I wasn't sure I could put the big bad "E" or "P" word in my subject without hearing from the kapos so I guess I will just have to reword my self.

So the other day I ran into an old acquiantance in game on Aro. After talking to him I found out he decided to quit and sell his character. Now normally you would think ok hes selling his char and thats it, but there is more to it than that. This same guy use to discriminate against "Epeople" like they were black in the 1950s (no offense, and do not mean to seem racist) and even went as far to try and get one of his best in game friends banned after finding out he bought a small amount of plat. Why is it people who play EQ can despise selling of EQ stuff, and yet be complete hipocrits and go do it themselves. I see people here who say they hate me because of who I am or whatever, and not because I "Esell" and that they respect other "Esellers" but now I wonder. I am sure I have pissed lots of people off, but is it because of how I act or what I sell? Now before anyone says "Oh it is probably just him" I can tell you I have met lots of people like him who I later either bought there account or found it up for sale. Just curious to hear from the hardcore gamers who have opinions on the subject since it seems kind of akward.

P.S I kinda worded what I wanted to say wierd cause did not really know how to say it so bare with me.

Or it could be over time this person's opinion of character selling changed. That does happen from time to time.

Here's a theory (keep in mind I have only conjecture. I have not bought or sold any accounts or plat before and have no first hand experience).

Player A has in the past ranted and insulted sellers/buyers of accounts because player A felt like it was degrading his achievement and playing experience. Player A notices that all his rants really have no effect...money talks and as long as people have money to spend on EQ they are going to do so regardless of Player A's opinion. Player A finally gets tired of the game and takes the view "If you can't beat them, join them". Is it hypocrisy or simply defeat? My guess is it depends on the player.

You asked for it, so here is my honest opinion, sorry if it offends you.

1st, you ARENT F'ING SELLING ANYTHING. =)

If Sony decides it wants ALL its marbles back, you cant follow through on your contract to provide something you have no legal right to. If Sony finds out you are ebaying or that a specific character is sold or has participated in plat for cash, they can ban it and there is not a god damn thing you can do about it. You think you are a 'businessman' but really you are closer to a thief, a Robin Hood stealing from rich rich Sony and sellling your ill gotten gains to buyers who know you have no right to sell what isnt yours, but are happy to trade with you anyway.

2nd, in a 'pure' game all players would be rewarded based on their skill, committment, deeds, and time invested. Real world transactions take that out of the picture, and those who arent willing to break the rules (say true newbies who would have a chance at lower cost gear) are penalized by having to compete against twinks who bought their way to uberdome.

More later.

Kad

I am not offended, but I guess I am selling my time :) but does this mean you hate ebayers as well kadath and even after you are done playing EQ you will not ebay? Does that mean the guildies of yours who ebay are now bad people and you hate them?

Fuck that. I leveled my guys up from scratch, and played every fucking day on that /played. My account was mine to do with as I please. If you truly believe we don't own these accounts, then you'd have no objection to your toons being randomly deleted. They're not yours, right?

Yes, I'm sure you'll bring it up, and ebaying does violate the EULA. But, in my view, I could quit and let Beo collect dust, or I could get some cash out of the fun I had here. I'd be a sap if I left my account rotting, when I could use it to get some cash, which never hurts.

Unless Simondavid is your buyer, but eh =/

Personally, I always differentiated between selling a char on ebay and buying one. Those two fields are worlds apart.

haha yah was my choice to sell the 3 million plat I had when I quit back when luclin came out :) ironically I still own my account.

you hate ebayers as well kadath and even after you are done playing EQ you will not ebay? Does that mean the guildies of yours who ebay are now bad people and you hate them?

No. I dont hate them. It is fair to say that I dont even consider it at all any more except as a fun, debatable point. We are merely at the very very beginning of how these points will be handled in the courts, so all of this is simply my opinion now rather than legal fact. (I am interested in all areas of computers, freedom, privacy and what is real in a world that supports virtual transactions.) It makes little difference to me whether you continue your trade or if sony would relent, endorse ebaying or even embrace character sales themselves, as apparently UO has. When I first started I very much disliked farmers, ebayers, and power levellers because the world was so small. With 5 expansions now tho the world is big enough to support it without most of us even noticing it. No drop items are primarily responsible for that too, and are probably the best thing to ever happen in this game.

Truth be told I have control of other 'previously loved' characters myself, tho I would never pay real life money for them or items or plat. They are simply rez and pull and storage mules tho, I could never play those roles adequately enough to convince a pickup group that I was worthy of the spot in their team as well as someone who has worked to their level the right way....

That said, nobody will ever handle the Kadath account but me. While some of you think of your toons as what you have 'earned' I think of Kadath as host to the fun and experiences I have had in my four years of travelling in this game, and nobody can ever fill his leather soles as I would. Good or bad. So, even if Kad were laden with riches beyond belief, and I had to give him up due to boredome or moving to another game or whatever, he shall permantly be mine and forever sleep. Not only that, but everything I have I owe to my guild, and selling out Kadath would be a stab in the back to all we have done and stood for, especially as non-uber players.

Kad

I hate people who only want to buy my plat and not my rogue too!!! DAMN YOU!!! hehe

Haha email me back, and reread what I wrote :) also PM me with your AIM or msn or ICQ...whatever you got :) ttyl and we will work something out im sure of it.

Sent you another email.

I am biased against ebayers, I make a conscious effort to avoid ebayed characters. And when I am done playin eq I will just cancel my account. I have no wish to have my name blown all to heck by some stranger.

Blazemore

buy my plat and not my rogue too

I dont follow the auctions but people I know tell me that the market has fallen out for characters. Plat, I am sure, never goes out of style, and probably has less stigma attached to it.

Kad

It is more unstable than fallen kadath. Characters have there moments, but have for sure lost much value. Plat as well dropped in price, but it still worth a nice amount of money considering it is EQ.

While I never put anyone down for ebaying,I always swore I would never do it myself.Now,I actually consider it from time to time when cash gets tight. Its all about perspective I guess. /shrug

first off, forgive me, im slightly drunk
anyway... on with my post


personally, I could never sell my account for money
I have allowed my friend to play my acccount for the most part, and occasionally log on it myself


however
perhaps the degree of how acceptable it is to ebay your accoutn has changed since this person used to rant abotu ebayers
maybe the person has realized well... everyone does it now, its essentially made itself part of the game, and no longer has a massive impact on everyone else, sine the playerbase and the economy has essentially adapted to the percentile of players who ebay items, accounts or whatnot

maybe this person feels that him ebaying no longer has any significant impact on the game, and thus feels justification in what he has done

I am sure I have pissed lots of people off, but is it because of how I act or what I sell?

It is the way you act. For the most part I don't give a shit about ebayers, fuck I ebayed when I played. I leveled val from 1-60 but I found that there was a huge disparity in the amount of money people were selling and buying plat for. I would just wait until someone was selling a lot for cheap, buy it, then resell it for more money. I probably made a few hundred thousand plat and between one and two thousand dollars doing that. It was just too easy to NOT do. The only thing I don't like is when people buy high level toons that they have no idea how to play, that is just annoying.

I am biased against ebayers, I make a conscious effort to avoid ebayed characters. And when I am done playin eq I will just cancel my account. I have no wish to have my name blown all to heck by some stranger.

Well, just change the name, no?

The reasons people cite they object to ebayed characters is that the ebayer doesn't "know how to play" those characters as they've not levelled them up from 1 to 65.

Really though the root of this objection actually comes from the attachment we all form to our characters. This arises naturally out of having invested time and energy into acheiving within the game with these characters. You want to believe that you've learned something special to get to be 65 or whatever -- to be as much of an Ooob as you are. Over time we become deeply attached to our characters.

But if you think about it, this idea that someone gains special skill just simply from levelling a character may not make sense. Sure there is experience in playing the game, can't deny that. But -- well -- it would seem you can learn to play a character at any level. You can learn raid tactics at any level - I have seen people adopt Ooob characters (who have their own Ooob character) and succeed with style in raids. Also, how many of you out there were PL'd to your higher lvl? And isn't that a bit of a cheat too? Like Ebay?

It is more about learning to play the game and the character in the situations at hand than it is about knowing how that class behaved in groups at level 30. Being a shaman, I know that there's a huge difference how you play as you level up.

During the early days of the game, then, ebaying maybe was more of a cheat. But now the game has no end, and Ooob characters are a dime a dozen, so really, getting an ebayed character is almost like deciding you want to be a raid player rather than an experience/quest player. An ebayer will definitely make mistakes as they are, well, learning to play that character (which could be annoying), but can they learn to play that character? Why not!

Then, why else could it be that ebaying a character is objectionable? Because the achievements of that character are not your own. It is like you are taking on the rewards of someone else.

I inherited three plus-60 characters from my brother. Now playing those characters sort of the same as being an ebayer. Meanwhile I've formed attachments to these little guys. When I've had people say to me "let me play so-and-so" I'm finding I don't want them to play those characters, even tho I didn't level them up from 1, because I want to achieve with them now that I've been playing them. I feel attached to how they are played, I feel attached to them. Isn't this why we all play continuously anyway, our attachment to our characters and their little worlds, the items they have and are going to get, the flags they have and are going to get and so on.

So obviously, as someone loses their attachment to their character and decides to quit the game -- or needs to create a loss of attachment to that character in order to quit the game -- they could swing from being anti-ebay to ebaying a character themselves.

Nothing to get one's knickers in a twist over -- just don't do it if you don't like it.

Here is a situation,
I know a person that made a Necro, he worked his azz off on this toon for 2 years, hating every minute of it.
He hated it so bad he quit the game, My sugestion to him was to buy a toon he likes. He has the talent to play any other class he wants. In my opinion he has paid his dues in the game.
BTW there is a cleric you wont ever see for sell, when im done playing im pressing the delete key in front of Buyza. :p

Oh man I don't think I have it in me to hit the delete key, I think I will just cancel and if I don't return in the three months lee way well then he can just kinda of fade away into digital oblivion on his own.

Blazemore

Any people that had it in them to delete a bigguns toon out of curiousity?

No offense decee but your no cleric I am to interested in :) have had much better clerics lol.

Like?

SoE owns the accounts. Even worse they own the rights to the names created and played on their gams.

Meaning if you create a name, such as I have done, and use it outside the game they could legally fight you for the rights to said name should you ever write a book and use that name as a character in said book.

Would they win? I honestly can't say, but I know if you made a grundle of money SoE would be interested in their share.

As would the IRS etc etc etc.

I'm not against Ebayers, but in my 4 plus years I've only seen 1 player pull off playing a toon he bought with any measurable skill. The rest just never stack up to the level of the player that sold the toon.

Oh and DC? Don't let the lil weolf get yer goat. Yer toon is a greatly equipped toon. He's just baying at the moon hoping to rile ya.

Me? I'm still wondering if the "finders fee" the IRS is offering is worth the fucking reams of paperwork I'd have to go through to shut the boy up...

Oh, and Fandros the toon will never be for up for sale. The cash couldn't replace what the toon means to me. He'll be here till they shut the game down...

Does this mean I hate ebayers? Nope I consider myself lucky to have played alongside folks like L2, Glad and Amidgit etc etc. My life is considerably brighter for the years spent talking and laughing with these folks. They just chose a path I myself wouldn't take. But then again, who amongst us wants our friends to be just like us???

Fandros

I consider myself lucky to have played alongside folks like L2, Glad and Amidgit etc etc.

I see how it is!
*in the voice of the happy gilmore heckler* JACKASS!
:p

Now Gerf question is, are you the 1st "etc" or the 2nd? :evil

Now Gerf question is, are you the 1st "etc" or the 2nd?

HAHA :rollin

Probably the 2nd ect.!:rollin

And you as well Gerf...goof of course I meant you ;P

Fandros

You cannot toucha teh mango!

I have nothing against the people who sell, only those who buy.

Acctually I was not trying to rile up DC, she just told me that she would hit delete in front of me as I cared, and I said I have seen and had better clerics than her. She is very well equipped no doubt. God everything I say seems to be taken negatively even though I meant it in a neutral way.

As for SOE to fight the people, I don't know how well they would do. Virtual stuff is very hard to keep track of and hard to prove what does and does not happen. I honestly can say it could go either way in court.

I have been owned. :D
But my sig works now. ;)

;)

No worries litle guy, you mean nothing to me either.
(BTW, like that triple post?)

What Weolf, you can say that from all of yer 17 years of experience? ;P

Sorry lil feller, this falls under the doman of Creative Domain.

Doesn't matter what form it takes, paper or electrons...the court would likely uphold SOE's rights.

Just up to them to push the buttons.

Fandros

As much as you hate me, you do not give me enough credit for what intelligence I do have :) The only person worth persuing is ****** since he makes a few million a year most likely and is in the US. The only other person who makes enough for them to worth persuing so they get a nice return is IGE, but they are based in europe.

Dude, Fandros, Weolf's a freaking Doogie Houser I swear to god. He'll be in the court systems in no time.

You mean he's a kid genius who dates an ugly chick and keeps a web journal?

Doogie Houser is Zehn's hero :lol

I got his poster right next to my Son of Sam's Man of the Year award.

Wow so roliel called me a genius and zehn keeps posters of me in his room? thats hot...but in a kind of wierd way...

I don't even know you. I have no opinion, good or bad, on what people do with their accounts. That opinion has nothing to do with you, either.

Ciao!

Doogie's girlfriend wasn't bad dude. I'd tap it.

Dude..
That aint saying much...
Amidgit comes over my house.. the cat backs into a corner and the fucking goldfish stop swimming.

damn you midgit... i still want your help to get that one thing from taht one zone 8*(

Damn, Midge E-bayed? Bummer.

Buyza, that question of yours has probably been hashed out alot over... I guess the YEARS now. People cash in their chips and walk out the door plenty of times and perhaps those that said " I will never E-bay" and later Esell their toons figure that it doesn't matter because EQ is dead for them and perhaps at that point owe the EQ community nothing. If you are dead in the real world, there is no longer any guilt about things done or said. All contracts are null and void. Perhaps the same can be said about selling your toon after you are sick and tired of playing it.

So, it really boils down to personal preference. If you have a well equipped toon and might make some good cash off it, well, thats your option. You accept whatever guilt or responcibility comes along with that sale.

LOL, I can't even sell my toons. All my gear is pretty much crap and can be obtained by a good group in a few days. I still play em when I can though. They still represent alot of good times that can't be put in a Magelo and packaged as a commodity.

ya dont need Midget's help, i got an extra one for ya... Well did you need the pads or the belts? and you know where in kaladim to turn them in right mortalis?

If you ever need help immy I would be glad to help you! :) just from pal to pal!

then help me get that one thing from that one zone that ive been trying to get since I was level 20! 8*(

SURE! whats it called? I know a level 20 warrior with only 100hp like your self may have some trouble getting it :)

midgit knows what im talkin about 8*( ... its that ONE thing from that ONE zone! argh... muh head 8*(

just from pal to pal!

Don't you mean from PayPal to PayPal?

No, but I wouldnt mind Immy :)

I don't play EQ, and I don't care much about it anymore. I've actually got all the pieces for a VT key, but don't feel like logging in to make it. That's how little I care.

I haven't even thought about selling though. Even back when I was relatively well geared, it never really crossed my mind. I've actually still got my original character on another account that hasn't been logged on in years now, who I also never thought about selling.

So, I can tell you that not everyone changes their tune about ebaying their characters after they quit playing.

midgit was gonna help me get a pegasus cloak, that... still to this very fucking day... when I get bored and dont have shit to do I will go to karana and try get lucky and snag one. But that fucker has evaded me every god damn time. If I get one more pair of legs.... *rips hair out*! 8*(

You too Immy? I think I logged like 100+ hours camping it. And I even had...uh...'help'.

100 hours doesnt even come close to the time ive spent in that god forsaken zone 8*(

i dunno i think people have hostilatiys toward the Ebaying Merchants like Buyza's because after ya sell 30 accounts theres bound to turn up a amplifyer in there and theres a walking anti-ebaying add

Yeah, but you're a lifeless loser who spends all his time playing video games Immy and I'm...I'm...

Damnit.

self pwned.... so like, does that make you feel good for pwning someone... or does it make you feel like shit for being pwned? hmmmmm such a philisophical discusion we have here!

If by say it would make him feel good about himself, would that in some way label it self gratification?

//Kiv

self ownage rules! I'm an ebaby!

I'm bringing you down to my level without your consent. 8(