Sony Online To Sell Virtual Property

OMG! writes "In an open letter to the community John Smedley, the president of Sony Online Entertainment, announced their new service 'the Station Exchange' which will allow players of Everquest II to trade their items for real live money. Sony Online is the first major player in the MMORPG genre to embrace commercial trading of in-game items." Commentary available from all the usual suspects, including Wired, the Players, Terra Nova, F13, and Grimwell. This would seem to be a total reversal of the policies of certain other MMOGs.

Comments

Re:The Death of Everquest II

[syukton]

You just gave two PvP examples; Everquest is PvE. Get it straight before you nitpick.

Letting Everquest players buy better stuff with real money lets them compete against virtual baddies more effectively. In chess, buying a second queen disadvantages your opponent, who is another human being. In Everquest, buying a pair of superUber flaming swords disadvantages the virtual goblins and dragons and makes all the newbie players feel jealous, but it doesn't disadvantage any other players.

People keep making this comparison with Monopoly or Chess and they need to understand the difference between PvP and PvE gaming.

Re:You just CANNOT escape the "real world", can yo

[droleary]

You say they are different because of two core issues; firstly, the number of players & secondly, lack of bias in a computer-governed (as opposed to human GM-governed) universe. I say you are wrong on both counts.

You are so misguided it is laughably sad. OK, one last opportunity for you to turn your brain on or I'm done with you.

Firstly, as a human GM I can populate my world with thousands of people in exactly the same way a n MMORPG does - however, in my case I create NPCs (non-player characters) who only become relevant when they interact with my characters.

Another non-parity example. An NPC is simply not another person. Hell, it is unlikely to even be another adventurer. That is, in an MMORPG, it is highly likely someone else in the world has explored the dungeon (or gone of the quest, or whatever the task is) and gotten whatever treasure was the point of the exercise. That creates an economy that any one-off campaign you run at home does not. When you tell the players they need to get a dragon scale from the caves of Qualdar, do you also supply an NPC that will just give them such a scale in exchange for something else? If not, stop pretending the two situations are even close to similar.

That's point one - it doesn't matter whether we are talking about an RPG or MMORPG here, if you give players rules about your universe and they create characters within that universe that they grow accustomed to then suddenly change those rules, you lose cohesion and destroy the fantasy; exactly what Sony is doing here.

But that's just it; the rules of the game are not changing! Players can already exchange items. It doesn't matter one bit the reason of the exchange. Maybe they're doing a vanilla sale in game for gold. Maybe they're part of the same clan or friends or have some other reason to share the item. Yes, maybe it's because they're getting cash money. Regardless, the game is unchanged. You're trying to claim a difference where none exists. I'd respect you more if you simply said you didn't like the idea rather than trying to make up an excuse through some unreasonable mental gymnastics.

A good GM understands this and can tweak his game real-time to keep all the players in the party interested - in other words, if the fighters are up the front wading into a group of orcs and the wizard is sat at the back clicking his fingers, then how about we throw in an orc or two then and there that surprises him from behind...

Uh, that is the very model of bias! What a shitty GM you are. The wizard is playing perfectly fair, and if the fighter doesn't like it he's free to turn on the bastard. If you as a GM are making a judgement on that, you're an asshat. That is precisely what Sony didn't do. The game still plays as it always did, and people will sell items like they always have. The only difference is that there will be fewer fraud complaints tying up their customer service lines.

That's point two - an experienced GM can keep a game balanced and unbiased. Sony's action creates bias towards those who can afford to buy their status in the universe.

Bwahahahahaha! Everyone buys their status in EQ! The game is not free to play. That creates a base for exchange, and "time is money" does the rest. It doesn't matter that you don't like it; that's just the way things are. As I have also noted, a bought status is easier to take than an earned status, so the bias is definitely against those with fat wallets. Your inability to see all these things makes your opinion on the matter essentially worthless.