WP stance on ebay with Shadowbane

[Martok]

Recently, the question came about on the Shadowbane forums about how Wolfpack will treat ebay in relationship to the game.  From what I have gathered so far, the game isn't designed to be ebay friendly.  I can say that I am quite "wealthy" within UO, and that unless my tower decays, or my account is hacked, I will remain quite "wealthy".  Shadowbane seems to be different.  One that gains a measure of wealth will have a very tough time keeping/maintaining it.  Here is some of the argument:

The Question: "eBay farming is so successful because in other games, a player can expect to be able to say, level a druid up to level 50 in EverQuest, or hoard like mad in UO and sell placed castles. Which, as I've said in one column, totally screws the the game up for players who just want to play instead of buy their way to a comfortable position.

I thought the plan for SB was to do away with some of this nonsense, at least by making it hard to reach the top levels and then making that hard to maintain. But I could assume one of two things about what you said to VR -- either you're accepting eBay farming as something you couldn't rub out entirely, or something you're actively encouraging."

The Response: We're not encouraging it, but (to be honest) we don't really care that much. I don't hold much stock in the "fairness" argument -- I fail to see how it is any more unfair than building a system whereby, given two users of equal skill, the one who can play 10 hours a day will always be more successful than the one who can only play 30 minutes... and if it is going to happen anyway (which seems likely -- someone sold an EQ guide account on eBay the other day) then I'd much rather set boundaries for how/when we think it should happen rather than just leaving it open for users to decide (or abuse) on their own."