Here's a thought...
Ok, fine. People want to play the game this way? Let em. But lets put some stipulations on this method of play. Maybe it would be a little bit easier for the rest of us to swallow if the people that "buy" their characters instead of working for them the "old fashioned way" had a few consequences so to speak for making this choice.
1. Let's bring faction back into the equation. Make the characters who play this way tagged in some way/set apart from the rest of the players so that they are easily identifiable in the greater populace. I know it's being said that new servers are going to (possibly?) be created to support this method of gameplay, but in the event of crossovers into OUR servers, I'd want to know who was doing this. Maybe a modification to the conning system so that when we consider the players we can see that they do this? And when they con people who aren't down with it, they could see "insert name here regards you with ill favor" and recognize that we aren't particularly interested in helping them out with things, etc (bad faction)? IMO, let the players who play that way band together and compete with their RL money separate and apart from the rest of us.
Again, I know its been said that they would have their own servers.. but what's this about some crossover into other servers??? I for one would be kinda ticked if I had to be packed up and shifted somewhere else because of these people. And I don't think its fair to have to feel the pressure of 'competing' with those that want to spend RL money on items and status that IMO should be EARNED.
2. In the event of a crossover situation, maybe more people would stay if the 'game poachers' were forced to live in their own newly created area as their home base i.e. instead of being able to have home in Willow Wood/Baubbleshire/ etc, a new area was established by SOE and integrated into the game where these people would be grouped, further separating and identifying them to other gameplayers. If this thing is gonna be about revenue for SOE, why don't they go all out and let these people pay out the nose for things? If they had their own home base area, the NPC merchants in these areas could be real price-gougers.... charge triple the price for items such as ration, furniture, weaponry, armor... they wanna buy things with RL money? Make em buy everything. And the 'bad faction' conning system modification would allow for merchants in other regular areas to refuse to sell to them, forcing them to use the NPC merchants in their own area.
These are just some brainstormed ideas I came up with while sitting here considering my feelings about this whole situation. If these changes are coming, I'd feel a whole lot better about it if we all had the easy ability to identify these people in game and the option to not facilitate their lvl advancement by giving them any breaks with goods that we craft or harvest and put on the broker for a good price. Give em a separate broker too! Let em be forced to play with the consequences that cheating w/ RL money brings to the table. In these ways, maybe they'd be forced to do all that buying of stuff among others like themselves and we wouldn't feel so slighted by having to play next to them. There would be a definite, recognizable division line in-game between those who earned their lvl 50 and deserve respect, and the ones that just sat down and wrote out a check.
Thoughts? Suggestions? Feedback?
edit: This idea is based on IF they ever did opt to allow these people to play on our regular servers. I don't care what they do on their own server.
Edited, Sat Apr 23 07:20:21 2005 by sashayenne
Edited, Sat Apr 23 10:48:28 2005 by sashayenne