Well Fuck, SoE finally Did it...who will follow suit?

[Tuco]

afds

[Sylas]

Mythic taking a potshot at SOE over this is pretty comical. "Hi, our game is basically dead but at least we're not doing this! Come play our game please please!"

yeah, about as funny as EQ2 launch press release using the phrase "The 800-Pound Gorilla of Online Gaming Is Ready to Play"

What we all need to realize is that as these types of games continue to become more and more mainstream, the amount of RL money transactions is only going to increase. This not only makes the market bigger and thus increase the incentive for people to want to get into it, but it also makes it less and less possible to cut into the volume of these transactions.

Yeah ok so even tho the primary factor preventing those mainstream potential customers from buying your game (Other than 1. a Personal Computer, and 2. a Personal Computer that meets the massive PC req for EQ2) is the concept of a Monthly Recurring Fee, somehow after EQ2 gets over this little slump it's in right now, its not only going to tear down that barrier that prevents joe gamer from wanting to pay monthly to play a video game, they'll even be able to convince him to cheapen the experience by buying his way through it with items and gold sales? Oh wait this happens before or after EQ2 brings the mainstream audience into the market?

So, all of that being the case, isn't it better to try and make these transactions as safe as possible, and funnel at least a tiny bit of it into the game itself rather than lining Yantis's pockets?

IGE exists because of scammers and the fear that the secondary market was unsafe. It came in and set up shop just like SOE is claiming its going to do now. It operates exactly like any other legitimate business would, and had already made the transactions "as safe as possible."

What's more interesting will be after this service is live and SOE attempts to prevent IGE from operating. Legitimizing the market by charging for it already destroys what little leg they had to stand on in their EULA, and since they sanction the transactions I'm not entirely sure this doesn't qualify as a monopoly, clearly there's a conflict of interest for SOE here that's obvious, but forcing the competition out might be enough for the anti-trust lawyers to take a looksie and start defining all those questionable grey area's like ownership of Virtual Items.

[Iannis]

I can only imagine SOE might actually crack down on IGE, because now they're in direct competiton.

Buy from us for $50, then you get a GM to appear before you, /create it, and then thank you for using the Station!

Buy from Yantis for $20, then YOU'RE FUCKING BANNED!

Just need a few high profile idiotic actions, like banning every single person who willing or unwillingly has duped money in their bank accounts or something like they did with SW:G, and they'll topple Yantis!