In many MMORPGs like WoW, players sell their accounts for real money on platforms like eBay. This is against the official rules and, worse, it carries many risks for buyers and sellers. But the German MMORPG Tibia from Regensburg has been doing it differently since 2020. CipSoft has broken the taboo and allows trading of characters in the game. We at MeinMMO spoke with one of the founders about why this is the case.
This is how it is with WoW: Anyone who goes to eBay right now can purchase a WoW account on the Blackhand server for €160 with a Level 60 Priest and Warrior.
The seller assures: The account is safe, he has also earned about 100 mounts and completed the campaign to 3/7. Upon receipt of €160, he would hand over all existing data.
This is not an isolated case: in many MMORPGs, accounts are constantly sold back and forth. It’s not something people talk about much.
But probably every MMORPG player knows the situation where a friend in the guild says goodbye to everyone because he is quitting the game: Yet a few weeks later, his character logs in again, but it is no longer the friend playing the familiar hero, but a stranger.
A controversial feature in MMORPGs is the gender lock:
Account trading via eBay brings great risks of being scammed
This is the problem with this type of trading: This trade takes place outside the game and is not welcomed by Blizzard and other publishers: There is a real risk that the account will be banned later or that the seller will reclaim the account through an appeal when the next expansion launches.
The seller also bears the risk that the buyer will request a refund.
The trading of characters and items through platforms like eBay is not supported by MMORPG developers but rather more or less ignored. Anyone trading there does so at their own risk. Furthermore, the “entire account” is always traded there.
This is how it is in the MMORPG Tibia: In Tibia, the “Character Bazaar” has existed since August 25, 2020. Like on a marketplace, players can freely buy and sell characters there.
There are clear rules for the transaction: The character must be tidy, must not own a house, or be registered for certain character services.
From the Tibia coins that flow during trading, developer CipSoft receives a 12% commission.
You can listen to the entire podcast about Tibia here. The segment starts around 33 minutes:
For 23 years, account trading in Tibia was strictly forbidden
How was it all the time in Tibia: We at MeinMMO spoke in May with one of the founders of Tibia, Stephan Vogler. Vogler co-founded the MMORPG Tibia with study friends in 1997.
For more than 20 years, the golden rule in Tibia was that trading accounts was strictly forbidden:
For us, it was a sacred principle that one should not pass on the account: one should not simply buy the state of a level, but it must always come with time. Until August 2020, we said: No, accounts should not be traded. And if we noticed this, those accounts would be banned and punished.
Every top account was traded – it had already been the standard for years
How did that change? Vogler explains that at some point, they looked closely at the situation and asked themselves: How many of our accounts are not traded?
We then found that practically all high-level accounts that were in the top third – they were all traded. All. There was practically no one who played their character to that point. And through surveys, we found out: It is just normal for players to trade. They kept quiet about it and kept it secret from us and didn’t brag about it, but it had practically been standard in the community for years.
Vogler explains that CipSoft could see how strongly players were trading their characters illegally, as a certain system for “account recovery” had been triggered incredibly often. Buyers used that to ensure that the new character really belonged to them.
Vogler explains that they saw this and knew it was certainly related to the “stupid trading,” but they never really cared about it.
Ultimately, they came to the conclusion:
In the end, we said: Hey, if it’s already standard, then let’s make it official.
Character Bazaar is a great success for the MMORPG
The advantage of the Character Bazaar is now that players can pass on each character individually under safe conditions:
It’s really amazing how well this is received and how many transactions are conducted. And no one from the community has ever complained.
Vogler explains that in the “illegal trade” outside the platform, one always has to trust someone: the buyer trusts the seller, the seller trusts the buyer, or one must trust a middleman. The Character Bazaar makes the transaction safer overall.
Tibia is a highly interesting MMORPG that plays a significant role in some countries around the world:
Man in Venezuela supports his family by playing a very old MMORPG
