I stand corrected; I thought most of Carbon was CCP… it was CCP’s implementation of nVidia’s APEX tech. I found this: NVIDIA APEX Clothing info/demo Includes video demo of the road-not-taken.
Players were concerned at the same time about the macro (not micro) transaction scheme exemplified by a certain Monocle - priced around $70 USD! Nobody had to buy it, but, the NES/NEX was new, and the scary price seemed like a scary sign of pay-to-win (though it was not, and CCP tried to assure players they would never sell “gold ammo” in the Store.)