Station Exchange

Station Exchange was ahead of its time, as a Real Money Transaction, player to player Auction site for in-game virtual goods. It sparked much debate in the gaming industry and with SOE itself, kicking off the RMT (Real Money Transaction) debate in a real way. Players and the Industry are still debating it today with Blizzards RMT Auction system for Diablo 3. Valve has taken a unique approach by making most items appearance only, well known for their variety of hats in Team Fortress 2.

SOE decided to make 2 new, separate EverQuest II servers, apart from the main servers. Players could transfers characters to the Station Exchange servers, to sell their characters, Platinum or even individual items. They could not transfer back, however, since that would introduce purchased items into the regular servers.

My Senior Designer, Eric Schmitter, and I rapidly assembled wireframes, mockups and a design doc. I’m proud of Eric’s initiative to add a good bit of humor to the site, with EverQuest II characters scattered through the pages giving advice.

There are 2 particularly cool features we added:

Anti-snipe – Having been burnt by last-second auction snipers on Ebay, we designed a system to prevent it. If an out-bid came in within an hour of closing, the customer who was out-bid was emailed and the auction extended by 1 hour from the last bid. Such it went until the bidder willing to make the highest bid won the auction, the one who was willing to pat the most did.

Auto-settlement – We avoided the need for a reputation system or any kind of dispute for bad goods or non-payment. The virtual items were put in escrow when they were sent to auction, and the buyer had to pay immediately via credit card or Paypal when the Auction closed. All sellers had to have linked Paypal accounts to accept their funds. No one ever got something that was different from what was listed, and the sellers always got their money!