SWG Tales

"SOE's EQBAY: Station Exchange
If only they had thought of it first

With the second-party market making money off their games, it was only a matter of time before publishers wanted to get a piece of the action. SOE will implement an official in-house auction site for EverQuest II, where players can put anything up for auction. Placing an item or character up for auction will immediately remove it from the server and put it on the Station Exchange auction site. SOE spokesman Chris Kramer says SOE wants to "shape the direction of the legitimate secondary market." Many companies such as Star Wars Galaxies publisher LucasArts will keep a close eye on SOE when it launches two new Station Exchange.enabled EQ2 servers in late July. SOE will charge a listing fee and collect a percentage of the final sale, much like other online auction companies do. Resellers tell us that selling gold and high-level characters is about a hundred times more profitable than what these game companies make from monthly fees. But will this truly eliminate the secondary market competition?"

Smooth Criminal's game cartel made $1.5 million from Star Wars Galaxies alone last year, and individually, he's made as much as $700,000 in a single year. "[SWG] built my new house, which I paid for in cash," he says. "So when you ring my doorbell, it plays the Star Wars music." Smooth Criminal is in charge of writing programs, finding exploits, and locating in-game "dupes" (bugs for duplicating gold or items). "I have a real job, but when there's a dupe, I call in sick," he says. It costs him more money to actually go to his "real job." "When I dupe," Smooth Criminal adds, "I farm billions on every game server and spread out my activities." He then uses three accounts to launder the gold: a duper account, a filter account, and a delivery accounteach created using different IPs, credit cards, and computers. This way, it's hard to trace the source, and the gold comes back clean.

Even though IGE itself doesn't farm, and IGE representatives recently told us the company is working to ferret out and ban such behavior, it does buy from farmers who could use exploits. "Whoever supplies IGE controls the market," says Smooth Criminal. Even worse, he continues, "IGE looks the other way when you give them currency. They don't care where it came from even if you tell them you duped it." In fact, Smooth Criminal alleges that IGE helped him hide the illegal credits. "They had to keep moving [Star Wars Galaxies] credits around from account to account to avoid the credit trail (i.e., duped credits) because we told them they were duped." (We asked an IGE representative about Smooth Criminal's experience and received no response.) Currently, Chinese farmers are the main suppliers of WOW's in-game items and gold, and they control the market. Does this mean IGE needs to buy from these suppliers to stay competitive?

Jabe Adaks wrote:With all the items on no trade now I can hardly see them capitalizing very much on this. Especially now that Jedi is a starter profession as well.

Jabe

Jerrel wrote:It'll snow on Tatooine before they would stop charging monthly fee's. Heck if there was no monthly fee I would come back to Galaxies but that aint happening as for increasing additions you beat they would. It increases sales of characters. Say the let out a new expantion with some secret hidden uber loot that cannot be traded or sold then you slip how to get it but make it hard enough that only 10% of the gamng population would beable to get it. This would increase the going price for characters with the item and in turn gives SOE a larger sum in the cut they take.

Isleh wrote:
There was more money selling loot then subscription fees. If making the game free resulted in more people auctioning off items to the point it made up for it, the forcast calls for snow on Tatooine.

E-bo Obi wrote:Hmm... whats to stop them from say uhh... inventing loot to sell? They made the game, they can just program stuff to sell you. This idea really scares me.

Isleh wrote:

E-bo Obi wrote:Hmm... whats to stop them from say uhh... inventing loot to sell? They made the game, they can just program stuff to sell you. This idea really scares me.

I guess some will try it. I think the smart companies will relize that it will devalue the service and it may cost them more in the long run. Anything the publisher adds still can't destroy the game because the game is what makes the auction service work.

E-bo Obi wrote:

Isleh wrote:

E-bo Obi wrote:Hmm... whats to stop them from say uhh... inventing loot to sell? They made the game, they can just program stuff to sell you. This idea really scares me.

I guess some will try it. I think the smart companies will relize that it will devalue the service and it may cost them more in the long run. Anything the publisher adds still can't destroy the game because the game is what makes the auction service work.

Are you trying to apply logic and good business practices to the SOE model? Because they are guilty of neither.