MUDgaard player-account price per year is now computed alongside the "Latest Rates include-file" and linked, like that file, to the Digitalis Assets statistics main page.
The player-accounts are available directly only to "Civilisations" and the price is a yearly fee.
It is intended that anyone who "is not" a Civilisation approach Civilisations to arrange access to such accounts.
Each account can have ten characters, of which only five can be online at the same time.
Five skilled Artisans working 24/7 (using, for example, the triggers or scripting or such that your favourite MUD Client provides) can rake in ridiculous amounts of "stuff" so these accounts are probably massively under-priced; if they are then unfortunately it seems likely that many will end up being used by "dumpers" intent upon destroying the value of all such "stuff" by "dumping" as much as they can as fast as they can. It is not even clear whether it will prove feasible for other players to figure out who the "dumpers" are in order to attempt some kind of in-game actions against them in hopes of discouraging "dumping" activities. Doubtless various teams are already at work looking for ways to address that potential problem.
Having the password of a player-account changed for the Civilisation that administers (aka pays for) the account is a separate service other than at time of payment of the annual fee.
That is to say, if for example a Civilisation has given out an account's password to others, and those others have changed the password so that the Civilisation no longer knows the password, having it changed so the Civilisation can again use the account itself entails a separate fee if not done along with paying the next year's fee.
Currently it looks like that "intervention fee" will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 5% of the annual fee but such details are still being discussed and worked on.
With regard to "the dumping problem", it is hoped that requiring the annual fee to be paid in one of the "big five" Galactic Currencies (the "big seven" minus GMC and GRF) will help by at least potentially increasing demand for the "big five" so that the lower "dumpers" dump the value of the in-game "stuff" and it's associated currency (CCAMB on Stellar platform, MGOLD on HORIZON platform) the harder it will become to "dump" enough to actually cover the annual fees.
Players should thus have some incentive to avoid "dumping", although even if they are careful to place sell offers above the highest buy offer there will still possibly remain the potential for a "race to the bottom" as they compete to place sell offers at lower and lower prices trying to be the first sell offer bought or at least among the first.
I guess we will just have to "wait and see" whether dumpers will spoil everything for the serious players or simply drive away their fellow dumpers and maybe many or most of the players hoping to "play to earn" using these player-accounts.
Having the player-accounts be "administered" by Civilisations might also help, since if a Civilisation manages to discover that one of the accounts it administers is being used to destroy the economy they might decide to revoke the offending player's access to the account. Hopefully the "Civilisations" will continue to appear "Civilised" even as going forward we open up access to actually being a Civilisation to gosh knows who, maybe, unfortunately, even to "dumpers"...
-MarkM-
