Post about IGE you should readFollow

The situation in EQ is the same that has been faced by campaigns in RPG games since they started. I dont know who coined the phrase, but the term is <Monty Haul Campaign>. The referance is to the game show, Lets make a deal, with the host, Monty Hall. The referance is to those games where PCs would go and kill all the critters in a lair, and gain a few xp, but walk out with thousands in gold, jewels, and magic items. I played in a game of this, and soon had a 10th level character decked out in +5 and aboce armor, uber weapons, and wands bristling out of every pocket and sleeve. Needless to say, the campaing ground to a halt soon, since there wasnt any fun to walking up to a Dragon, for the 10th time, and kicking its butt all over the cavern. oh hum.
IN EQ it is a similar situation, where we are getting people who have to have bigger and bigger paydays. Sony would not want this to end, because it is bringing in players, and bringing them back. I and some friends started a guild, and then started all newbie characters on the Firiona server, and spend months building up. While it is fun to run the low level characters, it is more fun NOT TO DIE! Many of the uber items do just that: alklow you to thumb your nose at death, to tell Pain and Suffering to take a hike. You don't die, you come back, plunk down more money to play (through credit card, or game card), and keep filling the Sony coffers. In many ways, Sony would NOT want to see the real-world plat selling stop.
It would be so easy to do for Sony, to end the selling. Just log in their own characters, buy the plat, then delete the seller. they could log the transaction, and back-check to see where the platinum came from, and delete those characters. Why dont they? They may or may not be making money off of it directly, but WE KEEP COMING BACK TO PLAY. I buy Plat, i come in to play, and come back next month. When the selling of platinum starts causing players to stop playing, then and only then will Sony do something.

Easy Solution, Without reading 7 pages long. Why not just keep the bazaar but cap prices to 50k max.

Money isnt that hard to obtain if they keep it the same way.

That will reduce the sellers market, and keep the buyers market flowing with cash. But offer other means to spend your extra cash online.

1. Like having very expensive Trade skills, Crafting costs. Open the Trade skills up alot more with new and harder, expensive items. Turn the Trade skills (components) to No drop items, that you can only buy. But craft and sell items in the bazaar (at a small but decent profit).

2. Invent some new ways to create player intervention with there money. That only the person involved can do. Remove MQ items that can be sold on the open market.

Supply and demand is gone with IGN, and Yantis. They will return to selling accounts. Reduce the profit they can sell items for, then they have to work harder to obtain the money by actually fighting for it.

50k isnt all that hard to get. looking at the way LDON was created, seems its a stepping stone for what I suggested here today. You work up your characters PP like you would Points, this way everyone has a chance to make money at the same time not going around and cry Foul everytime someone puts up 50k items.

But when i say 50k isnt all that hard to get, it does take some boxing to do it.

Hope my post made sence.

Here's a new idea. This is only happening because EQ is a game without an end, dominated by people 15 levels over the original maximum with way too much gear and money (not to mention time - don't you sleep or go to work?). SOE should introduce, with a expansion, the Quest To End All Quests, in which you overcome unfathomable odds to achieve eternal and unimaginable fame. Once this has been done and you've become a god or whatever, you can't play in Norrath any more, you just sit up there in the new land of the gods and laugh in a smug manner. Or start a new character at level 1...

Actually, you have it backwards. It is why democracies are such an effective form of government, if a little messy on the way. The gems that are the easiest to comprehend and are expressed the most clearly rise to the top - by the merit of the person's ability.

But that's a digression. It is an interesting proposition that the inflation is caused by LDON. I suspect it is a combination. LDON, plat purchases and people quitting the game and giving away PP. Personally I think we should ban all quitters!

Well I may be wrong but I believe SoE has done something already to combat this problem. It is called Ldon maybe im wrong but if you look at ornate armor and you look at Ldon armor they are not to far off from each other. Ldon points cannot be sold and plat is not required. And if I am wrong someone let me know.

SOE could solve the problem simply by having their own 'store' which could sell any item at a real life price.

They can undercut the cost of the items as they can simply create them in an account.

I know I wouldn't want my livelihood to be so unsecure...

I think they should do it if only for the laugh.

If you do alot of LDoN like i do this really doesnt affect you much. Since LDoN came out i dont need to use the bazaar anymore. The LDoN armors beat the crap out of anything in the bazaar even the tranquility stuff. Sure its alot of work but so is getting plat and can also be your final upgrade for quite awhile if not in a uber PoTime guild of course if you are in one of those you dont need bazaar either.

Now with GoD and the items with it i really cant see Mysupersales and IGE accually getting an increase in profits. They will have a decline. Although the sale of toons needs to cease. I hate getting a cleric in my group and finding out that person knows nothing about how to play the class and gets everyone killed.

If SOE really did care about the EULA they should be able to legally shut down IGE and MySuperSales. Since SOE does own the characters IGE and MySuperSales have no legal rights to them. With that SOE should be able to request a list of all of their chars and ban them and if not place the people at IGE and MySuperSales with criminal charges. Its not legal to sell something you dont own.

Another thing SOE can do is make their own little bot that tells them anytime account info changes and put that account under review. Also if SOE is trying to stop it that could be why there is the $13 a month charge so they can hire more people to try and put a stop to this crap. I am pretty sure there has to be some kind of legal way to stop this hacking from happening.

If not oh well. Just get a guild and do things the old fashioned way and raid for the good stuff. No one forces you to pay the bazaar prices. All you really need is some 30- items and can LDoN and raid the rest.Also you should never buy plat in the first place. It just takes the fun out of the game. If you care about this issue DO email SOE and tell them. The more people that complain the more they should listen.

I must admit this thread is very interesting...

For one we all agree that EQ is a game, and most (if not all of us) believe that spending RL $$ for in game plat is ridiculous.

If you agree with the above how could you possibly condone...

1. Launching a petty hacking assault on IGE.
--Plat dupers/sellers break the EULA, this breaks THE LAW.

2. Mounting a lawsuit
--If virtual items aren't worth $$ how could they be worth a lawyers time?

3. Sony sueing IGE.
--International law is a very touchy subject, and even IF they decided to pursue this option, not only would it most likely not only cost more than option 4. It would most likely take a year or more start to finish.

3. Expecting a multi-billion dollar corporation to pitch $10,000 a month to buy fake platinum.
--I'm not sure if some of you realize exactly how ridiculous this would a) Sound to upper management b) look to shareholders and the BoD or c) be explained in the financial statements (probably would be immaterial anyway)--The point is anyone who proposed this solution would probably be quickly unemployed.

SoE says they are aware of the issue and are working on it. I believe them. There is little else we can do about the matter. If you do not like the game/support(I know...it's really bad) then quit playing or simply deal with it. I'm positive SoE does not want to lose customers, but fixes like this probably don't occur overnight (Or in any brief period of time for that matter).

If we don't agree with spending $100 on 100k pp, how can you expect a business to throw REAL WORLD resources at the problem? One could easily counter that they should value your account and therefore your opinions (which I'm sure they do). When it comes down to it...you're still playing aren't you?



Additionally, for those of you who are econ educated.
You really cannot draw conclusions that hold true in RL markets to EQ. For one, the cost of living is ridiculously low, other than rations and water one spends very little on consumables. Also bear in mind these Ornate armor drops are camped, not produced. There isn't a constant supply, and a trader doesn't need to get rid of it on a constant basis to pay for expenses.
Meaning there is no worry if an Ornate Breastplate doesn't sell overnite, it can sit listed at 200k for as long as they wish, just waiting for a buyer.

As for IGE/Yantis whoever
I don't see a huge problem with peeps BUYING platinum. These middlemen don't produce plat in and of themselves, and I find it hard to believe they produce it all themselves. The problem comes from players who make a life out of SELLING platinum to them. Essentially it would be FAR less costly to pay RL $$ (alot less than you sell it for) to an individual then it would be to employ one for this purpose. NO I'm not saying dupers/macroers don't exist (I really don't buy into the Banker Abhor thing, I think that was a terrible attempt by an idiot to divert attention from the smithing combine being used at that time). Just having caught and petitioned one AND having a GM to respond and show up I know SoE isn't fond of this behavior.
---As far as who these people are...It doesn't take much to figure it out.






Edited, Wed Feb 18 03:12:24 2004 by NafodPwC

Not a single item worth a copper of my RL money [/u][/u]

Question : What about websites we read everyday that accept IGE adverts ?

Should we boycott them :)

Hmmm... Not sure why I'm bothering but what the heck?

On what basis do you make this statement? I do work for a multi-billion dollar corporation. I'd likely get a promotion for coming up with a way to spend such a relatively small amount of money in order to ensure our property and legal rights and satisfy our customers all at the same time.

Most importantly: No corporation, ever, under any circumstances, wants to allow another corporation to make money off their product. That's why we have licencing laws and such. SOE will do whatever it takes in order to make sure that IGE does not make money off of the buying and selling of Sony's IP. If that means spending a few grand a month for as long as it takes to run IGE out of the EQ plat selling market, that's what SOE will do.

So far, the "sting" method is the *only* one I've heard of that has any chance of stopping IGE, and doesn't negatively impact their legitimate customers. Ok. Technically, the lawsuit thing does, but it's got some pretty serious risks involved.


Come up with another method that will work better, and I'll gladly change my opinion. So far, I haven't heard anything that would be close as effective as the sting idea.


Um... Also anyone with any knowledge of how corporations that size work would know that the shareholders would never see such a small outlay, and it probably wouldn't even show up on an accounting sheet. It would just be part of a budget somewhere.


All their shareholders care about is that the company is profitable (and that it's as profitable as possible). They don't make spending decisions, and don't decide policy (not directly anyway). You don't have to explain to them why you want to spend some cash to protect the IP of the product you sell. You might very well have to explain to them why you failed to protect that IP and the business lost money as a result...

Let these bots do whatever the **** they want. Not like it really matters anyway since there is million ****** halfwit everquest players that dont even know how to play a MMORPG for themselves.

All half of you retards do is buy your platinum off the internet and then brag about how good your **** is. Give it up, you who purchase pp are just as bad as the ppl usin bots to buy and resells items.

Whats the point of this game anyway when some ****** can be runnin around in the buyable best gear in the game and not even know where the hell it came from or how long it would take to get it legally.

As a real MMORPG fan i am disgusted and ready to quit Everquest and go back to one of my other games where you have to spend the time and use your brain to get what u want not just your welfare check.

I have an idea lets give this thread a descent Burial, all that can be said has been said and it is long past any usefullness.

THE END.