Sony About to Drop a Bombshell? *Maestro, Music Please*

[GaliemVaelant]

I've been hearing for a long time that SoE will start selling plat themselves soon. Who knows? I figured Yantis and IGE are going after websites as a way out.

Basically, if SoE were to squash their current business, they would have a huge network of gaming websites to exploit in whatever way they thing will make them money.

One way you'll see a link to My Super Sales on the EQ homepage, and the other way you'll see a link to porn on Monkly Business. The difference? Well, they're both smut links, but in one scenario the good guys win.

[Worfless]

Originally posted by GaliemVaelant
I've been hearing for a long time that SoE will start selling plat themselves soon. Who knows? I figured Yantis and IGE are going after websites as a way out.

Basically, if SoE were to squash their current business, they would have a huge network of gaming websites to exploit in whatever way they thing will make them money.

One way you'll see a link to My Super Sales on the EQ homepage, and the other way you'll see a link to porn on Monkly Business. The difference? Well, they're both smut links, but in one scenario the good guys win.

i can only hope the good guys are us and winning means the porn

[Gahid]

Most of the arguements presented here are extremely foolish ones.

I read through the first 9 pages and gave up; so it's possibly some of my points were covered:

First of all, if SoE were to begin selling characters they would want to make as much money as possible. Agreed? Good. Now on to my second point: people who continue to play EQ for 2+ years at a consistant basis remain noobies because they cannot stick with a single character. Maybe they have one character who gets to 56...followed by them quitting. I have a RL friend who I do not consider to be much of an EQ player who recently leveled his Shaman to 63, and guess what? Now he's rerolling as a Paladin.

It's basic economics. Sony wants you to keep playing; and why do you keep playing? Because of people like Feror and the rest of FoH. Even though someone who picks up EQ today doesn't have a chance in hell of ever seeing Quarm doesn't mean they wont try.

So to keep their players playing (including the Ebay ones) Sony has to keep dangling the carrot in front of their faces. If they let you buy a level 65 time geared character you will quit within a month. If they let you buy a level 55 character with average innately no drop gear you'll keep striving. If Sony played their cards right they would sell plat, and lots of it. I can see it now - $10 for 1k instantly; $150 for 25k; $500 for 500k platinum. It doesn't matter, and do you know why? The market will expand for the influx of plat. And you'll always have levels 56-65 and aa's 1-650 to worry about (650 based on an educated guess of the number of AA for full GoD). And do you know the best part? The ebays would probably go through ten characters before they saw something shiny on the floor and got distracted.

As long as Sony does not introduce buying AA, no drop gear, or the hard levels of EQ the ebays will keep coming.

Do you want to hear the best part now?

We would get customer service.

Now that it costs them a potential lawsuit, SoE will maintain their servers with strict certainty. Compitant GMs will be hired to make sure people who lose things get them back.
In response to someone's comment about servers crashing : I would like to see you prove you lost a BoC when the servers crashed. Your logs aren't trustable, as they can be easily reproduced. Sony doesn't have the logs, because the servers crashed. If they did, you'd have your BoC. In fact, if you could prove it, they would most likely just give you a BoC and a polite "We're sorry we suxx0r omg hahaz!!1".

If you think IGE, ebay, or any other auction site is going to pose a threat then please consider that Sony has extremely lax rules on ebaying right now. If they did a crackdown they could easily eliminate it.



On a completely seperate note I must ask: Has SoE offered you $$ to do things for them Furor? Your own mouth is the greatest advertisement of all. You influence the actions of thousands of people.

Shit, Sony should sponser influential EQ players. If, say, you began claiming the beta for WoW make it look as if it is the shittiest game of all time and that the new tribute system completely revolutionized Everquest, as well as a new team of likeable supermodel irl (omgz0r!!) GMs, then I bet you could make thousands of people continue playing Everquest and never touch the other game.

You should sell out.

I'm sorry for my terrible paragraph structure - this was quite a ramble and lacked a predestination.

[GaliemVaelant]

I serverely doubt SoE would ever sell characters , because it would... Well, it would be outright stupid. The whole point of the game is developing your character.

I do not doubt for even one second that they would sell platinum. Why? Because it's a resource they can sell, which requires absolutely no real life resources to make or distribute.

See, picture this:

Joe player buys 10k plat from the SoE store. A GM or whatever logs in, meets the player, and types /summon 10000 0 0 0

Let's say the player spent $50

Money SoE made: $50
Money SoE spent to make it: $0

See how that would be smart?

Not that it would be a good thing, mind you, but think about it...

If they wanted to drive Yantis out of business, this would be the only way. They sell plat for a lower price than Yantis could ever hope to, and Yantis goes under. After that, they raise the price, and maybe later even say "It was a bad idea," and stop the whole thing.

Why would they have to do this to stop Yantis? Well, let's say more generally "To stop the sale of in game currency" So long as folks can make money doing it, they will find a way. It doesn't really matter if they can be banned, sued, or even go to jail. If there's a market for it, and incompetent idiots are willing to part with their money for it, it WILL happen.

Thus, they have to either make it completely unprofitable, or undercut the Yantises out there.

Then again, I don't really expect that they'll do anything. Most likely, nothing will happen, nothing will change on that front, and if anything it will become more and more commonplace in newer games until we all dislike it, but don;t even talk about it.

BTW, yes, the good guys are us, and porn is good 8)

[Gahid]

You are aware characters are free money too, right? And the ability to level from 1-55 instantly would increase the number of new players, as well as support noob twinkers who want to sink money into EQ.

[GaliemVaelant]

This is true, and EQ is turning more and more into a sort of virtual disneyland, but nonetheless, it wouldn't be wise of them at all to sell characters.

Granted, it takes practically no time to make 50 nowadays, and the previously existing notion that level 50+ players know how to play the game is no longer valid in all cases. Granted, this is sadly drifting from being valid in some cases to being valid in most cases.

Nonetheless, the time it takes to level a character is time you spent paying your subscription fee. Even if it's only a couple days, that's a couple days you paid for. For them to give up that time spent playing, they would be costing themselves something.

If they sold plat, however, the in game economy would shift with the ease plat would come into the world. The most negative effect of this would be that if they didn't keep a tight fist on it (set a hard cap to how much plat can be sold per month perhaps?), the economy would begin to almost require you to buy plat to keep up.

Also, selling plat would hurt them in a way, considering the time it takes to get it, but considering that plat must be sold more often than characters (considering the time it takes to level a character to a respectable level as compared to the time it takes to get 10k plat), they wouldn't hurt themselves much more there than they are already being hurt.

An unlimitted supply of pre leveled characters to be bought by players would be very very bad for them, though.

So it seems to me, anyway.

Now MAYBE we'll see something like "Spend $50 and get a level 25 character with some gear" thing aimed at new players, but I doubt they'd even do that. A person's time as a newbie is as important to them in getting someone hooked on the game as it is to the player so they learn the most basic things before leaving Gfay or where-have-you.

[Gahid]

I meant to suggest a new server where you can buy stuff. That way all the ebays could flock to it and be all "mi ePenix is teh biggerest then urs!!!!!11 haha omg lolz0r u r teh not sell house yet!"

[AngryGerbil]

I suppose there is no way to get the actual numbers, but I'd wager that the number of people willing to level from 1-50+ on their own time, (and spend as much of that time as needed) (AKA: casual gamers) outweighs the number of people willing to sink more cash into the game to get some items. I might be wrong, but the monthly fee is quite enough for most people. If you start giving Sam Deathwalker everything under the sun for a price, sure you'll make a few bucks from Sammy and people like him, but you'll make the game far less desireable to people who don't want to pay money for items. And I think in the long run, this will hurt you.

[Gahid]

However, I don't think it would deter many people from playing EQ.

And right now I'm viewing future new users as unexistant. Sony has been trying to make the game more enjoyable for them, but realistically the system itself is so hard to understand that any number of pop ups will save a true noobie from enjoying the game. Personally, I could not imagine starting from scratch with no knowledge of the game and no friends to guide me along. At least these days - but back when EQ first came out there was little else to choose from (especially if you value those graphics and mmorpg feel).

[AngryGerbil]

Personally, I could not imagine starting from scratch with no knowledge of the game and no friends to guide me along.

Now I want them to do this just to see what happens. You might be right, and actually, I'm inclined to agree with you, that is, until my brother started playing EQ.

My brother is Mr. Jock Coolguy. I've always been the geekier one in the family, so it is natural that I listen to NIN and play EQ. But for HIM to play EQ? Would never happen. Hell he doesn't even play minesweeper, or even know how to for that matter. I had to see it with my own eyes. 3 months ago he bought the game and rolled a Beastlord on some backwater server, and he still plays every night to this day. Hell, I played through and quit this game before he ever even heard of it.

Based on that alone, I think there HAS to be a larger contingent of newer and casual EQers than we think. ("We" being people who even know that this site exists).

There is enough reason for Sony to do this and there is enough reason for them not to. I'd just be impressed if they had the balls to.

[Snagglepuss]

speaking as a former trader (acel on veeshan), i would just like to give props to yantis and anyone else who made it big. i made around $8,000 off ebay over a several year period, but if I had been working instead of playing EQ, I probably would have made like 30 grand haha. but, it did get me interested in a career in finance, so it's all good!

[Gahid]

If I was a mod I'd ban you snagglepuss ;p Luckily I'm not, and that choice is not mine.

However, I ask you this:

Does someone completely new to EQ even care that you can buy characters off Sony?



I mean, I personally care. I know so many people these days who are guided through EQ with training wheels that they never learn what the game is really all about (before you raid). Buying a level 55 character and learning from there is a noobies loss at sony's benefit - and when has that ever bothered Sony?

[Affinity]

I didnt read every post.. but about how much does Yantis make a year?

[Gahid]

I doubt he'd be willing to release that information to the public.

However - more then me? A lot? Many dollar bills?

I honestly have no idea. But I don't want to hear the voice of reason while I'm ranting.

[findar]

why should he be banned?

proud he made money from this game?

id wager a good lot of people on this board have sold an item or two, or plat, or an account and made money from it.