One of our new writers Darren Bridle has just completed a breif write-up on some of the recent events surrounding SOE's shocking announcement of the SOE "Station Exchange" which willl allow EQII players to purchase online goods on specific servers through this service without violating the EULA.

A snippet from the article here:

To read the full article click here.  Make sure to share your thoughts on this in the comment link for this news post (link below) - the main purpse of this feature was to gather the opinions of our community.  Please refrain from flaming in this topic - we are only looking for constructive comments.

I was thinking that maybe SOE is setting up Station Exchange so they can start shutting down private sales because they all would be hindering on their Station Exchange sales.  That is an easy lawsuit to win.

Maybe if all the other MMO companies starting selling MMO items,  then they would have a bigger cause to shut down private websites and ebay sales because it hinders their own business.

That is the first thing that came into my mind about the Station Exchange.  Outside of that I think it sucks.

I play EQ2 and I don't want it turned into ebay thank you. As you can probably guess I won't be playing much longer with such stunts as /pizza and now this.

Other Game developers laugh at SOE with EQ2 take a look at WoWs April 1st joke about the /takeout or something like that. They should as well, they've always been money grabbing suits and they won't change. I'm sure they've got great plans for EQ2 lots of expensive expansions, ebay items, /pizza... hey all they need to do now is have some advertising..

"Welcome the Coke Cola island, inhabited by the evil Pepsi wizard."

When people are playing a game professionaly it totaly sucks for the people who are playing the game for entertainment. The two do not mix well at all.

I could say more, but I'll just leave it at that.

For me, 90% of the fun is earning that brand new upgrade to my weapon/armor/etc. It gives a sense of accomplishment that would not be there if I could go buy the items I wanted.

This may or may not be construed as a flame, but I think that outfits such as IGE and Mysupersales are bad in the long run for all MMOG's. They throw the economy of the game world out of kilter and almost make it a requirement that you need to use their services to stay competitive. Of course, this is much more noticable in a PvP setting rather than a PvE.

At first I was kind of undecided about this, but the more I think about it, the more I don't like it. The whole idea of having a virtual world is to divorce it from reality. So you can be someone you're not, enjoy the game world on even terms with everyone else, and have fun. Once it becomes standard practice for people to buy in-game stuff with RL money, it's no longer a virtual world where everyone is on the same playing field. Now it'll be the people with the most RL money who have the most in-game stuff. That pretty much blows the whole reason for playing. What glory is there in having a really nice in-game item that you didn't work for in the game? And what point is there in questing for an item if the next guy has a better one he just bought with RL money?

I think legitimizing the sale of in-game items destroys the game. Rather than join the farmers and botmakers, they should put their efforts into stopping them. SOE is just sinking to the lowest level, in my opinion.

I'm looking for other games to play. The SOE ones won't be worth playing much longer.

I was against it at first as well.....BUT......

Divorcing the virtual world from reality is a great idea. Unfortunately I cant divorce myself from reality. I have to work, in order to pay the bills.

The reality in an online world is that a person who doesnt have to work, who can stay logged in and play 24/7, is ALWAYS going to do better then someone like me who cant .

And that translates in almost all cases of Students, who are able to log on with their school friends and weekends/ holiday breaks and play. Several hours a day during the week and 24/7 on weekends and holidays. Why.....because they dont have to work, their parents pay the bills and they dont have the same real world responsibility that would otherwise limit their online time. The other case is the people who play the game for a living.

If the MMO's would institute some kind of RL time level for leveling then it might not be an issue. Or Build an actual faction system in where you HAVE to do quest given by the local city or you wont be able to train in that city. And you cant gain a new level until you train. What that would do is break the powerleveling guilds from dominating the games. No matter how big/uber/l33t your guild is...you still have to spend time doing city quest or you will never gain another level......I dont know, but something.

But the fact that I have to go to work should not penalize my success in the game. I personally feel that the longer a person is logged on the LESS xp they should get with each kill. That way.....the people who do nothing but sit in front of the computer and play a game all day arent the ones who are rewarded. The people who go out and contribute to society by holding a job, etc. should be the ones that get the reward right? Shouldnt they?

So SOE announces they are going to add auction enabled servers. GOOD. They arent adding the option to all servers. They are giving me the option to play on one of the auction enabled servers if I want too.

If you dont......hey, dont choose one of those servers. If I feel like getting that really cool looking sword is something I want to do, then why shouldnt I be able to buy it? I cant stay logged on 24/7 camping the mob that drops it like all the "non-productive-non-working" players can. I go to work, I earn money, why shouldnt I be able to spend it in the game? I put the same amount of time going to my job as you did camping that mob for the sword. So from a time perspective.....we are equal.

Your time lets you get a rare drop, my time earns me money. All SOE is doing is leveling the playing field. Now........instead of being punished for being a responsible adult, I am allowed to compete at the same level as the children, or as the unproductive worthless bums who quit their jobs and drop out of life in order to play all day.

Its only going to be on a few servers, and will only effect the people who CHOOSE to play on those servers. If you dont like it or think its fair, dont choose one of those servers. I dont think its fair that you dont have to go to work like I do, and instead get to play 24/7 (thus getting to show your ingame uberness to me every time I log in) So Ill CHOOSE to play on one of these servers and buy that sword I want with my hard earned money.

All SOE is doing is offering an option to level the playing field on a handful of servers. Thats all. And if it gets the farmers off your server.......isnt that a good thing?

My opinion of this move by SOE is its the worst move they could have made, period. I will never play a SOE MMO again, they don't value the time and effort of the player. They just allow anyone to have the equiopment that the hard working player has to sweat and fight for. I like the games that take effort to succeed not games that bring everyone down to the lowest common denominator.

I will say it again, I WILL NEVER PLAY A SOE MMO AGAIN.

Anybody who thinks this won't affect the "non enabled" servers is kidding themselves.  For years, SOE in general and Smedly in particular have been all about how to squeeze ever more money while providing ever less service.

He says this is to reduce service calls, yeah, right.  I guarentee it will also result in a reduction of staff so that their clearly second rate service will continue to be just that, second rate.

He claims they have ways of tracking farmers.  Yet they aren't doing much in that arena either.  And again, on the "enabled" servers, you KNOW farming will be going on big time.  It would be agains SOE's best interest to stop it, seeing as how they're taking a cut of the sales.  And, near as I can tell, they haven't done  much of anything about the farmers or the ebaying of items anyway.

Smedly is being absolutely dishonest here.  This is about one thing and one thing only.  Making more while doing less. 

I don't begrudge a company making a fair profit, but SOE and Smedly have to be the biggest money whores in the industry.  I quit EQ2 early because it wasn't fun.  This just re enforces my belief I did the right thing.

Say hi to the farmers for me....

I'll leave my opinion out of this for now, but I thought I would quote Mark Jacobs on something:

Mythic Entertainment has been very vocal about these plans. Mark Jacobs, President and CEO of Mythic, said "We will gladly 'leave money on the table' to ensure that whether or not you like our games, that they remain as that, games and not an entertainment version of day-trading,", and "I'm disappointed with the decision from a leader in the MMO industry"

He seems kind of ignorant of the fact that whether he likes it or not, virtual trading is a big business in the game sector. I figure any business man would leave morals aside from making a fine product, but apparently he is more about morals than making a profit. Pretty strange if you ask me. I know if I was a business man, I would do *almost* anything for a profit, even adding something like the Station Exchange.

I just dont get why players are upset over this.I could be wrong here but i beleive they said they are NOT going to do this on existing servers?

So DONT play on those servers then.

SOE could be implementing this as part of a program to redflag players on other servers that do buy virtual gear.I mean really i could see if eq2 had a PvP server and players were buying uber armor and uber weapons.Then they would have an advantage over other players.

But they dont.If you ask me i could care less about how other people play.It does not bother me in the least that people buy gold/isk/credits.Its not like they are feeling guilty or losing sleep over it either.

If you KNOW how you got to where you are then it shouldnt be an issue.Dont let it bother you so much and just play the game:)

KEYWORD:game.

Oh yeah all you guys who SAY you wont play another SOE game:Who really cares?Your not making much of a point here.For every one who supposedly quits there is another to replace you.

BTW zyguh im with ya 1000%!!

I don't like the direction that it's taking EQ2, and I don't like the direction that it's moving the industry (as well as legal implications regarding "ownership"). I also don't think that it's the best response to an ongoing problem. For every person that tries to sell gold or an uber sword for 10 dollars, there will be a major company like IGE that can offer it for 5 dollars, merely because of bulk of traffic.

I see it as SOE trying to cash in on a huge market.

However, I do like the way that they've handled it, and I can't really see how what someone does on Antonia Bayle will affect someone on another server.

Put the people that engage in this crap on one server, and let others play in peace.

basically in all games you are already playing with people whom buy and sell items and chaacters so taking a moral highground is pretty silly as in effect most games put up with it rather than really fight it. SOE is making a bold move - if its a good one or not is yet to be seen but one of the big players was going to try this solution sooner or later. If SOE does not come down really hard on farmers etc on non SOEbay servers then it will be bad but this move makes it worth their while to keep those servers clean.

personally I am very much against this type of trading bt I've been in these games long enough and at all levels of play to recognise that its pretty much unstoppable without integrated design and monitoring which no games are likely to be able to effectively do soon due to performance/CS demands.

Well here's my 2cents worth.

Being an avid gamer, online, regardless of what game it is, RVS, BF1942, GS, EQ, EQII, Horizons, Illusia, DAoC, M59, SWG, to name a few, i've almost played them all. And what it comes down too, is time.
1) Do i have enough time in the day, to play this game

2) If i don't have enough time in the day to play this game, is it worth my time playing it

3) If i can't play the game, why do i need it, or want to pay someone for a game i'm not going to use ?

These questions come up, when i play a game, or want to start a new game, it doesn't mater what game it is, either by Mystic, SOE, Sigil or many others, it all comes down to will a customer have enough time in a day to just jump online, play for a few minutes, and believe that they have accomplished something and aren't to far behind friends that play more then they do. OR, is this player wasting their time, and paying the company the games created by, just so their characters can sit there with nothing, no higher lvls, no new equipment, not stat increases because the person can't find enough time in a day, to login, play for XXX hrs, and then still get on with RL stuff.

When someones wanting to play a game, they want to enjoy it, not because some big named company made it, who cares, if the game plays fun, friends are there, and the opportunity to play without being left behind in the dust to suck on cobble stones is less the one or another game, then thats the one i want to play. So, when SOE says that they believe they can cut back on CSR calls because of fraudulant money/gear/item exchanges from sites online, then great stuff for them, they should have done it a long time ago.

Heres what i look for when i decide i do want to play a game.

1) How long it going to take me to lvl up, get big and strong and keep up with my friends, or make friends an keep up with them

2) Do i have to spend hrs or days building up my money to earn a simple piece of armor, or a new weapon so i'm not beating a iron door with fists all day to get in

3) Is this game online or hooked up with online money sites, IGE etc, and if so, how fast can i get the money, and start working on my characters levels / stats after i have bought armor / weapons so i can keep up with ppl, friends, guildmates etc.

Lets face it, its great to say that selling adena, credits, money, cash, coin, gear, items, weapons, accounts etc online is bad, folks should work for their own stuff. Sure thats great, but what about folks that don't have that much time as the hard core players, do to spend those xxx amount of hrs online playing because they have a family to take care of, full time / part time job to attend ? Just forget about them who cares, bah I say, thats rude, disrespectful to folks that have to work and have a real life. Myself i come online to play, game, whatever to relax, enjoy my free time, kick back and drop into a fantasy world where i can leave behind the harsh day to day trial and errors. But i don't have those xxx amount of hrs either to waste, so i don't want to get frustrated to no end, and realize i can't get anywhere in the game i just bought for 60$, i want to be able to do something with it and have fun, not beg / ask someone ingame for help cause i'm still a lowbie / newbie. I understand the work the dev teams and account managers, CSRs etc put into making a game, marketing it, and selling it. It is alot of work, and i believe they should all benefit from it.

The gaming industry is believe it or not, over 3billion dollar industry, ppl like to play and have fun, thats it fact of life, and if denied it, will find a way around it to do this. So weather its SOE that sells items / money, or IGE and sites, someones going to buy it if its being sold. I for one, would love to buy items / money from the company that MAKES the game, thus giving them more money to implement other ideas into the game, make the game better for them, and us.

So whats it boil down to, customers, what does the customer want. We want to have fun, earn or not earn our own ways, but we want that decision. If more companies go the way SOE wants to go, it will surely cut down on the fraudulant transactions as indicated by SOE, more ppl would have fun playing the games, and not complain as much about petty matters, and the companies that created the game itself will make enough money to upgrade their own games, instead of leaving them the same, year after year, without the money to fix old bugs, or such. I do hope that SOE does read these posts on this topic, it would surely benefit them and their customers, but this is just my opinion, and from someone thats been around the block a few times with most games, its fact and the customers want to have fun !!

Liking it or not. I don't think everyone even Smedley sees the legal implications that this is going to create with the IP. I can see the lawsuits rolling in already.

Cutting down on support calls? No way, I think it will only increase calls and even a lot of other activities that will only lead to a lot of fraud and who realy has ownership.

Oh and for the one guy that thinks he deserves to get uber stuff bacuase he worls all day and only has very minimal time ingame to get things. But somehow thinks he deservers to get everything just as much as others that play more. First of You hould'nt assume that others that play more are bums. Some of us OWN our business and we can play all we want because we have peons like you to do all the labor. Secondly just because you work and make some money IRL doesn't qualify you to have things in a game where you do things to earn it. Now, Should people that pspend more time in game tell their boss they want more money because they work so hard in a MMO? Doesn't equate. You aren't making sense. Only thing I get from your post is that you are jealous that others can afford to play more while you have to work your butt off to even get by. MY opinion, you shouldn't even be playing a game that requires a lot of time. If you want Multiplayer so bad, go play something like FPS games, yucan play them for 30 minutes and don't have to worry about falling behind.

Don't come into a game world where you are expected to put in a lot of RL time to make progress and expect them to cater to your needs. SOE isn't doing this to cater to your needs at all trust me. The only reason why SOE is going to be doing this is that they see so much money they could be making from it and are going to try to get in on the cut. No one really realizes though it takes two ways for this to work. FIrst the player that has the same desire with the game as Smedley does. MONEY MONEY MONEY....Then to player what wants progress without effort. You can't say that only you ooh soo hard of a worker needs this, that is a lazy ass lame player that doesn't want to earn it. Usually someone that is a BUM ar the job and tries to get off early so he can go home to race against his fellow players to come home to find out they already been there done that. Then it pisses people like you off that they got it and there goes the neighborhood. Willing to pay big bucks for something that takes less than an hour to get. We call you all EBAY SUCKERS. Now, SOE is going to be making the money and the only one on them servers are the ones that are wanting to BUY IRL and not the ones wanting to SELL IRL. Because of competing with OSE which would be very dumb. So your servers won't have ANY BUT the ones wanting to do as you and guess what. There goes the WHOLE purpose for doing it in the first place. Unless you all are just going to use this as a measure of your worth in cash IRL. Which will be the WORSE NOSE RAISING SERVERS IN ALL GAMES.

This Idea is the worse to come across the MMO market and only shows us that Smedley is SOOO GREEDY that he will go to the most extent to do anything to try to raise above WoW or totally fall at it. Which we all know where this is going.

Adding on to that Smedley's little letter about WoW and he view on what they did wrong and what future MMO's will be like, only had shown all of us that first off he is SO uninformed about what is already out there, where the industry is going and how future MMOs need to be more simplistic... I don't know whether to take his comments as sarcasm of jealously of WoW or that his just doesn't know a thinkg what he is talking about. If that is the vision of Smedley I think SOE will do much better if they hired a park bum off the streets to run EQ2 than keeping this Smedley onboard. In my very Honset opinion, I would have fired this Smedley guy before Christmas.

I don't care what a few of you may think, but you can't mix RL money with Ingame content. It just doesn't fit and it changes the whole concept of the game in general. If you can't make progress for how the game has been setup for you to make progress then I believe you are in the wrong genre in the first place. Stop trying to change how the genre functions and jus go back to what you use to love. You are killing this genre along with Smedley.

Farewell to trhis EQ2. I don't think it will raise anymore. It is in it's deflating process and the true to the EQ series will only run back to its predecessor.

What is kind of interesting in this discussion is that while the post on the forums are for a great deal very "intens", the times this came up on /ooc (on Luclan) the respons mainly was vaguely interested ("not for me, but it might be interesting to see how it works out"), to "not here please, but go ahad on a seperate server".

That is, apart from all the people who had to have it explained to them, who (appearently) didn't read the news-sites and the notes, and who just play the game as it is (or will be), ignoring discussions like these. To my surprise each time it was brought up there were quite a number of "ignorant" players. 

It seems that though a smal number of players feels very strong about issues like this, the majority just plays the game, however it turns out in the details, till the next game comes along.

  Unfortunatly limiting this to some new servers will do nothing to change the situation on existing servers.  Most people will not want to be known as ebayers (Exchangers, now..) and will not play on exchange servers.  So plat, accounts and items will still be available to all who want them on all servers with the same risk as today.

  The only ones I see moving to Exchange servers are people with a lot of cash who will continually spend money to keep there toons "uber" at all levels and sellers.   On an exhange server having good equipement will not be a sign of a good player, but just a sign of someone with a deep pocketbook.

  Too bad SOE got scared of public opinion and didn't just go and do this all over.   The virtual market exists,  ignoring it is not responsible.  I don't get why people are against this,  I think they just rather not know what is going on,  ignorance is bliss ....  The biggest problem here is I am not at all sure that if someone brought a SOE or others to court about this, who would win.   Is selling virtual stuff illegal ?  Are EULA's legal ?  Hmmm....

I like many initially was a bit confused on what all the ranting was about when this change was going to be implemented. I chose to check it out for myself and get a better Idea of just how this was going to "change" the MMO world.

First I have to say I agree with what so many others have already said, so they don't need repeating. I am not your average gamer, ie; I work full time, female, 45, mother, own my own home ect. I have played MMORPG's for about the past 5 or 6 years and before that it was all console stuff.

I was so excited when EQ2 came out an I was able to started playing on day 1. I actually though I would have a shot at lvling at the same or close to all the rest. I very quickly learned that not all things were created equal. How is it that I start on day 1, as well as all the others and I have total crap compared to some? Are they just better players than me? Do they just have awesome luck on drops? How did they lvl so fast, how is it that someone can hit lvl 30 in TS in 3 days? Never before had I even thought about a 3rd party gaining financial from gaming. I am/was naive. Not anymore after what I saw on the opening days of EQ2.

I have since discovered sites like IGE and all the rest. Did I feel guilty? Not really. The way I see it is that SOE is just doing what all these other sites have been doing all along, only now they can claim a piece of the pie. No I don't think its right but lets face it, this stuff has been happening for a long time and will continue. No matter how you look at it ~ someone is going to find a way to be more Uber than you.

Out of all the post I have read this one comes the closest to saying it all. As said by Zygutt:

Your time lets you get a rare drop, my time earns me money. All SOE is doing is leveling the playing field. Now........instead of being punished for being a responsible adult, I am allowed to compete at the same level as the children, or as the unproductive worthless bums who quit their jobs and drop out of life in order to play all day

What we are faced with are distinct differences in cultures and laws.  It is pretty well known, at least for those of us that have been around for some time, that some countries view virtual goods as the property of the player.  There was a criminal case brought against someone in korea or china I believe concerning theft of items from one player by another.  The thief was tracked down and prosecuted.  Whereas in the west too bad so sad is often the response players are given by law enforcement and cs game staff. 

We are all inundated (sometimes several times) with EULA's.  No matter how much crap the companies put into these things the majority of them are not enforceable becasue game companies are not allowed to over rule the laws of individual states let alone sovereign nations.  If I remember correctly a person can not, under law, offer a person a contract that goes against the laws where the customer resides.  Reminds me of a case from the 1930's or 40's where someone made hundreds of thousands of dollars selling a brass engraving of abraham lincoln for $1.00.  The item was brass and was an engraving of the former president of the united states... too bad it was only a penny. 

With that having been said I think it is good for a company to finally take control of their product finally.  In most every mmo that has been released the economies end up getting trashed because of the farmers and their bots.  Look at it this way.  You run company X from an illicit internet cafe in some remote place... lets say china.  You take these kids off the streets pay them about $1-$2 per day if they meet a specific quota.  Now, how do you guarantee that people, especially the casual gamer will have to buy from you?  Your employees only sell items at a huge markup, and control the availability of items in the following ways: 1) You have groups of them (especially effective in pvp games like lineage2) camping the best spots for money and items.  If someone comes along and interrupts the enforcers come kill the person(s) (steal whatever items are dropped by the player for resale) the bots then kill the enforcer with a number of them spamming pickup macros to clear the enforcer of the murderer tag and ensure that no one outside the group gets the loot that is dropped from the enforcer.  2) The farmers have their items and begin to offer them for sale at triple/quadruple or more over the actual worth of the item to players.  If other players start offering the same items for sale at actual value the farmers swoop in and buy the items out to resell at their inflated prices.

People try to say that this is the freemarket economy in action.  Whomever your economics teacher/professor was should be fired, shot, and shipped to a third world country.  As long as the laws that govern a free market economy are not enforced and there is no means of enforcement these kinds of illicit and blatantly counterproductive practices will continue.  I applaud SOE for taking a proactive step at fixing the problem.  Banning a number of accounts does not stop these people because there are 1)too many of them, 2) no way to ban the actual people behind these actions so when one account is banned another copy of the game is opened up and the serial used with a new bot that is powerleveled within a day or two to the level that is needed to commence the farming.  The only thing that happens is some kid is denied food for the day.

As long as game companies want to put out a half assed version of an economy into a game some people will feel forced to purchase items/money/accounts in order to keep up with friends and or rivals.  I see what soe doing here as a step in the right direction for regaining control of their games from the botters/farmers.