In Case You Live in a Hole...SOEbay

I wasn't going to comment on this, really, honest. I find it so mind numbingly obvious a decision that SOE would decide to get in on the auction action that their stock holders should probably have formed a lynch mob years ago. Can I get a DUH.

In the rare case that you are reading this and have no idea wtf I'm talking about, I give you the pundits of the mmogsphere:

Greg gets it as usual.

Two downside risks. The first is that you'll annoy some customers--lots of people hate "eBayers," because they view purchasing stuff as cheating.

I spent a looong time in a high end service industry and we used to have a saying. "The customer is rarely right, but its generally a good idea to let them think they are."

The second is the risk that the game becomes dominated by pharmers

In my mind this, as Greg points out, is an excellent reason to SOEbay in the first place. More data points on who's doing what. Still I'll never understand companies that ban you for their poor game design. If the game let's you stand in one place all day and get rewarded with uberloot then you've got a design problem not a problem player. (Disclosure: Camping sucks too...)

Broken Toys, news as usual.

It seems that those of us who object to in-game commodification for the sake of the game’s integrity are losing the argument. Hopefully the folks who win the argument (whomever they may be) will be able to use 'game' and 'integrity' in the same sentence without visibly snickering.

I do not see that changing who brokers these game transactions affects in any way the integrity of the play space. Holy crap, not a single snicker. I actually get what is being said, I just generally snicker at high brow digerati who throw poo at the man in one hand and while using the other to toss same at customers paying for digital bits (not referring to BT by any means there).

Gamasutra gives the straight facts.

As for the logistics of Station Exchange, when a player decides to auction the use of an item or character, that item is removed from the game world and is moved to a secure Station Exchange server. Once an auction is complete, the item or character will be placed in their account. Only some specific EverQuest II servers will be Exchange enabled, and subscribers will be able to choose whether to play on them or not.

Ahh straight news without commentary. Bliss...oh wait...
Sarcastic web varmit admits that the oft overlooked escrow is at the heart of the matter. See Smedley discussing 40% of EQ CS tickets revolve around fraud.
Dude, can you imagine how crappy it must be to listen to every dill hole complain to a CS in EQ. Kill me first please. Shall we rant on how many of the support issues in MMOGs are created by the very systems designed to deal with them or instead should we harp on the numbnuts who think that creating a barely enforcable rule is an acceptable band aid for poorly designed or executed features. Pass on both.

Terra Nova all ova.

If eBaying isn't a problem, why sell objects at all? Why not just give them away to anyone who wants them? If it's so great that people can just hang out with their guildies, why not let them do so without charging them $600 for their equipment? Why not just let them equip with whatever they want? It's probably easier to implement than a full-blown trading system. I'll tell you why not: it's because it SPOILS THE GAME. - Richard Bartle

Standing on the shoulders of giants makes it real easy for us these days. I have the deepest respect for guys like RB who paved the way with MUDs and when we add all that text stuff to games like Aces High we end up with cool games like we have today but sometimes I think the pundits have been out of the game too long. Hello! If 2 swords drop per day, my buying mine from you is no different than you giving yours to me, and it does not change in any way the number of swordws in the game. Teddy Castro goes on with the counter point to much better effect:

against this imagined future of no closed worlds, i am holding out hope for a future with *some* closed worlds. not *all* closed worlds, just *some*. i think having the major design houses come to grips with the incentives that lead to membrane-punching is quite possibly a good step. and it cannot hurt anything, because SOE games are completely ebayed now as it is.

As always Terra Nova gets a bit of a scoop and is well worth the read. Kinda...

Julian: Ebaying is no more or less a threat to the magic of the game than people talking about Britney's baby on guild chat is

If someone talks about Britney's baby, there are no tangible effects on their character in the game. If they buy a +5 sword of hitbebabyonemoretime then there is.

*snicker*

Star Wars TV Spots

My action figures are in an uproar today. Darth in particular is trying to choke out just about everyone in the office over the recent news that local marketeer Rafter has secured for the company 25 tickets to opening day, opening show of Episode III.

Instead of waxing poetic about how one evening in 1977 changed a little boy's life forever (boring you all to tears while at the same time allowing you to throw rocks at my inner dork), I'll just pony up the new Episode III TV spots that are leaking out today.

Here you go.

Free Civ Released

When I first got interviewed for the Junior-Under Terrain Monkey position here at Playnet lo those many years ago, Snail asked me what my favorite games of all time were. Pretty tough question for some but for me Civilization by Sid Meyer and its spin offs has always been at the top of the list. I used to spend long weekends hot seat playing conquer the world with Bloo and Krieger. Man those were the days. Next to Ultima and the Online varient, Civilization is probably one of the most defining games in my gaming history.

Good news than that FreeCiv 2.0 is now released under the GNU liscense and copntains the must have feature, multiplayer. Now if I can just get Shannon to go out of town for the weekend...

Get it here.

Star Wars on Slashdot

If you're a huge SW fan like myself, you've already seen this or have gotten it. Yesterday Slashdot and others reported on the release of a killer fan film titled 'Revelations'. I got it over night and am just sitting down to watch here at Rat Central. 40 minutes long so someone (Toto the Star Wars hater will do fine) had best fetch the popcorn.

Here's the Torrent (WMV).

NASA Steals Terrain II

I'll be the first one to stand up and clambir aboard the rocketship for a one way trip to the space colony but those space monkeys keep screwing up and now they've gone too far. Take a look at this!

If that looks an awful lot like Terrain II to you then you and I are on the same page brothers! Ok, all BS aside this is a very similar toolset, most likely because we are both using similar if not exactly the same DEM data. If you live under a rock and haven't checked World Wind out, get on it.

Free Music

I know I know. It sounds like a really bad subject for some crappy MILF-bus-tibetan-pr0n spewing from Thunderbird. Don't get me wrong, I love to play "Browse the junk folder" as much as the next guy but this is something different and no, I'm not asking you to install some virus laden garbage like Kazaa on your sys. This is the real deal. (note to self: write rant about girlfriend installing crapware like PrintShop on my uber gaming rig and likely filling the entire file structure full of crap)

The Columbia University Music Lab is doing a pretty cool study. The basic premise goes something like this:

"Britney Spears sucks really bad, why is she so damn famous 'cause honest, she ain't that hot neither."

So as any acadmeic having such a quandry before them would, they are giving away free music in an effort to figure out wtf the general public is thinking. It might sound wierd at first but remember this sort of high brow "wtf is that" thinking has been going on since at least the '50's.

Drop on over and help these grad students answer the most important question of the modern age, namely, why do we actually pay for the garbage the RIAA wraps in celophane?