I promised myself to not comment, but I’ll spare this (Smed on RMT):

We all know farming is rampant in MMOs (yes, ours included), but there is a very concerted effort in most of the major MMOs to stop it. It absolutely negatively affects people’s gameplay.

And:

I believe the real future of RMT is actually a really bright one if we can work on our game designs in such a way as to make it a cool part of the games.

An apparent contradiction. But it’s not, because he has a Vision:

What if an in-game tailor had the toolset to actually put cool designs on clothing and literally make them custom for different players, and then that person could open a virtual storefront on Station Exchange. That’s the kind of cool thing we see in the future and frankly it’s the direction we want to steer things.

But wait. I would consider “Vision” as something that is “not here yet”. Am I wrong?

So I wonder, if he wants these cool things why doesn’t he go play Second Life? Or buy it. He has an habit about buying things, shouldn’t be hard. Or maybe he could have embraced what Raph is doing, that should be close and YET more game-y. But he didn’t. There was in fact a complete disagreement: “his current interests take him into areas that don’t match SOE’s strategic goals”. So what? Maybe Smed got the Vision too late when Raph had already packed his things and left?

I really wish he went “Second Life” route. So that we could better recognize these things and KEEP THEM FAR AWAY.

Your hands off my loved games. Stay very away.

To create an ecosystem for players to make money from these games while they’re having fun.

Almost like Google ads on blog sites.