Sony has come full circle – in the days after the launch of EQ, they were the company most likely to ban or sue customers that dared used eBay to bypass the mindblowing fun that was their advancement grind. Now, instead, they will fight fire with fire. And there was much factual reporting, intelligent discussion as well as gnashing of teeth.

My honest opinion? I’ve been trying to convince people to try this exact approach since I was toiling on UO2. Why? Because at the end of the day, the biggest problems with eBay and MMOs are service issues that are solvable if the trades can be secure (as illustrated by the lovely cartoons on Sony’s explanatory site).

Will it work? It’s very hard to say. Sony was smart to only try it on a handful of new servers. One interesting tangential note is that EQ and EQ2 are games that require devotion to a great deal. Will these new servers have enough of a devoted fanbase to form a community core? Will there be enough buyers on this server to serve as market for the farmers that will descend on the server?

How will it affect the servers that are already live? The glorious ideal is that Players With Time will finally have an opportunity to play free of competition from Players With Money. However, I feel fairly confident that the law of unintended consequences tells me we’ll see something 6 months after launch which will upset the whole apple cart. One scenario I can clearly see is the new servers struggling (due to issues with building a core community), but Sony emboldened by the attempt enough to spread the service to other servers.

How will it affect IGE? In the plan that’s outlined, not much – IGE is in the service of providing the labor, and they’ll do it on whichever platform is available to them, be it eBay, their own home-brewed auction system or Sony’s Station Exchange. In reality, I wouldn’t be surprised if Sony had put more thought into how to deal with professional brokers than they’re immediately letting on to.

One interesting question I keep coming back to: how does providing your own internal trading service affect your attempts to shut down player trades on other services like eBay. One could make an argument that there are anti-monopoly considerations here.

Sony’s argument is that the primary reason for the service is the customer service angle. And I believe them. From the Wired article:

“When 40 percent of our customer service man-hours are dealing with fraud, it’s in our interest to deal with it,” said John Smedley, SOE’s president. “We don’t want to hide the fact that we’re going to make money.”

Which is to say: “What if we were to turn this gaping money pit into something we could, you know, use to provide better service, add more content or even make a new game?”

Of course, the real X-factor in all of this is the player reaction. Many players hate the idea of eBaying and IGE with a deep, resounding hatred. Many of them don’t even know why. This is one of those ideas that might die before it gets implemented for that very reason. Of course, even that’s misleading – the complaints come from the boards, who are by definition your most hard-core and devoted players – the ones who have more time than money. Sony is making a bet that there is a large Silent Majority out there, of people who don’t have time to level up to 60 and spend all their days making fun of The Vision on official message boards because they, like, have jobs and kids and stuff. If IGE’s boasting about their success is any indication, that doesn’t seem like a bad bet to make.

For those claiming that you will never again be able to play a game without the integrity being destroyed by microtransactions, I say ‘hogwash’. The market will ultimately decide, and there are enough people who hate ‘money games’ that someone will be willing to provide a place for them.

There is a gulf between people with time and people with money. Currently, we’ve only been making MMOs for people with time, and the people with money have been limited to second class citizens. But ‘People With Time’ is limited to hardcore gamers and college students. It’s about time someone tried to swing the pendulum to the other extreme, if for no other reason than it’s important to see what happens, even if what happens is a messy explosion.

Short form: I’m glad someone’s doing this. I’m also glad it’s not me.