As has been widely reported, when StationCash Item Gifting was added to SOE games, players realized that they could create new accounts and sign up for trials of SWG, EQ2, and other games and receive free StationCash in each game. With the ability to Gift items, players were able to gift hundreds of StationCash items to themselves without spending a penny.

Item Gifting will be coming back sometime this week, with suitable controls to prevent further exploits. More details after the jump…

From the EQ2 Forums:

We’ve found a problem with the Gifting option for the EQII Marketplace, so the service will be temporarily disabled until early next week when we can patch a fix for this issue. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Commentary

It is unknown how many players exploited the StationCash Gifting feature, what punishment they can expect, or when exactly this feature will be restored.

Here are your hotfix notes for November 23, 2010:

MARKETPLACE
You can now use the Marketplace at Login / Character Create to purchase account related items such as character slots!

You can now send gifts to your friends from the Marketplace!
 
ABILITIES
If the caster cancels a maintained spell that he cast, it will cancel the spell for everyone in the group.
 
PVP GENERAL
Fixed a crash bug from Battlegrounds and PvP combat.
 
QUESTS
Sinking Sands: The Beetle Herding quest line should be working correctly now.

This just in from SmokeJumper on the official forums:

We’ve solved some technical issues recently and we can now offer character slots for sale. (Something previously unavailable.)

So as of October 5th (Tuesday), character slots will be available for purchase in the marketplace.

Here’s a couple quick facts to answer obvious questions:

1. Slots are permanent. You pay for them once and they stay on your account forever.
2. You can purchase any number of character slots. There is no limit. You want 20, 30 or even a bajillion character slots? Go for it.

Regarding Station Access subscriptions:

1. Character slots sold are *in addition to* any slots you are getting by being an SA subscriber. (Example: If you had 12 slots available as an SC subscriber and you purchase two more slots in the marketplace, you’ll now have 14 slots available.)
2. If you cancel your SA subscription, and then buy slots to replace the slots you were getting, your characters *will* still be present in those purchased slots (they won’t get deleted during the swapover).

Character slots will be available in the in-game marketplace for 1000 SC each.

This also applies to EQ2 Extended as well.

Some of you may be interested in these Frostfell-themed items coming to StationCash Marketplace on December 22, 2009.

Red Baby Dragon Plushie and Merry Frostfell Backpack

Posting on EQ2Players