Sylvanking

No I need to restate that ...

Greed has prevented this game from reaching it's full potential and is constantly tearing down true growth.

Crabbok

This I agree with 100%. As having started on Faydark, getting talked into transferring to Shadowhaven, and force-merged to Bazaar, and now on Antonia Bayle, I've seen all sides, and there really isn't much difference. The only thing that really makes the bazaar different is the fact that your stuck there once you go.

Every Server (normal plus Livegamer) has a population consisting of some that buy plat, some that sell plat, and some that do neither. The same holds true for Characters, and Items (through loot rights). In fact, the bazaar's plat is by far the cheapest. If you want to sell plat, you are MUCH better off doing it on a normal server.

The Station Marketplace, and Legends of Norrath with it's Loot cards, have turned the entire game into a legitimate RMT game.

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Oh, and since I wanna bring this all back to the original topic... Firamas, I know you keep saying "Try it before you criticize it", and we will absolutely try it, but keep in mind, that we were told this idea, and Everyone here being so vocal about it NOW, will hopefully have some impact on how this new system continues to develop.

I'm hoping it is released as a good, workable system, that allows us to earn upgraded gear that we feel good about. I'm hoping that the game remains "fun", and we, as a playerbase, still feel the desire to get loot and expand our characters. I really do hope thats how it turns out, and I think we all do. Thats why we are here. Some of us just like to curse more than others.

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Sylvanking

NOPE WRONG, Bahzaar server is very different. It's funny you tried to point out that they are the same then in the next paragraph defined why they are very different.

Greed exists in all forms on all levels on all sides ... Microcosm!

Back to the thread ? ... the reason PLAYERS are so pissed about this is because they are greedy, they spent time building these characters up so they could sell them now part of what they have put into them is lost and they want to "cash in" before the market crash.

DO YOU SEE THE LIGHT ?

Kall

News flash, the market crash for characters was right when KoS was about to end.

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Retired from EQ2.

Playing DotA on US East (Kallp).

Sylvanking

People can see the end of TSO ... do you see the correlation?

Crabbok

Why? because you say so? Your reply completely ignored my point, which was detailing the specific reasons that exchange servers are separate from other servers. Obviously the fact that it is cut-off makes it different, but what happens within the server itself is quite similar. Of course, I'm sure you know all about this, how many years did you play on bazaar again?

You can say all the arguing here is about greed, and you might be partially correct, but I'd argue that there is a lot more depth to our concerns that just greed. I for example, will fight and fight to prevent gear decay, and guess what? I don't have a single piece of 80 gear anymore, I've sold my raid toon and am re-rolling, so I have nothing to gain, save preserving the game that I love.

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firamas

The days of getting $2-4k for a character with ultra high end gear (and I've seen a few in the $4-6k range back in the early days of EQ1) were over with years ago. We're talking a few hundred bucks these days, if that. For the many thousands of hours of time that people put into these characters, it's literally pennies per hour... no one's doing this as a legitimate source of income at this point. How much further is that market going to "crash"? I look at all the /played time I put into a character and I could never justify selling it. Maybe it's because I have a job that pays pretty well and it'd equate to less than a day or two of salary, but I don't think I even felt that way back when I was a "poor" college student in my EQ1 days.

If you want to make money, then you farm and sell plat (and even that is embarassingly bad income per hour... why not get a fuckin job and make 10x that easy and play the game for FUN instead?).

RMT is not destroying the game, it's not limiting its potential, it's not causing people to be greedy and make destructive decisions... it's just another aspect of MMO's that's been around since the introduction of the idea of virtual property. It's a bunch of Eastern European and some Asian farmers finding a way to make money in shithole countries with economies that are torn to shreds. $1/hr is good money to them.

This is also a conversation for a different thread. You didn't need to take one little parenthetical comment mixed into my discussion about player feedback and turn it into a whole spinoff. Lets get it back on track, gents. =p

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Oh, no!

Sylvanking

I don't know if you took note or not but I am also against it, for pretty much the same reasons.

I think you totally missed everything that has just been said .... So since you are the expert on the bahzaar server lets just establish that YOU have stated why the bahzaar server is different.

1. "The only thing that really makes the bazaar different is the fact that your stuck there once you go."

2. "In fact, the bazaar's plat is by far the cheapest. If you want to sell plat, you are MUCH better off doing it on a normal server."

There is a stigma attached to RMT. It is looked down upon. People who try to argue that Bahzaar is exactly the same as a regular server are delusional. The foundation of the RMT servers is a player base who's sole motivation for playing the game is to "cash in" or players who do not play the game in the spirit in which these games were molded from.

Lets go all the way back to pen and paper roleplaying games.....would you be interested in buying one of my character sheets from 20 years ago? Would you be interested in buying a module I created from 20 years ago? Think about those two things for a bit and what kinds of conclusions do you come to?

What would you really be buying? Intellectual property? Art? Dungeon maps? The character sheet and the attributes, the items, and the coin are all virtually worthless because the whole point of the game is to CREATE YOUR OWN character sheet.

People who sell characters and now SOE with RMT are basically charging people to build character sheets for them and that completly undermines the whole premise that RPGS were built on.

Crabbok

Seems to me like your going off on a tangent again, and ignoring the point I was trying to make, but fuck it I don't really care. This thread is about gear scaling.

Though for someone who is sooo against RMT, I'm surprised you play LoN, which is essentially what brought RMT to every server.

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firamas

You don't need to stereotype here. This may have been the case 20, 10, maybe even 5 years ago, but the opinion pendulum is shifting rapidly in the other direction. The micro-transaction business model is fast becoming the dominant model in Asia, and will spread to the western markets in the near future.

RMT is not just about selling actual toons. There's a lot of people (myself included) who could never justify selling their toon, their hard work, for the meager prices you could get nowadays, but have no ethical issues with people buying and selling virtual currency. It's a big grey area, everyone draws their own line somewhere. There is no "right" or "wrong", there is only what the market can bear. Time=money and money=time, this equation holds true in both the real and virtual worlds... and the concept of RMT is simply the bridge between those worlds. It's not fundamentally a good or bad thing, it's just another economic concept.

Some people pour their lives into building/restoring a classic sports car, others will just take their savings and buy one instead. Is there anything ethically wrong with the decision of the person who bought it? It depends how you (not the community, YOU) define the "worth" of an object.

Bottom line: Get off your high horse about RMT. You aren't some virtuous crusader of light, sent into the future from the D&D days of lore, here on earth to teach us all what is good and right. You're just another dude with an opinion.

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Oh, no!