PLEX – MMO Fallout

PLEX Comes To World of Warcraft

It will soon be able to purchase WoW Tokens, items that can be traded in-game for subscription time. Tokens are purchased on the cash shop and sold on the auction house, allowing players who are short on gold to acquire it in a safer way and allowing those with extensive bank accounts to play World of Warcraft virtually free.

The WoW Token was created to give players with lots of extra gold the option to use it to help cover their subscription cost, and give those who want to purchase gold a way to do so from fellow players through a secure, easy-to-use system. The Token will be making its debut in an upcoming patch—in the meantime, check out the FAQ below for details on how it works.

Sneaky merchants should note that it is impossible to resell a token once you purchase it as they become soul-bound when purchased from the auction house.

(Source: World of Warcraft)

$1,500 In PLEX Destroyed

Eve-kill.net this week recorded a player killed while transporting 84 PLEX items. The player, Ozuwara Ozuwara of the State War Academy corporation was killed by player Diorden at about 3:30pm in the high security sector of The Forge, while piloting a rookie ship Ibis outfitted with virtually nothing.

Unfortunately for the attacker, all of the PLEX was vaporized in the explosion, leaving nothing behind to loot. The total in-game value amounted to 70 billion ISK. PLEX costs $19.95 at its highest price per unit, making the real money value somewhere between $1,469.58 and $1,675.80.

PLEX, which stands for Pilot License EXtension, is an item in Eve Online that can only be purchased in the game’s cash shop, and is redeemable for 30 days of game time. The item exists within the Eve Online world and can be looted from ships.

Even more incredible is the fact that this isn’t the most valuable kill in the past seven days. The most valuable goes to a Leviathan owned by Goonswarm that saw 106 billion ISK (valued at $2,100 USD).

(Source: PCGamesN)

World of Warcraft Mulling PLEX Item

Paying for your World of Warcraft subscription may soon become a thing of the past, as Blizzard has announced that they are considering a PLEX-like item to be introduced next year. The idea is to provide a way for hardcore players to pay for their subscription using in-game gold, while providing a safe method for players to essentially buy in-game gold with real money.

We’re exploring the possibility of giving players a way to buy tradable game-time tokens for the purpose of exchanging them in-game with other players for gold. Our current thought on this is that it would give players a way to use their surplus gold to cover some of their subscription cost, while giving players who might have less play time an option for acquiring gold from other players through a legit and secure system.

Whether or not this will be implemented is still up in the air.

(Source: World of Warcraft)

Darkfall Introduces PLEX-like D.U.E.L

Aventurine is the latest company to jump on board the PLEX train. In a recent update post, the company revealed D.U.E.L, an item that can be purchased from the in-game shop that extends a player’s subscription by 30 days. The patch notes don’t offer much in terms of details, so we reached out to Aventurine to answer a couple of questions. The D.U.E.L is a physical item that is placed in the player’s inventory. It can be used to add 30 days to an account (extending any existing subscription time), or it can be traded to other players for in-game currency. The D.U.E.L does not drop on death cannot be looted by other players.

Thank you to Tasos Flambouras from Aventurine for providing additional information.

(Source: Darkfall)

Anarchy Online Introduces PLEX, But Not For Free Players

Funcom is jumping on board the PLEX train with the introduction of GRACE to Anarchy Online. GRACE, or Grid Access Credit Extension, costs $14.95 USD, and adds 30 days of game time to an account. GRACE can only be traded through the in-game market, does not count towards your market inventory limit, and cannot be withdrawn or traded through mail. Free players cannot use GRACE to upgrade their accounts without subscribing, as free accounts do not have access to the market and that is the only way to obtain the item from other players.

Free players will need to buy a subscription before they are able to purchase and use GRACE.

(Source: Anarchy Online)

Jagex Introduces PLEX, RuneScape Bonds

Jagex has introduced the idea of PLEX to RuneScape in the form of bonds. Bonds, like PLEX, are tradeable items that are purchased from Jagex and can be traded to other players through the in-game auction house or face to face, to then be exchanged for in-game goodies. As a measure to stop gold farming, which Jagex believes involves 40-50% of the active player base each month, the bonds can then be redeemed by the buyer for membership (14 days), spins (8), or RuneCoins (160) for the cash shop. Not a great deal at face value, but the goal is that the buyer does not pay real money, and the person who did initially buy the bond is receiving gold from the buyer.

Bonds cost $5 USD.

Wildstar Announces PLEX System

Carbine Studios has finally announced the monetization system for their upcoming game Wildstar, and it’s looking a whole lot like Eve Online. Wildstar will institute a system called C.R.E.D.D, which stands for Certification of Research, Exploration, Destruction, and Development. C.R.E.D.D will sell for $19.99 in real life money and can be sold to other players and redeemed for one month of subscription time. The idea is to allow one group of players to play without paying a subscription fee, as the money they make in-game will essentially pay for the subscription itself. The other group of players are those who would otherwise buy gold from gold farmers.

The Commodities Exchange, where players will be trading their goods, will operate much like RuneScape’s Grand Exchange: Anonymously.

“The CX is unique in that when a player wants to buy a particular commodity, they will only be able to buy that commodity at the lowest currently offered price, with no awareness of who’s actually selling it. Once the stock of that commodity at that price is gone, players will then be able to buy from the available stock at the next lowest price.”

Wildstar is set for a 2014 release. You can read more about it at MMORPG.com’s coverage below.

(Source: MMORPG.com)

MMOrning Shots: Premium Milk

How much tainted milk is premium worth? I guess that depends on what kind of premium milk we’re talking about here. Either way, I’m not sure how we missed it but last month Gamersfirst implemented an update turning premium subscription into a traded item, ala PLEX from Eve Online and in other MMOs.

MMOrning Shots is a (somewhat) daily line of screenshots from various MMOs. Most are taken in-house or come to us in press releases, but if you would like your screenshot featured, send it over to contact[at]mmofallout[dot]com with the subject “MMorning Shots.”

Sony Joins The PLEX Trade, Reveals Krono

PLEX is an item in Eve Online which allows pilots to purchase subscription time without spending a dime. In essence, one player purchases a PLEX for the cost of one month’s subscription. The PLEX is a real item that exists in the game world, and can be sold to other players for ISK, thus creating a sanctioned form of real money trading, without the negative effects of having gold farmers rolling over the server. Since then, the system has been adopted in other games, from the gems in Guild Wars 2 to a vanity pet in World of Warcraft. TERA introduced Chronoscrolls, and several other MMOs are coming along with their own special items as well. So it comes as little surprise that Sony Online Entertainment would eventually add this tactic to their arsenal.

At SOE Live 2012, John Smedley revealed that the Krono would soon be hitting Everquest II, on October 29th. The Krono can be traded between players, and offers one month of premium game access in whatever game it is redeemed in. Initially the Krono will only be available in Everquest II, however Sony hopes to implement the item in the rest of its library as time goes on. With Everquest at least, this should put a stop to one of the game’s black markets. On Everquest, currently, players regularly trade platinum (in-game currency) for game card codes, a similar but unregulated version of the Krono. As is common with such a market, scammers are always about with fake or used codes.

PLEX To Become A Normal Item In Eve Online

When PLEX, the cash-to-subscription-time item, was introduced to Eve Online, it was created special from the rest. You couldn’t undock with PLEX in your ship, meaning the item was bound to the station and its marketplace. CCP was so worried about the volatility of PLEX being introduced into the game that these restrictions were put into place, if temporary, to allow the item an introductory period of sorts until the kinks could be worked out and the game could become used to it. Luckily, with the upcoming changes to PLEX, many of these restrictions will be removed.

So what does this mean? You will be able to undock with PLEX, as well as placing PLEX in courier contracts. The restriction on redeeming (and reverse-redeeming) items only at NPC stations is being removed, as well as allowing players to convert ETC into PLEX when not necessarily at an NPC station.

This does, however, mean that you can lose PLEX if your ship is destroyed. A player who destroys you may find your PLEX as part of your loot, or it may be destroyed in your ship’s explosion. As with Eve’s other items, refunds are out of the question. CCP’s reasoning behind these updates is that they do not want items to have a special status, and would prefer to have item prices be determined by the players, rather than some system set up.

The updates go live next week (13th). More on Eve Online as it appears.

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