Snark

It too me far too long to realize what is so corrupted about station exchange. What so many people argued for when it was announced on the forums. Why my best "in game friend" cancelled his account on that day.

To be honest, its a brilliant idea.

Make money off people leaving your game.

But when a system is in place that makes it EASIER, perhaps even motivating, for players to leave the game, then it becomes something truly ugly.

Some would argue that it just pumps more money into development. People leaving the game puts more money into making the game better. Right.

It takes well over a hundred subscriptions to support a minimum wage job at SOE. Hundreds of players whos money is getting pumped straight to, say, Tamat. Mawwie. (?)

Anyways I had more to write but I just had to say those basic things.

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kaif

I don’t get it. Care to explain?

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Fewson

I hope that wasn't their idea. A game should not lower the barrier of exit, but raise it.(Standard Sales Concept. low barrier of entry for customer, high barrier of exit for customers, and a ongoing charge/revenue stream)

The flaw is that they allow people on non-exchange servers a easy way out of the game by transferring and dumping their toon to SE server. That is stupid of SOE. It wrecks both station exchange servers and non station exchange servers.

Used to be people had to play the toon they raised from level 1, or retire it, or sell it on the blackmarket if they were not on a station exchange enabled server. Many sold [I knew a few Elysium toons that were ebayed when I played years ago on Crushbone], but many also just retired.

But now on servers where the only money temptation was through the dark alleys ( : P ) of using www.ige.com, it is now as easy as a click and transfer to Bazaar or Vox and cash out legit in an auction.

Are you a dissolution player who wants a used car or a new computer...sell your toon and get it. Your guild loses, the server loses, even bazaar loses[unless it becomes an alt].

On money making in general:

People could always make money when leaving the game just look at www.ige.com.

Also the bazaar economy has prices for plat about the same as on supposidly "pure we don't sell stuff on our server" servers. This shows the rate of transactions and the amount of supply and demand in a "by the rules station exchange server" and the amount of blackmarket underground dollars to plat transfer in the rest of the servers is equivalent. It also means that plat buying/selling is as common if not more so on regular servers.

The game has a lot of flaws, as a person who used to design games they are apparent to me. But no game is perfect.

Fewson Level 70 Wizzy
Dark Horizon
The Bazaar
Playing Eq2 since Nov 2004. Too many toons on too many servers to list .

Kurizo

lol

Loolee

Mawie's not worth minimum wage.

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LFG

There is no question that SE increases turnover in raiding guilds, and makes the game worse for us.

I've said it before: Being able to sell your character for $1000 to $2000 in real money is far more temptation than the average college age player can deal with, especially when needing a car or rent payment.

And that makes it miserable on guilds with 24 person rosters, because of the constant time spent regearing and recruiting new members. It wouldn't be a fraction as bad as it is but for SE.

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"Bottom line: we're not all being honest with ourselves here." Become, Kraken forums

Ever

I really think they need to start by changing the free transfers to the Bazaar, it is way too easy to just transfer over and sell out. At the very minimum, make it $50 transfer just like every other server.

LFG

I agree, was thinking the same thing earlier.

Fine, let them continue to move toons to the Bazaar to sell, but make them pay fitty dollah for the transfer.

That alone would up the stakes and make people think twice before transferring. Prolly increase revenue for SoE also.

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Briza

I dunno... when we're talking about uber toons from Disso, NPU, SD etc.. that have a history of going for $1200.00+ then is $50.00 really a huge matter? It would probably cut back on all the normal casual toons that are constantly coming over as well, and probably on the healer classes which only seem to go for a few hundred regardless of gear... but I don't think it would cut back on a lot of the uber Guards, assassins, troubs and wizzy's.. but yes they should definately either STOP xfers all together or start charging for the xfers, make people pay to quit the game

Illuminator

When you don't have $50 to spend, then yes, having to pay $50 for the transfer (especially without the guarantee you'll make it back) can slow you down just a tad.

Haven't you seen people drive miles out of their way just to save a few cents per gallon of gas? People can behave fucking weird with strategically placed billing.

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80/140 Wizard, 80/140 Illusionist, 80/140 Warden, 80/128 Troubador, etc.



HA HA Fuck you, Roger. And don't vote for Obama.