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Sony's Brain Child: the station exchange and a comparison to another viewpoint
Rekindle
Member UncommonPosts: 1,206
For those looking for differences between SOE and Blizzard's game have a look at the stance of Blizzard on the sale of ingame propery for IRL $$ vs SOE. One company supports it and has encouraged it and the other feels its not good for the game, wrecks the economy and is not a good idea.
Below is a snipet I found from Blizzard;s site.
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It has come to our attention that certain individuals are selling Blizzard's in-game property for cash on auction sites such as eBay and on personal websites. The World of Warcraft Terms of Use clearly states that all of the content in World of Warcraft is the property of Blizzard, and Blizzard does not allow "in game" items to be sold for real money. Accordingly, Blizzard Entertainment will take any and all actions necessary to stop this behavior. Not only do we believe that it is illegal, but it also has the potential to damage the game economy and overall experience for the many thousands of others who play World of Warcraft for fun. In order to promote a fun and fair environment for all our customers, we are actively investigating those individuals who engage in this inappropriate activity and reserve the right to take legal action against these individuals to protect World of Warcraft for all those who "play by the rules." If you are found to be selling in-game property (such as coins, items, or characters), for real money, you will lose your characters and accounts, and Blizzard Entertainment reserves its right to pursue legal action against you as well.
We also want to remind potential buyers in the game to please refrain from buying in-game property with real money. We understand the temptation to purchase better items, but Blizzard, and not the seller, does own all in-game property. In addition, we feel that characters can find ample equipment and money within the game through their own adventuring and questing. Please understand that if you do purchase in-game property from sellers on eBay and personal sites, we may temporarily suspend your account, and at the very least, delete the offending items.
Thank you for understanding our position. Blizzard Entertainment is committed to maintaining the atmosphere of fair play and fun in World of Warcraft.
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EQ Fanbois, light your torches and flame away....the truth hurts.
Comments
right, PERSONALLY i dont like it either, but there are those that do, which is why they are making NEW servers for the service, they wont be changing the existing ones. and honeslty, i dont care how much they screw with theyre own damn economy on those servers because if they do its just their own fault for joining it in the frst place.
so this does two things:
a) keeps the people who like this sort of thing happy
b) keeps the people who like this thing separate from those that dont so that my economy doesnt get ruined by them.
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now that i've said that, to make you happy i'll say what you would have LIKED me to say judging by "light your torches and flame away EQ fanbois...the truth hurts"
ahem...
OMGZ!!!11oneone!!!!1two! blizard is such t3h n00b!!! i w@nt to be able to make m0neyz0rz on my items d00d! i d0nt c@re wh@ j00 think! its t3h ub3r 1337n3ss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Schutzbar - Human Warrior - Windrunner Alliance - World of Warcraft
Nihilanth - Kerra Paladin - Blackburrow - EverQuest II
XBL Gamertag - Eagle15GT
Great, now back up the statement and name the MMO that this has "runined the economy". Come on I'm waiting...Oh right it's never happened, it's just more propaganda aimed at their biggest competiter. Again Blizz spend less time worrying about what EQ2 is doing and more time figuring out how to run an MMO server
and let me add:
Go to ebay right now and see how many people are selling WoW tings. Then go to IGE and the 50 other sites. Now tell me, what exactly has Blizzard done to stop it?
As far as "fanbois" who is the blizzard fanboi, that felt the need to post something negative on a game they've never played? Who's the fanboi that still plays a game that is riddled with bugs, has added a miniscule amount of content and can barely play due to crappy servers, YET still defends the game rabidly...but I guess when the game has as many problems as WoW, gives you plent of time to talk about it since you can't play it.
If you really want to see the differences in the game, go to the server support forums, Bilzzard gets rid of everything over 2 days old and still is worse that EQ2's.
Blizzard doesn't allow it, and it happens evenly on all servers.
EQ2 allows it, and most of it happens on "selected servers". Which means less on normal servers.
I'd rather play on EQ2's "normal" servers.
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"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
-- Ken Olson, chairman of Digital Equipment Corp, 1977
But even if the companies dont alow it, look at the top of this webpage! One of the banners rotating at www.mmorpg.com is an add for IGE.com. It shows just how deep this market goes. The Exhange will hit IGE where it hurts. They just cant compete with the security of SOEs solution, and any price set by IGE can and will be undercut by players. IGEs luck its just 20% of its market share. Once the other mmorgs take up the idea, and they will, companies like IGE will see a huge loss in income.
For the sake of this discussion it matters not whether its actually happening or not......the OP said an alternate view point. One company is cashing in...the other is saying if we catch you we will ban you, and they have backed up their words.
Theres exploits on every server through both games too, it doesn't mean its supported.
Buying virtual items in game cuts the amount of time and effort to obtain them by exactly half when you stop and actually think about it. I realize its only on a couple servers, but Sony's add on gimmicks designed to rake in more cash have passed well beyond laughable.
/signed disgruntled and let down former EQ player.
If Blizzard actually back that statement up with action and then continue to take action when they initially fail to stop what's happening, then that will be good.
However, I suspect Blizzard will encounter the same problem that every producer of a popular MMORPG has encountered. I.E. that they can't actually stop the e-baying on their own and threats of legal action will have minimal effect on the practice.
The underlying problem is that in a modern western society, the concept of buying what you want if you have the money, rather than earning the right to have it in another way, isn't considered wrong. The reason that it causes people a problem in MMORPGs is because of the underlying competitiveness of people. At the end of the day, if it didn't matter to anyone, what other people had, then e-baying would be irrelevant.
The only chance there would be to to stop this is if all the game producers and the auction sites worked together to stamp it out. Unfortunately, that won't happen as there is too much money to be made.
Thats impossible as you said, since almost all MMO's dont really have an economy. In order to have an economy you have to have a limited amount of currency in the game, which no MMO has. SWG is a perfect example of that, so much old money in that game it isn't even funny. EQ 1 as well, as long as there is an infinite amount of currency earned in the game there cannot be an economy.
I don't care who sells what honestly, what I do care about is a pharming trying to hold a camp all day long so I can't finish my quest, as far as I am concerned anyone caught pharming should be banned. As for selling, no, there are alot of small potatoe people that just sell stuff as they get it, and don't pharm for it. Although I can never even seen a pharmer on my server in EQ 2, or even anyone holding up something I needed for very long.
I have heard horror stories about Lineage II and what pharming did too it. All I can say is NCSoft let that get WAY out of hand if what I have heard is true and let it go to an extreme, I am against that. The pharmers should have been nailed to the wall for third party apps had their accounts burned.
I don't know what everyone gets so upset about, WHEN there is actually a real economy in a game THEN I will get upset about someone buying virtual cash from ebay or enott's or wherever else. I do not support companies that do it but I certainly am not going to get upset over it.
As for Blizzards statement, so what? Near every MMO company out has a similar statement, including SOE up until recently. They ran polls (I Know everyone doesn't want to accept it, but they did make their decision based off player polls while EQ 1 was in its prime), and have made a statement of a 40% resource commitment to dealing with idiots that got burned buying virtual loot. Yet all the sudden, now after Sony has put out a ton of free content into EQ II, everyone is on the "its about greed" bandwagon. Well guess what, SOE is a company, companies become companies by making money, and they stay companies by making stockholders HAPPY.
I have yet to see Blizzard do any bans for selling virtual items, only for using cheats and botting, so they may have said they are against it, but I don't see them taking charge of the situation either. I don't see anyone busting Blizzards chops and saying they are all about greed when they starting putting the game back on the shelf before the problem servers were fixed or the character transfer service was working, yet they went against their statement and released it while there was still a sizeable issue with the game.
So now SOE is putting up servers where you have the OPTION to join where you can buy virtual stuff, they aren't making you join that type of server, they aren't choking down the other servers to push you to that type of server, they are spending capitol to put a new system in place and adding to their server farms for people that want that option.
Mythic made statements against SOE as well recently for this, yet when was the last time you heard of someone getting nailed for buying gold for DAoC? I NEVER have, and I have been in the game since release. They can make all the statements they want, they aren't backing them up, its simple marketting people, quit thinking this is some corporate ethics battle.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
I dont give a flying rats ass about stock holders dude, and no one else PAYING a fee to play a game each month should either.
As far as the evidence you look for regarding proof blizz is, at the very least, making an attempt to back up what their feelings towards ppl trying to make IRL $$:
http://news.gaminghorizon.com/media2/1110646020.397.html
Like I said before, every game title wants to make money from you playing. But there is making money and there is milking money.
My thoughts is as a gaming community we should tell SOE to take their ideas of totally capitalizing all aspects of gaming entertainment and tell them to shove it up their you know what.
SOE themselves stated they would really like to have ADS IN THE GAME, their retarded /pizza command, their adventure packs, and now their auctions.....just a tip of the ice berg.
http://money.cnn.com/2005/02/17/commentary/game_over/column_gaming/index.htm
HAHA! Completely agree Rekindle!
Want that uber sword? That'll be $7.95 for the "adventure pack". Don't want to have to work for it? That'll be another $30.75, and you're hungry while you're "gaming"? Please add another $15.95 for a large /pizza.
Thank you, come again. And dont forget your $15 a month subscription fee.
And I ask again: Who's worse? The company charging you a little more for something that works, or the company that charges you a little less for a product you can't use?
I could go into how SOE is no more money hungry than a phone company that offeres different amount of minutes for different prices, but you're really not worth my time.
Hey! Leave the phone company out of this!
And I have no idea what you're talking about, maybe I'm dense.
Someone have to get that sword in the first place. It might be someone playing 24/7, it might be that uberguild, but since eq2 got a zero tolerance for disruptive gameplay, and most certainly will enforce that hard on the new servers, it could also be you.
Of course, it could also become one of those really ugly experiements where the very best of human nature shines. It wont be worse then a pvp server, thats not possible.
[quote]Originally posted by Rekindle
[b]I have yet to see Blizzard do any bans for selling virtual items, only for using cheats and botting, so they may have said they are against it, but I don't see them taking charge of the situation either. I don't see anyone busting Blizzards chops and saying they are all about greed when they starting putting the game back on the shelf before the problem servers were fixed or the character transfer service was working, yet they went against their statement and released it while there was still a sizeable issue with the game.
I dont give a flying rats ass about stock holders dude, and no one else PAYING a fee to play a game each month should either.
As far as the evidence you look for regarding proof blizz is, at the very least, making an attempt to back up what their feelings towards ppl trying to make IRL $$:
[url=http://news.gaminghorizon.com/media2/1110646020.397.html]
Like I said before, every game title wants to make money from you playing. But there is making money and there is milking money.
My thoughts is as a gaming community we should tell SOE to take their ideas of totally capitalizing all aspects of gaming entertainment and tell them to shove it up their you know what.
SOE themselves stated they would really like to have ADS IN THE GAME, their retarded /pizza command, their adventure packs, and now their auctions.....just a tip of the ice berg.
[url=http://money.cnn.com/2005/02/17/commentary/game_over/column_gaming/index.htm][/b][/quote]
Thats it? Thats all you can come back with in regard to my post? Pizza command, a few links? Sony has done actions against illegal acts in EQ 2 as well recently, I don't see the point to your links for blizzard, you act like they are the only ones that have hit the news lately for doing something. Mythic has and SOE has, thats just off the top of my head.
And now instead of addressing the rest of my arguement you have brought into this in game adds, which is it thats got you upset, I thought it was Sony Exchange and how it can ruin an in game "economy" because thats what Blizzards says...
Well do whatever you like with your thoughts, I have a hunch you would be standing fairly alone while all the people that voted FOR the exchange in the polls Sony took in EQ 1 about a year ago are enjoying Sony's games and not regarding you what so ever.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
You have absolutely no idea what your talking about. I suggest you actually try the game before you act like you have and then try speaking about it. You cannot twink in EQ 2, everything is level limited just like it is in DAoC.
As for the pizza command, get over it, really, if thats all you can come up with for an arguement thats sad. and its 5.95 for an adventure pack unless your on the All Access Pass which makes it FREE. Which also gives me 6 full games, 4 of which are MMO's for the price of $22 a month. But its all about greed right? Seeing things how you want too and ignoring the parts you can't cook up an arguement for?
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
lol!
Someone dangled the hook and all these little fishes went for it.
Now playing: VG (after a long break from MMORPGS)
Played for more than a month: Darkfall online, Vanguard SOH, Everquest, Horizons, WoW, SWG, Everquest II, Eve
Hi there, Blizzard_fanboi_074.
Got some news for ya!!
Wired Story including Blizzard comments
Lisa Jensen, a spokeswoman for Blizzard Entertainment, a Sony rival behind World of Warcraft, said her company is waiting to see what happens, and isn't changing its policy banning the trade of its game's goods.
"waiting to see what happens"
I realize they're not changing their policy NOW, but not going to offer the service and not changing their policy right now while "waiting to see what happens" are two different things.
Feel free to respond when your brain stops bleeding. Thank you, drive through!
Habit is not to be flung out the window by any man, but coaxed down the stairs one step at a time. - Mark Twain
If blizz does this I'll quit that game too, plain and simple.
Nice try at starting a flame though. Perfect way to digress from a conversation when all you have are straws to grasp at.
Toodles!
We have facts on one side, and speculation and flame attempts on the other.
What facts do you have?
The fact that every WoW server has literally thousands upon thousands of gold that can be purchased from IGE right now, at this very moment? How about the fact that most servers have a multitude of items available for sale? Or wait was it all the accounts people were selling?
Yes, Blizzard clearly has a leg up on every other MMO company. Not.
You're contributing to the black market by paying for games whose companies ineffectively combat virtual item sales using year-old techniques like grandstanding, posturing, threats, and account bannings that have proven year after year after year to do absolutely nothing to prevent or even decrease the activity.
IGE thanks you. Player Auctions thanks you. And when the owners of those companies buy their new sports cars and jewelry with their corporate bonuses this year, their 23-year old mistresses will thank you. Thank you for contributing to the status quo. Thank you for fearing change. Thank you for thinking innovation is evil. Thank you.
Habit is not to be flung out the window by any man, but coaxed down the stairs one step at a time. - Mark Twain
Yea at least they are trying something new, and if they can make money while putting other companies out of business, good for them. But if they dont try something new to limit this, it will never go away. They say they are against people sellling virtual items for money, yet they remain on the fence and are waiting to see how it goes with Sony.
And wasn't this the whole polint of this thread? About how Blizzard is better because they are against it? Yet you say that if Blizzard does this too, you'll quit WoW.
And what does "Toodles" mean, is that a Canadian thing?
Think about it... if all those farmers go to their EXCHANGE server, then their items are worth NOTHING, because all of them can sell those freely. On regular server they are still worth a lot because not many farmers are risking a ban to ebay stuff. So, where would u go to sell your stuff, on a server whre its legal but its worth 1$, or on a server with a risk but your item will be worth 100$?
IMO, this exchange is only effective if it is applied to all servers, which is not a good thing as i stated in my previous posts. Read those if you are curious.
Peace out
I am the type of player where I like to do everything and anything from time to time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor - pre-WW2 genocide.
I understand what you mean jimmy and I have heard this objection before. However, would you pay IGE $300 for 5pp when you could buy 10pp for $65 on an Exchange server? That's the thing. If they create a much lower cost market, which I agree with you I think they will, if they create that market then it will make IGE's prices look severly inflated. Most people would rather forego the additional expense I would bet and just make or buy a char on an exchange server. They might easily have a char on exchange and one on a reg server so they could buy and mess around and still do it "the hard way" on a real server so as not to lose respect for themselves.
Sorry, getting off topic there. I think the lower prices will make people less likely to pay IGE's clearly inflated prices. In other words, yes, IGE's price will be higher, but don't you think that will make it less likely for others to buy from them? Why get an apple in one town for $5 when you could go one town over and buy one for $1? It's essentially the same apple, yes? I think so and I think the result is a dramatic drop in sales on "normal" servers. My opinion.
Dunno, ramble ramble, yes I think you're both right and wrong. Good post. Thanks.
Habit is not to be flung out the window by any man, but coaxed down the stairs one step at a time. - Mark Twain
Not only that but you're only looking at a sellers point of view. If you were a buyer, where would you go? On a server that you have to pay really high prices, or a server where it's a dollar? If farmers can't sell what they have, they're going to stop farming.
Ya, you have completely dodged most of my points since I contributed to this thread and didn't agree with you. I have laid out alot of facts, all you have tossed around is alot of speculation.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World