I'll admit I've neglected the blog for a bit (in my defence things have been very busy)

Christmas came and went, notable gifts were a copy of Battlefield 2 from the wife (thanks hun) and the entire hitchhikers guide to the galaxy radio series on CD (I already had the original broadcasts on tape but asked for the complete set on CD to bring me up to date)

The wife is getting very sick of being pregnant (theres a part of me that will be glad when the little 'un is out) and I've spent a small fortunate on baby stuff in the last week or so (praise be to overtime and christmas bonus!)

So I guess you're wondering what I'm going to bitch about this time?..... well its Eve Online.

I think I mentioned in a previous blog entry that I'd resubscribed in December because I was bored and because of the whole SWG situation. Well in some ways Eve is still as boring and unfriendly as it always was and yet I still find myself wanting to login and play (very odd)

A recent dev blog http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=304 attempts to tackle the subjet of 'Real Money Trading' (RMT) for in game items and money. Now issues with the legality or the licence agreement aside (thats a whole other mess) there are two things that perhaps CCP should have thought about before jumping on the RMT bandwagon with pitchforks and burning torches at the ready.

Unlike other games Eve doesn't have a tradition 'maximum level' and because of this it is essentially impossible for a newer player to catch up with the veterans. Now while some may counter this by saying that the only thing the vets can now do is specialize, and that this specialization doesn't give a huge boost over players without this.

While I disagree in this its not really the issue. Veteran players have had plenty of opportunity to take advantages of the inbalances of Eves past, they have had ample opportunity to join one of the 0.0 based corps/alliances and have probably collected a large amount of cash, this is obviously something the new player now cannot do.

Since Eves skills are real time gated a new player is still restricted in what he can do even if given a large sum of cash - I guess you can see where I'm going with this with reference to the earlier link.

While I can see RMT as being a [potential] problem in online games I just dont see it ever being as big a problem as in Eve. Cash in Eve is a barrier to fun and on this side of the barrier is simply boredom and tedium - would you rather be mining/NPC'ing/Missioning for the cash to clone/insure/upgrade or would you rather be out there exploring the gameworld and blasting other people to tiny bits?)

The second thing CCP should have thought about is their own policy on selling game time cards. CCP allow game time cards to be traded (i.e. sold) to other players for in game cash - I personally dont have an issue with this but many players do and think its a little hypocritical of CCP to ban one kind of RMT while allowing another (the timecard was obviously purchased with real money) and its difficult to ignore the fact that CCP obviously make money from one of these but not the other..... Best case scenario is that all RMT turns into timecard trading (which will be a major pain in the butt because the 'seller' would have accept 'payment' in timecards (not very desirable or practical for an eBay sale)

I also wonder how they go about proving that in game transactions were paid for with real world money?..........