There’s high drama in the spacey world of Eve Online this week. Well, there’s always high drama in the spacey world of Eve Online, but this one’s proving especially clamour-inducing. It hinges on the fact that CCP have just introduced a third virtual currency to the game. In addition to standard ISK and the exchangeable gametime credit known as PLEX (perhaps not technically a second currency, but it is traded between players in-game for ISK as well as being bought out-of-game with real-world currency), there’s now something called Aurum. This is spent on customisation and vanity items for the long-promised player Avatars, which were introduced as part of today’s free expansion pack Incarna. You can sell PLEX for Aurum: that’s complication one. Bear with me here.

The vanity items appear to have been comically overpriced. If you’re buying PLEX directly from CCP and you convert it to enough to buy an in-game shirt, you’ll have paid the equivalent of $25. In other words, as much or more than you’d pay for a real-life shirt.(more…)