SOE Station Exchange Launches

MMORPG.com reports that the experiment in Massive retail that is the Station Exchange has launched. From the article: "SOE recently concluded a two week pre-launch trial phase for Station Exchange. We only allowed a very small number of EQII players into the pre-launch in order to help us fine-tune the system and get feedback on the user experience. The service was live for pre-launch, which meant that all of the users were exchanging US dollars for the rights to use virtual goods, characters and coin within the game."

Comments

Re:Lawsuits, here we come

[Naerbnic]

Of course it's just a licence, but that wouldn't stop someone from making the argument of damages. They spent real money in an officially sanctioned way to get an item which can be traded back for real money via the same channel. If Sony does something which would hurt the tradeback value of the item, a damages suit could occur (not necessarily win, but at least be filed against them). This is not entirely unlike people suing because others did something to "nerf" their real-estate values. Of course, this is a horrible analogy.

Furthermore, since I think Sony is planning on this being a new cash cow, they're going to be very, very careful about what they change in-game. Even if their ELUA states that they can do something, the fear of bad publicity will probably cause them to think twice before they do it. If people start complaining on message boards and blogs about how Sony screwed them over, Station Exchange will feel the pain. While this may or may not be a big problem, it is going to make them a lot slower to actually rebalance unbalanced things which in the end hurts the gameplay. Seems like one heck of a sticky situation.

Re:hmm

[Nytewynd]

I think that any item bought this way should be indentified on the item. Either change the color of the item or at the least put a note on the description.

Also, I think players that sell any items should have their name colored one way to identify that they may be a farmer and/or ninja. Anyone that buys an item should have their name colored another distinct color to identify them as an idiot.