Feldon It’s interesting to see this posting from John Smedley, President of Sony Online Entertainment from Dec 22, 2007:
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.
He responded today with:
Just to be clear here – We aren’t allowing RMT (i.e. players selling items to each other for real money) on servers other than the existing Live Gamer enabled servers. What I said still stands.
John Smedley
No response yet to this Smedley quote:
This [LoN] is not some slippery slope towards selling items directly in EQ & EQ II.
A quote from Brenlo:
Station Cash is not tradeable nor are the items purchased and they will not be. The items will remain “fluff” items for convenience or customization. House items, pets, etc. . . This will not take away from anyone’s hard work and no one is forced to purchase anything. If you like the items offered, you can buy them. If not, keep on playing the way you always have.
and further (in response to the idea of trading plat for cash):
Well again, I suppose, however you would not recieve cash for the plat. You would recieve Station Cash which is only usable on the Marketplace. Thus you would be trading plat for access to potions, house items, pets, etc. . . I guess for me I an not seeing the incentive to do this. I imagine that some folks out there would try but the payoff just does not seem to be there.
The discussion rages on in the main Station Cash forum topic.
John Smedley, you are a liar. This new “sanctioned” store, is RMT.
RMT is RMT and he promised that it wouldn’t be on non-exchange servers.
Ok, now that’s funny. Talk about splitting hairs…. /sigh