Guild Wars 2

Bots are created to unfairly create income and spam advertise in channels for illegal gold sellers. This is understood by all players so it really doesn’t need pounded on. We all understand it is a violation of TOC and a bannable offense as well as draining server resources that should be intilized by honest players.

After reading the official post on botting and what ANET is doing about it I wish to bring up one point. While satisfied with your focus on gold-sellers, I see nothing about what you propose to do about gold buyers. Gold buyers are the cause of the issue. If there is no demand for a product, the product ceases to exist.
ANET provides a method to legally purchase gold through the TP. There is no reason to be lenient on illegal gold buyers. If you can identify and ban gold-sellers and botters then you have the capability to follow the electronic paper trail generated by the illegal tranactions and ban the gold buyers accounts as well.
Wrong is wrong , be it buyer or seller and I am asking for and advocating a strong firm response to gold buyers. Just as strong a response as ANET took toward a karma exploit. That is in fact what a gold buyer is doing. It is an exploit of the way the game is intended to be played and a clear violation of TOC. As the saying goes, “Cut off the head and the body will die”. Its time to let some heads roll.

I have to say that, on paper, this sounds great.
The problem I see is that if they don’t advertise in-game, they’ll do it out-game (as some are doing on youtube).
I liken the gold sellers/buyers to drug dealers and junkies. Both are a problem but the question is which is the bigger problem and how do you deal with it and not put innocent people in the crossfire?
Do you make gems worth more gold? Do you make gold easier to obtain in-game?
Either way, this could wreck the economy.

No game, as far as I’m aware, has ever banned buyers. See, here’s the thing. Those buyers, they’re also customers of ANet. Those buyers, I’d assume, will continue to play longer because they have their (wrongly acquired) gold. So as much as it sucks, it’s somewhat counter-productive to the game-makers to actually kill the buyers.

If they can get conclusive proof that people have bought gold I would publicly ban them (Dhuum). After the first few people will think a lot harder before buying gold.

I consider gold buyers to be just as bad as exploiters and users of hacks. They’re breaking the ToS, they’re cheating and they’re contributing toward making the game less enjoyable for “law-abiding” players.

Personally, anyone that buys gold from a seller rather than from ANet are nothing more than scum.

That may sound harsh.. but if that’s the persona the forums and gerenal populas take, then people would be far less to buy from gold sellers.

Think about it.. the only reason they’re doing it is because gold from sellers is a “better deal”.

But really, it’s like a huge smack to the face of ANet and the Guild Wars 2 community.. in that you like the game enough to buy it, but would rather support gold sellers and account thieves.

#Support GW2!

Why buy gold (from gold sellers) when u can buy gems and convert into gold in BLTP ?

In general, I agree with you: wrong is wrong. And I feel Anet is doing what they can at the pace they can, just as others have in the past. There’s a lot of dimensions here, most notably that banning accounts doesn’t actually prevent new accounts from being created quickly.

But in general, I am actually curious how much illegal gold buying is going on. Every MMO that has launched since DAoC has become replete with early days gold farmers peddling their spam. Of course, the practice goes back to even before UO; however, the introduction of zone and global chat channels in later games has made it more aware.

During the first month of a new MMO, there is an assumed market for gold farming. This implied market drives the botting and spam. But it takes a few months to really know if there is an actual market. And that was true even for subs-based games that frowned on RMT.

For newer MMOs built around MTX though, the game itself takes care of a chunk of what previously was considered illegal (or optimistically: emergent) behavior: small purchases including vanity and currency.

• So on the one hand, GW2 is suffering from the “new MMO” effect of gold farmers bringing their traditional behavior to every new MMO.
• But on the other, GW2 already facilitates the transactions that these farmers are peddling.

Which makes me wonder while there’s a volume of sellers, is there a volume of buyers that aren’t using Anet’s system?

Ban the people that buy gold from sellers. They are the cause of all the bots, hackers and spam. Because they are in game the sellers keep coming and coming.

Cure the problem and not the symptoms.

But I know why Anet is hesitant to do this, unforeseen consequences. I think they are in the best position to decide what to do.

I’ve wondered about this too, why not take action against the gold buyers? Someone else had a good answer to that though:

It’s almost impossible to do this without harming innocent players as collateral damage.
If Anet bans players that receive gold in the mail, RMTs could simply start mailing random players gold. Sure, you can post on the forum that people should return the mail, but people are gonna be banned undeservedly.

Another example: suppose I finally convince my RL friend to buy GW2. To get him started I mail him a few gold. Bam! Banned!

The bad PR and whinestorm this will create by far outweighs the benefits.

Problem 1 – the cost to buy gold legally is prohibitive. Do the math.
Problem 2 – the game economy leaves many players nearly broke most of the time, creating demand

Fix the economy. Stop nickle and diming people to death for porting, repairs in wvwvw, and improve loot drops in dungeons. Address the demand side the the issue and gold sellers won’t have a market.

Ratto.1572:

Why buy gold (from gold sellers) when u can buy gems and convert into gold in BLTP ?

Its probably cheaper to buy from a gold seller than to convert gems into gold.

Just a small note. Don’t forget to report ads on websites to their respective advertisement company (often google). I am pretty sure that what these goldsellers do is illegal, and google (or the advertisement company) wouldn’t want to work with them.

Eve Online removes money acquired illegally, but doesn’t ban players for buying. Often, though, the money they bought with cash is already spent and they end up with a negative wallet, which effectively disables that character (can’t buy or sell anything).

A temporary ban for buyers should be enough. If they keep on doing it and get caught, I guess their accounts should be permanently banned. But that’s on a case-to-case basis.

The TP allows exchanging gems for gold. However…

Ratto.1572:

Why buy gold (from gold sellers) when u can buy gems and convert into gold in BLTP ?

…gold sellers sell at a cheaper price. I’m getting at least one gold selling message per day. I keep reporting them all but I do see how cheap they’re supposedly selling. Everyone likes a bargain and some are just willing to take the chance.

I prefer to work for my own gold and to support the developers with getting gems. Buying illicit gold is also not worth a ban or getting your game account and computer potentially hacked by illicit websites.

Removing the gold would actually work, I like that.

Icecat.4528

“Problem 1 – the cost to buy gold legally is prohibitive. Do the math.
Problem 2 – the game economy leaves many players nearly broke most of the time, creating demand

Fix the economy. Stop nickle and diming people to death for porting, repairs in wvwvw, and improve loot drops in dungeons. Address the demand side the the issue and gold sellers won’t have a market."

^This and create a better value with the BLTP on the exchange. When the Gems to Gold Ratio is a better value to players; the gold sellers will have no customers. Anet will have taken their market away.

When players can make enough gold on their own AND have a better ratio via the Gems; Gold Sellers will have no market in which to sell. Basic competitive market situation.

Ratto.1572:

Why buy gold (from gold sellers) when u can buy gems and convert into gold in BLTP ?

Disclaimer – I’ve never purchased gold.

That said, right now, you can do either:

By 40,000 gems at $50 which will yeild around 12.5 gold.
or
Buy 50 gold from a gold seller at $50 (based on the spam I’ve received)

So you tell me, would you rather get 12.5 or 50 gold for your 50 bucks? I’m not a fan of gold sellers, but the gem prices are so out of whack, you’d be a fool to buy gems at the current exchange rate.

Cyrus.8261:

I’ve wondered about this too, why not take action against the gold buyers? Someone else had a good answer to that though:

It’s almost impossible to do this without harming innocent players as collateral damage.
If Anet bans players that receive gold in the mail, RMTs could simply start mailing random players gold. Sure, you can post on the forum that people should return the mail, but people are gonna be banned undeservedly.

Another example: suppose I finally convince my RL friend to buy GW2. To get him started I mail him a few gold. Bam! Banned!

The bad PR and whinestorm this will create by far outweighs the benefits.

You are not an illegal gold-seller that has been banned by ANET therefore your transactions will not be flagged

BrienBear.6073:

No game, as far as I’m aware, has ever banned buyers. See, here’s the thing. Those buyers, they’re also customers of ANet. Those buyers, I’d assume, will continue to play longer because they have their (wrongly acquired) gold. So as much as it sucks, it’s somewhat counter-productive to the game-makers to actually kill the buyers.

No game has banned buyers and no game has eliminated a majority of gold-sellers. See the connection? I will also put forward that ANET did ban the Karma exploiters who WERE also ANET customers. Do we split hairs or uphold the TOC?

Doc Thirst.3578:

Ratto.1572:

Why buy gold (from gold sellers) when u can buy gems and convert into gold in BLTP ?

Disclaimer – I’ve never purchased gold.

That said, right now, you can do either:

By 40,000 gems at $50 which will yeild around 12.5 gold.
or
Buy 50 gold from a gold seller at $50 (based on the spam I’ve received)

So you tell me, would you rather get 12.5 or 50 gold for your 50 bucks? I’m not a fan of gold sellers, but the gem prices are so out of whack, you’d be a fool to buy gems at the current exchange rate.

You can probably buy a stolen TV from some guy outside a pub for a lot less than you can buy one in a store too. Doesn’t mean that the stores should lower prices and I should get a raise to prevent me from embarking on a life of crime because the guy is cheaper. Being in receipt of stolen goods is a crime, just as stealing is.

Doc Thirst.3578:

So you tell me, would you rather get 12.5 or 50 gold for your 50 bucks? I’m not a fan of gold sellers, but the gem prices are so out of whack, you’d be a fool to buy gems at the current exchange rate.

The TP at least forces gold sellers to sell cheaper than what they would like. This, together with more efficient methods to ban them, would make their business increasingly unprofitable.

I think that the ratio of gems to gold is fine as it is. If the exchange rate is more favorable, prices for items would likely get prohibitive for players who don’t or can’t use gems for gold.

The full might Blizzard had spent the better part of two decades combatting Real Money Trading and failed. A War on Gold Farming is like the War on Terror it will never end because you are attempting eradicate an idea. It’s impossible.

Cyrus.8261:

I’ve wondered about this too, why not take action against the gold buyers? Someone else had a good answer to that though:

It’s almost impossible to do this without harming innocent players as collateral damage.
If Anet bans players that receive gold in the mail, RMTs could simply start mailing random players gold. Sure, you can post on the forum that people should return the mail, but people are gonna be banned undeservedly.

Another example: suppose I finally convince my RL friend to buy GW2. To get him started I mail him a few gold. Bam! Banned!

The bad PR and whinestorm this will create by far outweighs the benefits.

This seems to be a very extreme course of action and one I don’t believe profit oriented gold-sellers would be willing to try. On top of that we a already receiving ingame gold-seller email spam that include 1 copper. ANET has already stated take the copper and report. That course of action can easily be reviewed and eliminated by ANET. I would also ask what the benefit would be to a gold seller to do this and possibly eliminate his own customer base?

Manifoldgodhead.2356:

The full might Blizzard had spent the better part of two decades combatting Real Money Trading and failed. A War on Gold Farming is like the War on Terror it will never end because you are attempting eradicate an idea. It’s impossible.

The full might of blizzard NEVER landed on the gold buyer. ANET is not Blizzard. I see no real money auction house run by ANET. Another difference, I DO believe ANET listens to its players. Blizzard stopped effectively doing that after Activision absorbed Blizzard and dissolved Blizz North. I could say more but thats off-thread.

Manifoldgodhead.2356:

The full might Blizzard had spent the better part of two decades combatting Real Money Trading and failed. A War on Gold Farming is like the War on Terror it will never end because you are attempting eradicate an idea. It’s impossible.

Or like a War on Drugs – even American DEA starts to admit that their actions are pointless.

I’ve seen no MMO which could deal with gold farmers yet, since there are market for their service. And I’m afraid we’ll have to just use to the cheating (well, gold-buying is a cheating after all). ANet (and other devs) will fight it of course, will ban boters/spamers and exploiters of this kind, but not because it’s not nice to support cheating, but because it’s a competition to their own official currency-selling.

Yet I find one optimistic thing in this boting and spamming mess. I’m pretty sure that devs have vast info about gold supply in the worlds – this info lies within their very own game, I’m sure they have tools for extracting that. I’m also pretty sure they have logs on who and to whom send cash, how many, are they long term-friends or newly created account, if the IP was spamming or not. It’s within their grasp. So if Anet actions are so light, if ANet do not try to perform excesive banning operations (and as far as I’ve seen – they do not), that might mean that boters are not really selling much and their market is insignificant. Which would mean that amount of boters will decrease in time, since keeping them would be waste of time and resources.

FOr those of you saying that you should trace the money to the players and ban them that way, there’s one problem: The spam e-mails that include a copper in them. Since you can’t delete it unless you take the copper, you’ve effectively taken money from a moneyseller, and in this case you’d probably be seen, at a cursory surface glance, as guilty as someone who really DID buy from a moneyseller.

And that just won’t do.

Chessrook.8643:

FOr those of you saying that you should trace the money to the players and ban them that way, there’s one problem: The spam e-mails that include a copper in them. Since you can’t delete it unless you take the copper, you’ve effectively taken money from a moneyseller, and in this case you’d probably be seen, at a cursory surface glance, as guilty as someone who really DID buy from a moneyseller.

And that just won’t do.

Tracing mails containing only significant amount of gold, or even the overall cash flow from one to the another account (via 20 or 200 mails) should not be a problem. It’s a pretty simple macro, possible to implement even within the Excel. I don’t think that ANet would ban anyone for receiving 1c in total.

At a fundamental level, its just odd to say DONT BUY THAT THERE. Buy it here for more.

Here are a few issues points I’d like to put in perspective:

Firstly, the games that made statements saying they wouldn’t ban gold buyers were all subscription-based. It fit their business model better to have these players keep paying $15 a month rather than being banned. In short, the benefits of banning them were outweighed by lost revenues. GW has no subscription, thus all profits are from the initial purchase and the purchase of gems. Since the initial purchase has already been made, and since people buying gold online are most assuredly not also buying from the gem store, there is no opportunity cost for banning them in terms of profits.

Secondly, since Anet is supporting this game on the micro-transaction model, they depend on players purchasing gems. If gold sellers are undercutting the gem store, Anet is actually losing profits every time someone buys from the sellers rather than them. These players and the people who sell to them are effectively stealing money from Anet.

Thirdly, banning people based on whether or not they accept money from gold sellers in no way affects people simply sending money to one another legitimately. If the account that sent the money is identified as a gold seller and banned, then yes, any large sums of gold they sent to a player would be very much suspect. However, saying that the 1c attached to spam mails would cause players to be banned makes no sense at all. If Anet had the capability to track who is sending money to whom, I’m fairly confident that determining the actual amount sent would be trivial, as that data would have passed through their servers as much as the text content of the message itself. Now, the idea that sellers randomly sending large amounts of money to people is equally silly, because that money is their product, which is worth real money to them, and they gain no benefit from getting random players banned. All they do is waste product that they could instead have sold. If that was true drug dealers would be giving out free crack to people every day just to get them sent to prison.

Another thing I’d like to point out as a contributing factor is the fact that buying gems to sell for gold right now is silly. At current gem prices, a full suit of T3 cultural armor would cost around $600 US. I don’t see the “micro” in the microtransaction model. If the gems were even close to the prices the gold sellers offer, I believe the vast majority of players would prefer that method to third parties, especially if they knew there was a chance they could get banned and lose their entire investment.

@ Evil.9061 At a more fundamental level if the buyer understands that getting something for less through illegal methods comes with a high risk of losing that something plus more in penalty,then that is not odd at all. Gold sellers and botters have almost limitless methods of illegally securing accounts in order to sell to buyers who have gotten used to violating TOC with almost no chance of punishment. How many buyers have those same methods of gaining new accounts. I would propose next to none, otherwise they wouldn’t need to do business with the gold seller in the first place. End the demand to end the supply. Nothing odd to that at all either.

Remove the ability to transfer gold/items between players. Problem solved.

Create systems where players can still contribute to guild upgrades and commander etc.

Promega.7628:

Remove the ability to transfer gold/items between players. Problem solved.

Create systems where players can still contribute to guild upgrades and commander etc.

Sorry , but any solution that punishes 99% for the actions of 1% is not a proper solution.

Promega.7628:

Remove the ability to transfer gold/items between players. Problem solved.

Create systems where players can still contribute to guild upgrades and commander etc.

Do you have ANY idea the rage that’ll explode over the forums if you did that? They’d break out the pitch, forks, and torch and march to the offices of ANet in person, cover whoever came up with that idea in the pitch, then smash them over the head with the torch/flashlight! Then stab them with the forks!

100% of the players of the game are “punished” by lack of potential game content that could be created is ANet could invest resources into development rather than combating bots/goldsellers/gold buyers/account hackers.

So the cost of players being able to send an unidentified dye, or crap staff upgrade to a friend for free, is a massive lack of content, hacked accounts, gold selling spam, and overcrowding of bots.

Chessrook.8643:

Promega.7628:

Remove the ability to transfer gold/items between players. Problem solved.

Create systems where players can still contribute to guild upgrades and commander etc.

Do you have ANY idea the rage that’ll explode over the forums if you did that? They’d break out the pitch, forks, and torch and march to the offices of ANet in person, cover whoever came up with that idea in the pitch, then smash them over the head with the torch/flashlight! Then stab them with the forks!

Here is how I would sell it.

“Today we announce a significant change to GW2! Due to the resources we saved in other areas we are going to be able to release 2 more expansions this year for free for all of our players to enjoy! However to do this we had to remove the ability to send gold/items through the mail and had to alter the way guild banks work. But hey enjoy all the free content!”

Awesome.

VendettaDFA.9368:

Promega.7628:

Remove the ability to transfer gold/items between players. Problem solved.

Create systems where players can still contribute to guild upgrades and commander etc.

Sorry , but any solution that punishes 99% for the actions of 1% is not a proper solution.

Yea Anet would never put in a system that punishes the majority for the actions of the minority… Ah man!

Funny thing is I think ANet is the cause of their own headache when it comes to being able to out bid gold seller for your gold buying business.

Because the CE is available for Gems then Gems must have a hard and steady correlation to real money, and since gold can buy Gems, same thing. This is why items do not vendor for much and monetary rewards are not what we are used to in other MMO’s.

Personally I think ANet should do what EA does with their F2P games and have a trading post currency that is obtained in game, and one that is obtained for real money. Then you can have two separate conversions, and you can make two prices for every item (CE would be 2000 Gems but 4000 Dragon Teeth).

I believe it’s due to legality that is making it difficulty to ban players outright for buying gold. You need to proof that they really did violate the terms, and that’s often not as simple nor straightforward.

BrienBear.6073:

No game, as far as I’m aware, has ever banned buyers. See, here’s the thing. Those buyers, they’re also customers of ANet. Those buyers, I’d assume, will continue to play longer because they have their (wrongly acquired) gold. So as much as it sucks, it’s somewhat counter-productive to the game-makers to actually kill the buyers.

This only applies to games with a subscription. Having players that buy gold outside of the game then use that gold to inflate prices on the TP or buy gems would be bad for the game.

The only reasons I see to not go after the buyers are that it is difficult to distinguish them from innocent players who might have traded with and account before it was compromised, or that closing the holes gold farmers are exploiting to make their gold is consuming most of the resources ANet has to dedicate to the problem right now. I hope we’ll see some action against the buyers once the bigger fish are fried.

Alternatively, ANET could simply drive up the cost of making gold, by actively banning and combating Bots developing automated systems and taking direct action (actually having GMs log into the game and kick/ban them). Once it is driven up to be reasonably close in price to buy from the in game shop, the Gold Sellers all leave.

Start banning Gold Buyers and posting their account name, real name, address, credit card number and what not. Put them in the “Hall of Shame” of MMORPGs and contact other MMORPG companies about these players to not let them buy their products.

Will never happen but it would be so cool to watch…

Alucardrx.8930:

Start banning Gold Buyers and posting their account name, real name, address, credit card number and what not. Put them in the “Hall of Shame” of MMORPGs and contact other MMORPG companies about these players to not let them buy their products.

Will never happen but it would be so cool to watch…

The notion of public black lists worked amazingly well back in the days of BBS’s. If you were risking being banned from FUTURE games before they even came out, you may consider not being a burden on society.

Yep, let’s ban everyone. Ban those who play the game differently, ban those who buy gold because anet is incapable of dealing with the bots. Why don’t we ban those who didn’t buy the game on the release date as well, because obviously they didn’t care enough for the game.

Each new release, the malice on the forums and the need of people to have a game just for themselves astonishes me more and more.

Pandemoniac.4739:

BrienBear.6073:

No game, as far as I’m aware, has ever banned buyers. See, here’s the thing. Those buyers, they’re also customers of ANet. Those buyers, I’d assume, will continue to play longer because they have their (wrongly acquired) gold. So as much as it sucks, it’s somewhat counter-productive to the game-makers to actually kill the buyers.

This only applies to games with a subscription. Having players that buy gold outside of the game then use that gold to inflate prices on the TP or buy gems would be bad for the game.

The only reasons I see to not go after the buyers are that it is difficult to distinguish them from innocent players who might have traded with and account before it was compromised, or that closing the holes gold farmers are exploiting to make their gold is consuming most of the resources ANet has to dedicate to the problem right now. I hope we’ll see some action against the buyers once the bigger fish are fried.

The ability to distinguish gold buyers and legitimate players is easy enough for ANET. It will be easily apparent whether a standard account trade or a goldseller trade has occurred by timeframe and size of trade. Trades occurring with an account before it was identified as compromised would not be open to a ban. Fish will die faster if the is no water to swim in ….. no buyers. ANET will expend less resources in closing gold farmer exploits because with the gold farmers gone, a regular player is not going to “bot” an area. They will tend to play the game as intended. I view this method as a better solution to many of the botting and gold selling issues out there. It will be much less intrusive to legitimate players as well.

Well,

I think banning of gold buyers is a capital idea, I also want to address some concerns people have brought up, rightly so.

1. What if I’m simply trading gold to a friend?
A interesting note, assuming that the servers are keeping track of what is going on and some effort is put into investigating the case then players should be in the clear for a few behaviors to look for.

a. Farmers tend to bot.
b. Farmers tend not to be at all active in the community, an investigation would show that you get around and have friends and do a variety of activities, now while a FARMER may try to emulate these behaviors it would drastically effect their efficiency.
c. The idea is not to act right away, give it a little time, use it to map out who the buyers and sellers are, hit them all at once.

2. But gold buyers are also ANET customers.
Not really, ANET offers means to do what they want, its like bringing outside food/drinks to a movie theater, if you don’t want to play by their rules then you shouldn’t have agreed to them. Ultimately ANET already got all the money they were going to get out of “those” players with the box price, since “those” players have chosen to not buy things through ANET.

3. Collateral Damage.
This shouldn’t be as bad as you think, someone suggested gold buyers would start sending gold to random players to get them banned…why? The amount of time and effort to do so would be wasteful to them to try and generate any sort of outcry. As for the innocent who was sent gold from a total stranger….simple DO NOT TAKE IT! or SEND IT BACK! My wife actually accidentally sent some food to a random player rather then a guildmate…the response was “Ha ha thanks for the stuff” the loss of those players I do not think will hurt the game.

Ultimately Gold Sellers are ruining the game, they are reducing revenue to ANET. ANET can keep the game FtP by selling stuff to players, gold sellers are diverting that revenue to themselves and away from stuff like staffing/server maintence/content development. The arguement of ANET is asking for too much money isn’t really valid because they are supposed to be the only legitmate game in town..to put it simply buying gold is like buying a DVD player stolen from a store.

/rant

Sorry but this thread is absolutely useless.

First and last, Prohibition doesn´t work.

It only raises the profits for the suppliers that much higher. Something the people in the know very well understand, especially the ones in “real life”. Big clue for the wars on drugs.

ANet doesn´t have the resources for live GMs to police nakedly obvious botters, how on earth are your expecting them to provide a Gold Buyer “game police”.

Dream on.

What HawkMeister said,

The OP is talking about prohibition which only raises incentive and promotes even worse activities such as account hacking.

Anyone remember back in the day of vanilla WoW? Those were the days of actual farmers playing the game instead of a bot. I could live with that and think its something game makers need to aim for.

I really don’t think the prohibition analogue works here. For that to work, the US Government would have to be legally selling cocaine to people and the drug dealers would just be undercutting them.

Revenant.2691:

I really don’t think the prohibition analogue works here. For that to work, the US Government would have to be legally selling cocaine to people and the drug dealers would just be undercutting them.

Because theres underground tobacco growers and moonshiners everywhere undercutting gas stations and liquor stores.

I think if tobacco was illegal today it would be cheaper than it currently is.

Yes, but moonshine and bootleg tobacco aren’t anywhere near a significant portion of all sales, much less the majority of them.