wow, is this real?

kyoukan · Post by **kyoukan** » April 20, 2005, 12:00 am

http://stationexchange.station.sony.com/

Nilaman · Post by **Nilaman** » April 20, 2005, 12:09 am

Yup.

EQ2 is now going to mediate the selling of items and characters, however Sony says they will not get into selling items themselves. I doubt that.

I am sure it will happen with EQ1 shortly.

Drasta · Post by **Drasta** » April 20, 2005, 12:12 am

wonder if this is from the IRL PK's in japan

Dregor Thule · Post by **Dregor Thule** » April 20, 2005, 12:19 am

Jesus christ, what poor kid with down syndrome did they get to draw the cartoons.

Mr Bacon · Post by **Mr Bacon** » April 20, 2005, 12:43 am

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » April 20, 2005, 1:51 am

Not something I would use. But anything that will make character sales more secure I guess I'm for. If someone sells their character they shouldn't be able to steal it back 6 months later.

But guess it's only EQ2 so doesn't matter.

Canelek · Post by **Canelek** » April 20, 2005, 2:30 am

KYOUKAN OMG HI!!!!

Mr Bacon · Post by **Mr Bacon** » April 20, 2005, 11:04 am

If you look into the eq2 forums, a lot of people are responding "I would never do it, but I don't mind if others do" which I'm guessing SOE sees as "i'm for it."

I also find it hilarious that they are very excited and encouraging all of their subscribers to do this (if they want), but at the same time they will point you out and call you a bad person if you make transactions not involving SOE.

miir · Post by **miir** » April 20, 2005, 11:34 am

They are going to have 'SOExchange' and 'non SOExchange' servers.

If your server votes to change to a SOExchange server, you will have the option to transfer (for free) to a non exchange server.

All characters on an exchange server will not be able to transfer to a non exchange server.

-----

I can see why they want to do this but they are going to be alienating a fairly sizeable demographic in the process. Hard to predict if this will be a financially sound decision.

Will be interesting to see if they will also use it as a tool to root out botters and macroers.

Animalor · Post by **Animalor** » April 20, 2005, 12:27 pm

Doing servers where it's allowed or non-allowed doesn't negate the fact that they are now condoning such behavior.

How can they legally say that IGE can't do on all servers what SOE is now allowing on what will probably be the majority of it's servers.

Voronwë · Post by **Voronwë** » April 20, 2005, 12:35 pm

Animalor wrote:Doing servers where it's allowed or non-allowed doesn't negate the fact that they are now condoning such behavior.

How can they legally say that IGE can't do on all servers what SOE is now allowing on what will probably be the majority of it's servers.

i dont know, maybe because they own the servers, they own the intellectual property rights of the game, and because they write the subscriber agreement in their favor =).

miir · Post by **miir** » April 20, 2005, 12:42 pm

How can they legally say that IGE can't do on all servers what SOE is now allowing on what will probably be the majority of it's servers.

If everyone is as shocked and disgusted as they are claiming to be on the forums, none of the servers will SOExchange.

But then again, internet forums (especially official MMOG forums) are havens for drama queens.

noel · Post by **noel** » April 20, 2005, 2:30 pm

Issues with this include:

1. The precedent it sets.
2. The fact that I seriously doubt if it will be isolated to just a few servers down the road. As an example, what happens if every server votes no? SOE does it anyway?
3. How do we trust that SOE will represent the votes correctly?
4. Who polices SOE?
5. The fact that if you're playing on an 'Exchange Server', it's totally legitimate for everyone to loot every piece of loot. They are after all, worth money. Sure they were worth money before, but at least there was an EULA and a lot of bannings that would scare away a few people.

No, this is not a good idea. No matter how SOE wants to spin it.

Voronwë · Post by **Voronwë** » April 20, 2005, 2:33 pm

some manager is just trying to get a Q2 number that is something close to what they sold to upper managment this time last year. he's way too worried about his job than any of things you listed.

noel · Post by **noel** » April 20, 2005, 3:35 pm

To continue:

6. Can an exchange character /movelog to a non-exchange server?
7. People will still sell gear on non-exchange servers. This does nothing to prevent that.

miir · Post by **miir** » April 20, 2005, 4:37 pm

1. SOE is not the first company to embrace this business model in a MMOG. Project Entorpia has been around for a few years now and their game economy is based almost entirely on 'real' money.

2. Although its a potentially lucrative business, I think they will be surprised at how vocal the usually silent majority of players will become if they try to force 'exchange' on servers that don't want it.

3. If a server votes overwhelmingly against exchange, why would SOE risk alienating the majority? Unhappy players = lost revenue.

4. I doubt SOE wants to flood their servers with items. No doubt the exchange markets will be heavily scrutinized by players. If an unknown player is selling high end master loot that can't be accounted for, someone will raise a stink.

5. Regular loot, for the most part, is worthless. Anything with any real value (read:uber) is either nodrop or attained via raid or lengthy quests involving raids. Seriously, ingame I make most of my gold from selling tier 2/3 items on broker. Most servers have the majority of the population between 30-50 and the market is deluged with items from those tiers. I can make better cash selling loot drops and quest items to a npc vendor than I can selling it to other players. I can sell 5 tier2 adepts for 1-2 gold faster than I can sell 1 teir 5 adept for 5 gold.

6. Yes, before the servers are changed to 'exchange', you can move to a non exchange server. They apparently also have a tool that will transfer entire guilds. The cutoff for moves will be before the server changes to 'exchnage'

7. I'd assume they will continue to crack down on bot groups and plat/item farmers. Their track record in banning botters/farmers has been exemplary.

noel · Post by **noel** » April 20, 2005, 4:43 pm

I take point 7 to be humor or sarcasm?

I just took a gander at playerauctions.com, and there seems to be plenty of EQ2 gold and plat for sale.

miir · Post by **miir** » April 20, 2005, 4:48 pm

On most servers, the bot groups have been banned.
On Innothule, the 3 most well known macro/bot groups are completely gone... from the ranking boards, from the server databases... they just don
't exist anymore. Their vendor mules are gone too.

noel · Post by **noel** » April 20, 2005, 4:51 pm

What does that have to do with Platinum for sale? I don't deny they're banning bot groups, but my point is, I don't believe it's having any effect.

I can buy plat now, and I'll be able to a year from now. Doesn't matter if it's an exchange server or not.

miir · Post by **miir** » April 20, 2005, 4:52 pm

We banned over 700 accounts for farming and exploiting in the last month. We will continue to ban accounts for farming even on exchange enabled servers.

Professional loot farmers annoy our customers, we want nothing to do with that.

noel · Post by **noel** » April 20, 2005, 4:55 pm

You're kind of missing my point.

I'm well aware they're banning people. Doesn't really seem to matter though, as I've said. It also seems pretty obvious to me that the Exchange will have no effect on people selling. Not to mention the slew of other issues there are with selling in game merchandise at all. It's ok though, because SOE will make more money!

miir · Post by **miir** » April 20, 2005, 4:59 pm

The EQ2 listings on playerauctions are down drastically from about a month ago.
EQ2 used to have close to the number of WoW listings.

EQ2 servers now have between 10-60 listings.
WoW servers have between 100-500 listings.

noel · Post by **noel** » April 20, 2005, 6:04 pm

All SOE cares about is money.

miir · Post by **miir** » April 20, 2005, 6:28 pm

noel wrote:All SOE cares about is money.

All <insert any company name here> cares about is money.

Lohrno · Post by **Lohrno** » April 20, 2005, 6:33 pm

miir wrote:
noel wrote:All SOE cares about is money.
All <insert any company name here> cares about is money.

True but what I think SOE might not be seeing the forest through the trees if you know what I mean.

It's customers are it's customers because they want a good experience. What they are doing could be seen as sacrificing the customer's experience for a shot at more money. Money comes from customers. So maybe what SOE fails to realize is that if they are providing a slightly worse experience, they could be hurting their revenue stream.

We really don't know all the actual figures but someone did the research you can count on that, and it would look to them like doing this would be more profitable.

noel · Post by **noel** » April 20, 2005, 6:36 pm

Exactly.

Decisions like this are exactly why there wasn't a rush to buy the latest SOE MMOG when EQ2 came out. People don't forget this sort of shit.

SOE are managing their business into the ground. I sure hope the short term money is worth it.

Oh and did I mention this is a horrible idea?

Lohrno · Post by **Lohrno** » April 20, 2005, 6:38 pm

noel wrote: SOE are managing their business into the ground. I sure hope the short term money is worth it.

Maybe it's a cut and run kinda plan. They think they are in a sinking ship and want to get the most out of it before it goes under?

noel · Post by **noel** » April 20, 2005, 6:43 pm

Some great perspective (both for and against) on Terranova:

http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2 ... nybay.html

Here's some business perspective for you:

How many subs will SOE steal from Blizzard/Vivendi because of this announcement?

I can bet I know the answer...

A few notable quotes:
From wired.com

"Sony has finally dropped the other shoe," said Dan Hunter, a professor at the Wharton School of Business and an expert in virtual economies. "Finally, we understand what their reluctance (has been). It's not that the gameplay has been affected by (virtual goods trafficking), but rather, their objection has been that they can't monetize it."

From the terranova site:

Richard Bartle wrote:If eBaying isn't a problem, why sell objects at all? Why not just give them away to anyone who wants them? If it's so great that people can just hang out with their guildies, why not let them do so without charging them $600 for their equipment? Why not just let them equip with whatever they want? It's probably easier to implement than a full-blown trading system. I'll tell you why not: it's because it SPOILS THE GAME. If there is no game to spoil, as with Second Life, then fine, this is obviously a reasonable idea. If the game isn't about the kind of things that money can buy (as with Achaea) then it's also reasonable. If you can buy victory, though, it's either not a game at all or it's a wider game with different victory conditions.

Scott Jennings also had some interesting things to say on lumthemad.net. Which includes a link to an original post where he discusses why out of game selling is a bad idea (which was written well prior to SOE's announcement):
http://www.brokentoys.org/?p=6659

Also funny:

I wish SOE luck on their first lawsuit. They have now acknowledged in game items have RL value. As soon as someone loses their uber item to a bug or server crash, they will be sued. I’m very curious how the courts will solve the question of SOE selling items while claiming in the EULA that they own all in game items and players have no rights to replacement due to loss by SOE problems or errors.

Lohrno · Post by **Lohrno** » April 20, 2005, 7:12 pm

The first Ted made some interesting points I think.

Some that stuck out...

Now, each developer will have to design knowing that people will use the virtual item market to get around content.

I think that if players are buying goods to get around content, then probably you should rethink that content or remove it. It's not fun. Yes I am aware of the great hurdles that must be jumped in the design and development of MMORPGs, but think about that. If you had a console game that you go to enough lengths to skip content on, that seems to me to indicate a major flaw.

This move does that, and it will change how games are designed. Already, every developer has to design in full consciousness that people can write macros. As a result, developers will start making more fantasy-secure games, ones that cannot be overrun by gold-farming.

This seems to me a tall order if you think about it! That is, given the fact that we're talking about MMORPGs here. Think briefly about what processing/memory issues are involved with the current breed. To redesign it in that way would be likely asking for a lot of hard disk space and memory and CPU cylces. We'll get there, but I'd dare say it might be years...Either that or cap off the number of people who can play on one server.

Xzion · Post by **Xzion** » April 20, 2005, 7:22 pm

out of curiosity...does anyone know how much it roughly cost to make (the original product) WoW and EQ2?

Lohrno · Post by **Lohrno** » April 20, 2005, 7:26 pm

I don't know but EQ1 was 2 million for development costs, wasn't it?

I would guess now about 3 million or so...lemme check

Somewhere on WoW forums someone heard from someone etc. 10-20 mil. I wouldn't doubt it...No conclusive evidence found though. That figure could include some other costs like advertising, or not...I wish I knew from the dev's mouths...Especially since now AA+ games usually run around 1-2 million now. All that Motion Capture and the Orchestras they are so fond of renting out are not cheap...

*note I could definitely be off on those numbers...but I bet not too far off...have been too busy to keep up with things lately.

Siji · Post by **Siji** » April 20, 2005, 7:59 pm

miir wrote:The EQ2 listings on playerauctions are down drastically from about a month ago.
EQ2 used to have close to the number of WoW listings.

EQ2 servers now have between 10-60 listings.
WoW servers have between 100-500 listings.

I'd be more inclined to believe that this is because the interest in the game is falling fast. The only thing that made EQ2 as popular as it was in the beginning was EQ1. And the people that made EQ1 are gone.

Mr Bacon · Post by **Mr Bacon** » April 20, 2005, 8:07 pm

Siji wrote:
miir wrote:The EQ2 listings on playerauctions are down drastically from about a month ago.
EQ2 used to have close to the number of WoW listings.

EQ2 servers now have between 10-60 listings.
WoW servers have between 100-500 listings.
I'd be more inclined to believe that this is because the interest in the game is falling fast. The only thing that made EQ2 as popular as it was in the beginning was EQ1. And the people that made EQ1 are gone.

I personally have no interest in supporting miir, but with interest fading, shouldn't *more* accounts be available?

Lohrno · Post by **Lohrno** » April 20, 2005, 8:09 pm

Rellix wrote: I personally have no interest in supporting miir, but with interest fading, shouldn't *more* accounts be available?

Maybe demand is low for new accounts and they don't sell all that well...

Ebumar · Post by **Ebumar** » April 20, 2005, 8:42 pm

They dont.

miir · Post by **miir** » April 22, 2005, 3:04 pm

In that light, we want to make it clear that we will not force the Station Exchange ruleset on any currently existing live servers.

To restate: 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.

noel · Post by **noel** » April 25, 2005, 2:44 pm

GOGO Mark Jacobs!:
http://biz.gamedaily.com/features.asp?a ... ture&email

"I'm disappointed with the decision from a leader in the MMO industry to go down a path which in the past, has been an anathema to them and remains so to just about every other MMORPG company in the industry. I think that not only supporting the sale of in-game characters, items and currency, but also taking a 'cut' of those sales, is not only a mistake but one of the worst decisions in the history of the MMORPG industry," says Jacobs.

Jacobs also believes that the service will ultimately backfire in two ways. One, it will lead to frustrated players if their items get deleted or SOE has to make server changes; and two, it will also encourage the secondary market, which is exactly the opposite of what SOE is trying to do.

miir · Post by **miir** » April 25, 2005, 4:13 pm

You honestly think that anyone would take that idiot's opinion seriously?

noel · Post by **noel** » April 25, 2005, 6:15 pm

miir wrote:You honestly think that anyone would take that idiot's opinion seriously?

Yeah, totally. I mean fuck... all that guy ever did is direct one of the most successful EQ1-era MMOGs to date.

Penny Arcade also touched on this today: