Originally Posted by
Rakshakvana
Not really...
It was actually a discussion between SIMU's CEO at the time...forget her name, and that one uber merchant guy, I forget his name too (not Ardwen). He basically just convinced her it wasn't a bad thing. A lot of other players were okay with it. They began to loosen up about it because of this one very influential guy who was already doing big business transactions within GS.
Ah, Ciston, I think that was his name. I never met him but he used to host parties in SoCal that a few friends of mine went to.
That's what I know.
But one of the best items in the game was sold in the early 2000's along with a ton of other cool stuff - the Boots and Gloves of Tonis. This was a for-silver auction and they went very cheaply to an acquaintance of mine. I think less than 100 mill. Why does nobody like Tonis?
There's really not much of a difference between paying silvers and paying real money, since they are both easily transferable now. I do not care for the idea of buying in game ISK, but I've done it in Eve plenty of times. It's much harder to earn ISK in Eve than it is in GemStone. Creatures are much richer than I remember.
If Simu is selling silvers, I don't really care that much, since it's easy for me to earn them in the game. My guess is they have been selling real items, characters and silvers for a very long time now. It's just a guess, but it'd be the smart thing to do. They are just being less discreet about it with the freemium model, but my guess is they have plenty of undercover operatives - or just one, who is selling in game stuff, here at PC. Who cares. I hope they earn as much money as they can, as long as they hold to the American tradition of not cashing out like those Asian companies do. I 've been burned way too many times by Asian companies who shut down games and cash out after I've invested thousands of dollars. The fact that Simu hasn't done that is pretty remarkable. We should all be grateful that they are looking for ways to keep this odd, unpopular game afloat. As far as I can tell it's perfectly fun to play GS without spending any $ on it except for a base sub.