Yesterday Sony Online Entertainment announced that it would expand the LiveGamer RMT service to its Vanguard: Saga of Heroes MMORPG through the game's official forums. Through LiveGamer, players will now be able to purchase Vanguard's in-game currency, all items, and even entire characters for real money. Players will also have the option of selling any of their Vanguard assets for real moneyor setting up trades of various assets with other Vanguard players.
While SOE has yet to announce availability dates for signing up for the LiveGamer service, the company has announced that users who sign up for LiveGamer service in Vanguard in the first two weeks of service will receive a virtual good bonus. The bonus is a jewelry box that will allow the user to pick from one of three bonus items, each designed to be useful to one of the game's main three professions.
While third-party services offer similar features already for most major MMORPGs, LiveGamer is unusual in that it is being officially endorsed by Sony Online Entertainment as a safe and reliable method of engaging in RMT. It must be stressed that Vanguard's business model is subscription-based and in most subscription-based MMORPGs RMT is not permitted by the terms of the game's EULA.
Sony Online Entertainment has permitted the LiveGamer service into another one of its subscription-based MMORPGs before. EverQuest II players active on the the servers Vox and The Bazaar are to engage in authorized RMT activity through LiveGamer, a partnership announced in early February 2008. This still makes the way LiveGamer is being incorporated into Vanguard somewhat surprising, as there is as yet no indication that the service will be restricted to particular servers.
Massively has expressed surprise that LiveGamer's service is being allowed into Vanguard in light of our interview with John Smedley last month about virtual goods in the SOE family of titles. It's worth pointing out that in the interview, Smedley merely stated that SOE would not be selling virtual goods directly to Vanguard players for real money through SOE's StationCash service. LiveGamer is a service designed to allow players to buy and sell virtual assets in Vanguard to each other and is not part of the StationCash service.
At no point in the interview did Smedley ever promise that RMT would never come to Vanguard, though it is interesting that SOE is willing to allow players to buy and sell in-game assets for real money in games where the company otherwise feels directly selling virtual goods to users wouldn't be a good fit. This suggests that other SOE titles Smedley specified as not being candidates for StationCash service in the interview - such as Star Wars Galaxies - may very well adopt the LiveGamer RMT service in the future.
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