Guild Wars 2

I’ll start by stating I have never paid real money for in-game stuff (not even from Anet, sorry)
I have no idea if Anet does ban someone if they get caught buying from gold sellers, but I do believe it’s against the ToS to do so. I suggest reversing this (maybe word it so it’s against the rules but not punishable?). Maybe even offer a bounty for reporting.
The thought goes like this: if people aren’t afraid of getting banned or their gold taken away, they would be able to report the accounts that send out the gold, ridding us of more gold sellers. (and banning the gold senders’ accounts is probably more detrimental to the gold seller, causing them to rethink their business choice)
Another thought is to offer a bounty for reporting them. Maybe 10s? or 1g divided among all those who reported that one? It wouldn’t break the economy (even if 10,000 gold seller accounts are deleted, that’s only 10,000g that enters the game (equivalent to our ~2 million players each killing a risen and getting 50c). players would report like normal, then whenever a gold seller account is deleted due to players reporting them, a mail is sent to all of them with congratulations and some coins. (I imagine there’s a database of reports, and each one is gone through with a computer program to examine the account for key words in it’s chat log or unusual mails, then it’s flagged for a human to look at. for this idea, it would also look for large sums of coins sent to many different people that aren’t in the same guild)

Maybe I missing your point, but I already report gold sellers, both in game whispers, in game mail offers and private messages here on the forum.
I just do it to make the game a better place for everyone, I don’t expect a bounty..

Remove the customer and the business will wither away. Gold Buyers should be banned just as much as gold sellers. The problem begins with gold buyers, It should be made public knowledge that buying gold outside of the Black Lion Trader is an offence that is punishable by an account ban. I do not understand why players still do this, it is such an unsafe thing to do and usually ends up with the account being stolen anyway.

So they’ll get to keep the gold they bought?

Someone who buys gold is part of the problem.
They should never get to keep the gold.
Gold sellers don’t send you the gold, then ask for a donation. You have to go to them and request the gold, and pay.
And saying “I was just making sure it was a gold seller” or something like that is just a bad excuse.

Just report the accounts advertising it.

And don’t expect a reward. Taking out gold sellers is its own reward.

Responding to just the title of this post not even going to read it.

Anyone either working for or supporting gold sellers should be ban form all MMOs forever.

Those that buy gold are lazy self severing and have not desire to truly play any MMO as they are designed to be played.

If you want this type of playing style go to a Pay to Win game and have fun

I think I know what he is saying, that if a person is not gonna get banned for setting up a buy from a gold seller, but tricks them into proving they are a gold seller by buying from them he could report them as a known account and then not only does he get the gold from the buy that he made he would in his opinion should get a reward for going though the process of making the buy.

Which is stupid, If you follow any of those links to those sites more than likely you could end up having your account hacked and instead of you getting a reward you could be getting everything you have worked hard to get in game taken away not by being banned by anet for buying gold, but from the gold seller striping your account and selling off every penny you had, while using it to advertise to more idiots. This is how they run their business model, by turning on there own customers.

I am all for reporting, my reward is I don’t have to Compete with a bot or read unwanted mail in the game and on the forum. If Anet wants Bounty Hunters they could very well do it internally.

I know someone who bought gold in Aion, he was caught and banned.. since both Aion and GW2 are NCSoft, I assume it’s the same policy..

It’s the gold BUYERS that keep the gold BOTTERS in business.

Both should be banned forever.

Balance the game properly and the buyers and sellers would be gone. No need to ban anyone.

Offering a bounty is dangerous as people will start reporting everything and everyone. Banning lots of people is also not in the games interest – i just read the user agreement (dosent mention gold selling) and also read the rules of conduct which seems to prohibit “transfer” of ingame items/currency to anyone not approved by Anet so you cant even give stuff to your mates and stay within the rules of conduct (ok im tired so maybe I misread the paragraph but it honestly seems to prohibit everything – catch all “we can ban you if we want”).

Buying gold for real world money cant be evil as you can buy it from Anet (buy gems and convert them to gold), whats evil is the effect it has on the game economy and chat/mail systems (i.e. inflation and spam put people off playing). Its not buying gold Anet have a problem with its buying gold from someone other than them.

Yeah, so what you’re saying is you want to be able to buy gold so that you can identify the gold sellers? It isn’t our responsibility as players to conduct sting operations against gold sellers. This would just increase the gold selling by encouraging those people who would buy gold but don’t because they fear getting banned.

Sorry to confuse: the idea wasn’t to encourage people to make themselves bait. It was directed at people who already keep the gold sellers in business. They buy gold sellers’ gold, then don’t report because reporting is the only way they would ever be banned themselves (I have yet to hear of a single gold buyer get banned). The bounty is to encourage their reporting (pay them to give up their dealer).
I know everyone here already reports gold sellers, the bounty is for everyone who was too lazy to report or thought someone else would. It would produce more false positives… I guess I might have too high an opinion on Anet’s ability to distinguish false reports from real ones…
There’s no way I’m going to pay $10,000 to identify 10,000 gold sellers so I can get $1 worth of gold from each of them just so I can be rewarded with 1,000g from Anet.

gold buyers should be banned the same as gold sellers, becuase the buyers are breaking the rules just as much as the seller.

true, in a perfect world everyone should get what’s coming to them. But from what I’ve heard, no one has banned any gold buyers. And gold sellers are still getting away with their racketeering. This suggestion is to accept you can’t have a perfect world and try to work with as little disturbance as possible in order to attempt to make a perfect world. As long as gold buyers never get banned and there are gold sellers, there will be gold buyers. But if we can eliminate the gold sellers, then there will be no more gold buyers.
I realize how repulsive this is to common sense, but it’s not so different from police informants.

Mystic.5934:

true, in a perfect world everyone should get what’s coming to them. But from what I’ve heard, no one has banned any gold buyers. And gold sellers are still getting away with their racketeering. This suggestion is to accept you can’t have a perfect world and try to work with as little disturbance as possible in order to attempt to make a perfect world. As long as gold buyers never get banned and there are gold sellers, there will be gold buyers. But if we can eliminate the gold sellers, then there will be no more gold buyers.

But they can’t walk into the gold seller HQ with a Sunrise and start swinging to banish them, for w/e reason they cannot just ban or sue them. Yes selling in-game content is against the policy and punishments are given, to those who do those things in game. The best thing they can do is ban gold buyers, hopefully starve gold sellers of their profits and watch them disipate.

They can ban all the botters they want but most of those accounts were stolen so it doesn’t do too much to the gold companies. They just steal another poor saps account from key logging or simply the player unknowingly gives them too much info and its over. Really, the gold buyers deserve whats coming. If they want to “legally” buy gold, support ArenaNet by purchasing gems and exchanging those gems in the TP for gold and you got yourself a wopping load of coin. Especially at these current exchange rates.

I’m on the side banning both parties. When I play, I earn my gold through legitimate farming and selling stuff. I have no sympathy for gold buyers, if you really want to buy gold pay for gems through the in-game store and sell them on the market. Anet gets your money to support the game and you get to be lazy. Both sides win.

If you buy from a gold seller you are supporting spammers and botters. No sympathy what-so-ever from me.

Gold buyers who get caught should absolutely get banned. When there is a 100% legit way to acquire gold with real money, there is no justification for it. ArenaNet’s revenue to fund ongoing development (as well as for their employees to provide for their families) depends on the income from gem sales. It’s a small price to pay to have a REAL full MMO with no monthly fee and NO pay-2-win crap.

If you support and respect ArenaNet you should always report gold sellers you see.

GW2 is a pay-to-win game run by a gold selling company. The gold sellers are providing competition, thus making sure the price of gold remains low. The gold buyers are playing the game as intended. Now tell me, why would I report either of those groups?

Just because the gold sellers have done nothing for guild wars 2, they are parasits. A.net has made the game, they created this wonderful game for us to enjoy, and if they want to sell gold on their market, they have the right to do so.

And they also have the right to forbid others to sell gold for real money.

This is also to protect customers. When you buy gems (and so gold, if you then trade gems for golds) you do so on a trusted secure transaction website. When you buy gold from outside companies, you do so on risky websites. I’ll never trust a gold seller company enough to give them my credit card number.

Allowing gold sellers to sell gold is like saying you have a shop in town, you sell clothes, and someone comes in and start selling clothes inside YOUR shop at discount prices. Will you allow this? NO WAY.

Guild Wars 2 is owned by ANet, and they have the rights to do whatever they want on their game.

Moreover gold sellers are a plea… they spam you with messages written in bad english. ANet will never spam you asking you to buy gold.

And as this is because of buyers there are sellers, yes, buyers should be banned and their gold taken away.

I have bought gems from ANet twice, but not to have gold, I used my gems to improve bank and inventory storage. Gold, I want to earn it, not use my credit card for this.

And no, GW2 is not a pay to win, not for me at least. I enjoy playing it, and each evening I have fun with GW2, to me is a victory… so in fact I win without paying anything, just by playing the way I want

This isn’t even a debate. Anyone trying to defend illegal gold buyers is doing so for their selfish reasoning.

Craywulf.5793:

This isn’t even a debate. Anyone trying to defend illegal gold buyers is doing so for their selfish reasoning.

Agreed, this post is a pointless one. Gold sellers and buyers should be banned, If you want to buy gold, then log in, go to the gem store, buy gems and then convert it into gold, thats what i do, if i need gold.

Its ANets party and they havnt invited any gold sellers lol.

end of

Bubbles.1047:

GW2 is a pay-to-win game run by a gold selling company. The gold sellers are providing competition, thus making sure the price of gold remains low. The gold buyers are playing the game as intended. Now tell me, why would I report either of those groups?

GW2 is not pay-to-win (you clearly haven’t the slightest clue what that even means) and ArenaNet is not a “gold selling company”.

In short, you’re:

1. A really, REALLY pathetic troll

2. An obvious liar

3. Very stupid and/or ignorant

There are no other options. You pick.

Azzrael Deathbane.4965:

Craywulf.5793:

This isn’t even a debate. Anyone trying to defend illegal gold buyers is doing so for their selfish reasoning.

Agreed, this post is a pointless one. Gold sellers and buyers should be banned, If you want to buy gold, then log in, go to the gem store, buy gems and then convert it into gold, thats what i do, if i need gold.

Its ANets party and they havnt invited any gold sellers lol.

end of

/thread

All I needed to do was look at the title to form a response.

By buying gold, you’re willingly supporting gold-sellers, hackers, bots and annoying gold-spamming bots, all of the crimes of which are bannable and should be bannable.

Why should gold buyers be spared the rod if those they indirectly help aren’t? By buying gold you make the business of selling gold and hacking accounts profitable.

DocHolliday.5921:

Azzrael Deathbane.4965:

Craywulf.5793:

This isn’t even a debate. Anyone trying to defend illegal gold buyers is doing so for their selfish reasoning.

Agreed, this post is a pointless one. Gold sellers and buyers should be banned, If you want to buy gold, then log in, go to the gem store, buy gems and then convert it into gold, thats what i do, if i need gold.

Its ANets party and they havnt invited any gold sellers lol.

end of

/thread

this! I thought “are you kidding…?!” while reading this topic.

Bubbles, that’s an interesting point of view, thank you for your input. You would report them if it got you a reward. Sure, it’s a short-term reward, but most people live on those and don’t even think about the long-term affects.
Frosty, I can tell you only read the title. nothing in the rest of this post indicated gold buying was OK
Everyone else, I’m disappointed you didn’t understand what I’m saying. It’s as if everyone joined Frosty in only reading the title. I’ll spell it out in as few words as possible:

-BUYING GOLD FROM GOLD SELLERS IS NOT OK AND SHOULD BE PUNISHED
-But buying gold from gold sellers happens anyways, and isn’t punished because Anet has no way to know who committed the crime
-So why not use knowledge only a gold buyer can have: who the gold seller’s distributing account is. Currently, these accounts are going unpunished because Anet has no idea who they are

I can accept if someone doesn’t agree with this proposal (I know how far out there it is); but for puppies sake, disagree with the actual proposal and not your interpretation of the title. I can only hope a dev can see this because they seem to be the only ones who read posts the entire post and not selected words that stand out.
The goal here is to rid ourselves of gold sellers however necessary. To this aim, some can live with certain evils while others clearly can’t.
One of the reasons I have enjoyed GW2 is that they have found novel solutions to common problems among other MMOs (such as horizontal progression instead of vertical). Every MMO suffers gold sellers, Anet should use a novel solution to get rid of them, since everything already tried isn’t solving them.

I changed the title from “Don’t ban for buying from gold sellers” to “Use Gold Buyers to catch more Gold Sellers”. Hopefully now we’ll get some actual comments instead of “all gold buyers should be banned” – which is a sentiment I agree with (I just would rather see all gold sellers gone even if it means all gold buyers get away with it)

Well the first thing they could do is filter the private messages I receive on these forums with the title “I Love You” and which are nothing but gold sellers. It is bad enough when you get them in the game but here on the forums?

I also have been getting gold spam in the forums e-mail. Same title as above “I Love You”. If Anet would undercut the gold selling company’s they would leave the game, it costs them money to have sites, employees etc.

hehe, yeah. I’ve gotten 3 of those (can we delete them, or does Anet need them there to confirm the spam?) trouble with filters is that they would block actual love letters as well. better would be to have a list of all the addresses that sell gold, and auto-flag any forum mail or in-game chat or in-game mail that includes that url.
just you wait until someone hacks Anet’s servers, gets everyone’s home address, and physically mails you spam about selling gold. (they have at least some addresses – they sent christmas cards to them)

Do not forget that GW2 needs players, the banstick is fine for sellets but will shorten the life of the game if you ban people for wanting gold. Educate people if you can, guide them if you must but leave the banstick in the school club where people are supposed to be childish.

Look at something like superior divinity runes – ~50 gold for a full set right now.

Farming that long just for standard runes is very annoying and it would cost $50 for the gems which is the entire box price of the game. 6 Runes are worth more then the entire game?

I know demand yada yada…. Still Anet controls the drop rates and thus the price for basic equipment. A gold seller would charge near 1/5th of Anets price.

I am fine with farming for things that cannot be bought like dungeon and fractal tokens, but when Anet is charging 4-5 times the price of a gold seller and all someone wants to get is standard gear its going to create a black market.

For a lot of people the risk of getting banned is worth it since they probably would just quit anyways if the farming grind is so completely ridiculous.

While walking to work through the snow today I realised something rather obvious that seems not to have been brought up as of yet with regard to the practicalities of banning gold buyers.
 
There will be no ingame evidence that someone is attempting to buy gold, all transactions and communication will be outside the game therefore the only ingame evidence will be when they receive the gold (or an item which can be sold for a given amount of gold).  In the case of GW2 this has to be via ingame mail as face to face trades are not possible.  Banning gold buyers therefore means going on this evidence alone (as there is no other evidence) and the logic would have to be “you were sent gold by a gold seller, therefore you bought it, therefore you are being banned.”  This is 100% troll heaven, all you have to do if someone annoys you ingame is pay $10 via paypal to some gold selling company to send their char gold and hey presto they get banned – or if someone ingame takes a dislike to you then all they have to do is pay $10 to a gold selling company and you get sent gold and YOU get banned!
 
Seriously, this is so easy to abuse it is madness to even suggest it.
 
Come to think of it, its difficult enough to ban gold sellers as all they have to do (I assume they already do this) is use hacked accounts to distribute the gold – hey presto you just banned someone who got hacked, great job!

Yay You see why I said that no gold buyer has or ever will be banned

yes, that is what gold sellers do. hacked accounts running bots to collect resources and spam you.
anything those accounts collect I’m sure is sent to legitimate accounts and then sent to people who buy the gold. so if gold buyers turned in those accounts, Anet could delete gold sellers’ gold and not just their stolen (empty) accounts.
I don’t know if enough gold buyers would go for it, or if it would work, or if Anet /could/ even do this suggestion: to them, this might be like a politician admitting they were wrong – meaning they couldn’t do it without outraging so many people they would go out of business (just look at earlier posts here to see examples of what the general public might say)

Elthurien.8356:

Remove the customer and the business will wither away. Gold Buyers should be banned just as much as gold sellers. The problem begins with gold buyers, It should be made public knowledge that buying gold outside of the Black Lion Trader is an offence that is punishable by an account ban. I do not understand why players still do this, it is such an unsafe thing to do and usually ends up with the account being stolen anyway.

Then offer a competitive price. 50 dollars in gems for 40 something gold will get you well over 200 gold from our friends in the far east.

They offer the gem to gold option as convenience… I call it robbery.