In an announcement that shook the wallets of many launch-day hopefuls, the Certificate of Research, Exploration, Destruction and Development (C.R.E.D.D.) was delayed, citing economic concerns.
There has been a lot of anticipation for the full launch of WildStar, and a part of the anticipation has been for the unveiling of C.R.E.D.D.
We wanted to let players know that we are going to be holding C.R.E.D.D. purchases while we launch WildStar.
Simply put, we want to be cautious about the release of C.R.E.D.D. onto the servers. With the free Realm transfers that are going to be happening in the first week, and the opening of additional servers, we want to make sure Realm economies are well underway before we add C.R.E.D.D. into the mix.
Don’t worry, we are going to have C.R.E.D.D. available with plenty of time to spare for the 28-day mark. This will give players enough time to earn gold to buy C.R.E.D.D. from other players interested in selling it.
We’ll keep you posted on when everyone can expect C.R.E.D.D to go live.
–Raijinn, Carbine Studios Staff and probably some otaku.
C.R.E.D.D. follows in the footsteps of other games which allow in-game items representing game time to be purchased with in-game currency. Players with the desire to buy gold because they’re too lazy to farm help their fellow players enhance the gaming community are able to purchase C.R.E.D.D. with real money (“real”), then toss the C.R.E.D.D. into the in-game auction system.
There is a lot of debate about whether or not the C.R.E.D.D. system is a good idea or not, but the intentions are fairly solid. For many online games, we live in a reality where gold sellers will peddle their products and gold buyers will buy what they want whenever they want.
Players who are relatively new to online gaming, regardless of their perceived veteran status (scrubs who started with WoW in Cataclysm) may perceive some sort of new, dangerous change to the way money is handled. Only time will tell if the fears are legitimate, but from my perspective, we’re simply taking money from independent real money traders and handing it to Carbine instead. Will currencies fluctuate wildly like on Guild Wars 2, or does Carbine have more tricks up their sleeve?
Another thing to consider is the security of the player. Regardless of a person’s opinion of a gold buyer, having a player base that constantly compromises itself is not a good way to run a system. By bringing a legal alternative into the mix, many of the gold buyers can dodge the real money trading websites that spam chat channels across the MMOsphere.
u wanna smok sum gold
A bit of security is given to players, taking away the risk of going to a shady gold selling website with obvious warnings. Players no longer have to worry about accidentally giving out their credit card number, social security number, driver’s license or other pieces of information that are in no way needed to buy gold with a Paypal account.
Players also avoid the hassle of installing Adblock Plus and any semi-reliable anti-virus protection when visiting websites clearly written in the form of an Elder Scroll.
The C.R.E.D.D. Exchange is still functional in game, and shows an estimate of the going rate. Wildstar’s denominations appear in the form of Platinum, Gold, Silver and Copper, making the current rate of 35 gold (a few hours of gameplay) on the Evindra server a sad joke.
Take that, Susan Express!
The dissent hasn’t been too great in the Wildstar community, though a few players have complained about a bait and switch scheme. Not to mention a conspiracy theory about Carbine generating gold for the C.R.E.D.D. sellers with or without potential buyers.
Why does Carbine care? There’s no easy way to find out which server will have the biggest population of C.R.E.D.D. buyers, and with free realm transfers, multiple economies can be ruined in just a few days.
While I’d love to be cynical and cry in the rain about every server in every game being wrecked by the undying horde of goldsellers, the threat isn’t that rampant. Some servers may experience small bumps of inflation, but there are times when the same game can hold multiple hyperinflation economies, low currency servers and everything in between depending on how lazy or not-wanting-to-spend-real-moneyish the players are.
We’ll see how well this pans out for Wildstar’s currency metagame. If anything, a few market nerds will certainly get a kick out of it.
