WebTrader
Background Info
A while ago I made a plugin called WebAuction which allowed players to buy and sell items via a website. It had most of the things you would find on in game auction houses in MMOs (WoW, RuneScape, SWTOR etc etc).
However due to various updates to bukkit and other plugins that WebAuction depended on, I decided the code would need a complete re-working for it to be of much use. I mean, you could still get it to work, just about, but I was still interested in expanding it. Anyway I sort of abandoned that project, a few other people picked it up in different formats, but I have not looked to see what has been done with it.
The Idea
If anyone has played games like EVE, SecondLife or Diablo 3, you might see where I am going with this...
An idea that these games (and I assume others have as well) have been using is that they allow users to buy in game currency for real world money, and conversely they allow players to sell in game currency back for real money. (Not quite the case in Diablo)
Well this is sort of the idea I had for Minecraft Bukkit servers.
The whole planning of this is not 100% yet but here are the basic points:
- Will get a secure website hosted to run the webside (no longer hosted by each server).
- On the website players (and servers?) will be able to sign up for an account
- When they have an account they can buy a website based currency for real money (Via PayPal most likely)
- At any time players can request to "cash out" their website currency for real money again (Taking into account PayPal fees there may be a minimum currency you can transfer)
- Each server has it's own trading page.
- Each player has an online inventory for each server.
- Players can put item up for sale (Much like in WebAuction)
- Players pick a price as either server currency (iConomy stuff etc.) or for website currency, or both.
- Other players from the server can buy this item, they will receive the item in game and currency with transfer.
- Each server could pick how much commission it takes on each sale.
- In the same was as players, servers gain website currency and can exchange it for real money again to fund the server.
Sorry about the messed up way of presenting that idea, when I have got further will all the planning and diagrams I will be able to give you a better picture of the whole thing, I just wanted to see if people agree with this plan, see if anyone would be interested in using it.
Let me know what you think.