Station Exchange White Paper

[Smed]

Originally Posted by Maxxius

So from my understanding, for a full year SOE made abut 1/4 million dollars off the exchange. Had you added only 1,000 more subscribers for the year you would have made about the same.

It seems to me you would make more money working on the quality of the products you are involved in rather than trying to whore off secondary pixel sales. You will never generate the money companies like IGE do for several reasons. First IGE pretty much "sweatshops" and second, the "blackmarket" will always undercut the "official" market.

Nor did we ever intend to get into the same business that IGE is in. It's not one we like. Keep in mind, we have reduced the farming related CS issues from 40% of our CS petitions to more like 10%

Smed

[Mkopec1]

I dont know if its been stated yet, but dont forget that the whole reason for buying something in game is to cheat the system. It is no longer enticing to purchase in game items or money because its legal to do within the confines of the game rules.

So in a game like this, your essentially denying the "honest" players out of their "supposed" fair game, and you screw the guy wanting to buy some stuff to get ahead and cheat.

[kedwyn]

I can certainly see why SOE and other MMO developers are doing this and will do this. Why should IGE or some chinese farmer make money off their game? Especially when they can act as the middle man for their own shit, make some coin to boot and cut the other ass hats out of the market totally.

Its a fact of life that people spend money for virtual items. Many dont' like it but its not going away. I like the current implementation of seperate servers although I'm not sure how much longer games will do that. Sure it will drive some players out of the game, so be it. I honestly couldn't give a shit if some jack ass farmed for 2 weeks to get the gold to buy XYZ or paid $100 US on Ebay.

Ass hats / shitty players will still be just that. Nothing changes.

[Maxxius]

Originally Posted by Smed

Nor did we ever intend to get into the same business that IGE is in. It's not one we like. Keep in mind, we have reduced the farming related CS issues from 40% of our CS petitions to more like 10%

Smed

Well of course you reduced the number of farming related issues, simply because you now sanction it. And on the other hand I suspect you alienated many potential customers too, myself included.

I know you can't stop the farming. All you can do is make their lives miserable. As long as there is demand, there will be suppliers. But trying to snag a few bucks off it, and even sanctioning it does more harm to the genre than good. Now let's create games that don't have entertaining as the focal point but rather lets create worlds where real cash is generated over pixels, making game development issues even dependent on that. I deal with that enough in real life, I don't need to deal with it in a silly game.

[Requiem]

I'm interested in opinions on this board.

My opinion is that you should read your PMs.

[Vali]

Originally Posted by Mkopec1

I dont know if its been stated yet, but dont forget that the whole reason for buying something in game is to cheat the system. It is no longer enticing to purchase in game items or money because its legal to do within the confines of the game rules.

So in a game like this, your essentially denying the "honest" players out of their "supposed" fair game, and you screw the guy wanting to buy some stuff to get ahead and cheat.

I dont agree. I actually like the station exchange, as an idea.. as a whole.

First we have to realize the no outside commerce goal is idealistic, unpractical, and just not going to happen without serious game mechanic changes. Your game has money? Someone is going to sell it, and someone is going to buy it.

But if you create servers where you allow this kind of activity, hopefully you can attract players who wish to participate in this manner. Hopefully you keep them off the servers with honest players. Even if your only able to mitigate a quarter of the buyers and sellers on the honest servers.... wouldn't that still be a step in the right direction for the economy?

Ya cant stop it. But just like level caps and no drop flags for gear, I see this as another way to help the economy.

Players who wish to play without buying and selling at least have servers with a smaller market (I hope, in theory its sound). Players who wish to buy and sell have servers where they can trade safely. The complany makes a little extra cash and can monitor the outside market. Win, win, win.

-V

[Vali]

Originally Posted by Maxxius

I know you can't stop the farming. All you can do is make their lives miserable. As long as there is demand, there will be suppliers.

Don't they still do this on servers where there is no station exchange?

Encourage folks that wish to buy/sell to go to servers where its allowed. Keep em off the servers where it isn't.

Does this not happen??

-V

[voodoo13]

Just bring back my pre-cu so I can have a good game to play.

[Kaylena]

"We said at the start that we would keep it on separate servers, and we intend to keep that promise. In the future we will include some form of Exchange in some of our games, although we are leaning towards only allowing certain types of non-game impacting items to be sold."

For now, I'll just make these points and raise these questions:

The key points to this answer by Smed is a promise to keep it on separate servers. However, that's somewhat deceiving because initially you were allowed to transfer to these servers with items and gold.

Which needless to say, did impact the game for many guilds. Many an unsavvy GL depleted entire banks that wound up for sale on the SE. Proof that when a player gets to decide between integrity or his wallet, 'honor' be damned.

Next...

My question to SoE is: Did the SE solve the 'blackmarket' problem or join it? Did the SE aim to solve it at all? Or, was the SE just about 'legitimatizing' the practice? One perusal of Google says that non-SE sales are alive and well.

I'm also looking at the chart on Page 3, with a peak in sales starting February, 2006. I'm curious. How did this announcement dated 1/30/2006 by Gallenite impact those figures, if any? Did those transfers also allow switching over to SE servers a second time? I'm sorry, I don't recall if it did, but I see a significant rise directly after this announcement and I'm wondering if that's a coincidence or something more.

[Maxxius]

Originally Posted by Vali

Don't they still do this on servers where there is no station exchange?

Encourage folks that wish to buy/sell to go to servers where its allowed. Keep em off the servers where it isn't.

Does this not happen??

-V

No. The sellers follow the markets. Just because some servers provide for it doesn't mean it isn't still happening on all the servers.

[cyanbane]

Smed,

I would be willing to say that probably 40-50% of sales at the larger plat selling sites is done through affiliate sites. Does SOE ever plan to create that option for Station Exchange that fansites could use as a source of ad revenue?

[Zuuljin]

Originally Posted by Maxxius

And on the other hand I suspect you alienated many potential customers too, myself included.

I dont see how an optional server that doesnt effect the normal servers (at least I havnt seen 1 single change for the negative, if anything there are LESS farmers on the servers from what i'v seen) alienates you. If the mere fact that they are trying to make money alientes you, then I suggest you stop purchasing EVERYTHING, and grow your own food, because ever company is in it to turn a profit.

All the doomsayers that said this was a horrible idea, that would cause an increase in farmers on normal servers, that this would leak onto the other servers, that said SOE would stop fighting botters/farmers on normal server were all dead wrong.

[Old Man Potter]

I wonder what the reaction would be in the sports community if Major League Baseball decided that it would allow their athletes to use steriods and corked bats for a "fee"? Would that be ok Smed? Would you like to watch the World Series knowing that some players were cheating with the approval of the league and others were not? What kind of "game" would that really be? Answer: it would be like watching the comedic farce of so-called "professional wrestling". Hey if you want to be the WWF of MMO's I suppose that's your call but when players can buy their way to the top please don't call Everquest2 a game.

Smed, instead of always bragging about how much money your services are making (you've done this before in previous business articles re: paid character transfers) why don't you just make a better all around MMO? Good MMO's don't need unethical money grubbing schemes like RMT that debase the sense of fairplay that is critical in competitive games. Good MMO's like WoW have 8 million subscribers worldwide compared to a few hundred thousand for your products.

Blizzard doesn't need the Station Exchange scheme to make money. They just made the very best MMO possible. It's about quality, professionalism and artistry. Something that SOE over the years has proven they care little about. If only you could put the integrity of your games over short term profits.

[Gnome Eater]

Smed, thanks a lot for posting this. I am very satisfied with the approach of separate servers for people who wish to have the ability to purchase gold, because that allows people who enjoy that type of activity freedom to be on such a server, and everyone else can stay away from there.

Since you started a dialogue, I wanted to ask a hard question point blank. If you wanted to deal with the problem of gold farming, you are targetting the wrong people - instead of banning gold farmers, simply ban anyone who is caught buying gold. If a ban is too brutal, start with a rough suspension, then ban at the second offense.

This alone will kill gold farming, since going after the provider won't really do anything, as the gold farming accounts are tipically expendable.

Can you expand on why this is not a viable approach?

[Miele]

Originally Posted by Smed

...
What kinds of things could I imagine in the future? No sub fee games with a lot of content creation options that players can choose to buy.. stuff that doesn't impact the game itself. I think that could be a very reasonable tradeoff in future games. Do you really care if somebody buys a hat that makes their character look different? Probably not. But you do care if you can by the magic sword of buttkicking and use it in PVP. There are lines that are probably reasonable to draw and we'll see how they go.

Smed

This means that "fluff stuff" trades will be involving RMT, but other more gameplay relevant items will not?
If so I don't see how it would be an issue in today games as well, as long as it's only cosmetic stuff.