Station Exchange White Paper

[Obtenor]

$274,083

Probably not that much, considering that

1) Only 25% of the servers were participating
2) It's not WoW and their 8 million subscribers, but, what 200k, 150k tops?.

[Suineg]

Originally Posted by Trebla

Except the example you give doesn't deal with the inherent competitive nature of MMOs... instead, you're entering a race of just Honda Accords, but you managed to hide a '69 Camaro inside that body.

So no matter what method you used to get into that race (bribing the officials, doing it on the sly) you're still taking a competitive advantage. And your defense is that it's ok to do this because everyone else could too?

Not at all. You are putting qualities on it that aren't there. Trust me there is a much more competitive nature in racing than there is in an MMO to the point some people won't tell you what they did to go fast at all.

You are assuming that since you are competitive and feel that someone else that buys their way to the top or middle is cheating that everyone else does. Not the case at all. Where do you draw the line? Is buyng lvl 60's in a lvl 70 game acceptable? Does that make it less "cheating" since you still have to work a little to catch up?

You can't put qualifiers on it this topic is a black and white does the future of MMO's include buying and selling legitimately or will we always consider that cheating. If I recall correctly UO has been selling premade characters with certain cookie cutter skills for years now and noone cares. That is the actual company which apalls me due to the fact they can make the game practically revolve around that and it will mean you have to pay them more then just the game to even be able to function. Paying for another persons time spent working on a game to me isn't as far fetched.

[Fuvi]

Originally Posted by Nattac

2000 dollars an a instant. Completely different imo

Only if you buy the character and then delete it.

If you play the character for ~500 hours it would be about the same cost per hour as movies.

[Vali]

The part Im having a hard time with is -

If it benefits the people that don't like buying and selling.

If it benefits the people that do like buying and selling.


Whats the problem?

Its not like your selling your sisters virginity here.

-V

[Maxxius]

Originally Posted by Fuvi

Domestic Box Office Increases in 2006 - ComingSoon.net

Americans and Canadians spent $9.13 billion to watch movies in theatres in 2006 and $1.69 billion of that on Sony movies.

After 80-180 minutes poof it's gone, all you have is the fun of watching the movie and the memories. Does it boggle your mind that they wouldn't spend that money on tangible goods instead?

Difference is you aren't paying $2,000 a pop for a movie, no matter how dam good it is. Plus if you are equating it to time spent per cost, well hells bells start a level 1 on your own and level it up, more bang for your buck then no?

[Maxxius]

Originally Posted by Archeiron

Do you retain all of your wealth as consumable goods? No, huh....
You should be used to the idea that the content of electronic storage is valuable by now.

Oh come on get a grip, please don't compare true wealth with pixels in a silly game.

[Badass]

Originally Posted by Maxxius

Oh come on get a grip, please don't compare true wealth with pixels in a silly game.

Dude. Just...stop. Go do a quest or something and let people post who have a fucking clue as to what they are talking about.

[Fuvi]

Originally Posted by Maxxius

Difference is you aren't paying $2,000 a pop for a movie, no matter how dam good it is. Plus if you are equating it to time spent per cost, well hells bells start a level 1 on your own and level it up, more bang for your buck then no?

People spend money on entertainment because they think it will be fun.

If levelling un-twinked with a small number of people likely to group with you is appealing then you only have to purchase the game from a brick and mortar or online store. New game (Vanguard), new servers (EQ Progression, WoW) and new expansions (EQ, EQ2, WoW) give players a chance to level untwinked with a large(r) group of players.

If someone is having fun crafting, harvesting, questing and/or killing then they are unlikely to spend cash on the game. The reason they will spend money is because they think they will have more fun if they had more free time outside of the game and still had potions on raids, had a fast horse, could do things an untwinked group could do with a twinked duo or because they only want to raid and buy a character instead of levelling one.

Whether the Pet Dragon they bought is tangible or not has little bearing on fun, the money I spent last year on Cable TV, a golf membership and a trip to the Maritimes will provide me with no benefit this year, they all went poof and all I have left is memories. If someone thinks playing a high end character is more fun than golf then it would make sense for them to spend the money on Station Exchange instead of on the links.

[Trebla]

Originally Posted by Suineg

You are assuming that since you are competitive and feel that someone else that buys their way to the top or middle is cheating that everyone else does. Not the case at all.

If I'm competing against you, and you do something outside the rules of the game (Whether it's racing, MMOs or Monopoly) that gives you a competitive advantage, then you're cheating against me. I could care less if you don't think you're competing against me, all I care is that I'm competing against you.

And yes, I'm competing against you. Even if we're on different servers, I'm trying to get my guild to win encounters first, have the beefiest warriors and most pimped out Priests, etc. And you're willing to break the rules to do these things while I'm not. (Note: this paragraph is theoretical; first and second person perspectives are used for clarity... third would have been more appropriate).

[Maxxius]

Originally Posted by Badass

Dude. Just...stop. Go do a quest or something and let people post who have a fucking clue as to what they are talking about.

Yeah you are right dumbass, lets compare a stored toon in a developers' server, completely owned by him and pretty much deletable at will with an electronic bank statement. Yeah you have a clue.

[Maxxius]

Originally Posted by Fuvi

Whether the Pet Dragon they bought is tangible or not has little bearing on fun, the money I spent last year on Cable TV, a golf membership and a trip to the Maritimes will provide me with no benefit this year, they all went poof and all I have left is memories. If someone thinks playing a high end character is more fun than golf then it would make sense for them to spend the money on Station Exchange instead of on the links.

Fuvi yes all things are relative in the long run. If a person wants to be a retard and spend $2,000 dollars buying a deletable toon so be it. But please I am going to call him a dumbass for doing so, either here or in person. But don't compare that with GROSS spendings on movies.

[Pinski]

Originally Posted by Trebla

If I'm competing against you, and you do something outside the rules of the game (Whether it's racing, MMOs or Monopoly) that gives you a competitive advantage, then you're cheating against me. I could care less if you don't think you're competing against me, all I care is that I'm competing against you.

And yes, I'm competing against you. Even if we're on different servers, I'm trying to get my guild to win encounters first, have the beefiest warriors and most pimped out Priests, etc. And you're willing to break the rules to do these things while I'm not. (Note: this paragraph is theoretical; first and second person perspectives are used for clarity... third would have been more appropriate).

That's why those not on the SE-Enabled servers just completely ignore them and say, so? We don't really care about you guys because you have outside advantages that aren't available to us in a legal fashion. At least, that's how the raid community of EQ2 thinks, we just don't care about people on that server and how they are doing.

[Welwood]

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[Trebla]

Originally Posted by Welwood

Me personally, I couldn't care less if someone ebayed 5 billion credits/gold/gil as it really has no effect on my gameplay at all. I doesn't matter at all to me if someone got a Sword of Pwn from farming crap in-game all day long or from farming their job all day long. Unless they were an obvious chinese farmer with no english or game skills walking around with a SoP I would never know, and even if they did have it, if they were so unskilled that I would notice they ebayed it wouldn't matter what they had on them.

What would you say if you wanted the Sword of Pwn, but the only way to get it was to buy it from third-party farmers because they monopolized the spawn spot 24/7? That still has no effect on your gameplay?

[Samflam]

Some well known douche on my WoW server sold his account for 2 grand and then one of his faggot friends reported the guy who bought it.
Deleted.