Guild Wars 2

Ensign.2189:

Behellagh.1468:

All that does is shift who and when one group takes advantage of the information.

That would be all there is to it if people were economically literate, which they aren’t. There’s a perceptual issue; we have a bunch of Bernie Bros with pitchforks furious about a perceived injustice, and whether or not there’s any sense to it, it still creates a PR problem. Really minor gestures like previewing economy changes would build a lot of goodwill with those players and costs them basically nothing.

Fact of the matter is that economically the party that ‘deserves’ the gains from revealing the economic changes is…the devs themselves, which clearly shouldn’t happen because agency issues. So instead someone else gets to capture those rents, and they don’t ‘deserve’ them in any sense; no one does, so it’s just a cash grab with no good, known social solution.

So I just say screw it, make players happy, because it doesn’t matter and you can get some free goodwill out of it.

The thing is I don’t see a huge crowd with pitchforks upset about this, just a few who are out for blood for a perceived wrong to them, which is they didn’t get a chance to profit off of it. It’s jealousy, plain and simple. They simply couch it as a noble cause.

And just like shifting who profits if the information is released publicly for all to see , the players complaining will also shift to those who will say it’s unfair that some region of the world gets the info during their “prime time” rather than the region of the world the complainers are located. I saw this frequently in MMOs with scheduled weekly down time. “Why do you keep taking the servers down during MY prime time?”. This will be no different. You will simply placate one group while another rises to take it’s place.

When we had the Great Rollback of 2016, all of us online had insider information that certain Lodestones and Cores would be valuable, so we all camped and waited for the TP to reopen. I blinked when the TP came up, and all the low priced goods were gone. Regardless of when information is released, not everyone will be able to benefit. That’s why I don’t get mad, just a little jelly that it couldn’t have been me.

The thing is I don’t see a huge crowd with pitchforks upset about this, just a few who are out for blood for a perceived wrong to them, which is they didn’t get a chance to profit off of it.

Actually, quite the opposite, had you bothered to read the entire thread. I benefited from it, when the Halloween 2013 skins dropped drastically in price. I had 5 ascended sets already done and created prior to posting, and 2 legendaries crafted. I wasn’t burnt by the market, nor am i out for blood.

As i’ve stated previously, and as i believe currently, i simply want to see the release of market-affecting information provided to ALL players at the same time, instead of the info being given to the promoters first, and then 2-4 weeks later, the rest of the playerbase. More importantly, i want all these ‘shady’ practices that ANet does, to simply stop.

It is really disappointing that the promoters are the ones who seem to be doing this, even admit it like that guy in that reddit post and rub it in the faces of regular players. Quite a way to promote the game and get followers.

“I am famous so I am allowed to cheat and the regular scrubs should just accept this.”

Behellagh.1468:

All that does is shift who and when one group takes advantage of the information. Those who can’t take immediate advantage of the information are in the exact same predicament as they are with a few getting “insider information”.

Yes, but it becomes the situation of having equal opportunity (some would capitalize on it better, some worse). It wouldn’t be always the same, small and arbitrarily chosen clique getting the news first.

Behellagh.1468:

The changes to the market still happens and some small fortunate group still makes bank.

It wouldn’t always be the same group. And they’d need to be on their toes to make that profit, instead of having a massive advantage over everyone else, that practically precludes any form of competition from even applying.

Ameepa.6793:

“I am famous so I am allowed to cheat and the regular scrubs should just accept this.”

Yes, that is exactly the message the game is giving out now. And that is simply bad business.

I don’t see the issue: Content providers shouldn’t be shown things that will change the market if they are going to take advantage of that information. Show them that there will be a new crafted item, but not what the recipe is for instance.

As for testers, if they are taking advantage or leaking information, fire them, ban their accounts, and hire someone who won’t.

Djinn.9245:

I don’t see the issue: Content providers shouldn’t be shown things that will change the market if they are going to take advantage of that information. Show them that there will be a new crafted item, but not what the recipe is for instance.

As for testers, if they are taking advantage or leaking information, fire them, ban their accounts, and hire someone who won’t.

You can’t really prove that they are taking advantage.
The fix here is there should be no information regarding future market changes in a testing environment. Because they’re there to text the gameplay mechanics not the TP’s economic future.

They should not be able to see what goes into crafting what. You can just have some grey icons with “placeholder x” or “placeholder Y” if they really must test crafting.

The reason you can’t just outright ban testers and find ones that won’t leak is that there is no way you can prove that they did or did not take advantage of this.
I doubt anybody would be stupid enough to test the game and then immediately go and buy that item that they knew would spike on the TP on their main account and get caught.

Most likely they’ll tell someone else they trust – that person will make bank and they’ll find a way to share the money long after.
That’s the most logical and possibly easiest way.

There are other more convoluted ways to go about it but the bottom line is you can’t really figure out WHICH tester leaked it. Or why.

There will always be insider trading – but like I said – I expect it to be limited to parties close to the developers themselves – because there’s really no way to stop that.

It should NOT however involve people that get “early access” because they’re “content creators”. That’s their JOB. They earn MONEY from that. They’re not doing it because “they feel like it” or for the betterment of the community. It is a means to acquire income.
Sure – some might have started out with good intentions and may still retain them BUT that’s no reason to give them access to this sort of information.

slamfunction.7462:

The thing is I don’t see a huge crowd with pitchforks upset about this, just a few who are out for blood for a perceived wrong to them, which is they didn’t get a chance to profit off of it.

Actually, quite the opposite, had you bothered to read the entire thread. I benefited from it, when the Halloween 2013 skins dropped drastically in price. I had 5 ascended sets already done and created prior to posting, and 2 legendaries crafted. I wasn’t burnt by the market, nor am i out for blood.

As i’ve stated previously, and as i believe currently, i simply want to see the release of market-affecting information provided to ALL players at the same time, instead of the info being given to the promoters first, and then 2-4 weeks later, the rest of the playerbase. More importantly, i want all these ‘shady’ practices that ANet does, to simply stop.

Oh, I’ve read the entire thread here and Reddit. My points are still the following.

• Yes, people shouldn’t take advantage of information they gleaned from getting the patch notes or test server access before a change that will affect one or more items on the TP method of supply or usefulness in a significant way.

• There is no way to stop such information from “leaking”. As The Pierces say in their song, “Two can keep a secret if one of them is dead”. Developers talk and they may disclose something they worked on months ago, forgetting it hadn’t gone live yet.

• ANet grants access to their media partners days before it goes live and simply NOT having the exact client/server software running on test is madness. And while ANet can sanitize early preview patch notes, doing the same to the test server is asking for an oops. Balls get dropped all the time, that’s why we get multiple patches on patch day.

• Expending the manpower to hunt down and punish the culprits is problematic. There is no way ANet would sanction a major MMO news site, game reviewer, streamer/YouTuber or owner of a popular player resource. It would be shooting themselves in their own foot. ANet needs goodwill from them and making a large site their enemy wouldn’t help the game at all. Therefore sanctioning the “little guy” is then problematic because then “justice” isn’t being mete out fairly to all guilty parties.

• NCSOFT still owns ANet (although slightly more indirectly). They may consider this as acceptable quid pro quo for “free” advertising. So it’s possible that “corporate” is preventing/discouraging any action, not wanting any retribution blow back onto their other games.

• Unless a player notices the drop in supply or price in the days leading up to a patch, most will be unaware as the market will still settle at the new price points no matter when the info becomes known. An item will still be more expensive or their hoard will be worth noticeably less a day out from patch day.

In the end this topic, while legitimate, is a tempest in a teapot. ANet simply won’t expend any significant manpower to track down the “culprits” or future proof their pre-patch day access with a custom build. All they can do is issue a strong reminder not to and maybe cut off the next preview from EVERYONE.

Behellagh.1468:

ANet grants access to their media partners days before it goes live and simply NOT having the exact client/server software running on test is madness. And while ANet can sanitize early preview patch notes, doing the same to the test server is asking for an oops. Balls get dropped all the time, that’s why we get multiple patches on patch day.

As far as I know NONE of the media previews that have come from third parties have had anything to do with crafting or TP stuff. Just disable it. Or replace it with something else.

Expending the manpower to hunt down and punish the culprits is problematic. There is no way ANet would sanction a major MMO news site, game reviewer, streamer/YouTuber or owner of a popular player resource. It would be shooting themselves in their own foot. ANet needs goodwill from them and making a large site their enemy wouldn’t help the game at all. Therefore sanctioning the “little guy” is then problematic because then “justice” isn’t being mete out fairly to all guilty parties.

True – that’s why they should not be using versions of the game that have this stuff in them.

Most times the media they released is related to visuals, cutscenes, armor set looks, story and whatnot. Why would they need access to crafting data or anything else related?

In the end this topic, while legitimate, is a tempest in a teapot. ANet simply won’t expend any significant manpower to track down the “culprits” or future proof their pre-patch day access with a custom build. All they can do is issue a strong reminder not to and maybe cut off the next preview from EVERYONE.

And this is further reinforcing the already prevalent idea that they’re way over their head and unprofessional.

Behellagh.1468:

slamfunction.7462:

The thing is I don’t see a huge crowd with pitchforks upset about this, just a few who are out for blood for a perceived wrong to them, which is they didn’t get a chance to profit off of it.

Actually, quite the opposite, had you bothered to read the entire thread. I benefited from it, when the Halloween 2013 skins dropped drastically in price. I had 5 ascended sets already done and created prior to posting, and 2 legendaries crafted. I wasn’t burnt by the market, nor am i out for blood.

As i’ve stated previously, and as i believe currently, i simply want to see the release of market-affecting information provided to ALL players at the same time, instead of the info being given to the promoters first, and then 2-4 weeks later, the rest of the playerbase. More importantly, i want all these ‘shady’ practices that ANet does, to simply stop.

Oh, I’ve read the entire thread here and Reddit. My points are still the following.

• Yes, people shouldn’t take advantage of information they gleaned from getting the patch notes or test server access before a change that will affect one or more items on the TP method of supply or usefulness in a significant way.

• There is no way to stop such information from “leaking”. As The Pierces say in their song, “Two can keep a secret if one of them is dead”. Developers talk and they may disclose something they worked on months ago, forgetting it hadn’t gone live yet.

• ANet grants access to their media partners days before it goes live and simply NOT having the exact client/server software running on test is madness. And while ANet can sanitize early preview patch notes, doing the same to the test server is asking for an oops. Balls get dropped all the time, that’s why we get multiple patches on patch day.

• Expending the manpower to hunt down and punish the culprits is problematic. There is no way ANet would sanction a major MMO news site, game reviewer, streamer/YouTuber or owner of a popular player resource. It would be shooting themselves in their own foot. ANet needs goodwill from them and making a large site their enemy wouldn’t help the game at all. Therefore sanctioning the “little guy” is then problematic because then “justice” isn’t being mete out fairly to all guilty parties.

• NCSOFT still owns ANet (although slightly more indirectly). They may consider this as acceptable quid pro quo for “free” advertising. So it’s possible that “corporate” is preventing/discouraging any action, not wanting any retribution blow back onto their other games.

• Unless a player notices the drop in supply or price in the days leading up to a patch, most will be unaware as the market will still settle at the new price points no matter when the info becomes known. An item will still be more expensive or their hoard will be worth noticeably less a day out from patch day.

In the end this topic, while legitimate, is a tempest in a teapot. ANet simply won’t expend any significant manpower to track down the “culprits” or future proof their pre-patch day access with a custom build. All they can do is issue a strong reminder not to and maybe cut off the next preview from EVERYONE.

They don’t have to track anyone down, or give out bans. All they gotta do is release the patch notes to the public, at the same time that they are given to their “media partners”.

Thats it. It requires Arena Net to do the most crippling thing they have been unable to do up until this point: Effectively communicate to their audience, at the right time.

EDIT: The rest of your comments are a cross of fandom brainwashing, and making excuses for a company not bold enough to create their own.

How do i get in on this to become said rich person?

slamfunction.7462:

They don’t have to track anyone down, or give out bans. All they gotta do is release the patch notes to the public, at the same time that they are given to their “media partners”.

Thats it. It requires Arena Net to do the most crippling thing they have been unable to do up until this point: Effectively communicate to their audience, at the right time.

EDIT: The rest of your comments are a cross of fandom brainwashing, and making excuses for a company not bold enough to create their own.

Ah the classic “that’s not an explanation, that’s an excuse”. As soon as someone takes that position there is no chance for meaningful discussion.

And there are people in this thread and on reddit demanding blood. You may not.

Arenanet could make this a smaller issue by getting that information out to players earlier. There are tons of ways. They could do pre-patch notes, a Public Beta Environment, Include into their pre-patch dev chats to name a few. Letting the same clique have a huge advantage every patch is BS. The only reason I can see someone defend this is because they are one of the few that get the info every patch and so of course they don’t want it to change.

Behellagh.1468:

slamfunction.7462:

They don’t have to track anyone down, or give out bans. All they gotta do is release the patch notes to the public, at the same time that they are given to their “media partners”.

Thats it. It requires Arena Net to do the most crippling thing they have been unable to do up until this point: Effectively communicate to their audience, at the right time.

EDIT: The rest of your comments are a cross of fandom brainwashing, and making excuses for a company not bold enough to create their own.

Ah the classic “that’s not an explanation, that’s an excuse”. As soon as someone takes that position there is no chance for meaningful discussion.

And there are people in this thread and on reddit demanding blood. You may not.

Very few are “demanding blood”. Most just want an even playing field which would be very easy for Arenanet to do.

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

Arenanet could make this a smaller issue by getting that information out to players earlier. There are tons of ways. They could do pre-patch notes, a Public Beta Environment, Include into their pre-patch dev chats to name a few. Letting the same clique have a huge advantage every patch is BS. The only reason I can see someone defend this is because they are one of the few that get the info every patch and so of course they don’t want it to change.

The issue doesn’t change if you release the info one day or one month early. As soon as the information comes out, the first person who logs in gets to take advantage of the information. Whoever has the strongest PC, best SSD, and fastest fingers wins.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

Arenanet could make this a smaller issue by getting that information out to players earlier. There are tons of ways. They could do pre-patch notes, a Public Beta Environment, Include into their pre-patch dev chats to name a few. Letting the same clique have a huge advantage every patch is BS. The only reason I can see someone defend this is because they are one of the few that get the info every patch and so of course they don’t want it to change.

The issue doesn’t change if you release the info one day or one month early. As soon as the information comes out, the first person who logs in gets to take advantage of the information. Whoever has the strongest PC, best SSD, and fastest fingers wins.

Except in that case it would be a free for all fair competition where the fastest ones are the winners instead of what we have now where the chose few are the winners and others are not even allowed to participate. I’m sure you can see the difference here too.

Ameepa.6793:

Except in that case it would be a free for all fair competition where the fastest ones are the winners instead of what we have now where the chose few are the winners and others are not even allowed to participate. I’m sure you can see the difference here too.

The point is, it’s not a fair competition no matter how you cut it. People with slower computers. People who work when the client gets updated. People sleeping on the other side of the world.

I would rather have Anet benefit people who dedicate their own time to blog or create user content. Wooden Potatoes makes his living through the ad revenue his videos and subscribers bring. I’m not a huge fan, but I respect the sacrifices he makes to bring us fun and informative videos. So if it’s a choice between some random kid, or a respected content provider getting rich, I’ll go with WP.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Ameepa.6793:

Except in that case it would be a free for all fair competition where the fastest ones are the winners instead of what we have now where the chose few are the winners and others are not even allowed to participate. I’m sure you can see the difference here too.

The point is, it’s not a fair competition no matter how you cut it. People with slower computers. People who work when the client gets updated. People sleeping on the other side of the world.

I would rather have Anet benefit people who dedicate their own time to blog or create user content. Wooden Potatoes makes his living through the ad revenue his videos and subscribers bring. I’m not a huge fan, but I respect the sacrifices he makes to bring us fun and informative videos. So if it’s a choice between some random kid, or a respected content provider getting rich, I’ll go with WP.

It is fair if everyone has a chance to participate.

Really depends on what you are participating in.
MMOs dont have any rules which define how the game is to be played, hence there are no winners ever.
No one ever wins an MMO.
Also progress in MMOs is simply time based, ie whoever plays the most gets the most.
Its not fair in the sense that not everyone has the same amount of time available to play the game , but short of applying a quota of time that each player can play per day or week which no MMO is ever going to do, its as fair as you can make it.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

Arenanet could make this a smaller issue by getting that information out to players earlier. There are tons of ways. They could do pre-patch notes, a Public Beta Environment, Include into their pre-patch dev chats to name a few. Letting the same clique have a huge advantage every patch is BS. The only reason I can see someone defend this is because they are one of the few that get the info every patch and so of course they don’t want it to change.

The issue doesn’t change if you release the info one day or one month early. As soon as the information comes out, the first person who logs in gets to take advantage of the information. Whoever has the strongest PC, best SSD, and fastest fingers wins.

It wouldn’t be always the same person, noone would be guaranteed the advantage, and the advantage would be counted in seconds, not weeks.
And it wouldn’t also create the issue of Anet being accused of letting people cheat.

One is very much not like the other. Don’t try pretending otherwise.

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

Very few are “demanding blood”. Most just want an even playing field which would be very easy for Arenanet to do.

And while I’m not against a public early dissemination of recipe and new source changes, the motivation is still punitive as the only guaranteed result is denying those currently taking advantage from taking advantage and instead giving the advantage to an entirely different “elite” group, those online and in game at the moment the patch notes drop with the fastest machines, the fastest connection and the ability to speed parse the notes, not to mention the liquid gold to start buying up everything.

So the result will be taking it away from partners and friends of partners and giving it squarely to the TP mavens.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

Arenanet could make this a smaller issue by getting that information out to players earlier. There are tons of ways. They could do pre-patch notes, a Public Beta Environment, Include into their pre-patch dev chats to name a few. Letting the same clique have a huge advantage every patch is BS. The only reason I can see someone defend this is because they are one of the few that get the info every patch and so of course they don’t want it to change.

The issue doesn’t change if you release the info one day or one month early. As soon as the information comes out, the first person who logs in gets to take advantage of the information. Whoever has the strongest PC, best SSD, and fastest fingers wins.

Yes but this at least creates a competition and leaves you free to compete. If you care about it enough you’ll stay up at night ( provided you’re in that timezone) and invest in the best SSD and the best internet in order to be competitive at this.

As it stands unless you’re one of those “content creators” you can’t even sign up to compete.

And yes – I might buy an SSD or better internet to stand a chance to get a good TP scoop. I will however not build a youtube career just for this specific purpose.

My point is : make it an open and fair race. Or make it no race at all.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Ameepa.6793:

Except in that case it would be a free for all fair competition where the fastest ones are the winners instead of what we have now where the chose few are the winners and others are not even allowed to participate. I’m sure you can see the difference here too.

The point is, it’s not a fair competition no matter how you cut it. People with slower computers. People who work when the client gets updated. People sleeping on the other side of the world.

I would rather have Anet benefit people who dedicate their own time to blog or create user content. Wooden Potatoes makes his living through the ad revenue his videos and subscribers bring. I’m not a huge fan, but I respect the sacrifices he makes to bring us fun and informative videos. So if it’s a choice between some random kid, or a respected content provider getting rich, I’ll go with WP.

It will never be fair. But it’s not about FAIR. It’s about WHO can compete.

Right now I can’t compete – even if I have the fastest internet, best PC, and might not work a job and spend every second F5-ing GW2 news sites.
Give me the chance to compete. It will never be fair but it should at least be open.

I would rather have Anet benefit people who dedicate their own time to blog or create user content.

These people don’t do it for you or me – they do it because it earns them money. Or it allows them to boost their egos and self-esteem. Or they want to be e-celebs or whatnot.

Wooden Potatoes makes his living through the ad revenue his videos and subscribers bring. I’m not a huge fan, but I respect the sacrifices he makes to bring us fun and informative videos.

Yes – and he CHOSE to make those sacrifices. He profits from his choices as well.
He’s not a martyr. None of them are. And they certainly don’t deserve preferential treatment in this manner.

So if it’s a choice between some random kid, or a respected content provider getting rich, I’ll go with WP.

Why? There are people playing this game that are more deserving of “getting ahead” by virtue of what they do day to day. I’m sure we’ve got a fair share of first responders, teachers, doctors and whatnot in this game.
Why should just WP benefit in-game because of his line of work?

Behellagh.1468:

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

Very few are “demanding blood”. Most just want an even playing field which would be very easy for Arenanet to do.

And while I’m not against a public early dissemination of recipe and new source changes, the motivation is still punitive as the only guaranteed result is denying those currently taking advantage from taking advantage and instead giving the advantage to an entirely different “elite” group, those online and in game at the moment the patch notes drop with the fastest machines, the fastest connection and the ability to speed parse the notes, not to mention the liquid gold to start buying up everything.

So the result will be taking it away from partners and friends of partners and giving it squarely to the TP mavens.

It will be taking it away from people that didn’t do anything to earn it in the first place and giving it to people who actually work towards obtaining said advantage.

It would be giving it to whomever wants to take it – instead of these “select few” that just receive hand-outs at this point.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

The issue doesn’t change if you release the info one day or one month early. As soon as the information comes out, the first person who logs in gets to take advantage of the information. Whoever has the strongest PC, best SSD, and fastest fingers wins.

Which is, ironically, how it more or less works in the real world – the government agencies and public research institutions that compile all this data aren’t allowed to profit from it, so they release it at a set schedule so that it’s a free for all to capture those rents – and big banks invest millions of dollars in infrastructure and arrangements to be the first to sell that information to the market.

It’s a massive deadweight loss that wastes enormous amounts of productive capital. I wish we knew of a better way.

Members of the community have been looking into this for over a year, and several times the gathered data has indicated that there is a small number of players that start price regulating items before any patch changes have been announced to the public.

There are a few guilds that have close ties to people working for Anet (cant avoid that prolly), but a few guilds even made certain changes in guild strategies/equipment that coincidently made alot more sense when reading fansites & patch notes released a week later ;-)

But there definately are leaks, and I am sure Anet are aware of it. However, it doesn’t seem to be a big problem, but some guys are getting really rich by price regulating before everyone else gets a chance, over the years it all adds up to huge vaults of ingame currency. That leads to inflation and that leads to the development of stupidly high priced guild halls (for example :-)

Harper.4173:

Behellagh.1468:

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

Very few are “demanding blood”. Most just want an even playing field which would be very easy for Arenanet to do.

And while I’m not against a public early dissemination of recipe and new source changes, the motivation is still punitive as the only guaranteed result is denying those currently taking advantage from taking advantage and instead giving the advantage to an entirely different “elite” group, those online and in game at the moment the patch notes drop with the fastest machines, the fastest connection and the ability to speed parse the notes, not to mention the liquid gold to start buying up everything.

So the result will be taking it away from partners and friends of partners and giving it squarely to the TP mavens.

It will be taking it away from people that didn’t do anything to earn it in the first place and giving it to people who actually work towards obtaining said advantage.

It would be giving it to whomever wants to take it – instead of these “select few” that just receive hand-outs at this point.

Now as much as I’m hate the argument that was presented on Reddit, I’m going to use it here because I object to your comment.

So you are saying that ANet’s partners, those who make all those YouTube videos and do weekly streams promoting the game “don’t do anything to earn it”? It’s not like they are on the payroll. At best they get commissions on sales IF their viewers choose to use their referral links.

Plus we are talking only a few thousand gold, which is worth currently around $65-70 per 1000 gold from the gem shop. But before you go “we are talking 100s of thousands of gold” we aren’t. About 13K Stabilizing Matrices were drawn down from the TP in the days before the patch. At the peak you might be able to make 20 silver profit on each. That’s a total of 2,600 gold. Even if they were vacuuming up two or three times as much as other players sold off, it’s still under 10K gold, $700 in value split among those who leveraged the info. And because of the price increase, there’s now three times as much on the TP now than before, but at a 50% markup.

Behellagh.1468:

Harper.4173:

Behellagh.1468:

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

Very few are “demanding blood”. Most just want an even playing field which would be very easy for Arenanet to do.

And while I’m not against a public early dissemination of recipe and new source changes, the motivation is still punitive as the only guaranteed result is denying those currently taking advantage from taking advantage and instead giving the advantage to an entirely different “elite” group, those online and in game at the moment the patch notes drop with the fastest machines, the fastest connection and the ability to speed parse the notes, not to mention the liquid gold to start buying up everything.

So the result will be taking it away from partners and friends of partners and giving it squarely to the TP mavens.

It will be taking it away from people that didn’t do anything to earn it in the first place and giving it to people who actually work towards obtaining said advantage.

It would be giving it to whomever wants to take it – instead of these “select few” that just receive hand-outs at this point.

Now as much as I’m hate the argument that was presented on Reddit, I’m going to use it here because I object to your comment.

So you are saying that ANet’s partners, those who make all those YouTube videos and do weekly streams promoting the game “don’t do anything to earn it”? It’s not like they are on the payroll. At best they get commissions on sales IF their viewers choose to use their referral links.

Plus we are talking only a few thousand gold, which is worth currently around $65-70 per 1000 gold from the gem shop. But before you go “we are talking 100s of thousands of gold” we aren’t. About 13K Stabilizing Matrices were drawn down from the TP in the days before the patch. At the peak you might be able to make 20 silver profit on each. That’s a total of 2,600 gold. Even if they were vacuuming up two or three times as much as other players sold off, it’s still under 10K gold, $700 in value split among those who leveraged the info. And because of the price increase, there’s now three times as much on the TP now than before, but at a 50% markup.

I’m saying that those “partners” aren’t partners. They don’t work for Anet. They work for themselves and through that work they also promote GW2.
I’m saying they get enough benefit from just working that they don’t need the additional “insider trading” thing.

The point is very simple.
I understand that by proximity to Anet and Anet employees there will always be a group that profits from insider trading – but I believe this group should be as small as possible.
To that effect I believe that the only people that benefit from this should be close friends or families of the developers since there is unfortunately no effective way to keep the devs from disclosing information to said family members or friends.

I also believe that “content creators” do not fall in a category that deserves to profit from “insider trading” because what they do is a job – a regular job that just so happens interacts with GW2.
I do not believe they create content for the sake of promoting GW2 out of the goodness of their hearts but because they want to generate revenue for themselves.

The bottom line is that in their case Anet can certainly pull the plug and stop them from obtaining the “insider trading” information and I also believe this should be done ASAP.

I also believe that IF there are content creators out there that don’t monetize their content and do it solely because they enjoy it and want to promote the game then yes – maybe you could argue they should be “in the know”.
Care to give me some examples of such content creators though?

Most of the TP sites I visit have at best, a tip cup. Hardly a regular job, more of a passionate hobby. Same with some of the YouTubers and Twitchers at the beginning (going back to GW). Their long devotion to this game is recognized by ANet which grants them perks that we don’t get. Like access to the test server, free region transfers, codes for giveaways to help viewership, and early info so they can sound knowledgeable on patch day. ANet decided these sites are important as an advertising vector which is why some got referral links which pays them a commission on new accounts, HoT and P4F ones, created with those links.

Sure many now cover gaming or just THIS game as a job today but their primary source of income isn’t from ANet. They do it because they like the game, otherwise they would only be focusing on the games in the top 10 Twitch list. Devoting their time toward Guild Wars 2 isn’t doing them any favors since viewership is tiny on Twitch and YouTube. Ask any small YouTuber, they pay very little unless you are routinely getting 50K+ views on every video. Twitch takes half of the subscription money (again unless you have 1000s of subscribers) and no cut on advertising. And those 4+ digit tips you see on clipped on YouTube, doesn’t happen to too many streamers. Many can earn more working retail, McJobs or waiting tables.

So no, I don’t begrudge them a little extra in game gold, IF they are actually taking advantage of early TP info. But the vitriol against these few is terrifying and that’s why I say again that there are people calling out for blood.

Behellagh.1468:

So you are saying that ANet’s partners, those who make all those YouTube videos and do weekly streams promoting the game “don’t do anything to earn it”? It’s not like they are on the payroll.

Exactly. They aren’t on the payroll. If Anet thinks they deserve getting rewarded for their efforts, they should make it official.

There’s nothing more destructive for any system than unofficial, hidden deals that allow some people to act outside of it for personal gain. No matter how small that gain is.

Harper.4173:

It will never be fair. But it’s not about FAIR. It’s about WHO can compete.

Right now I can’t compete – even if I have the fastest internet, best PC, and might not work a job and spend every second F5-ing GW2 news sites.
Give me the chance to compete. It will never be fair but it should at least be open.
?

Nice to see someone else gets it. This whole “faireness” argument is just being thrown around to distract from the issue. Several posters in this thread, I suspect, are worried their gold machine is going to be cut off.

ALL players deserve to know when changes are announced. Not some select few Anet BFF’s.

but again, John Smith’s attitude in his insulting reply in this thread says everything people need to know about what Anet thinks of this issue.

Neural.1824:

Harper.4173:

It will never be fair. But it’s not about FAIR. It’s about WHO can compete.

Right now I can’t compete – even if I have the fastest internet, best PC, and might not work a job and spend every second F5-ing GW2 news sites.
Give me the chance to compete. It will never be fair but it should at least be open.
?

Nice to see someone else gets it. This whole “faireness” argument is just being thrown around to distract from the issue. Several posters in this thread, I suspect, are worried their gold machine is going to be cut off.

ALL players deserve to know when changes are announced. Not some select few Anet BFF’s.

but again, John Smith’s attitude in his insulting reply in this thread says everything people need to know about what Anet thinks of this issue.

He says he didn’t know what salami slicing was. Why was asking what it was insulting?

John Smith.4610:

Ha, I went right to urban dictionary assuming it was more…slangy? I should have searched better.

Astralporing.1957:

Behellagh.1468:

So you are saying that ANet’s partners, those who make all those YouTube videos and do weekly streams promoting the game “don’t do anything to earn it”? It’s not like they are on the payroll.

Exactly. They aren’t on the payroll. If Anet thinks they deserve getting rewarded for their efforts, they should make it official.

There’s nothing more destructive for any system than unofficial, hidden deals that allow some people to act outside of it for personal gain. No matter how small that gain is.

This is actually a good point.
If these content creator’s efforts are so good that they are key to Anet and GW2’s success then by all means – hire them. Or sign a contract and give them money.
But don’t allow them to gain unfair advantages over regular players without ever making it official.

Behellagh.1468:

Most of the TP sites I visit have at best, a tip cup. Hardly a regular job, more of a passionate hobby. Same with some of the YouTubers and Twitchers at the beginning (going back to GW).

First and foremost their “tip cup” doesn’t mean they don’t get personal gain out of it. It’s not the case of “boo hoo poor youtubers”.
Youtube videos are monetized and on top of that it might not be financial gain they’re after. Maybe they’re in it for the fame, or e-celeb status. The point is they are doing it for themselves and are benefiting from it. So it pays out for them – be it under the form of cash or whatever else.

Their long devotion to themselves through this game is recognized by ANet which grants them perks that we don’t get.

I fixed that for you.

Like access to the test server, free region transfers, codes for giveaways to help viewership, and early info so they can sound knowledgeable on patch day. ANet decided these sites are important as an advertising vector which is why some got referral links which pays them a commission on new accounts, HoT and P4F ones, created with those links.

And that’s what it should be limited to – links and straight up cash if they want. But not an unfair advantage over other players.
Just put them on a pay roll and call it a day.

Sure many now cover gaming or just THIS game as a job today but their primary source of income isn’t from ANet. They do it because they like the game, otherwise they would only be focusing on the games in the top 10 Twitch list.

You’re very sure they do it because they like the game but honestly I believe most youtubers and twitchers would switch to those top 10 games if they could. But they can’t – why? because somebody already beat them to the punch or was better at it and now the market for those games is generally saturated. You can’t break through. So you find another niche. Like GW2.

I’m sure every youtuber wants to make those big bucks off WoW or some other more popular MMO out there but not everyone can do it because there are already others doing it and sometimes you just won’t be able to break through in that market.

Ask any small YouTuber, they pay very little unless you are routinely getting 50K+ views on every video.

You forgot to add the part where it’s them also trying their luck out – maybe they’ll blow up. Maybe not. Every big youtuber was once small.

tch takes half of the subscription money (again unless you have 1000s of subscribers) and no cut on advertising. And those 4+ digit tips you see on clipped on YouTube, doesn’t happen to too many streamers. Many can earn more working retail, McJobs or waiting tables.

Yeah – but they don’t. They prefer this and profit off of it. Maybe they don’t want those jobs – maybe there’s more comfort in this.

The point is regardless of how “little” they earn they EARN something and are doing it for their own benefit and not ours. Youtube has long since stopped being a platform for free entertainment and is not a full on business.

I am not denying their contribution – I follow WP’s videos and watch them regularly. They do contribute to the community but that’s no reason to give them a unfair advantage.

If Anet feels they should get more stuff they should pay them money. Not give them the rights to abuse the TP.
I am not even asking for blood – and if there is any vitriol(which I do not believe is the case) in my posts it is strictly and entirely directed at Arenanet who is handling this whole situation unprofessionally – splitting the community and creating a conflict-rich environment by refusing to address this in a simple manner.

Are you a GW2 content creator? Do you provide X amount of exposure to the game? Ok – here are your in-game gem bonuses, your paid contract or whatever. Make it official – make it visible – make it clear cut.

Don’t keep it in this grey area.

It was insulting because John Smith is supposed to be the in-house economist. He should know what it is. The community relies on his expertise to watch over the game’s economy so even if he did not know what it is he’s expected to at least “save face” and not make a complete mockery by asking US what it is.

The fact that he didn’t even do that shows a complete disregard of the community and what they think.

It literally takes 3-5 seconds to google “salami slicing” and find articles describing it in detail.

Let’s put things differently – how would you feel if your doctor – upon telling him that your medication is giving you palpitations asked “whoa – what are those?”. You would lose faith in him wouldn’t you?.

Same with the JS situation – the attitude that’s insulting is that he does not even care if we lose faith or not – and by extension he doesn’t even care HOW he presents himself to the community.

Why ask us what it is? Why not just find out yourself? It’s basically HIS job.

Harper.4173:

… snip …

You’re very sure they do it because they like the game but honestly I believe most youtubers and twitchers would switch to those top 10 games if they could. But they can’t – why? because somebody already beat them to the punch or was better at it and now the market for those games is generally saturated. You can’t break through. So you find another niche. Like GW2.

… snip …

This is where we disagree. You see them as business people first, fans second. I see fans who are trying to turn their passion into a source of income.

To elaborate, the people I’m talking about have played GW or GW2 since early beta. Their YouTube channels overwhelmingly featured videos centered on these games from those times. Before Mindcraft or LoL or Hearthstone or most of those other top streaming games. Most were holding down “real” jobs while covering the game until very recently (ANet started noticing them around the time HoT got announced) and have recently tried to turn it into a business.

And you still think monetization on YouTube amounts to anything for Tubers their size. It doesn’t even pay the monthly food budget. We’re talking under 50K subscribers and videos only drawing a few thousand views during the video’s first month. And since YouTube pays on a sliding scale based on TTM average views, it simply doesn’t pay well unless you are pulling in significant views per month.

As for why ANet doesn’t hire them straight up, cause they are still considered unbiased news sites. You pay sites like MMORPG, MMOHut, etc with exclusives AND advance copies of the patch notes or access to the test server in the days before a major patch. So just like the big MMO news sites, the partners are granted an early copy of the patch notes and the test server so they can film their story walk through videos without an endless stream of photobombing giant Norns and Charr with wings obscuring the scene.

Now from the partners I’ve talked too, which I admit is only like six or seven, they too are POed that some partners have broken this trust and thus painted them as inside traders as well. Now they don’t want to lose that early access because it helps them interact with their followers/subscribes.

As I originally said, I’m being a devil’s advocate here. I agree that those that take advantage of early market info gleaned from their access aren’t playing according to Hoyle. But I don’t think the “damage” those partners are doing is significant. And while ANet could sanitize the patch notes about recipe and drop changes, I think it’s dangerous to expect them to sanitize the test server beyond access to crafting stations.

The “fair” argument can’t hold water if the solution simply gives the advantage to another limited group. Is it “fair” if only EU players can take advantage of the info because NA players are at work or in classes while Oceania players are sleeping? Or RMT sites target their army of accounts at buying up all of X while the price is less than Y?

Yes it’s the devil you know argument.

And I’m NOT a “content creator”. I do know several and broke bread with a few IRL which is why I take the position I do.

There’s an entire profession in the real world dedicated to predicting what prices will rise and fall. It’s by no means a stretch to say some players are always doing that without insider information. Once you amass enough gold, you become able to buy out supply of certain things that others can’t even afford. So while I’ll never be a person to play the trading post to make profit others will make forum posts that anet must have introduced ghastly grinning shields to drop prices.

So what I’m getting at is there’s no way for anet to stop “insider trading”. Even if they post the patch notes on this website first before giving it to the third party media ones, which they apparently do? You’ll still see the same market trends. And there’s no way to know if any or every game tester is abusing their information, and there’s no why to punish them or for us to know if they were punished.

Lastly, just play some content! This game is fun, stop being mean and raising prices on people.

Harper.4173:

It was insulting because John Smith is supposed to be the in-house economist. He should know what it is.

Let’s put things differently – how would you feel if your doctor – upon telling him that your medication is giving you palpitations asked “whoa – what are those?”. You would lose faith in him wouldn’t you?.

Sure, but that’s a terrible analogy – it’s more akin to your doctor not knowing about pulsatilla, or your mechanic about rolling coal. Sure, it’d be nice for them to be knowledgeable about tangential trends in popular culture because they’d have more insight into it, but it’s not part of the core knowledge base.

In this case, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for John to be unfamiliar with a pop culture term for penny shaving, which is something you would talk about as part of auditing round-off errors in an accounting class, not economics. I totally get that what economists know and what accountants know may not look all that different to an outsider, but I assure you the difference is pretty stark.

(Full disclosure: I’ve done a bunch of doctoral work in economics)

Ensign.2189:

Harper.4173:

It was insulting because John Smith is supposed to be the in-house economist. He should know what it is.

Let’s put things differently – how would you feel if your doctor – upon telling him that your medication is giving you palpitations asked “whoa – what are those?”. You would lose faith in him wouldn’t you?.

Sure, but that’s a terrible analogy – it’s more akin to your doctor not knowing about pulsatilla, or your mechanic about rolling coal. Sure, it’d be nice for them to be knowledgeable about tangential trends in popular culture because they’d have more insight into it, but it’s not part of the core knowledge base.

In this case, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for John to be unfamiliar with a pop culture term for penny shaving, which is something you would talk about as part of auditing round-off errors in an accounting class, not economics. I totally get that what economists know and what accountants know may not look all that different to an outsider, but I assure you the difference is pretty stark.

(Full disclosure: I’ve done a bunch of doctoral work in economics)

Or just that he made a funny joke that was in no way at your expense, and you want to crucify him for not giving out a sterile company response. Don’t ask for anet employees to give information and interact with the community more if you think it’s ok to treat others like that. No matter what his position, he has no direct obligations to you.

Harper.4173:

It was insulting because John Smith is supposed to be the in-house economist. He should know what it is. The community relies on his expertise to watch over the game’s economy so even if he did not know what it is he’s expected to at least “save face” and not make a complete mockery by asking US what it is.

The fact that he didn’t even do that shows a complete disregard of the community and what they think.

It literally takes 3-5 seconds to google “salami slicing” and find articles describing it in detail.

Let’s put things differently – how would you feel if your doctor – upon telling him that your medication is giving you palpitations asked “whoa – what are those?”. You would lose faith in him wouldn’t you?.

Same with the JS situation – the attitude that’s insulting is that he does not even care if we lose faith or not – and by extension he doesn’t even care HOW he presents himself to the community.

Why ask us what it is? Why not just find out yourself? It’s basically HIS job.

First managing the game’s economy is only ONE of his jobs. I seem to remember recently his name being mentioned relating to development of current events or living story.

Second he only really has two jobs when dealing with the game’s economy. First keep the amount of gold in the active economy from spiraling out of control. And that is controlling the sources and sinks. The second is to control the price of commonly dropped items and mats so their price neither drops to the NPC Vendor floor or increases so only a very tiny portion of player base can afford them. That’s too is balancing sources with sinks.

He sees the economy from the 30,000 foot view, very macro. No he probably, like I do, doesn’t see an issue as the price shift was going to occur anyway, matters not if it was on patch day or a few days before or who profited off of it. Someone was going to.

There is always someone “outraged” about something on the TP (currently Mystic Coins) and demand JS do something about it. His default response over the years has always been snark or feign ignorance because it doesn’t matter what he says, he will still be “wrong”. The outraged don’t care about reasons, they only care about their own wants, not the game’s economy as a whole and already has dug their foxholes and bunkered in. These people are no different than that one parent who is “outraged” over the Captain Underpants series being in the elementary school library at the school board meeting that’s discussion building maintenance.

Behellagh.1468:

This is where we disagree. You see them as business people first, fans second. I see fans who are trying to turn their passion into a source of income.

The moment they profit from their passion they can’t really be considered “just fans doing it because of the lulz” and must be considered a business. Even if they aren’t or claim they’re not.

Behellagh.1468:

To elaborate, the people I’m talking about have played GW or GW2 since early beta. Their YouTube channels overwhelmingly featured videos centered on these games from those times. Before Mindcraft or LoL or Hearthstone or most of those other top streaming games. Most were holding down “real” jobs while covering the game until very recently (ANet started noticing them around the time HoT got announced) and have recently tried to turn it into a business.

Yes but regardless of that – giving them an unfair advantage is still wrong. If they matter so much they should be on a pay roll.
Just because people have a hobby that happens to be promoting GW1/GW2 doesn’t mean they’re automatically these awesome people that are more deserving of things than others.

I don’t have a youtube channel or twitch – but I was there for the last 3 years of GW1 and for GW2 ever since the betas. Before the betas even – I went to the first playable demo and traveled around 1600 kms by car to do that. Is a youtuber more dedicated than me?
There are people that spend more time in game than a youtuber spends playing AND making videos. Are they less deserving?

Behellagh.1468:

And you still think monetization on YouTube amounts to anything for Tubers their size. It doesn’t even pay the monthly food budget. We’re talking under 50K subscribers and videos only drawing a few thousand views during the video’s first month. And since YouTube pays on a sliding scale based on TTM average views, it simply doesn’t pay well unless you are pulling in significant views per month.

It’s irrelevant. The fact that they’re not earning a a LOT doesn’t mean they should gain this advantage – because they’re “poor”. If they’re doing so poorly Anet should maybe help them out – or offer some recompense – but not at the expense of others. Or before others. Or in grey areas.

Behellagh.1468:

As for why ANet doesn’t hire them straight up, cause they are still considered unbiased news sites.

How can you be “unbiased” when your income ( or some of it) is generated by content related to this game. If the game does poorly – so do you. If the game dies – so does your revenue stream. They are not unbiased.

Behellagh.1468:

You pay sites like MMORPG, MMOHut, etc with exclusives AND advance copies of the patch notes or access to the test server in the days before a major patch. So just like the big MMO news sites, the partners are granted an early copy of the patch notes and the test server so they can film their story walk through videos without an endless stream of photobombing giant Norns and Charr with wings obscuring the scene.

So just give them stuff that doesn’t have “insider trading” information.

Behellagh.1468:

Now from the partners I’ve talked too, which I admit is only like six or seven, they too are POed that some partners have broken this trust and thus painted them as inside traders as well. Now they don’t want to lose that early access because it helps them interact with their followers/subscribes.

You mean it helps them make a profit – or grow closer to potentially making one in the future. I get that they’re mad. They’re right to be mad if they didn’t do it but there’s really no way to prove that they did or didn’t. So the only solution is that they don’t get the chance to.

Behellagh.1468:

but I don’t think the “damage” those partners are doing is significant. And while ANet could sanitize the patch notes about recipe and drop changes, I think it’s dangerous to expect them to sanitize the test server beyond access to crafting stations.

Why?

Behellagh.1468:

The “fair” argument can’t hold water if the solution simply gives the advantage to another limited group.

This is not about “fair” – it’s about “equal opportunity”. And the openness of competing – with a system like that EVERYONE can try to pull it off provided they are willing to try hard enough. That’s not 100% fair – but it’s more fair.

Behellagh.1468:

And I’m NOT a “content creator”. I do know several and broke bread with a few IRL which is why I take the position I do.

Pretty much. I’m not against them – the problem is not them – it’s what Anet is doing.
And it will create a community backlash against them that most of them might not even deserve. Just because there’s no way for them to disprove the charges brought against them by the community.

MoarChaos.8320:

There’s an entire profession in the real world dedicated to predicting what prices will rise and fall. It’s by no means a stretch to say some players are always doing that without insider information. Once you amass enough gold, you become able to buy out supply of certain things that others can’t even afford. So while I’ll never be a person to play the trading post to make profit others will make forum posts that anet must have introduced ghastly grinning shields to drop prices.

So what I’m getting at is there’s no way for anet to stop “insider trading”. Even if they post the patch notes on this website first before giving it to the third party media ones, which they apparently do? You’ll still see the same market trends. And there’s no way to know if any or every game tester is abusing their information, and there’s no why to punish them or for us to know if they were punished.

Lastly, just play some content! This game is fun, stop being mean and raising prices on people.

Yes – true – but in the situation where the patch notes are given to a select few sites and content creators the system is closed.

They get to impose these trends and take advantage of them and the other players get to do nothing.

If the information is posted for the first time on an official site without anyone receiving it in advance the effect will be the same ( market manipulation – trends) but the system is open. Since everyone who sees the post can now try to get in and use the information.

What this does?
It allows people to compete and thus earn the “right” to profit from that information.
It also means the guy that profits today won’t be the same as the guy who profits next time – more people will benefit from this as they try to “grab it for themselves”.
With the current system the same content creators and same sites benefit from it over and over and over again. Nobody else gets a turn or a chance.

Yes – the effect will be the same in the end – but at least for those willing to put in the time, effort and logistics – there is a chance to make it work for you.

Ensign.2189:

Harper.4173:

It was insulting because John Smith is supposed to be the in-house economist. He should know what it is.

Let’s put things differently – how would you feel if your doctor – upon telling him that your medication is giving you palpitations asked “whoa – what are those?”. You would lose faith in him wouldn’t you?.

Sure, but that’s a terrible analogy – it’s more akin to your doctor not knowing about pulsatilla, or your mechanic about rolling coal. Sure, it’d be nice for them to be knowledgeable about tangential trends in popular culture because they’d have more insight into it, but it’s not part of the core knowledge base.

In this case, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for John to be unfamiliar with a pop culture term for penny shaving, which is something you would talk about as part of auditing round-off errors in an accounting class, not economics. I totally get that what economists know and what accountants know may not look all that different to an outsider, but I assure you the difference is pretty stark.

(Full disclosure: I’ve done a bunch of doctoral work in economics)

You can argue that it wasn’t supposed to be part of his “core” education and I’ll agree that maybe that is the case but why show such disregard to what people think?
Why not just do the decent thing and look it up properly before posting your next post?

It is unreasonable for him to not research something properly if he decides he’s going to respond to said thread.

It’s like taking on a case then neglecting to brush up on the particularities of that patient’s condition because why would you?

Long time ago on JQ’s TS server(2 years past) I remember about such insider trading being discussed. it is not unheard of in this game. The GM’s are corrupt for their own servers they play on is my general take of the matter, as blackgate can buy guilds to transer to them since way back when, and all the former t1 servers had the ability as well. I’ll point out the wvw scene as evidence to fueling fire, you can’t zerg 24/7 on those servers if your not paying for people to keep Your server populated, unless you are inside trading the economy for your own guildmates…

MoarChaos.8320:

Ensign.2189:

Harper.4173:

It was insulting because John Smith is supposed to be the in-house economist. He should know what it is.

Let’s put things differently – how would you feel if your doctor – upon telling him that your medication is giving you palpitations asked “whoa – what are those?”. You would lose faith in him wouldn’t you?.

Sure, but that’s a terrible analogy – it’s more akin to your doctor not knowing about pulsatilla, or your mechanic about rolling coal. Sure, it’d be nice for them to be knowledgeable about tangential trends in popular culture because they’d have more insight into it, but it’s not part of the core knowledge base.

In this case, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for John to be unfamiliar with a pop culture term for penny shaving, which is something you would talk about as part of auditing round-off errors in an accounting class, not economics. I totally get that what economists know and what accountants know may not look all that different to an outsider, but I assure you the difference is pretty stark.

(Full disclosure: I’ve done a bunch of doctoral work in economics)

Or just that he made a funny joke that was in no way at your expense, and you want to crucify him for not giving out a sterile company response. Don’t ask for anet employees to give information and interact with the community more if you think it’s ok to treat others like that. No matter what his position, he has no direct obligations to you.

I go to work and do my job on point. I’m supposed to do things right, by the book and proper. I do said job in said fashion. I expect others to have the same common courtesy.

Their level of interaction is indeed affected by these responses but how else can I respond when the interaction is so unprofessional?
Somebody asked a question – answer the question. Alternatively – if you’re not going to do it right don’t do it at all.

He might not have a direct obligation to me – but I don’t have an obligation to not speak my mind either. So I do.
If he replies to a thread that contains a question in my opinion he’s taking the obligation of providing a decent answer to that question. Why else would he even post? If he wants to make a joke he can make it – answer the question then make the joke. Easy.

This thread is about an economic phenomenon. He is the team Economist. Don’t you think that he’s somewhat aware of the fact that if he posts in the thread people will expect a bit more than just some funny jokes?

Behellagh.1468:

Harper.4173:

It was insulting because John Smith is supposed to be the in-house economist. He should know what it is. The community relies on his expertise to watch over the game’s economy so even if he did not know what it is he’s expected to at least “save face” and not make a complete mockery by asking US what it is.

The fact that he didn’t even do that shows a complete disregard of the community and what they think.

It literally takes 3-5 seconds to google “salami slicing” and find articles describing it in detail.

Let’s put things differently – how would you feel if your doctor – upon telling him that your medication is giving you palpitations asked “whoa – what are those?”. You would lose faith in him wouldn’t you?.

Same with the JS situation – the attitude that’s insulting is that he does not even care if we lose faith or not – and by extension he doesn’t even care HOW he presents himself to the community.

Why ask us what it is? Why not just find out yourself? It’s basically HIS job.

First managing the game’s economy is only ONE of his jobs. I seem to remember recently his name being mentioned relating to development of current events or living story.

Second he only really has two jobs when dealing with the game’s economy. First keep the amount of gold in the active economy from spiraling out of control. And that is controlling the sources and sinks. The second is to control the price of commonly dropped items and mats so their price neither drops to the NPC Vendor floor or increases so only a very tiny portion of player base can afford them. That’s too is balancing sources with sinks.

He sees the economy from the 30,000 foot view, very macro. No he probably, like I do, doesn’t see an issue as the price shift was going to occur anyway, matters not if it was on patch day or a few days before or who profited off of it. Someone was going to.

There is always someone “outraged” about something on the TP (currently Mystic Coins) and demand JS do something about it. His default response over the years has always been snark or feign ignorance because it doesn’t matter what he says, he will still be “wrong”. The outraged don’t care about reasons, they only care about their own wants, not the game’s economy as a whole and already has dug their foxholes and bunkered in. These people are no different than that one parent who is “outraged” over the Captain Underpants series being in the elementary school library at the school board meeting that’s discussion building maintenance.

If what you’re saying is true then why even post at all? Why agitate things further?
Doesn’t he notice the people wanting an answer? Doesn’t he realize that posting something that’s not said answer will only make things worse?

If the outraged are already all set-up as you say – why expose a target and give them a chance to fire off? Why not just let it burn itself out?

Poking a stick at angry people is really not something you should do – especially if you can’t fix their problem.

Harper.4173:

This thread is about an economic phenomenon. He is the team Economist. Don’t you think that he’s somewhat aware of the fact that if he posts in the thread people will expect a bit more than just some funny jokes?

His post of Fry in a tinfoil hat was pretty on point and a thorough response to the original post.

I mean, you can word it more politely, like ‘original post is paranoid and non-sensical’, though that’s almost more cold than Fry in a tonfoil hat.

I don’t think it’s his job to try and teach players enough economics to make posts that make sense.

Behellagh.1468:

As for why ANet doesn’t hire them straight up, cause they are still considered unbiased news sites.

That’s even more reason to consider insider trading a bad thing (at least from our point of view). Because as long as this advantage exists and some of the content creators do profit from it, those sources cannot be considered unbiased. How can we believe they are acting in good faith, when they have a tangible advantage attached to how pleased Anet is with them?

I am not opposed to the idea of rewarding those content creators that do so much to support the game. The amount of work that I am sure goes into the Dulfy site is awe inspiring to me.

Give them gems. Name NPCs, locations, monsters, weapons, etc after them. Give them a free legendary of their choice. Give them each one of each legendary. Something seems appropriate to me. But…

The sort of, “reward,” mentioned in this thread rewards them at the cost of other paying customers. I consider that poor service and an unethical business practice.

Harper.4173:

The moment they profit from their passion they can’t really be considered “just fans doing it because of the lulz” and must be considered a business. Even if they aren’t or claim they’re not.

So they’re a business … even if they aren’t? Plus nice dose of salt there.

Yes but regardless of that – giving them an unfair advantage is still wrong. If they matter so much they should be on a pay roll.
Just because people have a hobby that happens to be promoting GW1/GW2 doesn’t mean they’re automatically these awesome people that are more deserving of things than others.

So how can it be unfair if later on you said it’s not about what’s “fair”? And you are assuming they are all taking advantage of any information gleaned. We all project onto others what we would do in a similar situation. So I would expect most to listen to their better angels and ignore it.

I don’t have a youtube channel or twitch – but I was there for the last 3 years of GW1 and for GW2 ever since the betas. Before the betas even – I went to the first playable demo and traveled around 1600 kms by car to do that. Is a youtuber more dedicated than me?

Yes, because it’s not just about devotion to the game but the willingness to use their knowledge and skills to inform, help and teach anyone who finds their channels or websites. Big difference between being the helpful sort who occasionally legitimately answers someone’s question in map chat and producing regularly updated guides and content that people can find online to reference.

The fact that they’re not earning a a LOT doesn’t mean they should gain this advantage – because they’re “poor”. If they’re doing so poorly Anet should maybe help them out – or offer some recompense – but not at the expense of others. Or before others. Or in grey areas.

How is it at the expense of others if the market was going to shift regardless when the information is released and which will still catch the vast majority off guard?

So just give them stuff that doesn’t have “insider trading” information.

But what if it’s related to a story or event reward? What are they going to show? “Oh look we just beat this big boss and we got … broken lockpicks. Yay!. Well it must be something good since they aren’t telling us.”

You mean it helps them make a profit – or grow closer to potentially making one in the future. I get that they’re mad.

Nice presumption of guilt there.

Behellagh.1468:

but I don’t think the “damage” those partners are doing is significant. And while ANet could sanitize the patch notes about recipe and drop changes, I think it’s dangerous to expect them to sanitize the test server beyond access to crafting stations.

Why?

I’ve already outlined why. But to reiterate, the shift to the new stable price would happen regardless of when the info is announced. If it’s about ANet doing a custom partner version on the test server, the fewer custom versions of software needed to be build, the less overall headaches and chances of “whoops”.

This is not about “fair” – it’s about “equal opportunity”. And the openness of competing – with a system like that EVERYONE can try to pull it off provided they are willing to try hard enough. That’s not 100% fair – but it’s more fair.

Sorry in my book “equal opportunity” is just another way to say “fair”. And again with the "it’s not about “fair” … but it’s more fair". You can’t have it both ways.

Pretty much. I’m not against them – the problem is not them – it’s what Anet is doing.
And it will create a community backlash against them that most of them might not even deserve. Just because there’s no way for them to disprove the charges brought against them by the community.

And what is ANet doing other than using them as a means to connect with the player base better? More so than an article on their blog or MMO news site. These are people in the “trenches” answering questions, providing a zerg to play with, doing map completion tours or leveling up a squad of new characters the slow way. And again with the presumption of guilt.

What bothers me is on one hand people like yourself are saying it’s about the principle, not the gold, doesn’t matter who profits … as long as it isn’t THEM. But you aren’t singling THEM out, except when you are. You aren’t implying THEY all are guilty, except when you do.

This is the same line of thought in Batman v Superman, “if we believe there’s even a one percent chance that he is our enemy we have to take it as an absolute certainty”.

And again, I’m simply being a devil’s advocate here, a position I took because of the presumption of guilt of ALL partners.