Ark's Ark

You probably already read this and this. The short summary is that SOE is going to let players sell plat, items and characters, provided they get a kickback.

This attractive model* could be yours for just $500 dollars!
*Hat not included

There’s no place like home! There’s no place like home! There’s no place like home!

*yawn* I had such a strange dream. You were there Malth. And you Tyron. And you Smedley. Smedley?!? Aaaaaaaaaah!

Meanwhile, over at Scotland Yard:

As you know, catching people handling stolen goods is quite tricky. Did you know 40% of our time is spent chasing such activities? We’ve thought long and hard, and decided that’s it’s a bit unfair on thieves who get caught when so many others get away scot free. We also know that many members of the public enjoy the low low prices that only stolen goods can offer. So we’ve decided to legalise it for everyone! The same goes for muggers, providing they pay their bribes on time. A nominal fee, plus a percentage should do it.

– Chief Inspector Smedlock of the Yard

This service will be offered only to US players at this time. SOE will be looking to expand Station Exchange to the rest of the world in the future.

So to add insult to injury, only US players can legally have this advantage. If you live outside the US, and seek the same advantages, well you’re going to get hit with the banstick. You can expect that SOE will agressively defend its monopoly on in-game sales. This is massively discriminatory against non-US players. Combined with the built in discrimination against the poor, that leaves us with a change that only benefits rich US players.

I truly truly swear they’re trying to drive every decent person out of Norrath. Speaking for myself, I have been shaken by this news, far more so than I was at being lied to over Frogloks.

When it becomes simple to exchange game money for real money, everything within the game suddenly acquires an explicit real cash value. Need before greed will become history, as everyone will see every item as something of worth to them. Sharing with guildmates, and helping out younglings will become much rarer. In short, Norrath will become a greedier more selfish place, where every action has it’s price.

It wouldn’t be quite so bad if SOE wasn’t taking a cut, but the fact that they are changes everything. There is a lot they can do to subtley encourage the buying of platinum. Increasing the number of money-sinks in the game for instance. Even though money-sinks are needed, now whenever they add one, I’ll think of all the extra revenue it will net them. They have said that they won’t change the in-game economy to favour platinum and item buying, but I’m afraid I just don’t believe them after the last week.

And how do you know that that platinum for sale was offered by another player? It would be very profitable for SOE to put items and plat up for sale themselves. It is the natural progression of the line of reasoning which Mr Smedley appears to be following.

Existing servers will only become exchange enabled if the population votes for it. But the votes are being counted by an interested party. Are we really supposed to believe that even if every server has a majority “no” vote, that no servers will be converted? And even if it is done honestly will that be the final word, or will there be another vote every so often until they get the result they want? Given that the voting is to be done on a “one vote per account” basis, doesn’t that tilt the results in the favour of botters, hydras, and other people that don’t necessarily represent the majority of players, even if they might be the majority of accounts?

It’s such a bad idea, even Moorgard’s old website, Mobhunter, thinks it’s a bad idea.

Less surprisingly, EQ Vault’s staff think it sounds “fun”. I look forward to a hard-hitting “Ask SOE” on the subject.

I feel sufficiently strongly about this that I’ve cancelled my account. Chances are, in the absence of something I’d rather play, I’ll pick it back up when my current playtime expires, but at least for the time being it’ll add to the stack of permanent cancellers and give SOE more to think about. That is unless their calculations show that they’ll make more money from Exchange, than they’ll lose from subscription loss. In which case we’re screwed.

EQ2 is in some ways ground-breaking. Several new concepts, (and some old ones) were brought into the adventuring system. These concepts, while quite possibly wonderful on their own, do not work at all well together. The ones I’m looking at today are:

• Trivial loot code. An idea which EQ dabbled with. Upon being a certain number of levels above a foe such that it becomes grey, you can no longer get access to it’s chest loot. It is quite useful for preventing the farming of loot by high level folks.

• Multiple tier con system. A level 18 epic encounter is several times more dangerous than a level 18 heroic encounter which is several times more dangerous than a level 18 solo encounter, yet all will turn grey at the same time.

• Solo friendly. The meaning of this one is subject to debate, but is tending towards: That grouping shouldn’t be necessary to get anything done. I’m not going to debate whether I think this is a good idea today, just that it is part of the current ideology of EQ2 design.
  

The multiple tier /con system never made any sense to me. Apparently it was added in late beta. If a “group” level 18 is as tough as, for instance, a solo level 20 then why not just have it con as a level 20? The multiple tier system causes zones to go grey long before they had any need to. It is true that a group encounter currently is no better at hitting you than a solo one of the same level so in fact a freshly grey group encounter is no challenge at all, but that is a matter of designer choice regarding the mathematics of combat, rather than something necessarily set in stone.

In recent patches the decision was taken to reduce the difficulty of the world, rather than to increase the capabilities of the weakest classes. This was a big mistake and has led to a situation where my guild’s paladin is quite capable of soloing certain epic encounters, while there are still many classes which really don’t want to be soloing any group encounters until they become grey, in which case they get no loot.

Insisting on all three of these ideas is causing EQ2 development to tie itself up in knots. I suspect one of them is going to have to go, in the long term. Solo-friendly isn’t going anywhere, I’m quite sure of that. The trivial loot code is probably here to stay also, mores the pity, though it may be relaxed somewhat by an increase in the level variation permitted.

Really though, most of the problems are being caused by the multiple tier /con system. The devs seem to be slowly edging away from it, but it’s hard to be certain. The fact that the new loot was only given to solo encounters suggests that they didn’t want to waste time changing something that was going to be going away anyway, or at least thats my charitable suggestion for the reasoning of it. They could have just forgotten though.

So that’s my long-range forecast. Once internal resistance is overcome (as multiple tier /con is undoubtedly someone’s beloved baby), the /con system will be reverted to it’s original tierless system. As multiple /con tiers were added in beta, then presumably the original data still remains, and only the more recent areas would need to have the changes done from scratch. A big job, nevertheless, but necessary to return internal consistency to Norrath.

All’s quiet on the Guk-Gate front, so I’ve taken the time to figure out how to get polls working. It’s ugly but functional.

Today’s question is “How often do you turn off Combat XP?”

My own guild keeps combat xp turned off permanently, from the Far Journey onwards. I’m quite sure that if we didn’t we’d all be level fifty already, instead of mid-twenties.

My own feeling is that xp is far too easy to obtain in EQ2 (or rather levelling requires too little of it), and without self-restricting your intake, you will level far too fast to really see very much on your journey. To prove this point I’m attempting to speed level a character on the Test Center, but it’s a bit too early to be able to show any useful results yet.

I’m looking forward to seeing the results from the poll, and would be very interested to hear other player’s opinions on this.