Earlier this week, I was out doing some real life pimping in soul-free LA, which is a great place to visit if you get paid to do so (emphasis on Paid Alot). Naturally, my primary concern was the continued progress of my soon-to-be uber Warcraft alt — well, besides bringing back bags of cash to my workplace.
Thanks to the wonders of drunken threats and repeated reminders on my guild message boards, the guild did drag around my afk ass and finished a buttload of quests and dinged many delicious levels on my alt’s behalf.
However, I feel like my finger is off the pulse of the online gaming industry, having been offline for a few days, and I do believe my duty here is pulse fingering. Let it be known, I take fingering seriously.
And, what have we here? (Originally spotted on ALL the better blogs: Aggro Me, N3rfed, the Poindexters, Lum’s joint, Skippy the teenaged blogging pundit, et al.) Summary: Sony, famed Nexus of Evil, is about to get into the game-items-for-real-life-cash gig.
Heh.
And really, who gives a fuck. It’s about damn time they got a piece of the action. Predictably, wailing, teeth gnashing and doom portending abound, but, in the end, it’s just another choice for the players — a choice we already had for many years, by the way.
This neighborhood kid told me last week that he had just sold his Star Wars Galaxies jedi account for $450. I think he unlocked two or three months ago — I dunno, I kind of tune him out when he starts retelling his game adventures in great detail. I mean … fuckkk, start a blog for that shit. Anyways, $450 is some good gravy. He really should consider tossing some of that to his neighborhood mentor. I did encourage him to stay indoors rather than wander over to my yard.
So, good luck to Sony with all of that — shame they couldn’t get their hands on a piece of that $450. (muahahaha)
Assuming this spreads around the gaming world, sign me up. I’m not currently sucking on the SOE tit, but you won’t hear me using the word “never”. I know plenty of EverQuest players, myself included, that said “never” when Star Wars Galaxies was announced, yet when SWG hit the streets, there we all were, lusting after the new and improved like all the other sorry gaming bastards.
Yes, sign me up and I care not the consequences. I used to have all the time in the world and no money. MacNCheese for dinner, ketchup on toast, rice beer … I was a newly-minted college graduate once, too. Few years out (ok, more than a few, bastards), I have plenty of money, no time.
Restore to me my rightful place as a member of the gaming elite.
When leveling slows down, I’ll buy my way free of the grind. When that last epic doodad eludes me, I offer my Visa. When the loot randomizer fucks me over, yet again, for the billionth time in my gaming career, it’s nothing that money can’t solve. When Skippy, the teenaged pundit, gets all in my face how I didn’t “earn” any of my game accolades, I’m willing to pay to have his unemployed ass banished from my virtual vicinty.
Hell, everything’s for sale as it is. ‘Bout time we stopped pretending.
What no comments about the new WoW patch? I guess you haven’t had time to check it out, but I figured your guildies would have said something to you.
Honor system = Massive Lag due to Raids
griping abounds on the forums of course
I was on last night and was lag-a-riffic almost everywhere. Guinness-eligible lag in IF, of course. So I was going to gripe about that, and especially that bullshit with mana regen, but wanted to climb aboard for the SonyBay hubub first.
Fear not. There is much griping to be had still.
New WoW patch=nobody cares 🙂
Most of us left wow after hitting 60 long ago. I’ve been to EQ2 and now Matrix Online since. WoW was an incredibly awesome game and I think it has been the MMOG made to date, including all of them starting with UO-onward. But it quit being fun so fast. Who knew?
The only thing that surprises me about the Sony market is that it took so long. An opportunity to make more money outta the game, and they weren’t all over it?
Will Blizzard be able to keep pointing the finger at the evil gold selling chinese farmers and saying, “they are to blame for the economy!” in face of this?
I’m not saying ‘never’ either, but after dealing with SOE over the years, this step comes as no shock. It’s all about making the quickest buck possible, and this is the quickest possible buck. I had to laugh at Smedley’s explanation: 40% of our CS time is spent dealing with people who’ve broken the rules and are unhappy about it, so let’s make the customers who weren’t breaking the rules unhappy instead. That’ll show ’em!
Screw trying to make the advancement process interesting enough that people actually want to play our game instead of skipping most of it – we’ll make it boring as hell and take cash to get to the fun. Farmers camping quest-drop spawns 24/7 so people trying to have fun in the game can’t? Hey, more cash for us.
I guess I wouldn’t mind the whole thing so much if they included a mandatory course with each account sold: “How not to be a retard in groups, in 10 easy lessons.”