More or less what the topic says; having a significant item that is only available for cash is a somewhat alarming direction for a free to play game which up until this point had the best implementation of F2P mechanics I've seen in any game.

As it stands now there is a major issue I see with having the elevator pass only available for money; it creates the first incentive for any sort of energy/crowns 'black market'. Let's say that player A is F2P and has a stockpile of crowns/CE, more than 3000CE worth of stuff. Player B normally buys his CE from OOO, in say quantities of 3500CE ($12 ish, might be cheaper depending on where you live). Now player A comes up to player B and says "Hey, how about instead of buying your 3500CE from OOO, I'll give you 3000 if you buy me an elevator pass". From both players point of view it makes sense. It probably violates the TOS and it also has a high risk of one of the players being scammed, however it will probably happen because from both players points of view it is a much better deal than buying directly from OOO.

As a somewhat more minor issue, for new players coming in to the game, the existence of the elevator pass may well look like a subscription is mandatory to be able to play the game. Whether this would be more or less of an issue than players thinking that buying CE is mandatory to be able to play is hard to say of course.

So, what are the potential problems with having the elevator pass be tradeable?

Probably the biggest issue would be that energy prices would probably skyrocket, to bring the value of the elevator pass to the average player in line with the energy saved by them having one. This particularly would have the possibility of shafting new players, since it is the first few CE purchases, before you can farm the royal jelly, that cause major difficulties for new F2P players.

The other issue is only a hypothesis and is only really relevant to OOO themselves. It would be very easy to think that a F2P player buying their elevator pass from boost for 3000CE (Just a made up number, but would probably be the amount I'd suggest selling them for) is simply being a money sink. If free players can be unshackled from the constraints of mist energy, why would anyone ever spend money on the game? The fundamental answer to this concern would be that such a transaction is still essentially money spent on the game. Money flows in when people buy CE from OOO, but is only really spent once this CE has left the game again. Be this through crafts, elevator costs or buying stuff from Boost, it fundamentally doesn't matter who it is that is actually performing this transaction, the important part is that an appropriate dollar-equivalent amount of CE leaves the game with such a transaction. As such, having the elevator pass cost around six dollars worth of CE would be entirely reasonable.

So, thoughts? Is there some major issue with being able to buy elevator passes with in-game currency that I'm not seeing? Would potential damage to the economy be just too high were it to happen? Do you want to just be able to spit on the peasant F2P players?