SOeBay-Gate seems to be gathering pace. At first, I was somewhat dismissive of it all; it wasn't going to affect me much one way or the other. I know it WILL affect all aspects of the server's internal economics drastically, but honestly, I really am that much of an online loner that I genuinely don't interact with player economics at all. I buy necessaries from NPC shops, and dump all my phat lewt on the nearest NPC merchant, regardless of rarity, value or utility. I just can't be bothered with haggle-anxiety, market-watching, price-checks, scamming and being ripped off, so tend to opt out of the economy totally. For most normal players though, this isn't the case - they want decent loot or crafted items, and want to earn enough to buy them.
But the most curious thing about it all is not the financial or mechanical objections, but that most people, Monster Hunting Bloggers, and Messageboard Posters alike, seem to have come out on the Moral and Sociological arguements against it all. 'What Price Fun?', 'Yah Boo Capitalism!', 'Work To Play, Play To Work?' etc. This seems to have irritated the Devs quite a bit, as seen by the various 'red-name' posts to be found here:
EQ2Players: Station Exchange Board - (My god...it has it's own board already...)
All manner of incensed posting there, and most of it negative, and a great deal of 'It's just a game! Real life is unfair too!' type dissembling by admins and devs. The basic problem here is that SOE seem to have provided a common enemy, uniting people who farm made-up money for real profit, and the people who hate them, by at once legitimising the practice, and taking it's administration out of player hands.
I had assumed that, as with all things MMORPG, the Dev's word will be law, regardless of what the players think or want; typically our only way to have an impact is to unsubscribe in droves. Now I wonder if this almost unprecedented universal backlash is enough to force someone like SOE to back down at all? I'd like to think so, but probably not. Remember; we're stupid, ungrateful, greedy and need to have important decisions made for us, and you NEVER deal with Terrorists.
Board Firebrands (and Blog Pundits) are two a penny though, it's always the silent majority you need to apease. Joe Casual, who doesn't even know about the message boards, let alone write essays for them, who pops online a few hours a week, chats a bit with friends, gets annoyed that he can't invest as much time as Hardcore Gamers, has disposable income, and doesn't really care what everyone else in some clique thinks - it'll be up to him to decide this one, I suspect, and he is Legion. I expect a safe, secure way to buy his way past 'content' is quite an attractive proposition.
Anyway, this definitely has something of the high-speed car-crash gawk-factor about it, so I doubt we've seen the last of it by any stretch.
(Presumably, as a 'Station' Exchange system, there will at last be a much needed regulation of item trades for PlanetSide. I'm fed up with Chinese Bots farming me for my Striker Rockets, just to fill an eBay auction!)
EDIT: Look see? Another 'Here's What The Normal People See' moment.
BBC News: Sony opens game goods marketplace
They think we're FREAKS! Stop doing this stuff, it just attracts attention!