Time versus Money
EVE is no different. In EVE, time means ISK whether by ratting, mining or missioning. What's different is that with EVE's unique time based skills advancement there is no such thing as "grinding" for skills advancement. This advancement scheme is the great equalizer. No amount of grinding will get a character from frigate IV to frigate V faster than the character's learning skills and implants will allow.
Since a highly skilled character is not something a player can trade time to get, there are few options. For some, illegal character transfers involving web-sites and the exchange of money. Account/character transfers are against the EULA and a real good way to get perma-banned from New Eden all together.
The threat of perma-ban alone is not enough to halt the transfer of characters and CCP is practical about this. As a result CCP has developed a policy about character transfers that involves the the purchasing of characters using ISK versus real money. The only real money involved is a $20 transfer fee paid to CCP by the seller of the character.
Characters are sold via the Character Bazaar which is governed by a specific set of rules that are listed in a couple of stickies at the top of the page.
I began watching the forums about a week before I made my purchase. I was looking for a character that would be able to support my non-combat activities and allow me to split my main off to focus on pure combat training.
It took some time to find a character that was going to meet my needs but I wasn't alone in the search. A member of my corporation took some time to help sift through the dozens of characters added or bumped each day to find one that had the unique set of skills I was looking for.
Once we finally found the character meeting my needs, we had to establish contact and begin the negotiation process. This is where the rubber meets the road. The seller believes in the value of their character, the buyer is interested but wants the best deal possible. Where these two parties meet is what ultimately becomes the "deal".
As I learned from my corpmate, there was a rule of thumb for calculating a 'value' for the character. Taking the "total number of skill points" - "extraneous skill points"and then offering 300 Million ISK per 1 Million Skill Points will give the buyer a good idea of fair value.
The character I found was being offered for 3 Billion ISK. After doing an assessment I determined that the character was only worth about 2 Billion ISK to me. Through some negotiation I was able to offer less than the 2 Billion ISK, figuring I'd have to increase my bid. Luckily the seller was more interested in unloading their character than hitting a high ISK target and I was able to get the character for 1.75 Billion ISK.
It was quite a deal! I followed the CCP protocol of sending a mail to the seller indicating my agreement to the deal and the account name for the character to be transferred to. I then posted to the forum, transferred the isk and within a few minutes the character was on the account of my choosing.
All in all it was a smooth experience, but as in all things involving New Eden - Buyer Beware!
Ultimately this exchange methodolgy (trading in ISK etc...) makes it accessible to both those who have the time to earn the ISK and those with the money to buy game time cards and sell the PLEXs for ISK. Either way, it's the only legitimate way to leap frog ahead of the slow-grind of time.
