To jump on the bandwagon….
The short: SOE is opening up a store where you can buy in game items for EQ and EQ2. The items are generally fluff. Pets, outfits and one shot use things like experience potions. Nothing is overly expensive.
The internet is apparently opening up and hell is spewing forth over it. Personally I don’t see an issue here. None of the items effect balance. Would I shell out a few dollars here and there so the monotony of leveling a second or third character is easier? You bet your sweet hind end I would.
I’d be particularly thrilled if the money generated from the store would go back directly into the game. If it was just going to the top I’d be a little grumpy but otherwise, imagine the possibility. I frequently feel like developers get a small share of the total pie. I think if more money stayed inside the project we’d see better results.
For more details you can read about it from Kendricke. He covered it very well.
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No of the items affect balance? So you are OK with endless supplies of EXP, AA or Tradeskill potions? tell me how this doesn’t affect balance. I’m not talking about class balance, I’m talking about the basic balance of enjoyment here. One player works his ass off to earn a respectable 100 or so AAs and another buys countless AA potions and in half the time he has as many?
Right now most these items may only appear as “fluff” but how long until we see game skewing items, armor, weapons ECT being sold through RMT? Smed lied SOE lied period. There is no gray area….the game is garbage now. They lied about RMT and they will lie again about all the items being fluff….As far as we here are concerned (at my house) SOE is now dead to us…
I can understand the passion really and honestly I do have to agree with you in part.
I should specifically say it really doesn’t effect EQ2 that much since experience ultimately comes to an end. I had forgotten that in EQ1 you can more or less grind AA eternally.
That said, these items are still transitory. No more than a few hours. I don’t see it offsetting things too terribly much.
I can forecast items that are more detrimental to the game but, until then, all I see is fluff.
@Olavf: If you have to “work” for your AA, then you aren’t playing a game. You are playing a job. Why pay for that? Jobs should pay you!
On that line of thinking (I no longer play EQ or EQ2) I think it’s great to allow friends to “catch up” or burn through boring grinds.
It would be better if it was free to play, with the addons, but I digress.
The ultimate equalizer in MMO-land isn’t money – it’s time. I don’t have the time to “work my ass off” to get my 100 AA points, as a full time father and with a rediculous work load. So, (if I still played), now I can still enjoy the game substituting my money for the time I don’t have.
In a non-pvp MMO you aren’t playing against other players (or barely even “with”), you are playing a solo game with the odd grouping for raid or quest. How you get from point A to point B makes no difference to me. How I get to point A from point B shouldn’t matter to you.
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