Hail! :)

I'm Nathan Pearce (Hammerfel), Creative Director for Web Presence at SOE. Station Exchange, our secure online marketplace of EQII players, is on the verge of launch! It's a really exciting time in the world of MMOs, as EverQuest II players are poised to chart new territories for increasingly diverse MMO play styles. Want to be one of the first to use it? Read on and I'll tell you how.

MMO's have a long history of adding different rule sets and new gameplay styles to accommodate player requests. PvP or PvE? Solo or Group? Casual or hardcore? Whatever your preference, MMO developers have created a myriad of gameplay experiences to make you feel at home, without upsetting your neighbor who may have a distinctly different playstyle. New player experiences lie at the core of the design of Station Exchange. Our goal is to provide a secure, user-friendly solution for those EverQuest II players who say they intend to join up, while not impacting the gameplay of the others who'd rather stay with their current servers.

We demonstrated the system to the press (mainstream and gaming) and players during the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, CA , this year, and received a lot of great, face-to-face feedback from a wide range of viewpoints. The feedback was priceless. Some feature suggestions we were able to implement for the launch of the product, while others were ambitious enough to save for a later phase. But this was only from demoing the product - the people we showed Station Exchange to didn't get to try it out for themselves...

So here's where we need your help.

Station Exchange Pre-Launch Applications

Next week, we're starting our pre-launch phase of Station Exchange. We've tested and reviewed Station Exchange internally through multiple iterations, and now it's time to let the players tell us what they think. We offer you the opportunity to try out the service and give us feedback on the entire user experience. There are a few things you need to know before you sign up:

  • This is for real. The character you ask us to move to Station Exchange will be on a Station Exchange (SE) server permanently. That character cannot ever be moved back to the regular servers (SE-to-SE server moves will be allowed with the Character Transfer System).
  • The money is for real. We're not testing this with play money; all transactions will be for real US dollars. As an incentive for you to take part in the early phase, we are discounting SOE's listing fees and commission by 50% during the pre-launch to make it easier to try it out. However, all sales and fees are for real world dollars in order to have a complete, end-to-end pre-launch.
  • Pre-launch participants will only be able to sell to other pre-launch participants. These lucky few can only buy from and sell to each other until we launch the service to the public.
  • Participation in buying and selling is restricted to US residents only, even after pre-launch. Any EQII player can have their character moved during the free move period described below, but only US residents may buy and sell.
  • You must have a credit card to participate in Station Exchange. If you intend to be a seller, you'll need a PayPal account in order to receive your money. Save yourself some time and sign up for a Pay Pal account today (http://www.paypal.com).

So, now that you know the score, go ahead and sign-up! If you're selected, we'll send you an email with instructions to get you started. The Station Exchange team at SOE will be watching the Station Exchange forum closely for feedback from our pre-launch members on the user experience of our system. Your thoughts and feedback are important to this project.

The Station Exchange team is seriously excited about EQII players finally trying out this system we've been working on for so long. Please give us all of your impressions on using the system. No detail is too small -- that will help us polish Station Exchange and get it in prime shape for the full launch on July 6th.

Station Exchange Launch & Character Moves

Station Exchange is scheduled to launch July 6th. We've changed our character moves schedule a bit to accommodate more players and Guilds who want to make the move. Starting 14 days before launch (June 22nd), players can use the /movelog command to designate individual characters and entire Guilds to move over to the Station Exchange servers. The characters will actually move on July 6th . If we launch with more than one Station Exchange server, all characters from a particular regular server will end up on the same Station Exchange server, so there's no worries that half of a guild may end up on one server and half on another. To designate a character to move, log in with that character and use the /movelog command.

Free moves will continue for 14 days after launch (until July 20th) using a free version of the Character Transfer System. These characters will be de-guilded, but will move over with all of their items, coin and housing intact. The last 2 days (July 19-20) of the free moves will include one last opportunity to use the /movelog system (described above) for any guilds who decide to move last-minute. After that, any character moves to Station Exchange servers will no longer be free, will no longer include coin or droppable/tradable items, and will be done with the regular Character Transfer System with the usual fee attached.

We are really looking forward to your feedback, especially since SOE employees will not be able to use the system. During E3, we met a lot of EQ/EQII players who are used to spending lots of time deep in dungeons, elbow-to-elbow with their guildmates and friends for hours on end. But many of them don't have as much time to invest in the "hardcore" raiding environment they so enjoy. Station Exchange offers a solution for those players. They will now be able to keep up with their friends by buying the use of items and currency to enhance their characters securely via Station Exchange. Buying virtual items is something many of them already do (and at their own risk) in the 3rd party market. Now, with Station Exchange, there will be a safe, easy-to-use way for them to keep pace with their friends. As SOE employees, we are not allowed to even play on these servers, much less participate in Station Exchange. So, go have a look and tell us what you think.

And please be really descriptive, as we'll be enjoying Station Exchange vicariously through you. :)

Questions about any of this? Ask them in this thread.

-Nathan "Hammerfel" Pearce

Creative Director, Web Presence