They've threatened to do this for some time, and now it's happened. Sony Online asked eBay to remove EverQuest items and accounts from their auctions, and eBay complied, taking down some 4500 auction items.

This is one of those stories that has no clear cut right or wrong answer. Players feel, with a great deal of vehemence no doubt, that they should be able to sell their characters and items. For a player who could realize several hundred dollars for a high level character, this enforcement of Sony's ban on selling accounts and items has to be a bitter pill, especially if it's just a matter of a player who's done with the game and would like to recoup some money from the time put in.

From Sony's perspective, these sales damage their game. Instead of players simply playing for fun, you get item farmers and players actively "power-levelling" other characters just so they can then sell them off. Indeed, there are reports of players essentially making a full-time income from selling MMORPG items and accounts.

The bottom line is that it's Sony's property and they get to make the rules, so players from this point forward should play EverQuest with just one goal in mind � namely, to have fun.

What do you think? Is this a wise move by Sony Online? If you're an EverQuest player, do you feel a bit robbed by this? Comment here.

This one's tough. On the one hand, it's Sony's game. But, on the other hand, we pay for the right to create the account, we pay for the time we put into the account, and it seems to me that if we are able to collect a return on that investment, that's our business.

This is not unlike some guy I read about that quit his job to sell "virtual real estate" in Ultima Online. He fully expects to make between 40 and 50 grand a year. By the way, if anyone has more news on this story, like exactly how he's going to pull this off, let me know...

Really, though, I think that this should be allowed. If I want to sell my account, I ought to be able to. I'd think Sony would encourage it, too, as it might get someone to play who might not otherwise. And it's not like everyone who plays doesn't pay for the time. I guess I just don't think they should be so concerned with people's motivation. Sony's main motivation for making the game was to make money, not just to entertain us. So, if someone wants to play the game just for personal gain, profit or whatever, then they should be able to do that.

If this were a single player game, I'd say more power to them, but every action by 1 person effects the other 5,000 people who have characters on the same server. If 2 guys have decided to farm robes 24/7 and sell them for $50 a piece, it prohibits other people in the game from getting those robes unless they 1) pay for them, 2) whine to a GM, or 3) break the rules and attempt to steal the kills from the farmers. The farmers (especially if they're an entire guild working together one it) can essentially corner the market on several items and refuse to let others have them unless enough cash is provided.

Perhaps it seems like I'm overstating things, but it's very possible for people to do this kind of thing.

As for selling accounts, I would agree that it isn't a bad thing to do if a person worked for 2 years on that character and decided to quit the game. However, that isn't what's happening. People are going out and buying 5 accounts at a time, powerleveling those accounts to level 50+ in a couple of weeks, and then are selling those accounts for hundreds of dollars (thousands if the character is fully equiped). This trivializes the accomplishments of people who worked their butts off for months/years to get where they are.

Lets put it in real life terms; You've been working at a company for 10 years. You've kissed corporate asses, worked overtime, learned the system, and generally clawed your way up to where you are. Your day has come, and you have been promoted to VP in charge of widget production. You get a company car, you buy a new house with your salary, etc. A week later a new guy shows up. He has a company car, a new house, and he's the new VP in charge of gadget production. He obviously has never worked a day in his life, but he has the same perks you have after all your hard work. When you ask him how he got the job, he says "Oh, I bought it on EBay. I have no idea what I'm doing, but look at all this neat stuff that came with it!".

A horrible analogy, but you get the point. :)

You would think that in some ways the auctions are a phenom that attests to the popularity of the game, and that it's something that helps promote the game and inspire interest. Makes for great non-industry pub too.

I'm not convinced that banning auctions will help the game...but then I don't play them much, so I'll let you guys figure that part out :)

"This one's tough. On the one hand, it's Sony's game. But, on the other hand, we pay for the right to create the account, we pay for the time we put into the account, and it seems to me that if we are able to collect a return on that investment, that's our business."

It's not tough in one sense. From a legal standpoint based on the user agreement, Sony has every right to enforce this. So no rights are being violated.

What's being violated are the expectations we have about what our time is worth and what that $10 per month buys us.

That's true, Mark. I realize that Sony does have the right to do it. I'm just kind of surprised that they are doing it. Although Jim Frazer made some excellent points, and I guess maybe I understand a little better why it's such a big deal. I've never played EQ, but apparently that same thing isn't going on (at least not as publicly) in UO. It's really hard to reach high levels in UO (or at least, it used to be), so maybe that's why it goes on less. As much time as it takes to get characters to such high levels, I can't imagine someone just selling them...Although, I guess if the price is right, people will sell just about anything.

I've never been a big UO fan, but one thing I can say is that it's very hard to exploit the games mechanics to raise your skills up to the maximum point (at least that's what I've seen). In Everquest, once you get, say, 2 characters of level 60 together, they can take any other character and drive them up to 50+ level in a matter of 3 weeks (sometimes less). This is mostly Verant's fault since they made it extremely easy to "power level" another character. What people were doing was getting a few friends together, buying a 5 accounts, and turning those 5 accounts into these 50+ level supre equiped characters. At the end of the 3 weeks, they would sell the accounts (normally getting over $5,000 when all was said and done) and starting over again. If you think about it, this is a great investment for them. They buy EQ ($29.95), get the first month free, and at the end of the month sell that same EQ disk for $1000+ (although recently the prices dropped down to the $300 - $500 range).

There was also a small problem in EQs past called "duping". People figured out how to clone items and plat at will and were using this to make real life money. On EQ, 1 plat = 1 cent, so these people were duping millions of plat and selling it to users. It completely reduced the in game value of a plat piece and flooded the market with the most desirable items. On some servers, the in game economy is so messed up that it isn't even funny.

Oh well, I tend to play more EQ than I should, so I'm a little biased in my opinions.

Jim -
Thanks for enlightening me as to how all this works. Having only played UO, I had no idea the way everything in EQ worked, and thus had no idea that it was so easy to take advantage of.

Still, like you said, it's partly Sony's fault. It seems to me like a better idea to modify the source code, through a patch or something, to make it more difficult to "rape the system" than to just ban E-Bay auctioning of EQ stuff. Of course, I'm admittedly not a very experienced programmer, so maybe that's a lot harder than I assume.

At any rate, Jim, thanks for enlightening us.

"It seems to me like a better idea to modify the source code, through a patch or something, to make it more difficult to "rape the system" than to just ban E-Bay auctioning of EQ stuff."

That only solves part of the problem. You still have item farming to deal with. I don't know how you modify the code short of not allowing trading to discourage this.

One thing we haven't said here is that banning eBay trades is just a band-aid. It doesn't stop people from selling accounts and items. It just makes it a bit more difficult.

These MMORPGs are always going to be open to abuse. In UO you have people selling land and castles. In AC you have accounts and items being sold too.

It doesn't just make it a bit more difficult, it makes a lot more difficult. And making it difficult is the name of the game.

Will some folks get around this? Sure. Will it reduce sales of characters and equipment? Yes. So it was worth doing.

does anyone know HOW they duped in EQ? I thought that was impossible! anway, on the banning of EQ on EBAY. . .its kinda a little late. . . sheesh didn't they forbid online sales like a year ago? hmm

etc

There were several methods, all of which were thankfully fixed over the years. One way was due to the way that EQ used to handle catastrophic crashes. It would restore your account to the last save point (accounts are updated roughly once every 2 minutes). So, someone would hand an item to a person and use one of the known bugs to cause a catastrophic game crash. When they returned, all of the items they traded are back and they are ready to roll. This was fixed pretty early in the life of EQ however.

The rest of the methods, well, I dunno how they were done. Originally Verant claimed that all duping loopholes were closed and offered to give a person free access for the life of EQ if they found a method. Recently there were a ring of dupers that were busted on various servers and their accounts were all banned. Apparently some of the people were allowed to keep their accounts in exchange for telling the GMs how the duping was done. I'd love to know how they did it, but obviously Verant doesn't want to publish that information.