Curious what everyones thought was on the poll they put out. For it? Against it? Why? Will it change what you do in game? etc.

P.S for those who did not login today it says something along the lines of "Is it a good idea for SOE to provide a safe method for players to buy and sell items/characters for real life cash"

i think they are better off with out, if they keep with their current policy they won't get in trouble if there is a problem with someone getting ripped off and needing to be reimbursed

I think they will do the transfers them self but I wonder how they will fight stolen paypal accounts. To many disputes, and if you send MO/WU no records of anything so how they would do that. I think it would be awesome to see mysuperfagsales go out of business though. As well as PA going down for being pieces of $hit. Any good economists got any thoughts on how it would effect the market?

If Sony themselves sold things for RL cash I think they would run out Yanis and his many wannabies, but in the long run it will ruin the game especially if they sell charaters or uber items. If Sony sells things in EQ for RL cash I think it is a sign of EQ is gonna die soon and they wanna milk the last cents out of it.

Poor you buyza... :smokin

Impresario Almadar Tegleftyln
Retired

Since there will be an easier medium for such transactions, the number of suppliers will increase dramatically; the supply curve will shift right. The demand curve stays roughly the same in the short-term, assuming ceteris paribus and all that fun shit. So the intersection of the curves will be somewhere down and to the right; prices will drop dramatically and since the demand for EQ gear is pretty elastic, it will increase greatly as well.

In other words, stuff will become much cheaper and much more of it will be bought. You don't have to take mind-raping microeconomics classes to figure this out, though.

Someone just finished taking Micro Econ 101!

You're assuming the supply isn't limited though. People might farm more small ticket items or be more likely to sell some plat, but account supply would likely not change at all. On the supply side, there's little reason to avoid selling currently.

In the end, no trading mechanism is going to change the rate that items come into the game to be sold.

I'm curious... Buyza, what percentage of the sales are items vs. plat vs. accounts?

The question itself concerned in-game items, not accounts, IIRC.

As much as I would love for Sony to just allow ebaying I feel like this is a rather bad idea for many reasons:

1. Market will crash for sure. You figure with so much now open easy competition and no more fraud prices will drop insanely low as they have been doing already. Ironically fraud keeps the market afloat. If sony starts selling their own stuff though consider EQ done.

2. Guilds will probably rot from the inside out with people who agree and disagree with this. Imagine knowing your guildie is an ebayer and your in an ebay guild...lets say eternal wrath where the loot is member chosen on /random. Would you ever choose to give loot to a member who ebays over one who does not in fear that they will sell their character any minute?

3. No one will farm lower end items anymore kinda disrupting the ingame and I guess out of game economy. Why farm a 20k item when you can buy it from sony for 8.95 or whatever?

There are tons more cons, but some pros:

1. PA goes out of business, I despise their site because they are bunch of fucking morons who can not see past extreme greed.

2. Yanti$ goes out of business. Need I go on? Duper, scumbag, etc.

3. No more fraud, I hate scammers more than anything so good riddens.

As for percentage of sales sanchek, I would say like 90% plat, 5% items and 5% accounts. Plat may even out weigh more than that.

All in all I doubt sony can go through with this as much as they would love to just because it would be such a spear into their hearts in respect to loyal players who can not deal with the fact someone can buy a character of their quality (which took 3-5 years to build) from like 50-500 dollars etc.

The question was:

Is it a good idea for SOE to provide a safe method for players to transfer in-game items and characters to one another for real money?
It's a little bit ambiguous, but I really really doubt they'd start selling "new" items yet. That would totally kill the integrity of the game.

They probably just want to get the infrastructure set up for player to player trades so they can cash in on the existing black market, while being ready to start selling "new" stuff when the game gets to that point.

I wonder if they'll include plat in "items and characters".

I think it is a good idea. At the moment, it doesnt seem hard or particularly dangerous to sell your character through PA or whatever, so from an everquest player's perspective the people who were giong to quit and ebay anyway would do so - i doubt the amount of players selling will increase. It will basically kill the current sellers, which are illegal as such. Also it will lower or nullify scams, which is always a positive no matter who is getting scammed.

Accounts might stay the same yes, but that does not account for the plat sales which makes up I would say close to 90% of EQ sales.

If sony starts selling high end no drop items or making every tradeable...GG EQ.

Soe preparing for the mass-desertion to wow and eq2, and wants to earn its last bucks by tradeing the quitters account for some % :)

I used to be totally against it, but I think I'd be more for it, fuck, actually I don't know. One the one hand, for any MMOG company to put fuckheads like ****** out of business, they have to also sell characters and loot, but they will just have a never ending pool of instantly generated shit and characters to pull from; which will put the duping and other BS out of business, but be just as bad; if not worse.

But if they just let players sell and buy to each other, then the duping and cheating would still go on. ****** would just use their service to sell his duped plat, and ninja'd loot etc.

So fuck... looks like it's lose/lose..

As for percentage of sales sanchek, I would say like 90% plat, 5% items and 5% accounts. Plat may even out weigh more than that.
And
All in all I doubt sony can go through with this as much as they would love to just because it would be such a spear into their hearts in respect to loyal players who can not deal with the fact someone can buy a character of their quality (which took 3-5 years to build) from like 50-500 dollars etc.
As you mentionned yourself, account selling isn't the "big color" in this picture. So it doesn't affect the game and playerbase as much as plat sells, which is, for the amount being sold, one big cheat that affects in-game economy deeply.

On the poll issue, I'm with Sanchek, I don't think they can "create" items to sell them, drop or no drop. Just legalise the black market in a way.

to kill the account selling they should do like they do in DAOC, once you reach lvl 50 you can start other toons at lvl 20.

Account selling is rather big compared to subscription base. Ignore the fact that is 5% of sales because it is trumped by the millions of plat sold daily. I would say on an average day 100 accounts are sold. That is a pretty good number which will most likely grow larger if this goes through.

I also heard rumors of them pullign a FV type thing where all new items will be tradeable and sellable, not sure on that though. Was just a rumor.

Personally I think it may help PA. SoE doesn't do any thing where they can not make a buck. Take EQIM they dropped it cause no one would pay for it. Many people don't use PA because its "bannable". If SoE gives the OK to online trading and they charge 5% per transaction and PA drops to 4% where do you think people will go to to sell their stuff.

I don't think they are looking at SoE selling to players but players selling to players. And how can they profit in this.

Just my 2 cents

Sony's basically looking for a way to make some cash; don't think this is anything but profit-motivated. I'd guess SOE will act as a middle-man for most transactions and charge a fee for such a transaction.

As long as the items sold are all brought into the game traditionally (dropped off a mob, quested for, etc), I doubt it'd be that big a hit to game mechanics. It'll be interesting to see how this effects the Firiona Vie server if it goes live. ;p

As our guild shaman said yesterday, this is EverQuest, not 'EverBuy', or 'ForSale Quest'. Legitimizing the sale of items for RL money (as opposed to having it in the shadows, as it is now) will change the economy of Norrath for the worse on a much wider scale, separating players not just by play style or play intensity, but their willingness to pony cash up to Sony to enhance their characters. Several of my guild members, myself included, have given a piece of our minds to Sony about this. If they're really considering implementing this, can the fall of Rome be far behind?

Sincerely,
Nydia Ywalmoriel
Past Coercer - Autonomous Collective

I disagree Nydia and other oppposed to this. You sound like the moral majority trying to regulate every aspect of society. A disturbing trend in the USA that is slowely taking away our freedoms bit by bit.

And SOE does not have to arbitrate transactions. Merly the owner can file a quick transfer email so they know the account was not stolen if someone tries to reverse the transaction.

Having sold my own accont for $2k usd I will say its a great policy. All my hard work did not get deleted and someone else can play on, the toons live on.

Also the account really belongs to whoever made it, it really is thier business what they do with it. I don't think anyone has the right to regulate that.

As for how it will effect the game, I think it will effect the game for the better. Firstly the economy of the game is allready blown. Once upon a time when the game was pure, and everyone wasnt a uber guild rat or a twink I would have said it would be bad.

Can anyone really be naive enough to think that the game is pure anymore like when it first came out?

So why not put some real life trading for real $$$ into the game. A new reason to play for many people. A reason to trade, to farm to level. Just like baseball trading cards, or any other hobby. Suddenly many folks will have a new (and now legal reason to play).

Also whoever said Buyaz would suffer from opening up the flood gates on RL trading is quite wrong. The people who know how to trade in RL and who have positive feedback like Buyaz will be the first place legitimate people will go to trade.

And once and for all the whinny little crap shit that complain about gear being traded in RL and want people bannned from the boards for talking about it will be shut the f#ck up.

"I hope the big guilds rot from the inside out too" nice quote! greedy bastiges serve em right, that would be a f@ckn laugh heehehheehehheeee!

Next you will see no-transfer items as well as lore and no-drop.

I recently had a conversation with a major @@@@ on another server. I asked him how much money he really made. His answer " e n o u g h t o b u y a c a r a n d a h o m e ".. I will say nothing about how. Can this be all bad!!

the old hellgrid and caligulla.

There is no debate that if Sony started to sell items that the effect could be profound.

However, for those with more money than time (and I lack both, so this doesn't include me) it could provide a way to get gear that they might otherwise never see or allow them access to content that they might miss due- thereby keeping them playing longer.

I'm wondering if Sony will take over the process and use some kind of leverage to try and put the other brokers out of business- for instance, free cross server transfers on any sale of a character over $100 or something like that.

The only reall negative I could see is if Sony started to add items into the game that were not "earned". If Sony suddenly started to offer (for example) Blades of Carnage for $50 the effect would be prices coming down on that item, but little else. However, if they started to throw in Elemental/Time quality gear or such not only could they sap away people's desire to bust their ass to get to those zones, but they could hasten the departure of people who become bored with trivialized content.

It is a pretty heady issue- didn't an online game offer "Well equipped, pre-made characters" for sale when their subscription base started to crumble?

Please blow this theory apart.

If there was no option to change your password, people would have accounts to sell and accounts to buy, but only accounts that others know the password too.

Once u sell u'r account and get u'r cash, u can log back on with your password and play/delete your toons ).

Once you buy a used account, you might not be able to log up because the original owner is into your freshly bought account deleting characters.

I like the whole idea - now tell me how that won't work.

Further, if half of the powerful characters in the game are run by first time players (newbs), it may wreck the game for many. Sony should be thinking more about that perhaps.

Yeah, I'd just love it if I couldn't change my password. That way, if anyone ever figured it out I'd be screwed and couldn't do anything about it. Yup, that'd be awesome.

You can't honestly expect SOE to put a system in place that would allow that sort of thing, would you? If it was sold through SOE, they'd implement a system that would use something aside from the account keys as a proof of ownership; probably a credit card number. The person selling the account would lose access to it, and the person buying the account would be able to register it in their own name, email address, credit card number, etc.

Oki adjustment,

Only sony can change your password and only with confirmation of your credit card information. Should new credit card information be necessary, old card information should be required also.

Just a note on what someone said about how first time players would ruin the game for many.

THis may not be pertenent however,

I've been a cleric for 5 years.

About a month ago my GF decided to start playing so i let her make her charicter on my acct.

I was over at a friends house playing with him (I was on his war, he was on his druid) And i told her to log in and play my cleric (Who is 65 with some ele gear mind you)

She's been playing for, a month now, and when she started to play my cleric it took her all of mabe 10 min to get the hang of it, Mind you she isn't the best one in the world, but no one died, and she kept her mana up etc, she did very well.

With the exeption of NOT KNOWING WHERE ANYTHING IS. The High end EQ charicter can be played pretty easily by first time players. With the Exeption of Perhaps, Bards Enchanters and Some Tank Classes. But they just take time, their abilities are half spells, half how well the person can time things and move about Lol.

Don't get me wrong i've run into 65 elemental/time warriors who didnt know what taunt was, or what cold resist was, but from my experiance of playing with e-bayed charicters, most of them do know how to play, i don't care either way what people do, if they can play the class, let them buy it, some people just don't have the time to level a charicter anymore. And if they wantt o pay their own hard earned money, let them it's their call.

Ok I mis-sread this totally.

SOE is going to sell shit / or thinking of??????????? if this right

Now THAT is the STUPIDEST THING I EVER HEARD. SO F#$CKN DUMB it did not even register. GREEDY GREEDY GREEDY. Naturally they had to want a way in on the action... Ok, so then what will stop them from doing that to EQII? My apologies for not being able to friggin read it just was so stupid of an idea it just did not register.

I saw a hotkey screenshot that someone had edited once with credit cards in slots. It was a funny joke they was talking to an NPC and then clicked hot key 1 for visa.

HOW LOW WILL THEY GO? Next they are going to have a RL charge/Tax on your networth in the game.

SOMEONE STOP THEM!!!!!!!

No, they've never even hinted at selling "created" items/accounts. People are just jumping to that conclusion on their own.

It'll likely happen a bit further down the road, but I bet it's 2005+ before they get to that point.

GREEDY GREEDY GREEDY
Some people are afraid to lose their business.

Players can do it illegally out of greed to "help each other enjoy the game", if you have cash to spend of course, but if SoE does it and wants to control this parallel market, it's out of greed.

Aha.

Growlpuss - if your theory that half the high end players will be played by new characters, Sony's policy will likely not change this at all. If someone wants to sell, they go through PA or ebay with very little risk of anything, really - and you see many accounts up at a time. All this will do is provide protection for the buyer and in some instances the seller. Which is a plus.

As for selling items, i doubt that this will happen, i certainly hope not. It will take everything out of the game for me, Where is the sense of growth? advancement? You couldn't match your equipment with another and say, damn - thats nice equipment, where did you get xxxxxx from?

Screw buying characters......just tell me when you can buy 600 AA and I may try to convince my wife to let me get an account again !

SoE can't beat 'em, so they are a figuring they might as well join 'em. Pretty good guess is something like what PA does will become live, perhaps by SoE buying PA and then slapping their own name on it. On the plus side it means that accounts and gear will be drawn from an existing pool, with perhaps more ease of cross server transfers. The horrible thing SoE could do, since they control the pixils, is create custom characters out of thin air and gear that never even graced a MOB's presence for sale, thus totally eliminating the need to even play the game. That would be a case ultimately of their own averess killing the goose that laid the platinum egg.

SoE could beat them easily. Just ban them all. Don't take them to court, over it. Just go to player auctions, and watch the sales. Or shit, just buy the shit themselves and ban it all.

******' bullshit thing at the bottom of webpage wouldn't hold up in court anymore than than a EULA, which everyone seems to say wouldn't hold up. So don't bother with the court. Just ban all the fuckers. If SoE wanted to they could beat the Ebayers with ease, but they prefer all the money they bring to them.

Seems like they would lose alot of accounts by banning all that. ALSO, waste alot of company resources (ie money) trying to monitor/track it. That will never happen...... My experience with SOE is that they would rather try to twist this area to there control and profit from it than take some moral stance if it requires *work* on their part.

I would love to see this poll they put out. Was it accompanied with an article or statement from SOE?

it was a poll you take before you log into your server

I know SoE won't ever do that, but saying there is nothing they can do is wrong. Whether they will do it or not is another matter all together. And I agree with you, they would rather make money of it themselves than stop it.

maybe they'll sell limited edition items or perhaps customized ones, something like changing a sarnak battleshield to one with the same stats but the look of a shield of strife,that would be a nice money maker,

If SoE gives the OK to online trading and they charge 5% per transaction and PA drops to 4% where do you think people will go to to sell their stuff.

SoE. If it was a difference of 10%, I still think SoE would get 95% of the business.

And I certainly would pay for AAs. Nothing more boring than grinding out 100s of AAs. Thing is... I wouldn't pay very much for them... even $5/AA is way too steep, and that would be the equivalent of hiring a migrant worked to grind AAs for me. Something like $100/60AA I'd do. This is coming from someone that has less free time than disposable income... so the business for SoE probably wouldn't be that great.

Hmmm...

How about if SOE puts an earmark on items purchased with real dollars...

Blade of Carnage *$*

That way when you inspect a_newb01 who has a BoC on a level 20 toon, you can make fun of them.

<shrug> Or not... it was a thought...

then he would laugh at you because his 1 bought item is worht more than everything you have and he did not waste years of his life to get it :(

Or we could laugh at him for spending real life cash to compensate for not being able to actually play the game for himself :)

Ever heard that joke about guys with big dicks not needing Corvettes?

or saving 300 days of his time since not everyone has the time to play 60+ hours a week.

Hey Rich,

Send me a PM bud.

I think this is a fantastic idea.

the problem was never that accounts were sold. It's that accounts were stolen, then sold, then customer service issues would ensue.....Or outright fraud would occur where the original owner would sell, then steal the account back 5 months later with original information.

Securing the financial process from the getgo, for both accounts AND in game items, is a pretty damn decent idea...though I think the only thing in game that should be for sale IS plat, sold dutch auction style.

Buying AAs for cash? - no fucking way.

You earn them yourself or dont have them. Where the hell is the sense of accomplishment? the sense of wanting? That would make everquest rape. goats. It would turn into "who has the most money IRL" - How stupid.

You'd have no pride in your character, "i paid 700 bucks for all these AAs and this great equipment, damn i'm good." And everquest characters would turn into an expensive virtual trading card game, where all the cards are replicable.

or saving 300 days of his time since not everyone has the time to play 60+ hours a week.
That brings up a good question :
What is the point of having a high geared toon if it's not to play it to its best potential?
Will you join a casual guild if you get your hands on a time geared toon? Or will you try to join uber guilds of your server where high attendance is required?

I wonder if ebayed toons are more "because I can" than "because I can't play 40+ hours per week".

You guys have this all wrong.

Heres what the deal with that is.
SOE has a pretty big staff of CS people, but they handle about 60000 petitions a month. Of that number, 70% are dealing with scams of this sort.

SoE is taking a beating about its CS, what they are trying to do is relieve some of the pressure on their Customer Service people and be able to improve dramatically in that area.
If SOE offered a secure way to transfer items and characters, it would go a long way to relieve alot of the workload and free their people up to do what they are there to do, namely, make your game experience better.

As an addendum,
This from what people at the guild summit reported wouldnt be SOE creating anything that didnt exist before, such as AA or characters or items, It would simply be a Ebay/PayPal service, wherein they act as a secure middleman for the transfer and do such services as changing the ownership of the account.

I think L2 may be right, but just wait until sony meets the 100k scammers out there waiting to pay with stolen paypal/CC and then it becomes a whole different story. I hope sony has a damn good idea.

They could always use an escrow type deal where you pay them and they only release the funds to the seller after the transfer's complete. They could automate that entire process, since you can't really fool the server. Either the item/account/plat is transfered or not.

Yeah, I'd just love it if I couldn't change my password. That way, if anyone ever figured it out I'd be screwed and couldn't do anything about it. Yup, that'd be awesome.

Not to go off topic, but alot of us cannot change our passwords anymore, either, with them requiring the secret question answer to do so. Oh yes, SOE, I can really remember the answer to 'Whats your fave food' after 5 years of having that damned account.


>:

DaarekZoolander- replied by your PM you get ?

HentaiSeph,

You need to go to sony online chat room and speak with CS rep. I ran into the same problem. With CC info and your name they will reset that.