Guild Wars 2

Psientist.6437:

Hello and thank you for not ignoring this so close to the end of your day. You do not need to argue but mustn’t you discuss this. You are a Goldseller.

As far as I’m aware, ArenaNet are not selling gold but are enabling the exchange of gems for gold between players. It may be a fine distinction as they are the sole vendor of gems which are purchased with real money, but ultimately their profits come from these gems being spent in the gem store.

So, bringing this back on-topic, it benefits ArenaNet to have as many items in the gem store that people are willing to spend gems on (whether purchased with money or gold) as possible, but this needs to be balanced with the general desire of most players for them not sell “pay-to-win” items.

At this stage, there does generally seem to be more demand for gold -> gems than supply of gems -> gold, hence the upward rise of the gem/gold exchange rate. While the rate is not yet near that offered by goldsellers, it is moving closer to that as time goes on. (Bear in mind however, that as the rate moves higher some items in the gem store may become less desirable to those who are spending gold to acquire gems, so we may reach an equilibrium point that is still short of current goldseller rates).

I believe ArenaNet are already planning on adding more items to the gem store, which will hopefully help with keeping the gem -> gold exchange rate increasing as the game matures.

Star Wars the Old Republic beat gold sellers by making sure their wasn’t anything useful to buy with game money. Most people have millions of credits and nothing to do with them.

When a game allows you to purchase the best items in the game their is always going to be a demand for the games currency. No Trade, Bind on Pickup, Be Present for the Fight, boss drops is the only way to go to put a dent in gold sellers.

Rafkin.8923:

Star Wars the Old Republic beat gold sellers by making sure their wasn’t anything useful to buy with game money. Most people have millions of credits and nothing to do with them.

When a game allows you to purchase the best items in the game their is always going to be a demand for the games currency. No Trade, Bind on Pickup, Be Present for the Fight, boss drops is the only way to go to put a dent in gold sellers.

The only way ANet can beat gold sellers is to offer more value than the gold sellers.

Offer a loyalty program for anyone buying gems from them directly which offers unique and desired rewards. Just make what ever program they develop something desirable.

illgot.1056:

Rafkin.8923:

Star Wars the Old Republic beat gold sellers by making sure their wasn’t anything useful to buy with game money. Most people have millions of credits and nothing to do with them.

When a game allows you to purchase the best items in the game their is always going to be a demand for the games currency. No Trade, Bind on Pickup, Be Present for the Fight, boss drops is the only way to go to put a dent in gold sellers.

The only way ANet can beat gold sellers is to offer more value than the gold sellers.

Offer a loyalty program for anyone buying gems from them directly which offers unique and desired rewards. Just make what ever program they develop something desirable.

“Asuran Frequent Gater” Program? For every 500 gems you spend in-store, you get a permanent 1% discount off Waypoint travel?

Same thing could apply to Armor Repair costs.

I would be happy to spend money on gems if I got frequent flygater mileage points

I think most of you who are talking about this don’t understand the following:

Third party gold sellers acquire their gold in two ways….
1) Hacking player accounts and emptying them of all value.
2) Using owned accounts and hacked accounts to farm for items.

If you buy gold from gold sellers you are performing almost an identical practice to paying a third party to steal things for you and then paying less for those items than they cost to be made. You are paying an organization that makes a large amount of its money preying upon you and your friends to get you items the organization will try to steal back from you and your friends in the future.

Basically the more you feed it, the worse it will get.

lcpdragonslayer.7895:

I would be happy to spend money on gems if I got frequent flygater mileage points

I certainly would. Even if I didn’t spend them yet I would buy enough gems to reach my goal because eventually I know I would use them.

Everything from bonus remote bank uses to armor repairs all the way to weapon and armor skins for the big items.

I don’t want to get into an argument, so this is the last statement I will make here:
Of the data that I have seen. Which is significant. It is reasonable to say
1) Goldsellers are a criminal group
2) Goldsellers damage games
3) Goldsellers cannot be classified as competition because they are not in the same industry

These are not statements of belief. They are statements of statistics.

And all those statements worked so very well during Prohibition. When a given society supports the criminals over the “government,” then the government is clearly on the wrong side of things and needs to change themselves, not the criminals, not the public.

John Smith.4610:

I don’t want to get into an argument, so this is the last statement I will make here:
Of the data that I have seen. Which is significant. It is reasonable to say
1) Goldsellers are a criminal group
2) Goldsellers damage games
3) Goldsellers cannot be classified as competition because they are not in the same industry

These are not statements of belief. They are statements of statistics.

Agree to disagree. My position:
1) Many but not all goldsellers engage in or benefit from activity that would be criminal under American law.
2) The service provided by goldsellers is a benefit to games, but the actions they take in procuring and advertising their product usually cause more harm than the benefit.
3) Goldsellers clearly are in competition to Anet in that they benefit from the sale of a product (in game currency) that Anet also benefits from the sale of, and their profits in this regard are mutually exclusive. Even if they value their product at exactly the same price as gold on the TP, they would still be a more attractive option to players, and would still be profitable, because of (a) real world currency exchange rates, and (b) eliminating Anet’s cut of the transaction.

The long term solution to this for any MMO is carrot and stick – to continue identifying and prosecuting destructive gold sellers, while encouraging and working with legitimate ones to create a regulated, vibrant and safe gold market to players. That is to say, accepting the fact that people want to take real money out of your economy as well as put it in, and start planning for that admittedly more complex scenario. If GW2 survives as a popular game more than five years it’s going to be something that external legislative, legal and cultural forces are likely to make you do anyway, so you may as well start planning now.

(What you’re saying is the equivalent of:

• a statistically large number of Australian motorcyle gangs are involved in criminal activity (true);
• criminal biker gangs endanger public safety and undermine law enforcement activity (true); therefore
• when you make a commercial trade with a person who owns a motorcycle you are supporting the corruption of Australian police forces (nonsense).
  Moral: You can have unassailable statistics on your side and still end up talking nonsense if you’re not willing to engage with the complexity of the situation.)

Psientist.6437:

Hello and thank you for not ignoring this so close to the end of your day. You do not need to argue but mustn’t you discuss this. You are a Goldseller.

Thats a pretty dumb thing to say (no offence intended). ANet does not sell gold – they sell additional services and allow other players to trade their gold vs services you bough) And even if they were selling gold directly, they wouldn’t be a gold seller – because a gold seller is by definition a third party who exchanges in-game items ultimately obtained through usual gameplay for real money. The problem is that the goldsellers play the game in the way which ultimately destroys the game economy while stealing hacking and cheating other players.

GregT.4702:

John Smith.4610:

I don’t want to get into an argument, so this is the last statement I will make here:
Of the data that I have seen. Which is significant. It is reasonable to say
1) Goldsellers are a criminal group
2) Goldsellers damage games
3) Goldsellers cannot be classified as competition because they are not in the same industry

These are not statements of belief. They are statements of statistics.

Agree to disagree. My position:
1) Many but not all goldsellers engage in or benefit from activity that would be criminal under American law.
2) The service provided by goldsellers is a benefit to games, but the actions they take in procuring and advertising their product usually cause more harm than the benefit.
3) Goldsellers clearly are in competition to Anet in that they benefit from the sale of a product (in game currency) that Anet also benefits from the sale of, and their profits in this regard are mutually exclusive. Even if they value their product at exactly the same price as gold on the TP, they would still be a more attractive option to players, and would still be profitable, because of (a) real world currency exchange rates, and (b) eliminating Anet’s cut of the transaction.

The long term solution to this for any MMO is carrot and stick – to continue identifying and prosecuting destructive gold sellers, while encouraging and working with legitimate ones to create a regulated, vibrant and safe gold market to players. That is to say, accepting the fact that people want to take real money out of your economy as well as put it in, and start planning for that admittedly more complex scenario. If GW2 survives as a popular game more than five years it’s going to be something that external legislative, legal and cultural forces are likely to make you do anyway, so you may as well start planning now.

(What you’re saying is the equivalent of:

• a statistically large number of Australian motorcyle gangs are involved in criminal activity (true);
• criminal biker gangs endanger public safety and undermine law enforcement activity (true); therefore
• when you make a commercial trade with a person who owns a motorcycle you are supporting the corruption of Australian police forces (nonsense).
  Moral: You can have unassailable statistics on your side and still end up talking nonsense if you’re not willing to engage with the complexity of the situation.)

I don’t quite see it.

1) Agree mostly. Legally I’m sure not “all” break the law but they all are ethically questionable, legal or not.
2) Gold Sellers provide no positive benefit to games… they provide the benefit to players.
3) You’re playing semantics with the word “Competition”. In context, gold sellers are not “competition” they are criminals, but that does not mean they are not competing. Stores compete with shoplifters, but that doesn’t mean shoplifters are their competition. And that’s what Goldsellers effectively are, shoplifters. hawking their ill gotten wares to the stupid and desperate.

GregT.4702:

3) Goldsellers clearly are in competition to Anet in that they benefit from the sale of a product (in game currency) that Anet also benefits from the sale of, and their profits in this regard are mutually exclusive. Even if they value their product at exactly the same price as gold on the TP, they would still be a more attractive option to players, and would still be profitable, because of (a) real world currency exchange rates, and (b) eliminating Anet’s cut of the transaction.

This is ultimately wrong, because – as said above, ANet does not sell gold. They sell gems and allows you to exchange gems and gold with other players. If gems were worthless, nobody would want to give gold for them. The only thing ANet profits from is gem purchases, they have absolutely no profit on gem to gold exchange.

An example to illustrate: assume that the entire player-base is ready to spend around 1000 gems per month in total. Thus, ANet will profit from selling these 1000 gems. Now, it does not matter who bough the gems – whether 1000 players bought 1 gem each or a single player bought 1000 gems, the profit is still the same. Now assume that 1000 players want to have 1 gem each but they don’t want to pay real money for them. This means that the rich guy who bought 1000 gems will be able to sell these gems to the players, in exchange for gold. What happens if the rich guy buys 1500 gems instead? Well, he is left with 500 gems over, because nobody wants to buy them. This will teach him not to buy too many gems in the future.

What I am saying is that ANet’s profits do not depends on number of gems-to-gold sales, they depend solely on how attractive are the services in the gem store.

GregT.4702:

Agree to disagree. My position:
1) Many but not all goldsellers .. criminal under American law.
2) The service provided by goldsellers is a benefit to games, ..
3) Goldsellers clearly are in competition to Anet in that they benefit from the sale of a product (in game currency) that Anet also benefits from the sale of, and their profits in this regard are mutually exclusive. Even if they value their product at exactly the same price as gold on the TP, they would still be a more attractive option to players, and would still be profitable, because of (a) real world currency exchange rates, and (b) eliminating Anet’s cut of the transaction.

Wow, you seem to be very good at being completely wrong. What a gift.

1) basically irrelevant, but RIAA and their FBI patsies don´t get that either. So at least you´re not alone.

2) Wrong as they destroy GW2´s economy by taking away the profit in farming and getting good drops for the average non-botter.

3)Goldsellers clearly are parasites. They cannot compete as they don´t offer a competitive product, just a STOLEN one.

(What you’re saying is the equivalent of:

• a statistically large number of Australian motorcyle gangs are involved in criminal activity (true);
• criminal biker gangs endanger public safety and undermine law enforcement activity (true); therefore
• when you make a commercial trade with a person who owns a motorcycle you are supporting the corruption of Australian police forces (nonsense).

Your mastery of the straw-man argument is mind boggling.
Owning a motorcycle has absolutely nothing to do with criminal biker gangs so that illogical construct fails too.
On the other hand hopping onto one of their prostitutes very much supports the gang, as you actually finance them this way.
Leaving the biker metaphor, just don´t buy their frikken gold.

Moral: You can have unassailable statistics on your side and still end up talking nonsense if you’re not willing to engage with the complexity of the situation.)

/golfclap
You manage that well without any statistics whatsoever.

ANet´s GEM selling program is very much the best way to battle gold sellers from the economic side as they can dictate at least the upper profit margin for them.

Where ANet really is failing is in outright banning them and increasing the risk for their actions.
I very much hope this “Bot Taskforce” will start showing real progress soon. It already has in regard to goldseller mail-spam, so I´m carefully optimistic.

John Smith.4610:

I don’t want to get into an argument, so this is the last statement I will make here:
Of the data that I have seen. Which is significant. It is reasonable to say
1) Goldsellers are a criminal group
2) Goldsellers damage games
3) Goldsellers cannot be classified as competition because they are not in the same industry

These are not statements of belief. They are statements of statistics.

I understand they are almost always criminal in some way. But you seem to not understand how CRIMINAL your own gem prices are. The amount of gems you get a dollar is simply that – CRIMINAL. It is an abysmal deal, most players will not ever use credit cards in your gem store, because you seem to not understand how to offer attractive deals to your clients. This is also a fact statement, none of the 80+ players I have talked to about the gem prices have been even remotely happy with the dollar → gem conversion.

This is what my analogy was alluding to. That the legitimate patent holder/inventor of the Koenigsegg are also, in a way, criminal, because they are abusing their power, be it backed by law or not. Hence, also my choice of the word totalitarian.

While you are not going to reply in this thread anymore, I hope you do read what I have typed to you carefully, because I have personally been witness to a lot of software company follies of this kind.

Pfffff,

I’m bored, asking question to ANet while debating of it with players… John it’s nice to have awnser from you about that but you are out of the topic and just not awnsering the question :/

Yeah we all know GS are bads, it’s not legit, ect…

Why players are suffering of a bad rate because of somes buying to GS, will you do something against this ?

Slic.2406:

John Smith.4610:

I don’t want to get into an argument, so this is the last statement I will make here:
Of the data that I have seen. Which is significant. It is reasonable to say
1) Goldsellers are a criminal group
2) Goldsellers damage games
3) Goldsellers cannot be classified as competition because they are not in the same industry

These are not statements of belief. They are statements of statistics.

I understand they are almost always criminal in some way. But you seem to not understand how CRIMINAL your own gem prices are. The amount of gems you get a dollar is simply that – CRIMINAL. It is an abysmal deal, most players will not ever use credit cards in your gem store, because you seem to not understand how to offer attractive deals to your clients. This is also a fact statement, none of the 80+ players I have talked to about the gem prices have been even remotely happy with the dollar -> gem conversion.

This is what my analogy was alluding to. That the legitimate patent holder/inventor of the Koenigsegg are also, in a way, criminal, because they are abusing their power, be it backed by law or not. Hence, also my choice of the word totalitarian.

While you are not going to reply in this thread anymore, I hope you do read what I have typed to you carefully, because I have personally been witness to a lot of software company follies of this kind.

Conversely I know people that bought gems from the gem store to get keys for the chests. I bought Gems from the Gem store for keys from the chest. I got GS skin and 2 1h swords made 85g on the first day of Halloween from that gamble. 3rd party didnt cross my mind at all.

Psientist.6437:

Hello and thank you for not ignoring this so close to the end of your day. You do not need to argue but mustn’t you discuss this. You are a Goldseller.

Not true.
They sell Gems for real money.

Then, you sell your Gems to other players who want to buy them for gold. The only problem is, we don’t see transaction/quotation of these transfers, so we assume that it is a rate fixed by Anet, but in reality, it is fixed by demand/request by players.

This type of transactions is auto-regulated to not bring up much inflaction in the game.

Inflaction is caused by the massive amount of gold introduced by the RMT companies, that is NOT regulated directly by players’ demand, but only by their availability (that at the moment is nearly infinite due to the bot issues).

People should really look at the game as it is… a game… putting $300 in a Legendary Weapon is not what i call “playing” anymore, it is obsession. This obsession is what makes RMT companies stay in this game.

Just think what would happen if Anet change all Legendaries and Precursors to “Soulbound on Acquire” from now on, even on the existant ones… a simple flag on these items will chase away all RMT companies: no need to buy gold, because you can buy/craft your other exotics for 10 gold total right now.

Or better, instead of the precursor you get a “Precursor Token”, account bound, that you can exchange for any of the precursors at a vendor.

You think there are other items in the gamethat will need hundred of gold to be bought?

Slic.2406:

I understand they are almost always criminal in some way. But you seem to not understand how CRIMINAL your own gem prices are. The amount of gems you get a dollar is simply that – CRIMINAL. It is an abysmal deal, most players will not ever use credit cards in your gem store, because you seem to not understand how to offer attractive deals to your clients. This is also a fact statement, none of the 80+ players I have talked to about the gem prices have been even remotely happy with the dollar -> gem conversion.

If you are unhappy with a product or service, you don’t have to purchase it. What’s the problem? Of course people want to have all and they want it for free. Well, they can’t. I find the gem prices to be fairly reasonable. Its not more expensive then other games of this sort.

Slic.2406:

I understand they are almost always criminal in some way. But you seem to not understand how CRIMINAL your own gem prices are. The amount of gems you get a dollar is simply that – CRIMINAL. It is an abysmal deal, most players will not ever use credit cards in your gem store, because you seem to not understand how to offer attractive deals to your clients. This is also a fact statement, none of the 80+ players I have talked to about the gem prices have been even remotely happy with the dollar -> gem conversion.

This is what my analogy was alluding to. That the legitimate patent holder/inventor of the Koenigsegg are also, in a way, criminal, because they are abusing their power, be it backed by law or not. Hence, also my choice of the word totalitarian.

You seem to have a very vague definition of the word “criminal”, if it includes “using legal methods to enforce the rights granted to one by law”. But I’ll assume you’re using it colloquially as a stand-in for “something I don’t like” or perhaps more specifically “someone charging what I feel is too much for a product”.

I think the problem here is one of unrealistic expectations. How exactly do you, personally, come up with your concept of a “fair” gold/gems exchange rate?

Are you basing it on the black market prices? You’re aware that they are tied to the official prices—they have to be set enough lower than the official prices to be attractive to buyers despite the risk. So if Anet lowers their prices for gold, the black market prices will drop too. Given the minimal investment required to farm, gold prices would have to dip extremely low to close the gap.

Maybe you’re basing it on how much you’re willing to spend. I’m pretty sure Anet has done more market research than you have, but lets consider what might happen if they decided that you were right and shifted the gold prices. Now all the people who were willing to buy gold at the current price get more, and a bunch of new people (like you) decide to buy gold with real money. So what happens when all this new gold hits the economy? That’s right—inflation. Prices go up on the trading post, because people have more gold to spend on things. You might think that if gold prices were lower, you’d be able to afford to drop real cash on that legendary precursor, but you’d be competing with the other people who had the same idea (and the people who want to profit from them) and the prices would rise.

That inflation would also be bad for all the players of the game who don’t, won’t, or can’t spend real money on gold. Their purchasing power would decrease, making it harder to have any real interaction with the market—pushing them away from segments of the game like crafting and possibly from the rest of the game.

(As an aside: Why would Anet care if they leave if they’re not spending money? Because an MMO lives and dies based on its community. They need those people playing to keep the population up and keep the worlds alive, to keep the interest of the players who are paying.)

So basically, there are strong economic reasons for Anet not to reduce the gold prices. Your argument seems to be “but I think they are too high”. Do you have anything concrete to support your position? Any reasons why reducing the gold prices would benefit Anet and the game long-term instead of just you short-term?

John Smith.4610:

I don’t want to get into an argument, so this is the last statement I will make here:
Of the data that I have seen. Which is significant. It is reasonable to say
1) Goldsellers are a criminal group
2) Goldsellers damage games
3) Goldsellers cannot be classified as competition because they are not in the same industry

These are not statements of belief. They are statements of statistics.

Way to tackle the soft pitch part of the arguements listed John. How about you addressing the arguement that your business practices of Legendary precursors as well as your BLTC halloween skins contributes to Gold Sellers.

At release the Black Lion Trading company posted buy and sell orders for Tyrian gold. Since then every change in the valuation of Tyrian gold has been the result of an algorithm designed to translate our behavior. The BLTP is the only entity posting buy and sell orders for Tyrian gold. Arenet is a Goldseller, Arenanet is a Real Money Trader and the BLTP is their proxy agent.
I do not intend Goldseller or RMT as an insult, only as a realistic description of what is happening. The role of RMT in gaming has changed: Blizzard’s RMAH, CCP’s PLEX, ArenaNet’s Gems and we must face those changes. The most important change is how these companies now treat GoldBuyers. Back when I was a kid and mmos where text based, game developers were understandably terrified of the effect RMT would have on their artfully crafted and poignantly offered imaginary worlds. Goldbuyers were the villain, but Goldbuyers had the cash and Goldsellers love cash. The RMT of mmo currencies and items is now a multibillion dollar industry/mafia. Arenanet and other developers have decriminalized GoldBuying, fundamentally changing the RMT environment and their role in the accurate and ethical valuation of their game’s currency.

I have to bring up to attention a little thing that in these “economic” threads is never mentioned:

Arenanet is the creator of the game, and the developer and manager of the game we are playing. They have all the rights to tweak and change the game, economy, object as they see fit. They decided GW2 to be a game based on microtransaction, and estabilished means to profit on this.

RMT companies don’t bring anything to the game. They abuse economy (the absence of a monthly fee makes this easier), creating inflation, that is bad in every game economy. The gold they create is in no way balanced with the demand, so it is basically a river with no dams. It flows and flows, and all have to be raised up to be competitive.

Who do you think is getting the precursors’ price so high? Players? Don’t be all so gullible, friends, if i were a RMT company i will go by any means to raise the most desirable items in the game as high as possible to create expectations and need of gold.

Blaming Arenanet for precursor price is ridiculous.

If i were Arenanet, i will cut it short with a little flag… “Soulbound on Acquire” on Precursors and means to exchange type, whoops, no more need of gold after the few ones that are on TP are sold. RMT companies will flee like there is a plague.

Fabsm.5897:

I have to bring up to attention a little thing that in these “economic” threads is never mentioned:

Arenanet is the creator of the game, and the developer and manager of the game we are playing. They have all the rights to tweak and change the game, economy, object as they see fit. They decided GW2 to be a game based on microtransaction, and estabilished means to profit on this.

RMT companies don’t bring anything to the game. They abuse economy (the absence of a monthly fee makes this easier), creating inflation, that is bad in every game economy. The gold they create is in no way balanced with the demand, so it is basically a river with no dams. It flows and flows, and all have to be raised up to be competitive.

Who do you think is getting the precursors’ price so high? Players? Don’t be all so gullible, friends, if i were a RMT company i will go by any means to raise the most desirable items in the game as high as possible to create expectations and need of gold.

Blaming Arenanet for precursor price is ridiculous.

If i were Arenanet, i will cut it short with a little flag… “Soulbound on Acquire” on Precursors and means to exchange type, whoops, no more need of gold after the few ones that are on TP are sold. RMT companies will flee like there is a plague.

I think we all understand Arenanet is the GL. A discussion of how game developers behave as RMTs is inherently about ethics, what do they do when no one is looking or when they make the rules. I don’t know if we can hide from game developers as RMTs or put the genie back in the bottle.

While I agree that ArenaNet is heavily involved in the cash price of precursors I don’t think precursor’s being available for cash is wrong.

edit. As long as the player base directly sets the market value of Tyrian gold.

There are much deeper problems with gold sellers as well. It can destroy a support system, giving legitimate players with real problems long wait times for resolution, since many will dispute their bans.

Some games will put GM’s in game and simply ban the obvious behavior of botting and gold selling, but yet the problem continues to remain that many of those accounts are actually legit and they are the ones gold sellers feed on the most. These stolen accounts cause a great deal of pain for the support system, to both players and the support team. I’d love to have a ban hammer, but the back end would suffer even more so than it does now. So ANet has to be careful how, who and when they ban each account, document the activity and generally proceed with caution. All that takes time and manpower. There isn’t a simple solution that will quell gold sellers without severely hurting the overall player base.

As to the disparity between gold seller prices and the gem shop trade prices, these gold sellers also hurt this market and it’s the players that end up paying the higher costs. I feel as if the gem shop trade system is more of a supplement than a mainstay way to get gold. The game is meant to be played, not paying cash to get your way to the best gear and the gemstore only should offer much smaller pay-outs to help aid that behavior.

3) You’re playing semantics with the word “Competition”. In context, gold sellers are not “competition” they are criminals, but that does not mean they are not competing. Stores compete with shoplifters, but that doesn’t mean shoplifters are their competition. And that’s what Goldsellers effectively are, shoplifters. hawking their ill gotten wares to the stupid and desperate.

That’s not really fair. If we set aside gold farmers that actively steal accounts and do other obviously criminal things to acquire their gold, their actions cannot be compared to shop lifters. If they obtain their gold legitimately, then they wouldn’t be “shop lifting” to procure it, they would be more akin to someone setting up a van in the store parking lot and hawking perfectly legal merchandise at a lower price than you’d find inside the store.

The criminal distinction between this analogy though, is that in Anet’s case, they not only manufacture the “goods” being produced, but define the entire economy surrounding those goods, so the price they choose to set for them within their own store are entirely arbitrary, rather than being defined by the price they had to pay to stock the item as in more real stores.

It is entirely ANet’s choice whether to price gold at the current rate of ~$2USD, or to set conditions that would lower that price to a more reasonable level. If someone else comes along that offers a more favorable exchange rate, then that is competition.

This is ultimately wrong, because – as said above, ANet does not sell gold. They sell gems and allows you to exchange gems and gold with other players.

That is bull kittens. That’s like the Japanese kittentteno parlors that get around gambling restrictions by giving winners marked packets of tissue paper and similar tchotchke , which they can then take right around the corner to a stall that will trade these otherwise useless items for cash money. So long as one can trade money for gems and gems for gold in a legal manner in-game, ANet is most definitely allowing you to buy gold with money, there is no way around that.

Then, you sell your Gems to other players who want to buy them for gold. The only problem is, we don’t see transaction/quotation of these transfers, so we assume that it is a rate fixed by Anet, but in reality, it is fixed by demand/request by players.

Which would be true, except that ANet also controls the demand for gold, by setting thee rate at which currency is dropped into the world, by controlling the rarity of items which leads to some being in high demand in the marketplace, and by controlling the “tax” on the exchange rate that makes a gap between buy and sell prices.

Gold sellers are parasites, exploiters and detract from enjoyment of the game, but they are not criminals unless they also hack.

I am not trying to defend gold sellers, I just want to make sure “well, they are criminals, nothing we can do to stop this, we are not the police!” way of thinking does not sets in.

Plus, hacking is entirely different (and more important IMO) area that should not be confused with selling gold.

As to gold sellers – the only way to beat them is to make it unprofitable. First devalue in-game gold by increasing reward for dungeons, PvP and anything else that is hard to bot. Second, find a way to make botting harder. Third, allow more things to be purchased with Karma/marks.

Rafkin.8923:

This is like saying you wouldn’t illegally download music if the companies just lowered their prices.

Exactly. You’ll sell more and earn more, but there will be still people that won’t buy, because they won’t pay for something they can get for free, or because they don’t have budget for it but still want to hear what other hear, or because they are lazy and it’s way easier to click a download link than registering in all the stuff required to pay online, or to ripthe music from CDs (is anyone still using that?).

The thing is, you simply cant solve such a problem, so the only thing you can do is go around it, by offering a service instead charging for stuff as individual items.
When you get people hooked on the service, they’ll pay.

Look at Steam! They are offering a service, and boom! They are in the money!

John Smith.4610:

I don’t want to get into an argument, so this is the last statement I will make here:
Of the data that I have seen. Which is significant. It is reasonable to say
1) Goldsellers are a criminal group
2) Goldsellers damage games
3) Goldsellers cannot be classified as competition because they are not in the same industry

These are not statements of belief. They are statements of statistics.

Unless you have some super secret insider that sells gold all the time and knows how all of these companies “supposedly” work then I’m going to call bullcrap on your “statistics”. If you’re going to discourage gold buying/selling go for it, it’s your product and you have every right. Scare tactics and flat out fabricated “facts” are in poor form and every time I see or Gaile post something like this it makes me want to punch myself in the eyes. It’s just as bad as people making kitten claims about political candidates, the only person who knows is the person in question.

Just a quick retort on the subject of stealing accounts: Does it happen? Yes. Are the “majority” of gold sellers using this tactics? It’s a kittening multi-million dollar market, I’m pretty sure they can afford to buy legitimate accounts. Given the amount of EFFORT, TIME, and WORK that is put into hacking data from web servers and whatnot on websites, and the severe lack of effort, time, and work it takes to just buy legitimate keys your argument holds just about zero water.

While I do respect your profession as a game developer, and as an adult, I don’t respect you inferring that you know what’s what when it comes to gold selling, botting, and account hacking.

On an ending note hire better economists.

It seems the Legendaries are like crack to the hard-working people, got to have them for no apparent reason. So you buy gold from RMT, without getting caught, and get your Legendary, then what? You go for another one via RMT? Anet certainly doesn’t need to treat RMT as competition with in-game gold for obvious reasons. You might really want that Lamborghini in real life but you probably will never get it unless you dedicate yourself to earning enough money eventually. It’s no different with Legendaries despite the fact it’s a game, most of the games are designed not to give their player everything easily and without effort. Stop asking anet to sell you in-game gold cheaper for a vanity item, they are already giving people like you the chance to get it with real money at the current pricing, it is an item that’s meant to be hard to get by design, why is that hard to understand? Unless you want to buy gold to cover waypoint costs, in which case you are definitely doing something wrong in the game.

How do you prevent players from buying gold from goldsellers? You ban the buyers (and sellers). How to identify them? That’s the question anet would like to get a good answer to (if they already don’t have it).

They.9516, if you take a few moments and do some research from people on the ‘inside’ of the gold selling community you’ll quickly discover that the majority of gold sellers do, in fact, steal the gold or break gaming rules (botting is against the terms and conditions of most (if not all) MMOs which, essentially, makes it illegal in the context of the game environment) to obtain it.

Here is an interview that is a couple of years old now but it still relevant since what was said has played out as predicted in that interview by the insider.

The gold selling ‘industry’ exists in a very grey area. In many ways I see similarities to it and the ‘mob’ during prohibition when they only dealt with alcohol and gambling.

Originally gold sellers used human resources to obtain the gold in a relatively legal manner (real humans controlling multiple accounts and putting time in to obtain the gold plus buying the gold off of players who, for the most part, legitimately obtained it) and have since moved to obtaining the majority of the gold via truly illegal means – stealing it from accounts flat out and stealing accounts to use for bots.

At the end of the day, gold sellers are very bad for games. Gold buyers are just as bad but gold buying has become to prevalent that people are pretty ambivalent towards the buyers. Realistically, gold sellers do not want to compromise the accounts of their clients because people who buy gold once will, typically, buy gold more often.

I had an acquaintance in WoW who bought gold. He showed me chat logs and emails of his transactions and I gotta say the level of customer service from the gold sellers was incredibly good. These guys know what they are doing at that level but that still doesn’t make gold buying okay.

@whiran he bought gold low and sold it high, nowhere does he say he stole accounts. Seen it ages ago, I’m on top of this stuff. You have the burden of proof.

They.9516:

@whiran he bought gold low and sold it high, nowhere does he say he stole accounts. Seen it ages ago, I’m on top of this stuff. You have the burden of proof.

You are correct, I do and I cannot definitively state with 100% certainty (nor did I) that -all- gold sellers engage in illegal activities to obtain gold.

You are also correct that he never says he stole accounts or that he would. But, he talks about how the gold sellers (to him, being a third party in this) were changing their ways towards stealing the gold or stealing accounts instead of farming it towards the end. He wouldn’t steal the accounts himself but he would buy the gold from people who had stolen accounts.

That’s what I was trying to highlight.

This seems to have played out given the high rate of occurrence of hacking attempts on accounts and successful hacked accounts. But, seems is not a statistical truth it’s my opinion and impression, nothing more.

Given that, and perhaps I am totally wrong we’re still left with the fact that these activities -do- happen even if they are a minority activities which I doubt but I am open to it being a possibility.

Even if stealing accounts, botting, and otherwise doing illegal or simply ‘against the rules of the game one agrees to’ things are not the majority of ways that gold sellers use to obtain the gold these are definitely results from gold buying.

defi.4127:

……..
How do you prevent players from buying gold from goldsellers? You ban the buyers (and sellers). How to identify them? That’s the question anet would like to get a good answer to (if they already don’t have it).

Game developers have been following that strategy for 20 some years and it hasn’t worked. ArenaNet did not decide to become a RMT of Tyrian gold on a whim. The industry is being overwhelmed by the arms race with RMT organized crime because players will without fail pay cash for ingame currency. Is it wise for Arenanet to continue failed strategies? Game developers as RMTs of their game’s currency is the new model.

Psientist.6437:

Game developers have been following that strategy for 20 some years and it hasn’t worked.

Over the past 20 years, most games were subscription based, so banning someone for purchasing gold meant a direct hit to your bottom line. Banning accounts for purchasing gold in a non-subscription game means that you’re banning someone who wasn’t going to give you more money anyways. In fact, you may cause them to purchase another copy of the game if they want to keep playing.

The only real downside to banning gold purchases would be the potential loss of user base critical mass and any associated customer support costs in dealing with the banned accounts.

Hey John could we get some comments on the real substance of the debate instead of your response which is very similar to this comment:

Hey guys Water is wet. (Yes we know Gold Sellers are bad)(move on and lets talk about how to address the problem instead of in the failed concept of scare tactics. See how well that did on the war on drugs… amazingly successful eh?)

Lets talk about how the company’s handling of things actually contribute to Gold Sellers.

Drunken Mad King.8193

Lets talk about how the company’s handling of things actually contribute to Gold Sellers

What has ArenaNet done that requires you to spend a lot of gold in order to progress in the game? Legendaries/precursors are optional, and give you no in-game benefit compared to exotics. Halloween skins are nice, but again, are not required.

As far as I’m concerned, there’s no advantage to be gained from buying gold beyond cosmetics. “Paying to win” was something the player base was concerned about before the game launched, and ArenaNet have delivered a game where economic advantage does not (generally) corellate into an in-game advantage.

Drunken Mad King.8193:

Hey John could we get some comments on the real substance of the debate instead of your response which is very similar to this comment:

Hey guys Water is wet. (Yes we know Gold Sellers are bad)(move on and lets talk about how to address the problem instead of in the failed concept of scare tactics. See how well that did on the war on drugs… amazingly successful eh?)

Lets talk about how the company’s handling of things actually contribute to Gold Sellers.

Got your pitch fork out? Like you want Anet to come out and say yes we have caused people to do go to gold seller.

If you where to break down why someone would go to a GS then you could say 1 part of the reason is they felt the price is unfair offered by Anet. I myself don’t think the price is unfair. You obviously do and would you consider going to a GS? I will pay whatever the price is at if I want to buy gems that bad because it goes to directly support Anet. So If I myself have no problem with paying the rate for Gems and you have a problem paying the rate and want to go 3rd party how is that Anet’s problem? Im willing to follow their rules you are not. You get ban hammer possibly I don’t have to worry about logging in and seeing a screen that says I have been banned. You buy 3rd party everytime you log in you could be your last login. Its pretty simple concept

So what would your solution be? Let me guess have Anet lower the price to match 3rd party which would in turn make 3rd party lower the Price even more.

Astraea.6075:

Drunken Mad King.8193

Lets talk about how the company’s handling of things actually contribute to Gold Sellers

What has ArenaNet done that requires you to spend a lot of gold in order to progress in the game? Legendaries/precursors are optional, and give you no in-game benefit compared to exotics. Halloween skins are nice, but again, are not required.

As far as I’m concerned, there’s no advantage to be gained from buying gold beyond cosmetics. “Paying to win” was something the player base was concerned about before the game launched, and ArenaNet have delivered a game where economic advantage does not (generally) corellate into an in-game advantage.

You apparently don’t understand human nature. It has nothing to do with progression. It has everything to do with desire. That is what the legendary is all about. When you create desire customers (not myself) will do what they have to do to obtain that item.

By making the precursor an item that can be sold (instead of being account bound) and also making it super rare you then encourage gold buyers who look to get it as quickly as possible. Is it needed? no. Nor is the game, but we still play it. If there are gold buyers out there then there are gold sellers. By removing precursors from being sold you then limit the “need” for gold buyers to buy gold in huge amounts. If they don’t “need” to buy gold in huge amounts then paying the difference from the authorized vendor will not be as big of an issue.

I do not buy from gold sellers and in fact have reported them routinely. However I also feel strongly that Arenanet buries their head in the sand on their actions and simply chastises their customer base when they have helped create the situation that they state they despise.

oZii.2864:

Drunken Mad King.8193:

Hey John could we get some comments on the real substance of the debate instead of your response which is very similar to this comment:

Hey guys Water is wet. (Yes we know Gold Sellers are bad)(move on and lets talk about how to address the problem instead of in the failed concept of scare tactics. See how well that did on the war on drugs… amazingly successful eh?)

Lets talk about how the company’s handling of things actually contribute to Gold Sellers.

Got your pitch fork out? Like you want Anet to come out and say yes we have caused people to do go to gold seller.

If you where to break down why someone would go to a GS then you could say 1 part of the reason is they felt the price is unfair offered by Anet. I myself don’t think the price is unfair. You obviously do and would you consider going to a GS? I will pay whatever the price is at if I want to buy gems that bad because it goes to directly support Anet. So If I myself have no problem with paying the rate for Gems and you have a problem paying the rate and want to go 3rd party how is that Anet’s problem? Im willing to follow their rules you are not. You get ban hammer possibly I don’t have to worry about logging in and seeing a screen that says I have been banned. You buy 3rd party everytime you log in you could be your last login. Its pretty simple concept

So what would your solution be? Let me guess have Anet lower the price to match 3rd party which would in turn make 3rd party lower the Price even more.

Go back and read my posts. You apparently haven’t read a single one of mine. I have never 1 time stated they need to lower the price of gems or gold or any item they put on the BLTP. I have stated clearly and unequivocally stated what they do to encourage gold sellers and buyers.

Drunken Mad King.8193:

oZii.2864:

Drunken Mad King.8193:

Hey John could we get some comments on the real substance of the debate instead of your response which is very similar to this comment:

Hey guys Water is wet. (Yes we know Gold Sellers are bad)(move on and lets talk about how to address the problem instead of in the failed concept of scare tactics. See how well that did on the war on drugs… amazingly successful eh?)

Lets talk about how the company’s handling of things actually contribute to Gold Sellers.

Got your pitch fork out? Like you want Anet to come out and say yes we have caused people to do go to gold seller.

If you where to break down why someone would go to a GS then you could say 1 part of the reason is they felt the price is unfair offered by Anet. I myself don’t think the price is unfair. You obviously do and would you consider going to a GS? I will pay whatever the price is at if I want to buy gems that bad because it goes to directly support Anet. So If I myself have no problem with paying the rate for Gems and you have a problem paying the rate and want to go 3rd party how is that Anet’s problem? Im willing to follow their rules you are not. You get ban hammer possibly I don’t have to worry about logging in and seeing a screen that says I have been banned. You buy 3rd party everytime you log in you could be your last login. Its pretty simple concept

So what would your solution be? Let me guess have Anet lower the price to match 3rd party which would in turn make 3rd party lower the Price even more.

Go back and read my posts. You apparently haven’t read a single one of mine. I have never 1 time stated they need to lower the price of gems or gold or any item they put on the BLTP. I have stated clearly and unequivocally stated what they do to encourage gold sellers and buyers.

I read your posts you state that they “contribute” “boost” “encourage” gold seller and buyers.

You offer no solution so you want them to come out and say “Our gem prices are a factor in why a person would buy from a Gold Seller” thats what your looking for?

Are saying that items in game should not be able to be acquired by micro transactions?

Drunken Mad King.8193:

Astraea.6075:

Drunken Mad King.8193

Lets talk about how the company’s handling of things actually contribute to Gold Sellers

What has ArenaNet done that requires you to spend a lot of gold in order to progress in the game? Legendaries/precursors are optional, and give you no in-game benefit compared to exotics. Halloween skins are nice, but again, are not required.

As far as I’m concerned, there’s no advantage to be gained from buying gold beyond cosmetics. “Paying to win” was something the player base was concerned about before the game launched, and ArenaNet have delivered a game where economic advantage does not (generally) corellate into an in-game advantage.

You apparently don’t understand human nature. It has nothing to do with progression. It has everything to do with desire. That is what the legendary is all about. When you create desire customers (not myself) will do what they have to do to obtain that item.

By making the precursor an item that can be sold (instead of being account bound) and also making it super rare you then encourage gold buyers who look to get it as quickly as possible. Is it needed? no. Nor is the game, but we still play it. If there are gold buyers out there then there are gold sellers. By removing precursors from being sold you then limit the “need” for gold buyers to buy gold in huge amounts. If they don’t “need” to buy gold in huge amounts then paying the difference from the authorized vendor will not be as big of an issue.

I do not buy from gold sellers and in fact have reported them routinely. However I also feel strongly that Arenanet buries their head in the sand on their actions and simply chastises their customer base when they have helped create the situation that they state they despise.

It may look that way, but in my eyes and knowing a good bit about the backend, it’s a tougher nut to crack than some people make it out to be. With as much activity going on across all the servers 24/7, it’s very tough to police behavior in an effective and fair manner. They have made mistakes where players do very long (8 hours of more) runs of farming through orr and have gotten banned, perma banned. So it’s really important they handle this stuff with care.

Nothing would be better than having people in game monitoring stuff, but that’s a lot of people just dedicating their time to monitoring bot behavior, documenting and then ultimately deciding to ban the account. There’s also the stolen account issue and the inevitable dispute from the player that got banned, not knowing they were hacked.

It’s really not fair to say they are burring their heads in the sand.

oZii.2864:

Drunken Mad King.8193:

oZii.2864:

Drunken Mad King.8193:

Hey John could we get some comments on the real substance of the debate instead of your response which is very similar to this comment:

Hey guys Water is wet. (Yes we know Gold Sellers are bad)(move on and lets talk about how to address the problem instead of in the failed concept of scare tactics. See how well that did on the war on drugs… amazingly successful eh?)

Lets talk about how the company’s handling of things actually contribute to Gold Sellers.

Got your pitch fork out? Like you want Anet to come out and say yes we have caused people to do go to gold seller.

If you where to break down why someone would go to a GS then you could say 1 part of the reason is they felt the price is unfair offered by Anet. I myself don’t think the price is unfair. You obviously do and would you consider going to a GS? I will pay whatever the price is at if I want to buy gems that bad because it goes to directly support Anet. So If I myself have no problem with paying the rate for Gems and you have a problem paying the rate and want to go 3rd party how is that Anet’s problem? Im willing to follow their rules you are not. You get ban hammer possibly I don’t have to worry about logging in and seeing a screen that says I have been banned. You buy 3rd party everytime you log in you could be your last login. Its pretty simple concept

So what would your solution be? Let me guess have Anet lower the price to match 3rd party which would in turn make 3rd party lower the Price even more.

Go back and read my posts. You apparently haven’t read a single one of mine. I have never 1 time stated they need to lower the price of gems or gold or any item they put on the BLTP. I have stated clearly and unequivocally stated what they do to encourage gold sellers and buyers.

I read your posts you state that they “contribute” “boost” “encourage” gold seller and buyers.

You offer no solution so you want them to come out and say “Our gem prices are a factor in why a person would buy from a Gold Seller” thats what your looking for?

Are saying that items in game should not be able to be acquired by micro transactions?

Wrong you are obviously not seeing what I have said. I have spoken about making precursors account bound as well as speaking about how they made the Halloween skins rare which they knew would then make them very high priced items on the TP which they again could have made more common drops or again account bound. These actions create a driving need for high amounts of gold.

What did I do… create a solution in reducing the amount of gold buying and gold selling.

@Drunken Mad King

As I understand it then, your solution is for ArenaNet to implement an economy that effectively has no trade in “luxury” items. (i.e. rare or hard to obtain items cannot be traded or sold).

While this might be effective in stopping the demand for gold from gold sellers, it would probably be bad for game as whole.

@ Astrea

Not all luxury items but Legendary items were meant for the player to go through effort to get the item. Legendary precursors being simply purchased for gold was a horrible idea and it feeds the gold sellers.

The massive amount of gold sellers and therefor the massive amount of gold buyers are far far far worse to the game as a whole. What it does is creates a massive influx of gold which then drives up costs on all things exponentially. This then does what? Drives away the honest players and also encourages more players to buy gold.

They can always easily adjust the method of obtaining the precursor and that could be done again without affecting the economy. Having precursors on the TP for gold makes it massively difficult to control the economy.

Alice looked around the room, the only exit was a doll-sized door. She read the label again, “Drink me!”

Coercion in gaming is a weird science/art, but it certainly exists. Arenanet routinely compares themselves to other developers, specificly in reference to how they are less coercive (think grind, gear treadmill) We bought the game so we could do the stuffs! We want the stuffs! What else is there but the stuffs! Arenanet thinks the Tyrian economy can survive us being able to spend cash on anything that exists in Tyria and I think it can. However, Arenanet does not think Tyria could survive us deciding what the cash value of anything in Tyria is.

@Drunken Mad King

Have to agree with Astraea.

Precursor prices are not set by Anet they are set by players the same goes for the halloween skins. So if anything you could point to not allowing certain items to be sold like Astraea said. If it is those higher end items like a precursor for example. Then you have to do the same for every component that is required to craft a legendary because someone one will find a way to get the most bang for their buck somewhere. If precursors are account bound then the price for lodestones will go up. If lodestones are account bound then the price for x ingredient used in Gift of x will go up.

Also not every gamer has a infinite amount of time to play the game. By allowing the precursor to be purchased or legendary items to be purchased it allows 9-5 john to be able buy 1 if he doesn’t have time to grind it out as much as someone else. Precursor is only 1 piece of the pie of a legendary I don’t know why people keep forgetting that. You are affected by RNG or buying items of the tp for every other component for a precursor outside of Map completion.

The other problem with precursors (or similar) being non-tradeable is the RNG factor. If I’m lucky enough to get one from a chest, but it doesn’t happen to be one I could use on that character, then it may as well not have dropped for me. That could possibly be mitigated by it being account-bound, but only if I’m interested in levelling a character that would use the finished item.

@oZii and Astraea

Arenanet controls the drop rate and the RNG factors of everything in the game. That in and of itself controls the price of things. Supply and Demand in it’s most basic form. 9-5 john can only buy one through buying gold or waiting a long long long long time to afford one (which in turn creates the issue of gold buyers and gold sellers).

Lodestones can always be adjusted in drop rate to keep their price at a reasonable rate.

As far as your point Astraea just because they are account bound doesn’t mean they couldn’t add something into the mix to allow for swapping it with an NPC after a quest or some requirement being met. Or hell make it a precursor token again soulbound or accountbound. The point being is that the Legendary precursors create a line in the sand at what everything else is valued at. This in turn creates an issue with gold buyers and gold sellers.

So if I could counterfit money and sell it for less than what it reprisents that would be ok by some of you?

Bear in mind that alot of people will recognise this as being “wrong”, so not many would use my “service”. And it will inflate the cost of things while making your money worth less. But it’s ok because nobody else is selling cheap money…

As people have pointed out just because something is illegal doesn’t mean people don’t want it, or want to do it. And genaraly speaking if no one is hurt and no property damaged, I have a hard time seeing why it’s not allowed. But Gold sellers damage someone elses property that we have a licence to use. They even commit fraud when logging in as you if they hacked your account, which is also an invasion of privacy… People who buy their gold hurt the game in a very obvious way and support those who sell it and their methods. I’d rather nither party existed because it’s not part of the game I’m playing, but still effects the enviroment that we frequent.

On a tangent to what’s been said here..

Bikes are lighter, smaller and better made for what they are than cars, yet there is no consideration taken to these differences, either by legal means or in some cases intellectual..

People who don’t ride bikes sometimes have very strong feelings about those who do..

I don’t have strong feelings about the gold sellers now that I don’t recive spam from them, and could care less about peoples justifications for buying it. It’s not a comodity for them to sell, and I doubt they pay tax on it…

A solution would be to regulate the farmers, give them a permit and an agreement by which to abide so they could regulate it themselves and prosecute people who didn’t abide by their contract.

Or you idiots could just stop buying it and play the game you bought like the rest of us…

(botting is against the terms and conditions of most (if not all) MMOs which, essentially, makes it illegal in the context of the game environment) to obtain it.

“Illegal within the game environment” is a vastly different thing than “illegal.” If they steal people’s credit card numbers or whatever, then that is illegal. If they cheat within the game world to acquire things that they should nto be able to get through legitimate means, then no matter how frowned upon that may be, it should nto be confused for “illegal” behavior. I’m not defending their behavior, but misuse of terminology just confuses the discussion.

They can always easily adjust the method of obtaining the precursor and that could be done again without affecting the economy. Having precursors on the TP for gold makes it massively difficult to control the economy.

True. What they should do is make precursors Account-bound on pick-up, but in exchange (to prevent RNG hell), they need to make non-random, if still challenging methods of acquiring them, like perhaps some sorts of tokens, gained via doing jumping puzzles, or dungeons, or some other difficult activity, with which you can spend dozens of them to buy the exact Precursor you want (without using gold or throwing you to the whims of fate).