| Is this supposed to mimic a SOE sanctioned player auctions site, or are they attempting to be the middle men in these market transactions as well? It seems like the only way they could effectively gaurntee safe transactions is if they are the party that's on the other end of the transfer, which seems to put the free market aspect of this deal in jeopardy. Unless they created some type of in game interfaces to facilitate this type of transfer, there'd be a lot of risk to still let the players handle the transfers themselves. I seriously doubt that they'd have the resources to hunt down every potential scam that went through their system due to letting the sellers trade directly with the buyers via the current trading infastructure in place.
Most of the difference in pricing that goes on in player auctions is related to percieved buyer security. If their system can put all sellers on a level playing field in terms of security, the first time seller who just wants to cash out can finally get a decent deal for his currency. It seems like the prices would also drop a bit in general, as the big time sellers don't have any excuse for their premium prices due to security being a non issue.
Unless they set up a auction-house type system, with paypal instead of gold, I see a lot of problems with what they're trying to offer. How can they claim security and reliability in these deals if all of the transfers would still be in the hands of the sellers? If not, are they going to hire their own massive team to provide the 24/7 service that a lot of the premium sellers offer? If they run their own team, what happens when a dupe outbreak comes and SOE, acting as the middle man, is sopping up all this excess that was put into the market?
However this plays out, it'll certainly play a huge role in the future of online selling for SOE games. I find it funny that they tote around the 1.x billion dollar number, when almost all of that comes from WoW and Lineage. | 