Sony are launching an escrow/auction service for Everquest 2, whereby players can sell in-game items, coinage and characters for real-life currency. They are applying it only to certain servers (to be decided via an in-game poll, and with the option for players to move servers). It’s a $200m-a-year industry, apparently, and 40% of their customer service goes towards dealing with fraudulent transactions.
My personal belief: buying things “extra-gamerily” is cheating, in my mind, just the same as hacking a savegame file or entering an infinite health cheat in a single player game. However my stance on cheating is that people should be allowed to cheat if they want to, provided that people who don’t want to cheat have the option to avoid playing with those who do. That’s the crucial point, and one that’s currently lacking with the black market cash sales going on.
The real questions are:
1. Will there be any non-exchange servers left after the poll and conversion? Will there be any left in a year’s time?
2. Will the introduction of exchange servers reduce or eliminate the market for bought items on the normal servers?
And these questions are both cause for concern for those of us who want to compete on game mechanics and not on cash. The second question is particularly contentious, I think. It’s a question of an evolutionarily stable strategy. Sony is separating the hawks from the doves. There is no reason to believe that item sales for cash will not continue on the non-exchange servers just as it does now: when item-buyers move to exchange servers, the achievable differential for item-buyers on the non-exchange servers is greater, and therefore the incentive to buy is greater. The hawks will do better for a while among the dove population, until an equilibrium is reached.
Time will give us the answer to the first question. I’m not optimistic for the doves on this point where corporate finances are involved.