By mmobux.com staff | Leave a Review | Read Customer Reviews

We had a chance to talk with one of the leading MMORPG currencies and services provider, OffGamers.

Can you give us some background on OffGamers and how the company got started?

OffGamers was originally known as offd2.com in its early years. Back in 2001, we were only selling Diablo 2 items. We had a very simple business model as the whole idea of RMT (real- money trade) was still something very new to us. As time passes, RMT gradually garnered more attention from the masses and we started to realize that the demands from the virtual worlds were never going to die off. Taking the opportunity to capitalize on the emerging markets, we incorporated OffGamers in late 2004. What follows was the launch of World of Warcraft and the rest was history as we ride on the wave of the most successful MMORPG ever created. We now provide services for over 20 MMORPG titles.

OffGamers were built by gamers to serve the needs of other gamers and so, we are a passionate bunch who knows exactly what we are doing.

Please give us some overview of your operation. Do you employ your own farmers or do you only act as a distributor or broker?

OffGamers is essentially the broker bridging the gap between sellers and buyers. We recognize the needs of our customers and goes all out to fulfill that need. We try to get the best possible value for our customers' money while not compromising the quality of service.

Our Service department is in Malaysia while our office is Hong Kong based.

According to Alexa, your website receives a lot of traffic from Malaysia, any significant work there?

We receive quite a lot of traffic came from Malaysia because of its local games. Things like Perfect World, Last Chaos, and etc. are popular Asian games which we are selling their game points.

What makes your company unique to many other gold sellers out there?

We realized awhile ago that in order to stand out from the ocean of gold sellers out there, we need to focus on something, and that something is our customers. At OffGamers, our customers are our priority and their needs are our utmost concern. So we are currently working on offering a wider range of services and products while perfecting our delivery system to cut down wait time.

What are your thoughts on news reports about "Chinese gold farmer sweatshops"?

I personally think that the term is derogatory and sweatshop is a stereotype. Just because somebody posted a video of the worst possible setup of a gold production house doesn't mean that every other is alike. I think some of the reports were over sensationalized and does not represent the real situation.

Many customers often complain about no delivery of gold which is perhaps "intercepted" by Blizzard before the customers take it out of the email. What has changed for you over the last two years given the increased efforts and counter-measures employed by companies like Blizzard?

Blizzard's actions has definitely kept us on our toes and gave us many sleepless nights, but I'm proud to say that we have managed to keep things in control. Our customers are receiving their orders and complaints are at minimal. I would love to share our experiences and the steps that we had taken, but that would compromise our efficiency and I can't do that.

How would you describe your relationship with game operators? Can you share your worst experience with a game company? Do you have any experience like getting a very valuable account banned and lost tons of gold in one night? Could it be possible for gold sellers to cooperate with game operators? Like this Guildwar rumor.

You can call our relationship with game operators a love-hate relationship. Love because we are after all making money from their games and technically without them, we won't exist. Hate because of the banning issues you have mentioned. We have lost much due to bannings but that is an unavoidable risk we take.

As for the rumors in that blog, we never had the pleasure of enjoying such a deal.... However, if the rumor is true, the deal is very shady to say the least, considering certain parties will be suffering with such a 'deal' and at the end of the day, players get the short end of the stick. If any game operators are actually keen to control bottings, etc and are willing to talk, we are looking more into guidelines. Something easy to start with is, monitor our activities, make sure our gold are not connected to botters' gold, give us clear and concise guidelines to follow and we in turn will use these guidelines to control our suppliers and weed out those suppliers who use dupes, bots, etc. This will benefit everyone including the players but this whole exercise can only be done with communication and assistance from the game operators themselves. On our own, there is only so much we can do.

With a few games coming out at the end of this year, which one do you think has potential for RMT market?

We are really looking forward to the launching of Warhammer Online and a few others. There is really just too many out there but Warhammer is one that we think has the biggest potential.

Many gamers have been annoyed about in-game spams from gold farmers. And that has given the industry a bad name. How do you promote your company and services? Do you think gold selling companies can stay in business without spamming the customers?

We know and we will never use such annoying methods to advertise our services. Our affiliates are warned about spamming in-game as well.

We spend on PPC campaigns, banner advertisements to promote our site. That aside, we do rely on our customers promoting our store by word of mouth as well. There are definitely other advertising methods other than spamming.

What is your outlook for the future of RMT? What will we get to see in the next few years?

We are very positive about the future of RMT. It was estimated that US$2 billion worth of RMT transactions took place in 2006 and there are very promising projections made for 2007. The RMT market is growing at a pace faster than anybody has predicted and will continue so in the next few years. More and more game publishers are realizing that the RMT model is here to stay and starting to embrace the idea of it. We will also see more players accepting the idea as well.

With that, we have set our sight on growing with the market and we are very confident that we will.



About Offgamers:

OffGamers, one of the leading currency sellers and was founded by Ken and Stanley Chee in late 2004 to serve US and European gamers. They have expanded their operations rapidly to Malaysia, Hong Kong and recently to China. As of June 11, 2007, OffGamers ranks in Alexa at 10,784 - higher than IGE’s 28,005. The company is especially strong in Malaysia market where 73% of its traffic comes from.

In an interview with 4U community in China, Stanley and Ken shared an interesting view on newcomers and competition which they credit with driving innovation in the RMT industry. However, from their point of view only the best will survive the current market trend of moving to China. They further comment that the real-money trading (RMT) market is going to flourish regardless of problems with banning and government regulations which have yet to be resolved.

OffGamers’s customer service track record has been excellent so far. They have been trading on eBay since 2001 and received over 8,086 unique positive feedbacks, which nets them an overall rating of 98.9% on the auction platform. Another review from The Edge of Nowhere forums confirms the company’s positive reputation there. Criticism comes from TopTenREVIEW, where a customer accuses Offgamers of not keeping enough gold stock, resulting in delivery delays.

As at June 11, 2007