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Comment by daeken | Hacker News Reader

QuestCompanions is a new startup launched by myself and some friends. The idea is that casual MMO players can pay to have hardcore players help them with quests, tough enemies, etc. The difference between this and everything else out there is that the Companions do not play for the player, but play with them. We think that makes all the difference in the world.

We're in private beta right now, but you can use this invite link to join: https://questcompanions.com/invite/accept?code=1.1335882868a...

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

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"The difference between this and everything else out there is that the Companions do not play for the player, but play with them."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girlfriend_experience

I see fail in your venture sorry. I played mmos for some time and never had problems to find some hardcore players to come and help me. I mean they get an ego boost out of helping noobs like you...

While I did buy some gold from some farmers I would not pay for this kind of service. If you are really lost just join a guild and one of your guild mates will help you.

Not sure about the downvotes, this is not really a business. Connecting MMO players so they can play together, but having one person pay another?

What ever happened to playing games because they were fun?

Full disclosure: I never really understood the pay-someone-to-play-a-game-for-me-that-I-also-paid-for business. Are people so busy these days they don't even have time to play video games so they must pay other people to do this?

What ever happened to meeting up in chat rooms?

This is an awesome idea overall, but I think it goes without saying that you need to be very careful not to run afoul of an EULA. At what point does playing "with" the player become giving the player ingame items for real money? If you share quest rewards equally, you're probably OK, but what if the companion gives all of the gold rewards to the paying player? What if the companion runs them through a dungeon and gives them all the drops? At that point I think you're essentially selling the items for real money, which violates the EULAs. Tread carefully.

Totally, totally agreed. We explicitly disallow any use of QuestCompanions as a way of buying/selling virtual items or currency. We plan to police the site very heavily, and we will be reporting users to the game maintainers when necessary. The goal of the service is to be helpful to the users; allowing jobs like that will harm everyone involved.

That's not the only EULA violation you need to watch out for. I can see someone paying people to be their own personal gank squad in a PVP MMO. Depending on how things play out that could easily get people banned etc.

I still like the idea.

Agreed, there are definitely other uses of this that could be bad for the community. We're keeping an eye on how this is used and making sure that we're a positive, not a negative. As we say in the terms of service:

> If you're not sure if something is acceptable or not, please contact support and ask us. At the end of the day, remember what Bill and Ted told us in their adventures: Be excellent to each other, and party on.

It's a neat idea, but I'd expect the average MMORPG player to like your users/buyers only a little better than those buying gold ("I earned lvl80 through endless hours of tedious busywork, so you have to go through the same pain!"). In other words, even if it's not against the EULA now, Blizzard et al. will probably not be happy to see you.

"I earned lvl80 through endless hours of tedious busywork, so you have to go through the same pain!"

The fact that MMORPGs are full of people who think like this is one of the worst things about the current crop of MMORPGs. I think there's a long tail opportunity for MMORPGs where "Work smarter" is the prevailing ethos.

At that the point the challenge is how to keep the 99% of players entertained. :)

GW2 is probably an attempt at that, but the problem with "work smarter" is the Internet.

I remember the early, early days of EverQuest. I had little directional notes and constantly referenced the map that came with the game. Then EQAtlast came out with beautiful hand-drawn maps and key NPCs. Then things like Illia's Bestiary, &c, continued to lower the bar of entry. MMOs have been democratized, and it makes "work smarter" much harder.

The closest you can probably get to "work smarter" is "work skilled". And there are gamers who pursue that route. For instance, Skunkworks was a guild that was 81st in the US to kill Heroic Lich King. This was on an 8 hour a week raid schedule (compared to 'hardcore' guilds that raided 2-3 times that long, in a week). So there's definitely skill there. But those are the exception rather than the norm.

You're caught up in how things work in most MMOs. I was thinking of things like, being able to script most anything. (Then being able to license the scripts to other users. This would be a "futuristic" space game.)

Love the idea! Vigilance will make it successful. Be careful, don't let Blizzard's draconian EULA get in the way.

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