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

[Kolle]

http://stationexchange.station.sony.com/

Q. What is Station Exchange?

A. Station Exchange is the official Sony Online Entertainment auction service that provides players a secure method of buying and selling the right to use in game coin, items and characters in accordance with SOE’s license agreement, rules and guidelines.

This service provides players a way to take part in this growing secondary market in a more secure manner. Station Exchange is currently scheduled to launch at the end of June.



Q. Why are you offering this service?

A. EverQuest II is a massive game, with much to see and do. Some players want to experience as many different aspects of the game as possible, but may not have enough time to play multiple character types.

Other players with the time and skills to devote to the game will find new avenues of reward opening to them within the game.



Q. How is this going to work?

A. A player will opt to sell the use of something within the game using the in-game email system, effectively removing it from the game world. Next the player will go to the Station Exchange web site and list the item into an auction. Other players will then bid on the goods.

Once a winning bidder is determined, the winner will receive the item and the seller will receive the money from the winning bid less a service charge.



Q. How will this affect me as a player?

A. We will be introducing new Exchange-enabled servers. Over time, we will look at possibly enabling Station Exchange on current servers based on the desires and activities of our communities.

Players who wish to join an Exchange server will be given an opportunity to transfer one or more characters to that server, at no charge for the transfer, when the server goes live.




---------



Letter from Smed:

John Smedley Discusses Station Exchange

Hello Everyone,

We have a big announcement coming out in the press in the next day, and I wanted to make sure you heard it from me directly rather than reading an article about it.

Starting in late June, SOE will begin offering a new service called Station Exchange. This secure service will allow EverQuest II players on specific servers to buy and sell the right to use items, coin and characters. To be clear, all we are doing is facilitating these transactions. We are NOT in the business of selling virtual goods ourselves.

I'm sure this is going to come as a shock to many of you, since for the past six years, we have held the line in not allowing these sorts of things to occur. I'd like to explain the primary drivers for this change from our perspective:

First: It's obvious that a large percentage of our players either don't mind this activity or actively participate in it. We've done a fair amount of homework on this subject, and we believe this is a $200 million dollar market worldwide, and there are a huge number of our players taking part in the buying and selling of virtual goods. We have conducted polls, and the vast majority of players either doesn?t care about it or would like to participate in it. We believe that by allowing this to happen on select servers, we can have a solution for both the many players who want to participate in this and for those who don?t.

Second: Dealing with fraudulent transactions of one type or another takes up roughly 40% of our customer service people's time. We have players calling us up or requesting in-game service for activities related to these sorts of transactions constantly, even though they are specifically disallowed by our EULA. You may ask why the percentage is that high when it's not allowed in the first place? The answer is simple. Many times, people in these situations aren't up front with us about what actually happened. "My sword disappeared from my inventory" comes to mind, when what actually happened is the player has sold the item to someone else. Our CS people have to take the time to investigate this claim because if something legitimately happened, we of course want to take care of the player's needs. We believe that by taking this course, we will free up a great number of resources to deal with other things for our players.

Third: We see this as a potentially interesting model for future games. If we came up with a game specifically designed around these sorts of transactions, it might be pretty cool. Online gaming is always evolving, and we?re going to see how a sanctioned exchange service shakes out in EQII. From our perspective, it's always wise to keep pushing the envelope.

With the big reasons we're doing this laid out, I'd like to now tell you about the process:

On Wednesday, you'll see some press about Station Exchange. After about a week, we will conduct an in-game poll that's going to ask whether you:

1) Want to play on an "Exchange enabled" server
2) Do not want to play on an "Exchange enabled" server
3) Don't really care

Based on the results of this poll, we will light up a certain amount of new servers that are specifically "Exchange enabled." If the percentage of players who want this service is high enough, we might consider converting some existing servers to "Exchange enabled." Players who want to play on those servers will have the opportunity to transfer over to the "Exchange enabled" servers for free on a one-time-only basis (but you can't ever move that character off these servers). We will, of course, let people who don't want to stay on an "Exchange enabled" server off with a free transfer.

I want to be clear here: We will be lighting up a few new servers that are specifically ?Exchange enabled,? and the number of existing servers we convert to ?Exchange enabled? will be based on how many people actually want to be on "Exchange enabled" servers.

In addition to the issues listed above, you may ask, "What about farming?" The simple answer to this is that we're going to continue to heavily enforce the rules of EQ II, and those rules don't permit players to monopolize spawns or in any way harm the play experience of another player. We will continue to enforce these rules, but we also think that by allowing for a legitimate way for players to buy and sell virtual goods among themselves, there will be fewer problems on the non-Exchange servers.

I realize this is a lot to think about, and I expect a pretty good debate to start on this subject. We welcome all your feedback, as it will help determine the future of this service. All I ask is that you consider the fact that we're really addressing this problem in the best possible way for all sides of this issue.


John Smedley
President, Sony Online Entertainment"

[Araxen]

'Tis a sad day....

[emmer]

TARREN MILL NEEDS REINFORCEMENTS!

[kcxiv]

was either them or yantis. I think most people seen it comming eventually.

[Kolle]

I honestly can't bash SoE for this considering reality. Companies are making assloads of money off their game and it does cause a lot of problems as mentioned above.

I figured this would happen...I'm wondering if others will do it too like Vanguard, DDO, etc...

[Ronne]

Fuck, guess it's time to try WoW.

[Samus Aran]

Originally posted by Araxen
'Tis a sad day....

Why? The customers get security and SOE gets a cut?

[Rune]

No. It's a sad day because SoE (and Blizzard) are too fucking lazy to get in there and cut this shit out at the source. They're not willing to take the initiative to hire people to look at logs in increments of 100's of platinum, or your currency of choice, and have corresponding bannings. They're too content to let it 'extend the life of their game' or whatever the fuck the current MMO management 101 philosophy is.

Instead they fold up and pretend that it's impossible to avoid this kind of corruption, and it's part and parcel of the system. It's not.

No one in big business is willing to take a stand and set an example, to be the shining light in the darkness. There are no ethics anymore, just bottom lines. This is yet another sign of this, as though we needed it.

That is why it is a sad day.

You stupid fuck.

[Samus Aran]

Originally posted by Rune
No. It's a sad day because SoE (and Blizzard) are too fucking lazy to get in there and cut this shit out at the source. They're not willing to take the initiative to hire people to look at logs in increments of 100's of platinum, or your currency of choice, and have corresponding bannings. They're too content to let it 'extend the life of their game' or whatever the fuck the current MMO management 101 philosophy is.

Instead they fold up and pretend that it's impossible to avoid this kind of corruption, and it's part and parcel of the system. It's not.

No one in big business is willing to take a stand and set an example, to be the shining light in the darkness. There are no ethics anymore, just bottom lines. This is yet another sign of this, as though we needed it.

That is why it is a sad day.

You stupid fuck.

Oh my so much rage. Did some ebayer rip you off?

The simple fact is, there's no way they can police the gargantuan amounts of transactions that happen on a day to day basis, and there's no guaranteed way to find people doing it. They'd have to significantly harm their profits(most likely resulting in a rate hike) and they might get a small fraction of the people who do this, in addition to legit people who simply mule and arrange loans or some shit.

So they took the route that they should have all along and are providing a place where people who want to trade and play in that kind of environment can do so. It's not like they're shoving this down the throats of players who don't want this going on.

[FooBar]

They're not willing to take the initiative to hire people to look at logs in increments of 100's of platinum, or your currency of choice, and have corresponding bannings.

You want to hire people whose sole purpose is to decrease revenue? You sound like an auditor.

[Dahlrek]

Oh please, it's not like SOE didn't just recently ban a couple hundred accounts for farming/botting. You should have seen IGE's EQ2 website after that... not a damn thing for sale.

The problem is, quite frankly, people WANT this service, and I can't blame SOE for wanting to cut down on the expensive CS supporting fraud victims or hunting down IGE's peons. That's a lot of money going out, when they can just support it secure in-game and line their pockets to boot. It just fucking makes sense.

All the same, I don't like it. Yes, cognitive dissonance, so sue me.

[Kolle]

I've been playing mmo's since '97 with UO and when I think about it, I could have made myself fucking rich by now considering how hardcore I play usually.

I always stayed away from it. I'm gonna watch this close and see how it goes and then think about it some more.


I think it was the smart move. I dunno how it will backfire. It might. But then again millions of dollars are being spent here so apparently a lot of players are perfectly fine with it.

[Kolle]

More infos from Moorgard:


"The news about Station Exchange is bound to be controversial. I'm not going to try to sell you on the idea or promote the service; most players in this genre already have an opinion on the subject, and there is little point in one side trying to win over the other.

What I do want to do, however, is make sure posters can respond to the facts of this service rather than base their reactions on emotion alone. So please keep the following things in mind before you praise or denounce Station Exchange:

Station Exchange will be launched on new servers. Think of them as special rules servers, and if you decide you don't want to play under those rules then you simply don't need to play there.

These servers allow player-to-player transactions only. SOE does not create virtual goods that we will be selling ourselves; we are only facilitating a secure transaction between players.

The EverQuest II team and our customer service staff will continue to enforce our licensing agreement and rules of conduct. Station Exchange is not a means to break the rules in order to farm cash or items. We will keep on banning farmers who break the rules on all our servers, including those with Station Exchange enabled.

Subscribers get one free character transfer to a Station Exchange server if they choose to use it. Characters, items, and coin cannot be transferred from a Station Exchange server to a non-Station Exchange server.

SOE is charging a nominal, nonrefundable listing fee, plus a percentage of the final sale.

Prices will be determined by the market. SOE will not be enforcing any kind of pricing guidelines.

SOE is establishing this service on its own, not in partnership with anyone else.


Ultimately, this is about giving our player base options. This wouldn't have been considered if it wasn't something that was so commonplace in online gaming. What we're doing is giving the players who want to engage in this activity a place to do it.
This service will be offered only to US players at this time. SOE will be looking to expand Station Exchange to the rest of the world in the future.

You can read some more specific details on the service at its official website. Please check out the FAQ section.

I realize this is a controversial subject, and there will be a lot of emotional reaction to it. I'm not going to argue with people who don't agree with this service, as disliking it is just as valid as wanting to take part in it. But please remember that this is entirely optional system. If you choose not to play on a Station Exchange server, you don't have to.
===========================
Moorgard
EverQuest II Community Guy"

[Kan]

who gives a flying fuck if someone is selling Plat/Gold. SoE did the smart thing and grabbed the market that is never going to go away. All these crys about companys needing to ban players who farm and sell the shit is fucking retarded, if you dont like it dont buy from them but i can guarantee you the majority of the people on this board hell majority who play online games have either sold or bought a char/item/money in the online community. Its just common sense for them to do this, why let the community have free reign over that when you can take a piece of it and control it to a degree its just smart buisness and SoE is a buisness.

[Zhakrin]

This is just a way for Sony to cut into the profits of IGE/Yantis.

1. it allows casual players to sell too, increasing the supply (therefore REDUCING the price, and profit of items)

2. Cuts the profit center of Playerauctions out of the IGE/Yantis balance sheet for EQ2. They charge a pretty-penny for listing fees and such on PA.

That being said, please, please,please don't make my server (Faydark) and ebay-server