John Smedley is the president of Sony Online Entertainment. We've decide to sit down with him to talk about SOE's ground-breaking plans to introduce the idea of "Station Cash," which will allow users to purchase new items with real-world money. UGO: Station Cash is kind of a new departure for established titles such as Everquest and Everquest II, what was the decision making process to bring this to older titles and will games such as Vanguard and Star Wars Galaxies see similar options in the future?
John Smedley: We're excited to bring Station Cash to our customers. It really gives us some flexibility and some new things we can offer our customers. We plan on using this across a lot of our titles over time, although we currently have no plans for Vanguard or Star Wars Galaxies.
UGO: What value does this bring to current SOE customers in each game and what plans are there in the future to expand this?
JS: We see offering cool items that are not game balance problems. Mostly vanity stuff, but probably also some useful things. But nothing imbalancing. In the future we hope to be able to offer things like guild photos that can be physically mailed to the members of a guild or t-shirts with your character on them. We also will likely add the ability to use Station Cash for Character moves or Character Renames.
UGO: There has been some commotion in game and on the messageboards that this is an unexpected move for EQ and EQII, how would you respond to allay the fears of the playerbase (particuarly the slippery slope questions)? JS:It's hard to address those kind of concerns because as a player myself I understand the issues. Some people just won't like this, and I respect that. Some players will and will buy things. Many will probably just not care. We are committed to insuring game balance, so we won't be selling anything that will ever become a "every Raider has to have one" kind of thing. Many of the items and services available in the Online Market through Station Cash have been available previously through anniversary events and claim items, what can we look forward to in the future (new items available only through the Market)?
UGO: We are constantly asked to make those kinds of items available, and that's part of the reason behind this in the first place. In terms of what we'll offer in the future? We plan to look to the players for those answers. We want cool things that don't break the game. We also want to insure that we continue to deliver the top notch quality updates that we are known for.
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