selectparks - Sony Online opens EQ2 marketplace

You can't argue with the weather I guess..

Against the grain of all other MMORPG's on the market, Sony Online has created a secure (read legal) context for players' to make a little realworld money off their hard earned labour.

Station Exchange will be the bidders floor for this market and will apply to a variety of servers based on popularity from player polls. John Smedley announced this in an open letter to the player community.

It'll be interesting to see if this 'legalisation' (of what was otherwise a black-market for items, characters and hard cash ) will influence the mood on these EQ2 servers, given that it essentially equates to an infrastructurally supported free-market economy for the sale (not exchange) of game based labour. That said, rampant capitalism like 'farming' is not allowed sayeth John.

Regardless, we can be certain that somewhere, a keen-minded entrepreneur is scheming how to turn their LAN cafe into a sweatshop, "Bruce, you can play for free today. Just let me have that lovely Sheild of Infinite Awesomeness.."

Perhaps eBay, that dark and seedy alley of PC pimps and item hawkers will be feeling the heat at NASDAQ this week..