taken from Thread :-Sony's "Experiment" with Real cash for Virtual Goods is a "Success" UO UHall

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*Hoping this post is not considered to be directly related to ebay stuff*

According to this article, Sony claims that Station Exchange has been a success. It allows players to sell/trade virtual EverQuest items for real-world cash...



I'd be rather happy to see EA/Mythic do something similar.

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Although deep down I am probably morally opposed to this sort of thing, when I look at it from a business perspective, I really don't see why more MMORPGs haven't jumped on this obviously extremely lucrative opportunity and aspect of MMORPGs by now.

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[i] I'm surprised EA hasn't doing this more with all there games , digital downloads , mini expansions. This business is huge these days , look at xbox live (elder scrolls has many little upgrades) [i]

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I would be happy for them to do this as well, on a couple of conditions:

1) New server for this, allow transfers to but not from...

2) Ban outside sales, actually enforce it...

I think if you are going to spend real money on items in the game, it should support the game and the company that develops it.

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Let's face it... though ebay going away will put a pinch in online sales, no, they're definitely not going to go away. However, the bankroll that EA could make on supporting such a system (no $200,000 isn't a goldmine, but it's also at least 4 GMs salaries) could enhance the game at least minimally, and as Sony's venture pointed out, reduce scamming in online sales.

Honestly, sales might increase with a valid method of conducting them.

While I'd never buy or sell real for virtual (aside from expansions), that others do isn't going to stop being true, and so EA should implement a system similar to this.

And with due respect, it should be available on all servers. There's no reason to limit it... limiting it to a single server won't stop the outside sales, and there's no real way for EA to police them.

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EA already does sell items for RL money, like the Anniversary items, evil tokens, ect.. its just not on the scope of Sony, but they do sell virtual items for RL cash.

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Jeremy_EAMythic UO Community Coordinator

True, and RMT has never been illegal in UO - it's a very different culture than most other mainstream MMOs in that respect.

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Jeremy, may I ask you a question, if you are a developer (I am more interested into this rather than a Company's point of view...) ?


The goal of a game developer, from what I seem to understand, is to put one's own creativity and work to produce something which will be fun and enjoyment for those who will play it. Is that so ?

Now, online games are very complex structures of software and it is very hard to make sure that when they come out their code is not exploitable by players via stuff like duping, bugs, scripting to "power game" and access more easily and faster high end items of the game. That is, even though programmers do their best to stop bugs and ways to exploit the code, usually it is quite hard to prevent it and can only be done "after" an exploit method has become known which, sometimes, can take a considerable length of time and a lot of damage done to the game before a fix gets in.

Now, this all said, am I safe to say, from a developer's point of view, that allowing the sale of virtual items for real world money could, "at least in theory" create an hostile environment for developers and programmers who would find themselves overwhealmed by an unusual number of attempts by some players who may try to exploit the code aggressively so as to benefit, with real world money, from high end items obtained fastly and easily (duping, scripting, bugs) ? In such a scenario, wouldn't developers risk to find themselves having to devote time to catch up a number of exploits and bugs or, worse, try to overcome things like scripting which, having been in UO for several years now, seems to me close to impossible to eradicate..., with less time at hand to actually be able to make the game better for those players who actually play it for fun ?

Bottom line, I am interested to hear, not so much the Company's point of view, but a developer's point of view in regards to this issue.

Thanks.