Savanja

lol. No, it's not. I just joined them a couple of weeks ago so I'm still getting to know everyone, but I'll admit it, their name drew me in first.

LFG

Sav lol, that was my guild on Maelin Starpyre in EQ. It was the uber guild on the server there, before that it was on The Nameless. I think it formed when some people started on Kith from that guild and used the same name.

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Savanja

Does this makes bf and gf now LFG? :p

So far I'm diggin 'em. Good fun people to play with.

Smed

I've been a regular lurker on this site for a while but I wanted to step in here and dispel something that's just plain not true - I don't have my name highlighted here, but anyone that doubts it's me can email me at jsmedley@soe.sony.com and I'll happily reply.

We aren't going to be allowing RMT in any way, shape or form on the non-exchange enabled EQ II servers. Period. End of statement. If we catch people, we ban them and have been for a long time now. The truth of the matter is it's very difficult to combat them, but we have people at SOE who fight the good fight each and every day. In the near future you're going to see us becoming a lot more public about this then we ever have been. I think we've done a bad job at communicating just how seriously we take this fight.

We're interested in working with LiveGamer because they are unique in the RMT world due to the fact that they are pledging (and are putting technology behind it) to not buy from farmers. Farmers are the bane of our existence at SOE. They cause us endless amounts of grief and do real financial damage in a meaningful way.

What do I mean by that?

Many of them use stolen credit cards, obtained by unsuspecting users who give them credit card #'s to purchase in-game gold. I'm not saying all of the RMT shops out there use stolen credit cards, but a LOT of them do. Your credit card is absolutely not safe in their hands.

In addition we recieve large scale (over $500k so far) fines for chargebacks that these scumbag farmers routinely do. They purchase a new account.. use it for a month and then call the credit card company to say "I never paid for this". Over time, as the # of these incidents rise we get fined by the credit card companies. And it's not just us, other large MMO companies are seeing exactly the same problem.

In any event, I wanted to stop in and at least set the record straight - you aren't going to be seeing RMT allowed on the non-exchange enabled servers.

John Smedley
President, Sony Online Entertainment

Kyrsten

Hi John, thanks for posting! I am very curious as to your feelings on this:

I can *right now* buy LON items/packs/boxes and trade them for ingame plat. I can trade ingame plat I've earned for LON items/packs/boxes, and then trade those items for cash. Is this something SOE condones, or has plans to eliminate? Assuming it is something that is condoned, please explain to me how this is not a form of RMT.

Sincerely,

Kyrsten -

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Dirge / Defiler / Guardian

Niber

Great news! Thanks for dropping by. (And I made your name white!)

Smed

Hi Kyrsten. I can see your point. We specifically allow the cards themselves to be traded in-game (in the card portion of the game) because card games like Magic: The Gathering wouldn't be the same without the trading economy that goes on. It's just a part of what makes them work.

Do I see your point? Yes I do. Do I agree with it? Yes I do, but dis-allowing this trading would hurt the in-game economy which is so vital to card games, so I'd say it's the lesser of two evils.

The simple fact is that we could make it so no items are tradeable. That would put a stop to RMT in a jiffy, but destroy the in-game economy of EQ II (or any other MMO IMO) - but people would still be able to sell accounts (obviously not something we condone).

So in short - yes I see it, no I don't like it.

With all of that being said, I think we've done a great job at ensuring that none of the in-game loot items are so awesome that they become "must haves". We've been careful about that issue. Therefore I think I can say with a straight face this just isn't a big deal.

Hope I've answered your question

Smed

Kyrsten

Thanks John, I appreciate your time

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Dirge / Defiler / Guardian

Gaige

Wow. Smedly posting on Flames is pretty hot. Good for him.

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Exeugi

I agree, that's pretty sweet... can't top the president lol

Well LFG, anyone else you want posting here?