EQII selling goods for cash.

Hobbes

http://eq2players.station.sony.com/news_archive.vm?id=457&section=News&month=current

Beginning of the end for the game if you ask me.

jaggeh

tbh i think this kind of thing is long overdue, i dont think its going to kill anything, it happens anyway and there is no regulation. now that players have the option to use exchange servers and will have a secure way of doing real money transactions.

sony did something right........im buying up bottled water and canned goods.

Ivan

How can a player of MMORPG's actually condone that sort of thing?
Whats the point in playing if you can just buy the stuff from sony. What are THEY actually selling, they can just create this virtual goods or xp or whatever.
At least the estonians and co. had to work for what they sold.

Begining of the end, this is so far past the end its not even funny.

Drakar

Apparently it's common in some of the Japanese games that they do things like this. Again I wouldn't have a huge problem with it as I don't play to 'be ahead' of other players. I play to have fun. It doesn't matter to me if the person I've been grouped with the last hour quested all his equipment or bought some using RL money.

Games like Second Life support currency exchanges etc and they seem to survive fine. As others said, it's happening now anyway (try searching ebay for wow gold). All this means is that people who play by the rules can also now buy equipment as well as the people who have been doing it against the rules all along.

jaggeh

you dont buy anything from sony except your game subs, the exchange servers are to facilitate player to player transactions.

this ALREADY HAPPENS on ebay and forums alike, as far as i see it this will solve a lot of security issues people have with real cash trading.

Ivan

Right, the game isnt about keeping ahead of the other guy, its about development. You put in the time and you level up, and when you finally get that uber piece of eq, or defeat that boss or player, or whatever, its a very satisfying moment.

And now you can buy that same satisfying moment, for just $4.95.

jaggeh

ypu always could ivan, and if you think otherwise you are being naive.

after speaking with CSR-chris for half an hour i have a picture of how it will work.
player A wants to sell a sword, that sword goes into an escrow account until player B pays for it, once paid for it goes from the escrow account into player B's inventory and player A gets paid.

the only thing im worried about is what kind of cut sony are going to be taking, it would have to be smaller than ebay for anyone to use it.

in case you dont beleive me
Money for sale
Character for sale

Ivan

I understand its been around for some time now, I even mentioned the estonians in my first, misinformed post. My point is that with Sony supporting this action, thats now a completely legitimate method for acquiring success in a game, instead of cheating. Why am I the only one that has a fundamental problem with that.

In EQ2, of all games, where there is no PvP support. Where there is nothing to do but wonder around aimlessly (or aimed) killing npc's, people are now just going to skip the boring parts right to the end where they get their l33t gear, only to find they've bought themselves out of a gaming experience.

jaggeh

while there is no pvp in eq2 at the moment all the infrastructure is there to introduce RvR and consentual PvP.

Both freeport and qeynos have arenas.

the only thing is that all the best loot are quest rewards, and you CANNOT trade them to other players any more, so its hardly going to ruin the gaming experience, the way i see it player made items, non quest loot and money are the only viable things that will be sold.

and if people WANT to buy it, let them buy it. you will quickly find that as you level most items become worthless to your character as the bonus they offer is so low compared to an item with a higher level than you that it isnt worth using.

so the only people who are really going to get anything out of it are the really high level players, who level so slowly that they get much more use out of the item.

and you can pretty much garuntee that a level 50+ character has seen and done most of whats available in the game. the only thing keeping these people in the game anyway is the monthly updates and the hope for some high level content which i know from previous experience usually doesnt happen or if it does its too little too late. but that doesnt deter me from playing these games

roll on the exhange servers.......

pwd

well I think the whole point of it is that people who don't like that happening, such as yourselves, can play on seperate servers to the people who want to buy and sell virtual commodities. The buying and selling itself already happens. all this does is legitimise it, and probably make it more transparent.
If you read the article the game company isn;t going to sell the goods themselves; just facilitate the exchange.

Drakar

The other thing is that this safe selling will be enabled only on new servers or if enough people on the server vote for it, on specific existing servers. If you don't like being in an environment where trades are provided safely, then you can move your character (for free) to one of the unsafe trading servers.

In PvP servers, the challange is in fighting the other players. So by buying extra equipment you are making the PvE bit easier and yes depriving yourself of the game's challenge. In a PvP game, the journey to the level cap is just wasting your time. In PvE, the journey IS the game.

I'm generally against buying equipment personally, but I think having a proper way of doing it is far better than the current situation where only 'bad' people can do it and it's open to scams of all kinds.

On a semi-separate point, possibly more interestingly, Sony did mention on their site that this concept has lead them to explore a game type where this would be more integral to the game system. I'll hold my sceptism in check until I see what they are suggesting (a few years away yet I'd suggest).

zekiel

Its times like this that make me glad I moved to WoW.. in which the only real item that is sold in such a crap manner is gold.

Stokolan

well i play eq2 and i think its a joke what there doing and so do everyone else in the guild. Some of my guildies have already cancelled there accounts and put the reason down as Station Exchange

If it does happen to come in ill be selling my stuff on it and finding a new game

Hobbes

What will be funny is when there is a rollback or an item that is bought is nerfed to hell and back.

jaggeh

do you hunt with just friends or do you sometimes jump into a random group?
do you ask every person where they got their items from?
do you ask them how much money they have?
do you ask if they bought their account off someone else?

the answer to all these is more than likely NO, ok so now we proved that you dont care where anything people you play the game with comes from. WTF difference does it make if sony legitimise and secure the system by which this is done.

I find it funny that people will jump ship because of this, rather than KNOW that if someone is on an exchange server they could have bought their stuff with real money, they would rather leave the game for some other where they dont know where anyone got anything again........... that makes a whole lot of sense.

as to nerfs, i havent seen any major nerfs other than the removal on player to player to player trading of quest items.

jaggeh

the nail was quite literally hit on the head in this webcomics BLOG

Ivan

Did you even read that?
He goes on a massive rant about Microsoft and X-Box before finally delivering us a gem;

http://www.squidi.net/ wrote:

I don't think SOE's new ebay system is corrupt. I've seen every indication that they want lots of cash, but thus far, I've seen every indication that they are willing to work for it too.

He even points out to us, that with this new, SOE controlled, EBAY like system, they may be able to manipulate the whole purchasing items/gold situation by releasing a ridiculously overpowered item with a ridiculous rarity. Thus driving up demand and thus prices. That by having an ebay type system, which is no longer controlled by a third party, but by SOE directly, that there is room for corruption and abuse.

I really do fail to see how this sums anything up.

This all, completely ignores the points made here, by plain old boards people with no fancy blog or webcomic to back us up.

The fact is that legitimising this sort of thing, removes the danger associated with it. Thats a problem, this should be classes as cheating. It unbalancse the whole economy, it ruins the gaming experience (although some may not realise or care), and it fundamentally rewards people who have the cash in RL. Power gamers should be ahead of the casual player. THEY put in the time, THEY put in the effort, THEY work hard to play a game, in a world, seperate from this one. And you're now, all for stripping that away.

Anyway...
Ladies and gentlemen, your moment of zen...
http://forums-en.wow-europe.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-blizzard-archive-en&t=9&p=1&tmp=1#post9

jaggeh

the nail being, it happens, get over it. its not being forced down your throat. yes sony will be taking their cut as is their right. any system is open to abuse. this in my opinion makes the game safer for people who do real cash trading. whether or not you like it it happens, just because blizzard decided to ban 800 accounts because those accounts were specifically there to make money. whereas i know at least 5 people who sell stuff on ebay just so they can play the game.

Ivan

jaggeh wrote:

it happens, get over it. its not being forced down your throat. yes sony will be taking their cut as is their right. .

Do you have any idea how frustrating that is. Here we were, having a nice debate about the ramifications of this, and you give us this. I mean, how are we supposed to respnod to this kind of verbal diarrhoea?

I'm sorry, I just cant argue anymore with someone who is going to argue like an idiot.

Let me just finish, for good, by saying that this cannot be a good thing, for MMORPG's