Sony selling ingame items for real money

[Smacdevil]

Check out this article on wired.com - it seems online gaming is taking a new and interesting turn if this catches on (which it probably will)

http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101, ... tw=rss.TOP

[Auro]

Imo its not a turn for the better,just think of what this will do to the player bases..i hope for the people in EQ that its not a reality.
Know a lot will dump the game if it does happen

[Selavi]

Guess that SOE wants part of the Ebay action. *shrugs* Cancelled my EQII account due to this. Not because I think it will damage my gameplay all that much. But its more the principle of things, and that I dont want to be part of a community where people spend their online time to get fast levels in order to sell off the account. What nice teams would that make, eh?

[Smacdevil]

*nods* I hope Funcom tread very carefully if they consider this type of business model for themselves - but I do think some kind of implementation of it could be ok, for instance selling IPR points or server transfers to their customers.

[Selavi]

I have always liked the idea of everyone having equal opportunitys in games like these. Not everyone of us are sitting on piles of cash to spend on their charachter ingame. If any implementations are made to allow for boosting of charachter with means of RL money, would make for some improper imbalance IMO. Everyone pays the same amount of cash, and get the same possibilities/options for playing the game. People with good economy are already having a slight benefit over others without any new system being implementet in AO. I am talking about having 2 accounts and also in some cases, two PC's. This wont make any of your toons any better, but you will have it far easier in certain cases, than someone with just one account. The latter being withing the boundries and rules set by said gamecompany, so not meant as a complaint. Just pointing out how a game shouldnt favour anyone with wast amount of money to spend in it vs someone that doesnt.

[Cogs]

Totally agree, Selavi ! These are games we are talking about......this new SOE deal will take "game" out of the equation....it will now be business. I dont like it....not one friggin bit....

[furyangel]

It's nothing new, this Korean MMORPG was already based around the above premise, check out:

http://www.kalonline.com/

[furydemon]

It is incredibly unbalancing - one of the reasons I love WoW is the rest bonus - ppl who have less time to play get a small bonus because they're not online. Its not massive, but it shows that they're thinking of those who work or have busier schedules.

As for this - as Angel said we'd seen this available in Korea for a while. As EQ now generates enough real world money to be the 77th richest country in the world (less than Russia, more than Bulgaria) its unsurprising that Sony wanted to tap into some of that massive cashflow.

I can't see how it'd work tho - seems to make little to no sense to me - cash & items perhaps because that happens on Ebay anyway - but actual *new* high level characters too? It's just crazy... I do like the idea of non-Auction servers tho... be interesting to get some populaton stats when they do it.

[Auro]

Well,they have done one right thing though,they have given the people that are playing now on normal servers the choice.
They wont force the station exchange ruleset on anyone.

Moorgard wrote:
we want to make it clear that we will not force the Station Exchange ruleset on any currently existing live servers.

Next week's polling will be used to determine how many new servers we need to start up at the service's launch. It will not be used to determine whether any existing servers should be converted. There will be no current live servers switched to the Station Exchange ruleset.

Whole thread can be found here : http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/ ... redir=true

But doesnt make me any happier that they are actually going thru with this.

But like everything else in the big MMo world,money counts..in what ever from or shape they can use to get more of it.

*edit- forgot to link to the thread *

[demetri]

You know what I aint entirely sure i disagree with this idea.

Especially on the ips and server/account swaps this would be ubah and infact is something sony have been doing for ages i just believe it costa rather alot.

As for buying phats and items online...well depends if they were fairly priced and how well balanced things were. If i can go get my dragon chest and T3 pieces for my 60 tower twink then there is more than an issue here.

I for one would like to see sad game junkies like myself who work 50 hours a week and have wife, kids and baby to give me jobs all day some way of getting pahtsor AI etc without haveing to troll channels forvever waiting to get lucky on a team. I simply dont have the time. Wether i would actually pay for the stuff is a differant matter but then again we are talking about a feature for 'power gamers' who like nothing more than being and having the best nd dont care who they stamp on or what it costs...in my mind if they wanna pay and make it easier for others to get the item in game then its not that bad a thing.......

Of course by not bringing things like this in you leave poor saps with cash the E-bay route where they risk getting robbed and leaving the game because of one rip off merchant. I think if the items available were controlled and didn't include all the ubah phat uniques ec then it may not be the end of the world as we know it but a good way to bring in people to the game who just need a little boost to get them going....

Hmm this looks like a rant, i'' get off my soapbox nad leave quick before my ass gets burned

[Lesttad]

What I read about this thing is that there are ppl in so called "3rd world countries " whose job actually is to game and sell the stuff they get like this.

And lead a very good life doing this where they live....

And, if, like Fury said, EQ generates world money to be the 77st richest country in the world.............can you imagine that amount of cash considering there are more games like this then EQ `?

How ironic is that ? You play a game to relax from your job, and to better play that game you buy virtual stuff for rl money from someone living in a country which has a poorer economy then EQ ?