Got my paper topic

I went out to lunch today with my old boss, mostly to just catch up, ok really just to catch up. But since I was there I made sure I could use him as a source for my paper, since I can't use myself as a source. He and I talked about many things MMO related, the state if his current game, future ideas, how things should change, basically 'industry talk' stuff. Was nice, I miss that.

After we got back I got to meet their PR lady, who I had heard about often but had never met. She and I ended up talking for about four hours about a million things, but during this epic conversation she ended up mentioning that she was directly involved with EQ2's Station Exchange.

This is something I am looking to reference, so he volunteered any information and quotes I needed. After these conversations I've decided to narrow my topic a bit more.

Massive Multiplayer Online Games have to deal with people buying and selling their virtual items for non-virtual money, a black market of sorts. This is done on eBay and other third party sites and is not sanctioned by the game companies, and thus not policed. Sony Online, with EQ2 decided to take a different approach and set up something called the Station Exchange. This allows people to buy and sell the RIGHTS (this is very important) to these in game items through a safe and controlled environment provided by the company. This is a great departure from Sony's policy in the past. I am going to examine this program and discuss if it was successful, what, if any, impact it has had on the number of players of EQ2 and what Sony plans to do in the future.

The best part is that they published their results for the first year, so most of my research is done for me. I can spend the first part of the paper explaining exactly what a MMO is, and then lead into EQ2 specifically. To fufill my interdisciplinary requirement I'll look at it from an economic point of view, mostly how much money SOE has made.

The best part is the Executive Producer of EQ2 is a close friend, so I can pick his brain for some cool quotes.

So despite my not really doing anything for class today, I actually accomplished something pretty significant!