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  1. #1
    Black Belt
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    Sony Online Entertainment opening RMT Servers for EQII

    John Smedley Discusses Station Exchange


    Hello Everyone,

    We have a big announcement coming out in the press in the next day, and I wanted to make sure you heard it from me directly rather than reading an article about it.

    Starting in late June, SOE will begin offering a new service called Station Exchange. This secure service will allow EverQuest II players on specific servers to buy and sell the right to use items, coin and characters. To be clear, all we are doing is facilitating these transactions. We are NOT in the business of selling virtual goods ourselves.

    I'm sure this is going to come as a shock to many of you, since for the past six years, we have held the line in not allowing these sorts of things to occur. I'd like to explain the primary drivers for this change from our perspective:

    First: It's obvious that a large percentage of our players either don't mind this activity or actively participate in it. We've done a fair amount of homework on this subject, and we believe this is a $200 million dollar market worldwide, and there are a huge number of our players taking part in the buying and selling of virtual goods. We have conducted polls, and the vast majority of players either doesn’t care about it or would like to participate in it. We believe that by allowing this to happen on select servers, we can have a solution for both the many players who want to participate in this and for those who don’t.

    Second: Dealing with fraudulent transactions of one type or another takes up roughly 40% of our customer service people's time. We have players calling us up or requesting in-game service for activities related to these sorts of transactions constantly, even though they are specifically disallowed by our EULA. You may ask why the percentage is that high when it's not allowed in the first place? The answer is simple. Many times, people in these situations aren't up front with us about what actually happened. "My sword disappeared from my inventory" comes to mind, when what actually happened is the player has sold the item to someone else. Our CS people have to take the time to investigate this claim because if something legitimately happened, we of course want to take care of the player's needs. We believe that by taking this course, we will free up a great number of resources to deal with other things for our players.

    Third: We see this as a potentially interesting model for future games. If we came up with a game specifically designed around these sorts of transactions, it might be pretty cool. Online gaming is always evolving, and we’re going to see how a sanctioned exchange service shakes out in EQII. From our perspective, it's always wise to keep pushing the envelope.

    With the big reasons we're doing this laid out, I'd like to now tell you about the process:

    On Wednesday, you'll see some press about Station Exchange. After about a week, we will conduct an in-game poll that's going to ask whether you:

    1) Want to play on an "Exchange enabled" server
    2) Do not want to play on an "Exchange enabled" server
    3) Don't really care

    Based on the results of this poll, we will light up a certain amount of new servers that are specifically "Exchange enabled." If the percentage of players who want this service is high enough, we might consider converting some existing servers to "Exchange enabled." Players who want to play on those servers will have the opportunity to transfer over to the "Exchange enabled" servers for free on a one-time-only basis (but you can't ever move that character off these servers). We will, of course, let people who don't want to stay on an "Exchange enabled" server off with a free transfer.

    I want to be clear here: We will be lighting up a few new servers that are specifically “Exchange enabled,” and the number of existing servers we convert to “Exchange enabled” will be based on how many people actually want to be on "Exchange enabled" servers.

    In addition to the issues listed above, you may ask, "What about farming?" The simple answer to this is that we're going to continue to heavily enforce the rules of EQ II, and those rules don't permit players to monopolize spawns or in any way harm the play experience of another player. We will continue to enforce these rules, but we also think that by providing a legitimate way for players to buy and sell the use of virtual goods, there will be fewer problems on the non-Exchange servers.

    I realize this is a lot to think about, and I expect a pretty good debate to start on this subject. We welcome all your feedback, as it will help determine the future of this service. All I ask is that you consider the fact that we're really addressing this problem in the best possible way for all sides of this issue.


    John Smedley
    President, Sony Online Entertainment



    Learn more about Station Exchange.
    Source:
    http://eq2players.station.sony.com/news ... th=current

  2. #2
    E. Body
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    Nothing new, they mentioned at E3 that not everyone has time to spend hours upon hours on a game so RMTing should be an option (the game in mind at that time was infact GT4's online mode, which never happened).

    RMTing still sucks though. If you can't play an MMO for a fuckton of hours, then don't. Get a single player RPG or something.

  3. #3
    Renegade Philosopher
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    I wouldn't mind if there were RMT specific servers available in FFXI if it meant that they'd enforce their policies on the non-RMT servers more quickly (getting rid of teh gilsellers would free up so many HNM camps).

    Edit: Hell I wouldn't mind RMT *as much* if it didn't involve HNM monopolizing. Even though there were people who RMTed, it didn't get really bad until Amemet squad came to the scene (roughly NA PS2 release).

  4. #4
    Ridill
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    If I ever programmed a MMORPG all items and money would be Rare/EX so RMT would not exist. Pretty hard to do real money transfers if there is nothingto transfer.

  5. #5

    Quote Originally Posted by Septimus
    If I ever programmed a MMORPG all items and money would be Rare/EX so RMT would not exist. Pretty hard to do real money transfers if there is nothingto transfer.
    Would make money pretty worthless, only thing you'd need gil for it food and travelling costs... not to mention buying gear is a staple of an RPG, we always love buying that new sword, saving up for that piece of armor...

  6. #6
    Ridill
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    Quote Originally Posted by Elcura
    Would make money pretty worthless, only thing you'd need gil for it food and travelling costs... not to mention buying gear is a staple of an RPG, we always love buying that new sword, saving up for that piece of armor...
    Not really. You can still buy gear and items from NPCs, as well as paying to repair and upgrade armor, buying spells, learning abilities, ect. In game money is worth what the developers allow it to be.

  7. #7

    WoW's system of gear was pretty unique in where once you equip an item you can never sell it to another player. Although i can't see it working in FFXI's system where selling your old gear to finance new works out nicely in the case of non-HQs at least.

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