Well, I was thinking about this today and I think I have an answer to ebay. This might be difficult to implement but I think it will deal with ebay issues.

I was thinking about how to address ebay and the fact that some people will do it and the cost of stopping it means dedicating someone to enforcing the rules and canceling accounts. This is negative from all points of view. That is you have a demand and that demand is not being met by SoE. So like gambling in real life, the answer is to provide a forum for exhange of game items for what I will call SoE dollars(SoEd).

The concept is based on a new player buying SoEd with a credit card and 1 SoEd could be spent on game items or to buy game time. That is you could buy SoEd and purchase a month of game time with them. So a new player could gear up and not spend time on camping items and a player that wanted to have free game play could farm plat or items to pay for the game time.

The implementation would consist of an in game vendor that would interface with a web page that has offers for certain items. A player could post on this web page an offer of 2kp for 1 SoEd. This list would be visable in game while visting this vendor(s) and you could sell item(plat) to the vendor for SoEd. Now the SoEd exhanged could be used to purchase game time OR other items on the web board. You could not get your money(real dollars billed to a credit card) back once spent on SoEd. Note that an offer for an item would have to be made first and someone in game would meet the offer. A more complex version would have items offered but I think implementation would be too complicated.

Well, what do you think?

Why bother with SOEd? You already have plat as a medium of exchange, and adding SOEd just means you are adding two new conversion rates: dollars to SOEd, and SOEd to plat.

You aren't really hiding the fact that you're buying gear and plat for dollars by using SOEd. Why not do it directly?

Somewhere someone made a screenie of just this....

where you loot a mob and a range of options of loot come up with their $ costs. I will try to find it.

Somewhere someone made a screenie of just this....

where you loot a mob and a range of options of loot come up with their $ costs. I will try to find it.

I remember that screenshot. :) It was made when Stormhammer was started.

That was a great pic. If I remember right there was even a credit card option on the screen :)

I think they ought to let you test drive a character before you buy it just to see if you like it. If you bring it back with some dents and scratches I'm sure it wouldn't be a problem ;).

Rentals would be good too. Guilds should be able to hire the cleric or warrior they need for that important flagging raid. Need a powerlevel? Druids come cheap and ready to use.

UO has an advanced character service where you can pay to have a gm advance like 5 skills to 80-85 range and max stats. Would probably be the equivilant of a level 45ish EQ character (in character development terms only).

http://support.uo.com/advancedcharacter.html

I remember that screen also. hehe. will that loot option be MC, Visa or PayPal? As for test driving, they give the free 30 day trials out like crazy. I think I have recieved at least a half dozen of them without asking for one. All they need to do now is make the starting level 45 and you are all set since you could use all the clicky gear and group with your lv 65 PLers.

Why bother with SOEd? You already have plat as a medium of exchange, and adding SOEd just means you are adding two new conversion rates: dollars to SOEd, and SOEd to plat.

You aren't really hiding the fact that you're buying gear and plat for dollars by using SOEd. Why not do it directly?

-> The basic idea would be to have a method to pay for your monthly eq bill but since you could not remove money from this system it would make it very difficult for individuals to live off this.

Somewhere someone made a screenie of just this....

where you loot a mob and a range of options of loot come up with their $ costs. I will try to find it.

-> Paying to loot an item is not what I meant.

[QUOTE=Ndainye]UO has an advanced character service where you can pay to have a gm advance like 5 skills to 80-85 range and max stats. Would probably be the equivilant of a level 45ish EQ character (in character development terms only).
[QUOTE]

-> I dislike the idea of creating a high level character out of nothing but if you had a character, you could have one created that is the same level... might be ok but it goes beyond the scope of what I am proposing. Also trading characters or accounts goes way beyond the intent of this trading method but implementation would be similar.

-> The basic idea would be to have a method to pay for your monthly eq bill but since you could not remove money from this system it would make it very difficult for individuals to live off this.


Nobody removes money from the system now. All the plat and items in the game stay in the game, and all the RL money stays outside the game. RL money changes hands outside the game, causing plat or items in the game to change hands inside the game.

You are merely adding another medium of exchange to this. Perhaps two levels. RL money changes hands outside the game, causing SOEd to change hands inside the game, which in turn causes plat or items to change hands inside the game.

Moreover, I don't see anything in your system that makes it any more difficult for individuals to live off this. As I note above, no one makes a living at removing money from EQ now.

Furthermore, you are cutting off your nose to spite your face. If the selling of equipment and plat in return for RL dollars is a bad thing for the game, SOE doing it instead of Yantis doesn't make it any better. In fact, since SOE would be doing it on a larger scale, and any current impediments to such trafficking would be removed, the net effect would be far worse.

/agree Scirocco

Nobody removes money from the system now.

I do not understand this statement. The "system" is the method I suggested and not the current eq environment.

RL money enters the game in the form of monthly fees... and will not exit unless SoEd is ebayed. However this concept is intended to lower the value of plat. A parallel would be when alchol was legalized or after cocaine was made illegal. There was a price difference and the issue is at what point will plat farmers/item farmers give up because the return versus time input(risk) is too low(too high for the risk).

Individuals would, I think, have a more difficult time living off this because the profit margins would be reduced. That is the value of plat, for example, is 50 cents buy and 1 dollar sell value per kp. In other words, a supply and demand would be created and competition would drive down the "value" of plat.

If redistributing items and plat to newbie players is "bad" for the game or considered an "externality" then the value of sanctioning versus the cost of enforcing the rules should be taken in to consideration.

I wanted to add that this would reduce the cost of items if they were common enough and available enough(droppables) then a new player/casual player could gear up quicker. The impediment of "trafficing" as mentioned would be removed. I can not answer if this would be better for the game or not but that question is one that SoE would have to decide on. The general idea is regulation versus making an activity "illegal". Making this activity part of the EULA will allow newbies to level up quicker and not forcing them to focus on camping equip while leveling to the point where they can join a raiding guild sooner or just play if their time is very limited.

As a final note, SoEd would be similar to a ride ticket that one would buy at an amusement park for the purpose of riding the rides. If you bought the ticket, the money would not be returned if not used but could but given to another. However, if you left the park, you would lose the value of those tickets. The parallel would be if someone sold a charater for SoEd, they would lose that SoEd when the account was transered. They "left the park" or their account was canceled and then reistated if sold on this "system" and any existing SoEd would be removed from the system. In other words, SoEd would allow others to essentially give away their account. I am not sure how this would be accounted for by the accountants... Items sold would recieve SoEd and these "tickets" would be considered nontransferable(like football tickets) and SoE would not have to honor them if ebayed.

Well, I enjoy the debate. Please make futher comments. =)

The picture in question:

http://fohguild.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6445