The Plat Barons: Evil, or Just Greedy?Follow

The plat selling companies seem to almost be out to ruin the game. What is the purpose of buying out popular forums/sites and letting them stagnate? It could be they believe that if they eventually own the whole community, they can limit the amount of spoilers out there (Provided IGE did in fact acquire Caster's Realm). I read a post about these companies using their basically infinite plat to purchase high end items when they drop below a certain level. This way they can more easily control the market on high end items. The thing is, if you have more money than free time and want to run with the big kids, plunking down some cash for wealth that would take you months to acquire on your own can be tempting. With all the script kiddies selling their duped/macroed plat, Yantis/IGE's coffers are filled to the brim. SOE obviously sees the problem, the tribute system and casino (If they ever bring it back) are desperate attempts to get some plat out of circulation. It doesn't take an economics major to tell you that with an enormous amount of extra money dumped on the market, the corrency itself loses value. I recall finding a link to a post that explained the problem much better than I can here, but don't recall how to reach it (Little help, please?)
I apologize for rehashing what may well be an issue run into the ground, but I just got a new hard drive, 120 gigs to replace my old 20 gigger, and am waiting for my 20 gigs of data to copy over to my new friend(The new friend being the hard drive. As if I had human friends. :P). If anyone reads this, maybe post your beatings of this poor dead horse. I read that courts ruled that online currency and items aren't legally property, and that these services are basically selling the time it took them to get the stuff (none). Our time still belonging to us, (Depending on what your job is like) there's not a lot Sony can do legally against these guys. They have plat spread across tons of Mules, created when Ubisoft (European distributors of EQ) was giving out free EQ basic accounts, so it's difficult to ban them all. I doubt the accounts IGE uses to deliver plat/items ever carry more stuff than they need for deliveries, so stings probably wouldn't work. However, I believe SOE could take steps to shut IGE/Yantis (I heard they merged) down, if they really wanted to. Very detailed logs are kept of most everything, and flagging transfers of large amounts of plat between low level characters shouldn't be hard. Scanning accounts looking for those containing level 1 characters with 100,000+ plat, then flagging them for closer inspection wouldn't be too taxing either. However, to do this would cost money. SOE would be paying new people/overtime to those running the searches, taking time to develop and test programs to scan for the things I mentioned, watching accounts to see if they are legit or selling... I'm not certain if there is an upper limit on the amount of plat one can posess, if there is, I've certainly never hit it :P. Even if they have little actual legal recourse, Sony still has considerable legal might. I can't see IGE as being more than a few people in a rented office at the biggest. Perhaps there is no central location. If Sony really wanted to, they could create a LOT of trouble for these people. That's a BIG "if". The bottom line is that a few people may leave EQ in disgust, but most of us will keep paying to live in Norrath. Some folk may even find their interest in the game revitalized after charging a million plat on their credit card (Yes, they do sell it by the million. $2000.00 or so, I believe. Sometimes I check prices out of morbid curiosity. That's all it is, really!) As long as SOE can claim they can do nothing, the honest players of EQ will suffer. What can we do? What if 300, or 500, or 1000 people all petitioned the same message simultaneously? I can answer that. The guides, who are people just like you and me, albeit with thick skins and high resistance to profanity, would be overloaded. They would write the event up in their shift reports, which are printed out and used to line the cage of the SOE mascot, a parrot named "Noob Twinkie".
Yeah, I'm not funny at all, but on the upside I think my data transfer is almost done. Talk amongst yourselves.

/consoles Narev

We had a 700+ long post about this lets not do it again.

/em Hands Leiany a Gattling Gun.

Here you are dear thats more effective

Sony can't do anything since it isn't illegal. Dead horse.

They can ban accounts but there are too many, with too many go-between accounts. The amount they'd have to spend on full time employees to bust a few people would in no way be justified.

Its a battle they can't win. Its also pointless since most "honest players of EQ" are totally unaffected by it. The bulk of everquest players are not taking part in the selling or buying of items. The only way it affects you is if you are sitting around typing about it on messageboards.

Here ya go, breathe in, breathe out...let it go... better? =)

Was linking it so we wouldn't have to actually discuss it anymore, but by all means shoot away. One can never be too certain a horse is dead until you're pouring it on a paper plate bean shaker to get the glitter to stick.




No cake for the impurity! - Moses

Edited, Sat Mar 13 17:17:41 2004 by plick