I've long studied the world of Real Money Trading (RMT) aka gold buying. It's truly a global black market, operating outside the view of normal "society" (in this case, outside of SWTOR), and has shown to be full of innovative people who keep finding ways to stay in business and presumably stay profitable.
I'm not going to beat around the bush or anything. RMT will exist for every MMO, and it's already here for SWTOR. Forget the ideological debates, it's not going away, so deal with it. The fact that one can already purchase credits before the game is already out, however, speaks to the confidence that the RMT brokers (or farmers, if you like) have in this games success, and as a platform for their own profitability.
So, what's a credit going for anyways these days?
100,000 Credits for $3.00US. That's $0.00003 per credit. Pretty astonishing, isn't it? Let's break it down in some in-game terms.
First tier of riding skill - 40,000 Credits, or $1.20
VIP Wristband - 1,000,000 Credits, or $30
Mount for sale in VIP area - 1,500,000 Credits, or $45
Average Slicing lockbox found on Coruscant/Droumond Kaas - 2,000 Credits, or $0.06
First Row of Inventory Expansion - 5,000 Credits, or $0.15
I find looking at in-game purchases this way helps me properly evaluate whether I'm spending my money wisely or not, and if the value for an item is appropriate for the cost. Looking at this data, I think it's pretty safe to say that the VIP area is not worth $30 (that's 2 months of game time!), and the mount available within will be a relative status symbol for quite some time (assuming its exclusive there, I'm not sure if it is).
It'll be interesting to see where this exchange rate goes once the game releases. I believe it's going to go up, simply due to the number of preorders, which brings along a certain percentage of credit buyers with it. The question is, where is the hot spot to farm credits going to be? I could use a place to practice communicating in Chinese.
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