Guild Wars 2

My account has 11 chars, 6 or 7 of which have their 3rd year birthday present. For the 2nd time in a week, when trying to sell ordinary chest loot on the TP, using the “O” key to open the TP from the field, I’ve gotten an Account Verification alert/interrupt.

It warns me that new accounts must be upgraded to HoT (done at the time of HoT launch, and 9 elites later I’m getting this alert) and newly activated accounts must be validated. (see birthdays, above). The character involved is only one year old.

ANET, what is considered a “new” account? Is this alert to be considered something sinister going on with my not so new account, or a normal software bug?

Sounds like a bug. Prob worth submitting to support rather than the community on here. I suspect they can answer you and ensure there are no account related issues.

I’ve been getting this one quite a lot lately, not sure if it’s the same one you’re getting but the pic might be able to help the Devs….

(I own game since release and had HoT pre-ordered)

I am 90% sure that what y’all are seeing is completely unrelated to your account status. It appears to be one of those glitches where the error-reporting software has found a problem and is trying to be ‘helpful’ in identifying it, but failing miserably in its task. (Somewhat like a car’s computer cheerfully reminding you to get your oil checked when the engine case has cracked and all the fluids have drained onto the ground.)

What I suspect is that your game is having trouble connecting with the authorization server to verify your status — this is something that the game does periodically as you play and when you start a TP session. Since you’re still connected to the game server, the error-reporting code assumes the issue is with your account, rather than with the connection.

I’m sure that’s all very interesting (if true), but not very useful — what should you do?

Here are some things that have often fixed such issues for others:

• Restarting the game.
• Clearing the game’s cache. (See this thread)
• Repairing the game’s database
• Closing the game, restarting your router, restarting the game (only if you use a dynamic IP address) or using/changing a proxy server (if that’s an easy option for you)

or sometimes the ‘problem’ will resolve it self just by waiting and retrying later

I agree with IllConceived. It reports to me that I must own HoT, then reports that I do, then reports that my new account must be validated, and reports that it has. So what’s it’s point? If they’ve determined I own HoT, and am a validated account, then why interrupt the transaction and announce it to me? Just do the transaction.

For the last 100 or so years I’ve done software for a living, and this screams of amateur debug code, either left in the client accidentally, or ill designed in the first place.

I expect no nourishment from customer support on this type of matter in normal times, and this is holiday season in ANETsville. OTOH, if enough players are seeing it, it’s likely a code bug and hot a malware irritant. It requires clearing the error message, the TP window, and any other open panels to restart the transaction.

Michael.9403:

For the last 100 or so years I’ve done software for a living, and this screams of amateur debug code, either left in the client accidentally, or ill designed in the first place.

To be fair, 99% of error messages I get from Microsoft (and Apple) are just as amateur. I think too many software engineers (and their managers) are terrible at anticipating all the things that might go wrong. And when they can identify the potential issues, it rarely occurs to them that it might help their Support Team colleagues if the software included debug code that was up to the same standards as the rest of their code.

Outside the software industry, the debug code is even worse, which is why I used the “out of oil” example — my engine computer has never successfully reported an actual problem, outside of the timer/odometer that keeps track of when to visit the mechanic.

I’ve complained about this one months ago. This isn’t a consistent problem. I think that somehow instead of getting the error that the player is selling stuff to fast we are getting the account verification error instead. The problem cropped up when they supposedly fixed a bunch of stuff on the trading post then the game got shutdown for many hours because of a big problem. That error started cropping up about the same time. For me it mainly occurs when I sell stuff to fast.

Tekoneiric.6817:

For me it mainly occurs when I sell stuff to fast.

Interesting. I almost never sell stacks at the same price and I rarely sell to buy orders, so I find it impossible to “sell too fast” — that would explain why some people see this error a lot and others never do.

I think it’s likely that it’s any number of reasons, not just a single one. Still, it seems as if it would be relatively easy to test the “too fast” hypothesis and (probably) fix that source of the error.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Tekoneiric.6817:

For me it mainly occurs when I sell stuff to fast.

Interesting. I almost never sell stacks at the same price and I rarely sell to buy orders, so I find it impossible to “sell too fast” — that would explain why some people see this error a lot and others never do.

I think it’s likely that it’s any number of reasons, not just a single one. Still, it seems as if it would be relatively easy to test the “too fast” hypothesis and (probably) fix that source of the error.

Usually when I sell to the TP I look at the buy vs sale. If there is little difference on some items that may not sell quickly then I sell to the buy orders. Better to make the funds now than have something not sale for months. I find I make more money quickly that way. I also look at the buy orders as demand. No buy orders tell me that there is no demand for the item so I salvage it.

One thing that bugs me is why do some people not do an orderly progression of underselling by dropping the price one copper at a time. I see people drop random amounts below the lowest sale item sometimes by several silver. They are basically undercutting themselves and artificially deflating the value of the item.

I would bet that someone could write an academic paper on game economies.