The never-seen-before game has never seen before features. This was one of the catchphrases used by gaming company while promoting JIN HO.
After 6 hours of playing the VR game, all agreed that the company had fulfilled its promise. Everyone was talking about the game. Literally, everywhere. In newspapers, in televsion, in social networking sites, ...even if you went to use general toilet, you would hear people discussing the game.
The company utilised its popularity correctly. It had created separate sites to speculate, to share, to gossip. They introduced auction site- working online and offline. But the company would charge extra for each trade and each coin or credit conversion.
The higher ups in the guilds, the rich and spendthrift flocked to this site. They had plenty of money. They wanted it to be converted into worthy items inside the game.
For the normal people, or to those who did not want to spend their real cash, the gaming company had set up a 'barter' site. This came with few conditions applied. Else this would be another auction site, right?
Few of the catches were like these-
* The site is for off-game bartering only. Once you or the opposite party entered the game, the transaction would be considered null and void.
*All transactions would be anonymous unless you pay extra to show you name or profile etc.
* Though its true that you could barter with anyone, shipping charges would be included if the bartering did not happen between fellow players from same village.
*By paying extra money, you could create a temporary shop (till you go into game), where you could sort out the barter items and barter with ease.
Few grumbled, few rumbled, few cried that the treatment was unfair. Few seemingly intelligent people though..they found a loophole.
Say, you are in village 1 and need some 10 ores for your quest. But you are near grasslands, thus the mines in your village is not yielding much. Your friend in village 58 is grumbling that he is tired of mining. Mining some 20 ore s is not worth the effort he had put. His is a mining village, so all ores are cheap. So you ask your friend to go to barter site and create unique name and set to barter the ores he has and set the barter for personal barter.
Yes, personal bartering. There was default automatic barter system where you prefix the barter items. For example, You want some purple mushrooms, so in default automatic barter system, the barter will appear as XX resources(the item you are bartering) for XX amount of purple mushrooms. If the other person feels it is right amount, he will apply for barter and the exchange happens without your presence.
In personal barter system, you wait for opposite side person to message and you haggle through chats. In this way, you don't know what the other person is offering and how much he will offer. This method pays more when you have relatively rare or costly items to barter. Good news is, there is a chance to earn more if the opposite side is desperate. Bad news is what you earn is dependent on how much you can haggle and you should be always be available for chatting. If you don't have time to sit through multiple chats for long time, don't bother with personal barter system.
This is summation of personal and default automatic bartering, written in the barter site.
Coming back to the loophole. You ask your friend to create bartering for the ores and set it as personal barter. You already know your friend's seller name, so you go directly to him. You get the ores and pay something nominally because the transaction has to take place.
When Nia heard of this loophole, she couldn't help laughing. If the loophole is so glaringly obvious, its no longer a loophole, but a obvious trap. She did not want her friends to be struck in this trap, so she tried her best to dissuade them. When that did not work, she told them to wait. Wait for some time. The game would not be open for 18 hours. If they wanted to cheat and not get caught, they should wait till its nearing opening time and then start the barter.
Human tendencies were same- whether its real life or VR game life. Last minute rushes would be inevitable.
Few agreed. They might not wait till the start of new day in game but waiting for few hours would not hurt them. They could look around to see what other features the game had released for off- game enjoyment. They could upload their gaming statuses and few cool videos in their social networking sites. They could then compare...A word of advice- comparison would lead to feeling despair in few cases.
Nia wanted to set up the barter system. She had made so many potions, bartering a few for her quest items would not be bad. She did not want to get ripped off though. So she waited for her financial consultant for the game to be free.