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

[Furor Planedefiler]

Cue the intro to Swordfish.

Alright boys and girls, it's time for a little theorizing and speculation.

Yantis and IGE are both in a fierce bidding war for Class specific sites. Why? Better question. Why now?

I'll tell you why.

SPECULATION: Sony in the near future is going to announce news of Character/AA/Item Sales.

Now, seeing as how suddenly both Yantis and IGE are offering 5 figures+ for these sites and based on the information that aftermarket item/character sales are HUGE business (IGE speculates that it will be a 1 Billion Dollar+ industry within the next 5 years - this is the entire MMORG market mind you), WHY ELSE would this be happening now? As soon as Sony legitimizes this enterprise, both of these companies will also be legitmized. Thus, he who has the most ad space is the big winner!

Why would Sony do this? Better question, WHY NOT? Is anybody surprised? Really? Other games already do this in one fashion or another, why should Sony be missing out on a cut of this fat pie? These are, afterall, their pixels being traded/sold.

Now, please SAVE the righteous indignation. I'm sure you're all appalled.

Anyone have any information? Any Sony reps care to comment? *snicker*

Cue the song from the Crying Game



On the other hand, maybe I'm just crazy!?

[DalamartheDark]

Saw this coming a long time ago, I'm suprised it took sony this long. EA did it for UO, and any game that has past it's prime will start reaching for new revenue any way possible.

I say good for those people who know how to take advantage of the system such as Yantis, it's the American way after all (and I'm not saying that as a bad thing).

The best analogy to this is basically "cashing out" near the end of a monopoly game. EQ is coming to an end, so Sony is letting go of all dignity and cashing out and running to EQ2.

[Furor Planedefiler]

If any of this comes to fruition, I can only laugh at the suckers that sold early. If and when Sony makes an announcement, the value of your site will double overnight, if not triple. *shakes head*

Thankfully, Sunmoon already got jacked. Couldn't have happened to a bigger dickhead and board nazi.

Now, I must duck out for the hitmen are most definitely on their way...

I'll be in Belize if anyone needs me.

P.P.S. PppppRrrrrrR

[khalysta]

I've always thought sony should run the character sales business. They should basically take the place of yantis and player auctions by providing a safe character sales service. Have a sony auction house where characters are put up for sale and sony takes a cut of the sales. In return the seller waves all rights to the account and the buyer gets full rights to it. You electronically sign forms saying such. Buying from the other places isnt necessarily safe. I've seen quite a few people buy and then get the character taken back by the original person. At least sales through sony would be legit for people that wanted to go that route.

[masteen]

Originally posted by Furor Planedefiler
P.P.S. PppppRrrrrrR

???

[Lalala]

why Sony would sell leveled up char fronm other players?

they can create a char from scratch put some good gear on it, a decent amount of AA and sell it. they can create an infinity of char to sell that way.

[Goanad]

Sony in the near future is going to announce news of Character/AA/Item Sales.

Even as jaded(meaning ambivalent as in dont give a rat's ass) as I am on the RL cash for Items thing, I would be disappointed if SOE did this.

I mean it would be like seeing the Pope in gay porn.

As to the value of message boards.....5 figures is simply shocking.

[Furor Planedefiler]

They will be selling other people's characters (yet, anyway). I figure they'll just have some naked, pre-leveled characters for sale. Just provide the name you want and the server you wish to play on. Presto!

After a few months I expect item sales, aa sales, etc... sky's the limit.

[Sorran]

(Longish reply, sorry

Another possibility may simply be competition with each other. I started hearing about all this when Yantis bought EQBeastlord and EQDruid - suddenly every class site was reporting offers from either Yantis or IGE or both. It may simply be that Yantis' acquiring of those two sites touched off a race to get their advertising up. IGE is hardly going to sit by while Yantis gets his adds over all the class boards.

Having said that, I wouldn't be too surprised if Sony DOES eventually start selling pp/items/etcc. I'll admit I don't personally like RL money being spent on this stuff, and it's not something I would do personally, I think it's pretty clear that fighting against it is a losing battle as long as the companies that run MMORPGs don't want to use the courts to try and shut people like Yantis and IGE down (for very good reason - there's no garauntee they'll win, and I'm pretty sure Sony et al are not keen to hurry the day when this issue finally goes up before a US court).

The problem I see with Sony selling pp/items etc is the following:

The items they sell really must come from the existing pool of equipment in the game. If they start actually creating items to sell, they will do far more damage to the game than Yantis, IGE and company have done combined. As much as I dislike them, those companies *usually* only sell stuff that enters the game world via legitmate means. Obviously, there is the occasional dupe or exploit, but most of the time it's "legitimate" items. However, if Sony only sells items that already exist in game, that means someone has to sell items to them first. Now if Sony starts offering money for plat and items, would any player *seriously* not take them up on that offer? I'll be honest, it would tempt me for sure, and there are many, many people less worried about selling items for RL money than I am . In that environment, I can see the "expensive" end of EQ in-game trading vanishing overnight. People would be *forced* to buy high-end stuff from Sony. I hope the developers would recognise the damage that would do to the game.

I just don't see a way for Sony to be selling (and buying) items for RL money without seriously screwing up the game.

One thing I can see SOE doing without many problems (and something that doesn't bother me nearly as much as buying plat and items) is auctioning accounts. Something like that is actually in SOE's best interests (a chance to retain revenue from a retiring player). They could either simply take a commission or simply buy accounts outright and resell them (less likely I think, as they probably wouldn't want to spend money on a character they'd never sell). They could use a bidding system to sell them, and then the owner gets to take legitmate control of the account, with never any fear the original account owner can yank the account back. I'd imagine Yantis' account auctions and playerauctions would vanish almost overnight, simply because people could buy a character in complete security and comfort from SOE.

Cheers,

Sorran.

[DalamartheDark]

Wonder who's going to be the new owner of this board...

Dont give in to them furor!! =/

[kudos]

I cant help but laugh. Sell your characters now before its too late and you cant sell shit when you retire. The appocalypse has finally come.

[Ravensign]

I think Sony is holding off on this until they need it. Right now, with no immediate threat, they are probably better off to just keep turning a blind eye to Yantis and IGE.

I think that when/if the sub numbers start to wane, from WoW or just burnout of the playerbase, or whatever, they would spring this to help mitigate the lost revenue and capture the "cheat code - skip ahead" players.

[Goanad]

Decent point sorran. I think introducing plat and items created from basically thin air would obliterate economies already under stress and trying to rebound from recent sploits.

Naked characters, as Furor mentioned, are more likely. I'm sure that they have much less potential to mess with resource allocation mechanisms ingame.

What a dead giveaway though. Some level 65 with XXX AA's comes strolling in with a centishortsword $$$.....wonder where he came from

[Scuba Steve]

Where do Halle Berry's boobies fit into the plot?

[Kilivek]

they'll use her as their head advertiser