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In my professional opinion as an MBA, you succeeded in generating a tiny revenue stream while creating a risk that has far reaching effects across your player bases' & potential future user psyches. You were already on tenuous ground with many of the PR/design blunders of Everquest, the extremely poor launch and game design of EQ2 1.0, and Sony's waning popular opinion across all of its business segments. Those people who stuck with EQ2 after WoW's launch were your die-hard fans--the people who spread popular support and word of mouth. The moment you disenfranchised your hardcore base you opened yourself to a world of risk. However, since the risk is long-term and not necessarily quantifiable or observable short-term, I am assuming the plan went ahead due to the common fallacy of short term revenue generation.
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In my professional opinion as a guy on the intra-nets, from the opinions we see when polls are taken about RMT, they could argue there was more risk in continuing (pretending?) to fight it than opening SE.
I'll always look for games where time/skill are the only "allowable" tools for progression, but it seems like a lot of people are in the "I have a life so I'll just buy gold and everyone's happy" camp.
I'll grant one thing, it didn't seem like much revenue for the effort/publicity that went into it.
