Welcome to the Eye On MOGS news page,keeping you informed of what is going on at Eye On MOGS as it happens. You can find more news and information on RMT in general by visiting the Eye On MOGS Blog. Server Updates - WoW and LOTROTuesday 12th of June 2007I've finally got around to adding the new servers that you guys have been sending me over the last few weeks. This means that today there are 9 new WoW EU servers and 3 new WoW US servers! I've also split LOTRO into two idioms - EU and US to reflect the way the game is setup and how providers sell their wares; in doing this I've also added 11 new EU LOTRO servers. LOTRO listings still remain bare right now, but that is something I will be looking at soon, as well as bulking out VSOH and doing a reccy on the other games Eye On MOGS lists. f you see games which are poorly listed (and you want to buy for) then get on the contact page and send me an email! That's all for now folks. I'll be trying to send a personal thank you to all those who contributed to make this update possible! -Mike  100K Listings!Monday 11th of June 2007It's party time here at Eye On MOGS HQ! We're now consistantly listing over 100,000 MOG products! It's a pretty cool milestone and it's about 10x the number of listings we had when we started back in late 2005. I think I can honestly say we've made good on our promise to keep expanding our listings and service based on that! Of course these numbers wouldn't mean anything if it wasn't for the people who use Eye On MOGS. We add new providers and keep working on the site to help you guys out. The more you use, the more we can do. Future Milestones Our next milestone will be 200K listings, but before we can get there I will be doning my thinking cap and sweating over a hot keyboard to overhaul the Eye On MOGS system to be able to cope with the increased load. That is a work in progress and with the number of new potential stores we would like to add you can bet I'm getting through things as quickly as possible! Quality I'd just like to say something about the providers we list, and the reason we don't list all of them. It's simple: Quality. The sites you see on Eye On MOGS have been vetted by us for honesty, security and professionalism before being added. Now obviously sometimes orders will go arwy and we do like to hear from you when that happens so we can make sure providers are still behaving - but in general you can be sure of a problem free purchase with the stores we list. We could add all and sundry like some similar site do, but where's the point in us pointing you to a site we're not sure we trust? What if 50% of our users got ripped off? Wouldn't be good for you, wouldn't be good for us! Community Submissions That said I do really appreciate all the suggestions that come in from the community regarding new providers. Keep letting me know! I do try to check all of them out and stick them on the list to contact if I think their cool. Not everyone wants to be a part of Eye On MOGS which is fair - perhaps it's because some of their prices are pretty high... I'd also like to say thanks to everyone who submits new servers for games, points out problems with some listings, suggests new games and suggests new features/improvements for Eye On MOGS. In short a big thanks and shout out to everyone who takes the time to be in touch! I try to reply to everyone, but I know I often don't manage - sos. Happy gaming all!  FYI: Gold ScamThursday 24th of May 2007Via GamerWealth "There is a scam becoming popular in the RMT market. A player in-game may see our characters standing next to each other and they will assume its a gold sale. Once we split up, they will send a tell saying that our DB crashed (or some other made up story) and we need the gold back. GamerWealth, nor ANY website, will ever ask you to return sold gold to them. Please do not fall for this scam. If you're playing a PvP game we ask that the only thing you deliver to them is a beating they wont soon forget :P (If you have doubts about anything a character in-game tells you, please contact our site to verify that the character belongs to us)" Take it in and make sure no-one scams you out of your gold!  Auction House. Where for art thou?Wednesday 4th of April 2007It's been a while since my last blog entry - life has been busy for me (nothing of any real interest though). Finally today I had a chace to settle down for a short WoW session. I chose to head back to Zangarmarsh where I had a few quests left to tidy up. As I was swimming about killing countless Fenclaw Thrashers (with an awful drop rate on the quest item), I started wondering about the Auction House. I've not been to the Auction House in, well I'm not sure I've been since the expansion came out. It suddenly dawned on me (Duh. I know) that the nearest AH was way back in Azeroth. So, I did a little looking around to find out why this was and I came across the following from Blizzard: " As others have said we want to keep Azeroth inhabited post-60 and by leaving the Auction Houses and class trainers we can keep an entire game where everyone is interacting at some point instead of a large chunk of players just moving from new land to new land as we release expansions, never to be seen again in the old cities. Performance concerns are also obviously factored in as well." In principle I agree, it's nice to keep the population pre- and post-expansion mixing. But then again does that really benefit the experience? Chances are level 60+ visits back to Azeroth are fleeting (probably selling loot from OL). I wonder whether it would have been better to attract back level 60+ players by adding some level 60+ content to Azeroth and Kalimdor rather than forcing them back just to train or use the AH. There are a few spaces left in WoW which remain pretty empty (Karazhan is a god example of a level 70 dungeon which has been sneaked into Azeroth), and I'm sure you could add higher level content into these areas. Alternatively I suppose you could include quests in Outland which send you back to Azeroth to work through a quest chain or two. The quests might be easy at 60+ (assuming you keep the mobs at around 60 in Azeroth), but could be made more challenging (and very difficult for those under 60+) by ensuring you always had to face down two mobs at a time, or even leaving it easyish to complete but giving more quests in the chain which require moving around a lot, or getting a large X of Z things. My other thoughts drift to those 'old' and now pretty defunct dungeons. I think it's a real shame that the gear from Outland matches up to the Molten Core and it's ilk sets that doing these dungeons is now pointless (gearwise at least and thats what people mostly do them for I guess). Others like strathholme and xxxx I can live with being unused as generally people are just levelling through these or perhaps hunting for the gear to help them through MC or something. There's been a lot of discussion about how to bring people back to the old content, I guess the main issue is that returning to old content doesn't fit with the story progression, although you might get around that by having a version of an instance for 60's and a version for 70's. Imagine a MC where Ragnaros has been slain the dungeon left in ruin only for another lore character to take over the place, or for Ragnaros's essence to reform - or something. Hey, there's an idea. Why not send groups of 2-3 70's on quests into the old dungeons, providing loot for quest chains that is only available in old instances? I've strayed from my original point. I wish the AH would make an appearance in Outland. The trek back for me serves to real social purpose and is instead a bit of an unwelcome time waster. I might be on my own in that opinion, but that's how I feel :)  GamePal, ZacGame & NewsMonday 19th of February 2007Normally Mondays are a bit of a so-so affair, but not today! This Monday has seen the addition of GamePal to Eye On MOGS, bringing their great product catalog to your front door and pushing our listings so close to 100,000 I can almost taste it! The GamePal listings are a little buggy at the moment and should be fixed over the next few days - needless to say it's something I want to clean up! BTW I do appreciate it when you guys let me know there are issues with any of the listings, sometimes it is hard to keep on top of them all! Today also see's an integration of the Eye On MOGS Blog onto the main Eye On MOGS site in the guise of the News and Information page. Granted that results in some duplication but not everyone who uses Eye On MOGS uses the blog and vice-versa, so I wanted to make sure everyone had access to the content. I've some changes planned for the news page (already), but we'll have to see when those spring up. Finally I noticed a new incoming link from ZacGame and I just wanted to say thanks!  WoW - The Duracell of MMOs!Wednesday 14th of February 2007... When other MMOs are about ready to quit, WoW just keeps on going, and going, and going. Sometimes it seems that half the time I spend on Eye On MOGS is spent adding new World of Warcraft servers... Today is no exception. Once more the community has spoken and exposed a few server related chinks in the sites armor - the response? To add the servers below to the now behemoth list of WoW servers! EU Dun Modr, Der Mithrilorden, Nefarian, Anachronos, Nazjatar, Defias Brotherhood US Korialstrasz, The Scryers, Velen That brings the total number of WoW servers (on Eye On MOGS) to US - 202, EU - 202 (weird)  Shout Out to: Elite PVPersSaturday 3rd of February 2007I just noticed that Elite PvPers has stickied a thread about Eye On MOGS over here: http://www.elitepvpers.de/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=58&t=40182&s= I just wanted to say thanks (Danke!). I'm glad you guys have found Eye On MOGS useful. I noticed some mention of ItemGarden in the posts. I have been trying to work with them, but as of yet we have not been able to agree anything. Rest assured that new providers will continue to be added, and Item Garden will probably give in one day! Happy gaming all! Mike  WoW Server UpdatesWednesday 31st of January 2007The following servers have made it onto our lists today (in no particular order): US That's 35 new servers! I have to apologise for the delay in adding some of these. Thanks go out to all those who submitted missing servers to us! As always please allow some time for these new servers to get listings, for some it will be 24-48 hours, for others it will be longer. Remember to keep bugging us if we drop the ball on any of them! To help with the community submitted missing servers I've updated the missing server page today. A number of submissions were coming through with no idiom or game mentioned and while it's possible to check manually what these should be, it adds time and complication which isn't necessary. So I've updated the rather lack-lustre missing server form so you can easily select the game/idiom, pop in your server name, email address and any comments you want. Happy gaming all, Mike  Gamer Wealth offer EXCLUSIVE 10% off couponWednesday 31st of January 2007New to Eye On MOGS, Gamer Wealth, is generously offering our users 10% off their purchases throughout February! All you've got to do is enter "vip@eyeonmogs" in the coupon box when you make your purchase. If you're buying Lineage 2 Adena, Guild Wars Gold, Everquest 1/2 Plat, EVE ISK or DDO Plat then this is the offer for you! You may find that the Gamer Wealth website is offline when you visit. Unfortunately, due to staffing issues (their new remember), there is a 4 hour break in delivery each day during which time the operators close down the site. That might be a bit of a pain, but it's better than placing your order and then being left high and dry with no explanation as to the delay in delivery.  No More Gold on eBaySunday 28th of January 2007I just came across the following posting on Slashdot which basically notes that eBay are making changes to their policies such that selling virtual items (WoW Gold, FFXI Gil etc) will no longer be possible with them. Virtual Economy.org also have their own take on the story.
"The growing popularity of Massively Multiplayer games has brought the issue of ownership rights in virtual worlds, and the appropriateness of what is called 'real money transfer' (RMT) into an increasingly public light. The success of the company IGE, as well as the launch of Sony Online Entertainment's 'Station Exchange' service would seem to indicate that RMT is now an acceptable part of Massive gaming. The well-known auction site eBay has recently made a policy decision that may throw these assumptions into a different light. Following up on a rumour that's been going around I spoke today with a media representative for the company, who confirmed that eBay is now delisting all auctions for 'virtual artifacts' from the site. This includes currency, items, and accounts/characters; not even the 'neopoints' used in the popular Neopets service is exempt from this decision. Read on below for the company's rationale for this decision, and a few words on the impact this could have on future RMT sales. Mr. Hani Durzy, speaking for eBay, explained that the decision to pull these items was due to the 'legal complexities' surrounding virtual property. "For the overall health of the marketplace" the company felt that the proper course of action, after considerable contemplation, was to ban the sale of these items outright. While he couldn't give me a specific date when the delistings began, he estimated that they've been coming down for about a month or so. Mr. Durzy pointed out that in reality, the company is just now following through with a pre-existing policy, as opposed to creating a new one. The policy on digitally delivered goods states: "The seller must be the owner of the underlying intellectual property, or authorized to distribute it by the intellectual property owner." Given the nebulous nature of ownership in online games, eBay has decided the prudent decision is to remove the possibility for players to sell what might be the IP of other parties via their service. Mr. Durzy made it a point to say that initial listings of virtual property would not have punitive actions. Their assumption, he said, is that most users break with policies because they're unaware of them, rather than maliciously. Initial infractions will result in a delisting of items, and an attempt to educate the user on the policy. Persistent disregard for the policies, of course, will result in a removal of the seller's account. We've spoken before on the possibility of taxation of virtual goods in the U.S. and abroad, as well as the economic impact these sales can have. With the removal of a very popular, very public source of virtual currency and goods from the market, what does this mean for the future of RMT? Will small businessmen who previously worked via eBay now turn to larger independent sites like IGE? Given that eBay is ipso facto declaring virtual goods to be the property of the game makers and not the players who 'earn' them, what does this mean for the future of virtual rights in general?"  For older news and other stories don't forget to check the Eye On MOGS Blog. |