Pot calling the kettle black, IGE and usFollow

If there is a porift to be made, no matter who it screws, someone will make it. The other day I was complaining to my friend about the bazaar prices, and just like everyone else I complained that buying plat was ruining the economy of this game. His response was something that i think holds dearly true to the heart of this situation:

"Dude, 90% of the people that play EQ nowadays buy plat, the other 10% just dont know they can yet."

I'll admit, I too have made a purchase from IGE because I wanted to get my ranger some decent equipment. And when I did that 6 months ago, the 20k I got went a long way, and I thought hey, how handy is that. Well...I'd go so far as to say I wasn't the only one, and now here we are with inflation and a bunch of people pointing the finger at everyone but themselves.

Now quite honestly in the debate of the EQ economical ethics, everyone is a white-knight claiming that this is a problem that "other people" are causing. I'm thinking that most of us are a hell of a lot more guilty than we all want to play.

EVEN IF your platinum was FREE....:

-You still have to pay a large group of individuals 24/7 to packet sniff things and find the exploits.
-You still need yet another team of at least 46 people on 24/7 to be able to instantly deliver the plat to people on each server.
-You still have to pay for quite a few EQ accounts each month anyway.
-You still have to buy the computers/networking material/bandwidth to acctually DO this.

My point being, running an operation like this on so great a scale that it ruins the economy server-wide can't be cheap. I'm thinking that if everyone out there was on the straight-and-narrow like they all claim to be, we wouldnt be combating nearly the problem we are right now. I'm not pointing any fingers right now, my hands are just as dirty as most peoples here...but jesus lets just be honest about it and give it a rest.

The real bottom line here is this:

This is a company who is POWERED BY US, THE PLAYERS. If it wasn't for us pissing away our dollars and cents anyway, they wouldnt be around. If everyone really hated them like they claim to, IGE wouldnt be around because they couldn't AFFORD TO BE AROUND. Yes IGE is a problem, yes what theyre doing is wrong, but at the same time if they were as unwelcome as we all say they are then they wouldnt be here at all. I think this is probably how SOE feels about the situation too, because they sure as hell cant be oblivious to all these enormous platinum transfers. (Either that or they're ok with letting EQ slide so we all hop on the EQ2 bandwagon)

So what I'm saying is essentially, we have the the most efficient tools to stop this already in our hands. It doesn't take an act by SOE or someone else to ban these websites, we just need everyone to exercise(sp?) some control and just stop buying the platinum, before we totally ruin the point of having plat altogether.

-and thats my 2cp

Eumyen Entwise
61 Enchanter
The Seventh Hammer

few things, i have known about buying pp for $$ for years now, but refuse to cheat the game this way. A it is a breach of the EULA (big deal like soe ******* cares anyways) B. it is cheating and i deplore cheating in games, just as i do IRL.

now to comment on some of what you made lite of:

-You still have to pay a large group of individuals 24/7 to packet sniff things and find the exploits.
-You still need yet another team of at least 46 people on 24/7 to be able to instantly deliver the plat to people on each server.
-You still have to pay for quite a few EQ accounts each month anyway.
-You still have to buy the computers/networking material/bandwidth to acctually DO this.

lets see here. simple you only pay them for the exploits they find, then you give them either a commision, or a flat fee per exploit. not real pricy, thus no hiring of ppl, or paying them for letting their comp run macros.

as for getting ppl their pp, that is a macro deal and nothing more. so no need to pay 46 ppl to do anything, just up and run with a macro program and away you go.

as for paying for EQ accounts, nope they are free from ubisoft(sp), or you just use E-bay accounts or what ever, who cares. $13 a month for X amount of proffit. that is pennies.

bandwidth and computers. hmm bandwidth is basicaly free with either 1 or 2 cable/dsl connections and a router. as for comp, hell most of these are ppl as in line 1 of your statement here that already have this, thus no need to pay anything for what is already in use.

if i hire someone to do work from home on their PC, i am NOT paying them for their PC, or their bandwidth. that is just part of the requirements for working for me.

now that being said, of all the ppl i know in game, a few hundred so not near even 1% of the total population of EQ, none have ever bought pp or items for IRL $$.

to say that 90% of the ppl in game spend irl $$ to buy ingame pp is way to far fetched. i could see the #s reversed maybe, or even as much as 20-30% but no way is it 90%, or EVERYONE would have virtualy unlimited amount of coin in their accounts and EVERYONE would have nothing but UBB3R gear and they DO NOT.

Let me make it perfectly clear here (though i thought i already did) that im not on IGE's side. I don't buy plat (anymore) and I'm not trying to be a finger-pointer. What I'm saying is more-or-less that nobody is going to step up and fix this problem for us when in essence we have created it ourselves.

Gratz to you for not buying pp Jophiel, your one of the few. But at the same time nobody is going to (or should have to) clear this problem up for us, when we are fueling it in the first place.

I agree, IGE needs to go away, but I think its up to us, the players, not SOE.

-Eumyen Entwise
61 Enchanter
Seventh Hammer

Yay me!

Seriously though, according to who? Your friend? Is there something that makes him more qualified than the guy who bags my groceries to say what 90% of people are up to? I mean, if you're going to call everyone who posts on threads about plat sales hypocrites, you should have something to back it up with beyond "My friend says everyone does it."

/sigh Jesus Jophiel IM ON YOUR SIDE. read my post a little more carefully....I'm not saying buying pp is ok, in fact I'm saying quite the opposite.

quote from me:
"The 90% isnt something im saying to be true, im just saying it kinda got me thinking, there wouldnt be such a wide-spread problem if there werent a rediculous ammount of people feeding the IGE machine."

I agree, IGE is a bunch of assclowns and need to be stopped, but all i see is people ******** in forums and then picking up 20k on the way back to EQ so they can get a BP for their pally or something.

here we go again, just so were clear:
_______________________________________________________

-IGE = BAD
-IGE PROFITS COME FROM PLAYERS
-BUSINESS DOESNT EXIST WITHOUT CONSUMERS
-EQ PLAYERS/PEOPLE ******** ABOUT IGE = CONSUMERS (with a few exceptions)
-IGE WOULDNT EXIST WITHOUT US
_______________________________________________________

So i hope thats clear enough...cuz i dont know how to do it any better than that...

ps I HATE IGE TOO, so lets stop critizicing me like i dont. Just the last thing i wanted to do was say lets all stop blaming everyone else and then call myself a saint.

-Eum

and Xythex...plz read my post before u reply. AGAIN: im NOT using the 90% thing as a basis for an argument, just something a freind said, rather casually and not trying to play it off as fact. This got me thinking about this issue...nothing more.

-Eum

I never said you supported IGE. I said your friend is wrong and justifying his actions by making crap up. I also said if you're going to call people hypocrites ("I'm thinking that most of us are a hell of a lot more guilty than we all want to play"), you should have better defense for it than your buddy's numbers which you admit have no actual basis in reality.

I'm going to compare plat sales to selling drugs. Not because I think buying 50000pp is the same as buying an eight ball so relax, it's just an analogy.

We can all agree, I assume, that drug use is illegal, regardless of whether or not you think it should be. We call agree that buying plat is against the EULA, regardless of whether or not it should be. We can all agree that if no one used drugs then there'd be no market for drugs and the drug sellers would have to get day jobs. Likewise, if no one bought platinum, IGE would have to start selling herbal Viagra or something. I think we can agree that the whole "Just Say No" campaign did nothing to combat drug use in the United States. Now, do you think a "Just Say No to IGE" campaign will work better?

SOE is the law and the police force on Norrath. When someone is breaking the law, it's up to the police to do something about it. While it'd be lovely and utopian to say "if no one broke the law, we'd all be swell", it doesn't work that way. And all the "anti-IGE" education without active militant support from SOE is about as useful as Nancy Regan telling on TV telling a bunch of pot smoking teens in their parents' basement to "Just Say No".

I'm completely with you here. If it becomes impossible to benefit from items that are twice your level a lot of problems could be solved.

I'm not up to reading the EULA at the moment, so I'll give you points on a technicality and note that it doesn't make a whit of difference. Change the lines to "The sale of drugs is illegal" and "The sale of platinum involves breaking the EULA" if you're worried about the semantics.

And it's implied that I'm discussing illegal drugs, not Tylenol, DexiTrim and caffine before you decide to bring THAT up

What im worried about isnt you discussing drugs in some petty attempt to make me look dumb on a forum, its the fact that nobody realizes SOE isnt gonna fix this problem for us. IGE has been around since i started playing EQ (when pop was the new thing). Which means that for over a year now, SOE has had these people opperating on their servers selling PP and breaking their EULA. So why havent they been booted? Well, quite simply, they cant be booted for one reason or another.

Im fairly certain SOE doesnt support them...and i doubt they appreciate inflation thats off the charts, and ruining the economy of their servers. you would think they would probably delete the accounts of these people, since they can obviously track them with ease.

I think SOE's inaction tells the story here.... nobody can fix this but us. Wow yay they made a casino to absorb some laundered plat...that lasted what, 3 days? phhh get real people, they arent fixing this problem for us. Sure they can fix the exploits, but im thinking the way they find them is by noticing huge bank accounts being created overnight...what the hell does that help? Were on our own on this one methinks...so maybe crying to SOE isnt going to fix the problem.

-Eum

Edited, Fri Jan 30 14:33:41 2004 by Eumyen

Of course I'm a saint. Didn't you see Merrikat's rendition of me in the OOT thread? They should build a frickin' church in my honor for my non-plat buying ways. With lots of flying buttresses and gargoyles and stained glass.

Just so we're clear, your point is that if no one bought platinum, IGE wouldn't sell platinum? So it's everyone's fault (except mine 'cause the Vatican has me on speed dial) that IGE is ruining the economy? That's genius.

My point is Joph that SOE wont fix the problem for us...id imagine that if they could have wiped the beelions of plats off their servers by now, they would have, dont you think?

read this about IGE

all speculation, but if the rumor is true, then that would explain why SoE is doing nothing about IGE.

as for other contries and US law. its simple. you breach the EULA the resulsts is supposed to be suspention or banning of account(s). is SoE would follow though with this, then poof, no more ebay, or IGE, or supersales, etc. to cause this kind of BS.

yes, a few ppl (less then 1000) could easily controll and corner the pricing in the baz. heck i would venture that a few hundred ppl could do so with the plat dupping and other instant coin bugs out there.

the overhead is negligible compaired to the proffit.

there is no real overhead for hosting a URL (few hundred dollars monthly), no real overhead per account. $13US monthly, no real overhead in cheaters as you only pay them per cheat they find and then exploit for you. no paying them for the work to get there. or they are paying you for the most current cheat list that Yantis/IGE are famos(infamous) for putting out on their web page.

so your overhead is nothing compaired to ppl paying IRL cash to buy something that is NOT REAL. its no differant then ebaying toons. its the same thing. worst yet on the ebay is the original owner can always take the account back if they still have the start up info used to get the account going in the first place.

the overhead for IGE or Yantis (not including advertising) is close (this is a HUGE guess on my part) to 10k -30k per month. that is nothing when you think about the money IGE just spent to buy Yantis. why did they pay 10million? because that is what Yantis was making in 1 year worth of interent sales that is why.

normal pricing structor for buying a business is find out how much X company makes in 1 year and offer that amount less 1-20% to cover losses in the change over. that is a common use price structor for buying compaines.

thus i would sell my school from roughly 100k today, or 150k in roughly 3 more months as ill have my student base back up to were it was before the newyear kicked in. Dec. Jan. are always loss months for my industry. not a big deal.