When we asked to be able to unbind things

[Orratti]

We were looking to be able to move things from one character where it is now useless to another where it would be useful, not to sell on a new pay to bid ah in order to make turbine money from our items.

[Karavek]

Well you know what we learned around the table top, becareful what you wish for, for the gawds are capricous and cruel. When you make a wish on a lawful evil entity what do you expect?

But seriously, even though I dont see this as pay to win, but simply taking advantage of we players for so foolishly for years now giving so much value to virtual goods.

Remember when the term micro transaction meant maybe spending as much as a whopping dollar on the best item in the cash shop, where it would take 5 or 6 bucks to kit out a fresh character on a typical FTP PVP game or the like. Where P2W really mattered yet never seemed much an issue.

That for me is the real annoyance, its not that they want to nickel and dime us, i can live with that, but 5 or 10 spotting us is magnitudes of an increase in cost. Once I had more faith our funds would lead to a bigger better world for us all, now I see only a slowly dieing themepark that rather then taking a season off to retrofit and upgrade, stays open, limping along, and adding a new ride here and there they over charge for while forcing people to use it as the older rides are unfit for human interest.

[Orratti]

I don't see it as pay to win that is for sure. I see it as being turned from customer into a unpaid employee. As soon as the cost of an item goes beyond what can reasonably be worked for in game for free from that point on turbine makes cash off of the buyer and the seller.

The only way I could see to balance that out would be to actually make shards capable of buying anything you like from the game. With that kind of buying power the cost of the shards and fees could be looked as a convenience cost. Otherwise it has stepped beyond selling us convenience items as customers to having the players working to make money for them off of the other players.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

Yep.


I realise the idea is to make money, but I totally do not understand the logic of BTC instead of BTA, but we'll let you auction it to other players if you pay us.

[Musouka]

Yep.


I realise the idea is to make money, but I totally do not understand the logic of BTC instead of BTA, but we'll let you auction it to other players if you pay us.

or auction it to one of your other characters?

[Memnir]

Did you really think that the Modern Turbine™ would let you unbind things for free?

Silly Rabbit.

[FestusHood]

or auction it to one of your other characters?

I'm wondering if it will be possible to bid on your own auctions with another character? If it is, trying to use this to swap a bound item between characters could be risky, as someone could buy it before you had a chance to get it back yourself.

[Orratti]

Did you really think that the Modern Turbine™ would let you unbind things for free?

Silly Rabbit.

No of course not. Unless you are using the ah to sell things back to yourself really this isn't letting you unbind anything either.

If they were trying to let you unbind items to move them to another character they could have sold us an item from the store to do that. That would be us buying something from them as a service.

This is them making real money off of us selling fake things to each other for fake money. It's nothing anyone would ask for.

[Memnir]

This is them making real money off of us selling fake things to each other for fake money. It's nothing anyone would ask for.

Oh, absolutely. They conjured up a new economy with the sole purpose of fleecing the greedy and gullible*. However, this is at least nominally a way for players to pass around bound items - so the Dev team can tout it as such and make it seem like it's something other then a naked cash grab. It's a shining example of Modern Turbine™ and their vision for the game and it's players. If the market does not exist to part us from our money, invent one and then gild the turd to a high polish.



*being neither greedy nor gullible, I won't be using the Shard Exchange - however I fully expect it to be quite a bustling little money maker for Turbine. P.T. Barnum was not wrong concerning the birth-rate.

[Musouka]

The funny thing about it: I can sell something, cover the initial listing cost, and guess what? I just earned a whole bunch of astral shards without buying any, regardless of the cut Turbine takes. I do it again and again, I can just stockpile the shards, and never really have to buy any. Just play the market as a seller, and you can easily buy things without having to buy shards from the store.

[Orratti]

The funny thing about it: I can sell something, cover the initial listing cost, and guess what? I just earned a whole bunch of astral shards without buying any, regardless of the cut Turbine takes. I do it again and again, I can just stockpile the shards, and never really have to buy any. Just play the market as a seller, and you can easily buy things without having to buy shards from the store.

Yep. The people who bought your stuff bought them from Turbine for you.

[Musouka]

Yep. The people who bought your stuff bought them from Turbine for you.

There will always be people that do buy the stuff Turbine offers, so I don't really see an issue.