Guild Wars 2

Cod Eye.1632:

Do what I have done with my missus, create a guild together, it doesn’t take long to get a bank.

And if they are already in a guild they like with other people? Not a solution.

HawkMeister.4758:

Actually ANet´s “Gold 4 Gems” is a good solution already.

If you look at what Arena.nets exchange rate is, compared to the sellers spamming, Arena.net isn’t even close to competitive to them.

Like I said earlier, I’ve bought twice from Arena.net. And looking at what sellers are selling them for, I feel like I got ripped off almost, a fool at least. But I’m not interested in taking the risk with those sellers.

Unfortunately other players are, and in good numbers clearly with the amount of botting and spamming we’re seeing.

zerospin.8604:

2. Goldsellers start to mail random people free gold.

lol right.

Hasn’t happened once in any game that has punished the buyers.

Pandemoniac.4739:

The industry solution:
First, go after the pirates. When that didn’t work or had little effect; go after the downloaders. Thousands and thousands of regular users, innocent and guilty, old and young, people with internet connection and those who didn’t even have a computer. All targets and all threatened and/or taken to court.

So how exactly are people not buying gold going to get punished by Arena.net punishing the buyers they are certain of also?

Anguloke.2706:

Cod Eye.1632:

Remove the ability to trade in-game currency via mail, most of the problem solved.

There was no in game mail in GW1, but selling was rampant in that game also. How do you think they distributed the gold then? All they had to do is send them a message to meet in a zone and trade manual. You don’t stop a thing by doing that.

If I’m not mistaken you can’t trade manually in game.

It is still of my opinion that gold should just not be traded. Either that or a 5 gold gift limit on everyone each month. It’s cool that we can give each other gold but what’s the point? If someone needs gear or items, just buy it and send it to them.

I think given the choice to either trade gold or stop gold spammers, I’d pick the latter.

wintermute.4096:

Wow, the stubbornness is strong in this one… It is not about a data trail, and it never was, you completely fail at logic.

Ok, listen closely: There is no way to trace a purchase outside of the game, therefore there can be no way to trace it ingame. You would have to entirely block people from transferring money or goods to one another, shut down the trading post and make every single item in the game bound to account to achieve any sense of blocking illegitimate transactions.

Still don’t believe it? Let’s give another practical example: Imagine you were a gold seller, and you know someone is about to ban the people you hand gold to. The simplest way to get around it would simply be to go around town and hand out gold to random strangers, problem solved.

It does not have to be much, so lets be generous and say you hand out 10% of the gold you sell, and you always approach people with the same sentence about how you give up the game and want to give away what you have, and simply make sure your customers are among those people.

If Anet now really proceeded to ban people for taking something from a random stranger, well the kittentorm would be a sight to behold…

And to anyone who now says something among the lines of “well, it would at least drive the black market gold price up!” – No bobo, it won’t. Like, not at all. Because acquiring the actual ingame currency is not much of an issue, and the number of “fake handouts” could be significantly smaller then 10%. Oh, and no, you can’t just message everyone to not take gold from strangers or face the consequences, people are too stupid for that.

Ok now YOU listen closely. They dont have to trace the transaction from outside the game. A known Goldseller is going to be known privately to ANET long before they realize someone is onto them. Also Gold sellers wont cut into their profits by handing out freebies …EVER …. you fail at that logic. They dont care.They just hack another account. The illegal gold buyer is the only one truly at risk and the only one a ban will have a real effect on.Chat logs are just as reviewable as any other data stream so even if a gold-seller were to try your extremely far-fetched scenario ANET has proven deliberate enough in their data gathering to avoid the massive ban of innocents you seem to think will come.

Negativity such as yours is what goldsellers rely on to prevent a proper concerted effort by the community and the game maker to successfully curtail illegal activity. You can either help or not, but when it comes right down to it I would rather go down swinging on the right side of an issue than toss out a “give up you can’t win” viewpoint as you so smugly put forward. Lead , follow, or get out of the way … right is right and wrong is wrong period.

No matter how low ANet goes on their price for selling gold, the gold sellers will always undercut it because gold is effectively in infinite, free supply for them. You have two competing forces controlling an infinite supply with negligible cost to produce. The only limiting factor for ANet is they can’t very well destroy the economy trying to race to the bottom versus people who have no such worries. If by some miracle the real money value of gold drops below the point it’s profitable for the botters and gold sellers, they’ll just switch their server space for running bot gold farmers for another game and never blink an eye while the economy in GW2 will be permanently in the toilet.

Nope, just ban buyers as well. You can’t ban them all, you likely can’t even ban a significant percentage of them, but you don’t need to. All you need is a regular series of reports of accounts being banned and your average schmoe isn’t going to bother because the risk is greater than any possible reward. Not even sure how people think otherwise – this isn’t some real world analogy, ANet can automate investigating 100% of currency transfers in this game and flag anything above some threshold from a suspected gold seller. Get their proof the gold was being sold on the RMT, get their proof your account accepted gold over some limit to avoid the FUD about randomly mailing out gold, and ban it all.

@VendettaDFA

Gold companies have already done this. One company did this in SWTOR, I got money mailed to my characters twice, my account was banned then restored a few days later once the devs caught on to what was happening. They had to end the practice of blindly banning accounts that were sent money.

Gold buying is wrong period. Even worse for a company to sell it themselves.

dimgl.4786:

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.

Actually…you’re not very aware of this but Guild Wars openly banned many buyers of illegally obtained gold…

Yes! I just found this out. And LOTRO too. I’m surprised, this is a first. WoW, as far as I’ve heard, has never actually banned anyone. Or Everquest 1. Or Everquest 2. Or …. well any other game I’ve played LOL

*Edit to add – I’ve never bought gold, I’m just saying, when I play a game I’m generally involved in the community peripherally. I don’t get why people buy gold. You spent 60 bucks on the game, why spend any more when you don’t have to? But then I feel the same way about gems too

bcbully.7289:

Gold buying is wrong period. Even worse for a company to sell it themselves.

Wait, are you saying that ANet is bad for selling their own gold? Or am I misunderstanding?

BrienBear.6073:

dimgl.4786:

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.

Actually…you’re not very aware of this but Guild Wars openly banned many buyers of illegally obtained gold…

Yes! I just found this out. And LOTRO too. I’m surprised, this is a first. WoW, as far as I’ve heard, has never actually banned anyone. Or Everquest 1. Or Everquest 2. Or …. well any other game I’ve played LOL

Actually,Everquest1 origianlly had a policy of banning any account that moved/traded a high sum of money,regardless of prior suspicion or not.

I know personally some players that had and I myself have been perma-banned from EQ1 for moving/trading a large sum of in game currency between guild members.I belonged to a very large long standing guild for years in EQ1,so when we got the E-mail notice,none of us felt the urge to appeal the decision and return (was new MMOs coming out).

I’m happy that we got banned,because it showed what we new all along,that in early EQ1,the devs cared,the server GMs were active and had we appealed we would have been reinstated.

In earlier games,the GMs were like celebrities of their home servers,these days however,well you’d be lucky to find a GM in a game.

Temper.7265:

BrienBear.6073:

dimgl.4786:

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.

Actually…you’re not very aware of this but Guild Wars openly banned many buyers of illegally obtained gold…

Yes! I just found this out. And LOTRO too. I’m surprised, this is a first. WoW, as far as I’ve heard, has never actually banned anyone. Or Everquest 1. Or Everquest 2. Or …. well any other game I’ve played LOL

Actually,Everquest1 origianlly had a policy of banning any account that moved/traded a high sum of money,regardless of prior suspicion or not.

I know personally some players that had and I myself have been perma-banned from EQ1 for moving/trading a large sum of in game currency between guild members.I belonged to a very large long standing guild for years in EQ1,so when we got the E-mail notice,none of us felt the urge to appeal the decision and return (was new MMOs coming out).

I’m happy that we got banned,because it showed what we new all along,that in early EQ1,the devs cared,the server GMs were active and had we appealed we would have been reinstated.

In earlier games,the GMs were like celebrities of their home servers,these days however,well you’d be lucky to find a GM in a game.

I don’t recall this at all. I started playing EQ1 in ‘99. I knew a couple people in my guild (on Lanys specifically) that bought gold. I wasn’t the guild owner or I would have kicked them but whatevs.

I DO remember the days when GMs were the shiznit though! You’d see one in game (IIRC just a (GM) next to their name or something but that could be off) and everyone was like “oohhhh aaahhhhh” LOL

EQ1 changed after… what PoP? That was when it was bought by Sony and went… downhill, to be nice. Maybe it was Velious?

Yeah BrienBear,Velious was kinda the begginning of the end for me.

On Quellious,quite a few of my guildies were banned and investigated,then reisntated,it was kinda part of the deal when you became an officer of that guild,that you would be moving large sums of in game plat from time to time (not illegal currency).

IIRC,my own account was flagged for some a riduculous amount of plat over a 12 month period (millions rings a bell lol),and rightly so,as I was the guild banker lol.

I must see if I still have that E-mail somewhere,I did keep it around for some time to have laughs with old guildies that I ran into in newer games. =P

Temper.7265:

Yeah BrienBear,Velious was kinda the begginning of the end for me.

On Quellious,quite a few of my guildies were banned and investigated,then reisntated,it was kinda part of the deal when you became an officer of that guild,that you would be moving large sums of in game plat from time to time (not illegal currency).

IIRC,my own account was flagged for some a riduculous amount of plat over a 12 month period (millions rings a bell lol),and rightly so,as I was the guild banker lol.

I must see if I still have that E-mail somewhere,I did keep it around for some time to have laughs with old guildies that I ran into in newer games. =P

If you do, I’d love to read it! Just to see how they were back then. It’s nice to know the GMs cared. And the devs.

I miss EQ. I went back a few months ago just before the free to play happened and I was like “irk.” Actually, to keep this on topic, the economy is shot. Completely. You go into the Bazaar and stuff that should be relatively cheap? millions of plat. A CRAZY amount. I left around the time that Ykesha got big, so I didn’t have much on my main at all….

I miss EQ a lot. I miss how the camaraderie was, and I don’t know if I’d like it now, but the forced grouping was amazing back then because it forced you to socialize. I’m not sure, but I don’t know too many games that do that anymore, if any. And even if they did I’m not sure I’d like it.

Anyway /nostalgia off!

ANet could do what CCP does with ISK buyers in Eve online: Set the player’s wallet to a negative amount equal to what the player bought. Therefore the player has to work off their ill-gotten gold and they’ll think twice before buying it again.

I think this is a great idea. Why send the buyer ‘on vacation’ for 3 days? That’s a slap on the wrist. Punch him in the face and make him work instead:

A player has 30 gold but buys another 50 gold from the black market. The transaction is detected, the seller is perma-banned and the buyer gets his illicit gold removed. A calculation is made: (illicit money) – (money he already had) = -20 gold. The player then has to work his way in order to get a positive balance again.

A quicker way to settle the issue is for the player to exchange gems for gold.

This would make for a good deterrent and a possible positive outcome for ArenaNet, with the player buying gold from them in order to make up for the negative amount. It would at least minimize the purchase of large amounts of illicit gold, which would then flood the market. A player wouldn’t want to buy 100 gold outright if he could have -70 gold waiting for him the next day.

A temporary ban isn’t that much of a deterrent to gold buyers. The possibility of hitting them where it hurts the most, together with an aggressive promotion of this measure by Anet, would be an effective way to cool heads.

A new mail arrives:
‘Hello hero! Go to wehackyou.com and buy $50 for 50gold!’

Player reaction:
And likely lose my hard earned money AND get a negative amount that will take me months to balance out? No kitten way. Where’s that report button…

By the way, I haven’t gotten mails about gold selling for many days now. That’s a good thing.

How about whenever a player receives a large infusion of cash to their account from mail over a certain period of time, say more then 20 gold over an hour (because gold sellers could spread out the transactions over multiple mails), a special icon is put beside their character name. This icon would let other players know that there is a good chance this player has bought gold from a gold seller. This would create a bad view of the player in other players eyes and would make the game less fun for the offending party.

The icon would go away if the player bought a commander compendium, because these are mostly bought with guildies giving money to the guild leader. Or the player could put in a ticket to get it removed and an investigation would take place to see where the gold came from. If it came from an account flagged as a spammer, bot or gold seller, the gold in the account would be taken out from players account. If the gold is no longer there, they would be put in a negative amount of gold, and the icon would not be removed.

How about whenever a player receives a large infusion of cash to their account from mail over a certain period of time, say more then 20 gold over an hour (because gold sellers could spread out the transactions over multiple mails), a special icon is put beside their character name.

What good would come from public humiliation? The player would likely want to quit instead of redeeming himself and innocent players caught in the humiliation by mistake would give a very bad rep to Anet.

The humilation would prevent others from buying gold. Maybe it is a little harsh for the icon to always be on the name if you are guilty of buying gold. If you give the gold back or arenanet takes it they can take the icon off your name. Then you would not do it in the future.

If it was a legitimate gold transaction from guild member to guild member or friend to friend it would be easy for arenanet to find out and take the icon off, maybe the icon goes away while the ticket is being processed.

The humilation would prevent others from buying gold. Maybe it is a little harsh for the icon to always be on the name if you are guilty of buying gold. If you give the gold back or arenanet takes it they can take the icon off your name. Then you would not do it in the future.

I think a better examination would be to find out the mentality of the people in the first place. What I mean by that is, you’re saying it’d be a deterrent, but in my experience with the gold-buyers, they tend to be honey badgers. I think they’d end up either buying another copy, then buying more gold, or they’d just move on to another game.

If they’re willing to break the rules in the first place and have no morals, it doesn’t sound like they’d be too bothered by “public shaming” per say.

Now, with that being said, it doesn’t hurt to public shame somehow LOL It’s not entirely a bad idea. I just don’t know if it’d be worthwhile to put out the code, or just be better to outright ban them.

I have never bought gold for any game purely because I am a cheap kitten. However, 3 weeks ago my account was hacked; all my gold taken and stockpiled items sold off after having been transferred to a different server.

Anet says they are unable to roll back the character or replace the taken items. It has been a pain in the kitten these last weeks trying to rebuild and I am still not where I was when I was hacked.

Since Anet is unwilling to help restore my items which could easily be tracked by examining all transactions performed on the server I was moved to, it makes it very tempting to spend about $40USD and buy gold to get back to where I was.

And since gold sellers offer it cheaper than buying and converting gems, that makes it even more tempting. So I am wondering how many people that have gotten hacked and have not gotten their lost items restore have broken down and bought gold to try to get themselves restored? I know I am tempted to do so at this curent time, but have been trying to resist hoping that one day Anet will restore my crap.

If ONLY we had authenticators!

lordozone.9167:

Since Anet is unwilling to help restore my items which could easily be tracked by examining all transactions performed on the server I was moved to, it makes it very tempting to spend about $40USD and buy gold to get back to where I was.

Your account got hacked, so you are thinking about paying a hacker to do it again?

Gold sellers are not members in good standing of the Better Business Bureau. They are criminals, you may even end up dealing with the person who hacked your account the first time. You can buy your gold back from him, and when his website puts a keylogger on your computer he can steal it again.

So even after my lengthy reply abotu how it can’t work to ban buyers, people are still saying it’s the best option.

well lotro bans buyers
Yes they do. They also aren’t catching all of them. I know because I know a lot of people who have bought gold and they are still around despite the warning on the launcher. In fact, I would say they haven’t even caught most of them.

The ones they’ve caught are the guys bragging about it or letting it slip in chat or dealing with sellers who couldn’t care less about covering their tracks properly.

Not all gold sellers are created equal. Some are more shady and unscrupulous than others. There are those who treat it as a real business venture and focus on customer retention. All you need to do is go talk to them in game. If they like you, they tell you stuff about how they get around getting detected and how they keep their buyers protected. I have listed some of the ways previously.

Here is one simple way (again).

launder the gold. Split it among various accounts. Give it to the buyer at different times in smaller amounts. always trade something of value during the transaction. <- this is how they operate in LOTRO. The reason you don’t see more gold sellers in lotro is because the value of gold in the game simply isn’t there. You do very few things with gold and the player naturally earns enough from regular play for it not to be an issue. It’s just not profitable for them; though there are still sellers catering to a smaller niche there.

As long as the cash money transaction happens outside the game for the gold purchase, there’s very little you can do to the buyer.

lotusedge.6743:

The humilation would prevent others from buying gold. Maybe it is a little harsh for the icon to always be on the name if you are guilty of buying gold. If you give the gold back or arenanet takes it they can take the icon off your name. Then you would not do it in the future.

If it was a legitimate gold transaction from guild member to guild member or friend to friend it would be easy for arenanet to find out and take the icon off, maybe the icon goes away while the ticket is being processed.

That is you are assuming the system is accurate. It isn’t. I have been banned (albeit reinstated) from nearly every mmorpg I’ve played because either they mistook me for a gold seller and farmer or because some nimrod thought I was one.

My most recent 3 times was in WoW where I got suspended/banned for
1) flagged and identified as gold farmer.
2) Selling Gold.
3) Selling Gold.

In all those instances, I had my account reinstated after I asked them to go check my history. There is no activity there that would warrant this. And in all its irony, after I took a 1 yr break, my account got hacked (even with the authenticator) and THAT hacked account wasn’t banned and was allowed to freely trade and sell gold through my account (not to mention they vendored all my gear which required a full restore from the date I stopped playing-which I’m quite impressed with btw.)

there’s no point in shaming people randomly when the evidence of guilt is shifty at best and wrong at worst. It doesn’t matter if later, they find you innoccent. the way human beings work is, once someone sees you labelled as “insert random illicit offender”, people will always remember them as being that person who did that illegal thing.

It’s a witch hunt and about as accurate as a witch hunt. Did a black cat just run past that house? there’s a witch inside. burn it down!

@ounkeo.9138
Your lengthy reply carries nothing informationally good enough to sway anyone elses opinion concerning banning gold buyers. Banning gold sellers has enough of a history of failed attempts to understand that banning sellers wont work. Banning gold buyers has not been pursued enough to generate a history of success or failure and myself and many others, as you can see, are more than ready to give it a shot.

If you got banned from other games that is those games problems in policing themselves. I also notice the examples you give are all for selling and NOT buying gold. Your logic has a fatal flaw. The examples you give only prove that people can be mistakenly banned for selling gold.

So by that extension it wont matter if ANET bans buyers and sellers because mistakes can be made according to you … .but you are relying on ANET reacting on word of mouth instead of checking things out first. I disagree with that line of thought. I am willing to believe ANET is capable of being deliberate in verification before handing out a decision. There are avenues of appeal for mistakes just as a majority of games have. It doesn’t change this line of thought that it is time to ban gold buyers.

Unrelated side note: I think it’s sort of funny that you could potentially draw parallels between a simulated world in which gold buying is legal and the real world in which the legality of drugs is being debated. The fact that Anet is having trouble competing with and eliminating gold sellers from the market is interesting to me as a potential simulated model for an environment in which certain drugs are legalized. (granted this doesn’t include several other differing supply/demand variables)

But I digress….I have a feeling that Anet just hasn’t gotten around to banning most of the gold sellers and botters yet. I keep seeing the same spammed messages in my mailbox even though I report them each and every time I get one.

I’m not sure what the deal is with that. As for gold buyers I don’t see a great solution for this except to keep banning accounts ruthlessly.

I feel that CCP games’ solution to the same issue in EVE online is a good one.
They also have a real money → gold (ISK) system, where you can trade subscription time cards for gold. The RMTers (Real Money Traders, aka gold sellers) sell at a lower price than whatever the going rate is, but having an official system does help.
CCP doesn’t ban gold buyers, but they do remove that much money from your account. This can send you negative. So if you buy 100g, and spend it, you end up with a negative balance. Can’t buy anything until you farm enough extra to compensate.

I think something similar would work here. Just remove the gold, let the balance go negative. Then they’re not banned, they just can’t waypoint, repair, pay TP sales fees, or buy anything until they’ve made that much gold back. If they buy gold and don’t spend it they’re just out however much money they spent on gold.

Allow players to trade gems in the trading post (setting their own price), like Eve Online does with PLEX, and 90% of the gold sellers and bots will be gone within a week.

The current system (where the gem-gold exchange rate is set by Arena Net, based on some data that no one can see, fed into some algorithm that no one knows) makes gold selling extremely profitable (yes, they do use a lot of stolen accounts, but they don’t even need to; they can just keep buying new copies of the game and still have a profit margin around 75%).

Mike O’Brien specifically mentioned Eve Online and PLEX when describing how gems would work in GW2. Unfortunately, the final implementation is nothing like Eve, and these problems (areas full of bots, endless gold seller spam, etc.) are a consequence of that.

Do it the Eve way (allow trading gems for gold through the trading post) and every player in the game suddenly becomes a direct competitor to the 3rd party gold sellers, reducing their margins to the point where it’s no longer worth it for most.

Exactly as said above. ANET copied EvE Online but not completely and not well enough.

- In EvE the value of the “gems” (PLEX) depends on supply and demand like a true market (that is like the rest of the game). This means that gems would be worth for what they are. Price would indeed drop and go closer to what I call “individual maximum integrity thresold”, that is the point where a normally honest individual decides he “needs” to cheat and buy gold. By making “normally honest” individuals think about cheating twice is already an accomplishment.

- Offenders must be found and punished. There are ways to detect bots (using “points”, that is automated behavioral patterns) well enough to solve 90% of the botting in automatic and leave just 10% to manual, gruesome GM handling.

- Buyers should be punished as well but not with something that will make them unable to play (player retention). Just do – as EvE – and make their wallets negative. Being -50g in wallet IS an harsh punishment.

- Something worth spending gems for should be actually proposed on the gem shops. No, pilot’s googles are not worth. In this EvE has it easy, because their “gems” can be converted in subscription time, which for a subs based game is a great possibility. However ANET don’t seem trying really hard to put something cool on their shop and so far they are not charging for services that are requested by the playerbase (like changing character’s aesthetics).

Ilegal gold buyers should be banned…if you can prove they bought gold, that’s the hardest part; how can you prove they paid an extrenal entity for gold when they could just say it was a gift from a friend…

The way I see it is that you have to eliminate account hacks then it becomes harder and harder for these people to actually make money on selling gold. We need to get the cost of illegal gold up higher than that of GEM gold and the problem will go away.

(As I’m sure has been stated somewhere in the post above me)

Guys my question is, how u think to deal with problem when even reporting bots does nothing. Last group (they farm in packs now) of bots i reported 3 days ago are still at SAME spot doing same thing. My topic where i pointed out that this must be worked on was closed. So if bots are able to keep on for days after they are reported , what is stopping them from making more ?

Mojo.2691:

Anguloke.2706:

Cod Eye.1632:

Remove the ability to trade in-game currency via mail, most of the problem solved.

There was no in game mail in GW1, but selling was rampant in that game also. How do you think they distributed the gold then? All they had to do is send them a message to meet in a zone and trade manual. You don’t stop a thing by doing that.

If I’m not mistaken you can’t trade manually in game.

It is still of my opinion that gold should just not be traded. Either that or a 5 gold gift limit on everyone each month. It’s cool that we can give each other gold but what’s the point? If someone needs gear or items, just buy it and send it to them.

I think given the choice to either trade gold or stop gold spammers, I’d pick the latter.

New accounts are already limited as to how much gold they can email. Blocking the transfer of gold is not an option – many people play with their friends/spouses/partners and want to be able to send gold without being forced to be in a guild. The “Your message has been stopped due to excessive messaging” or whatever the hell it is message is already very annoying. I was trying to email a bunch of stuff to my fiancée last night and it took over 30 minutes – don’t punish legitimate players for the actions of bots/gold sellers (which is what every solution ANet have put into place so far -has- done).

ANet need to

a: make their own conversion rate more competitive
b: increase loot in dungeons and off high level mobs (seriously have you seen the crap that falls from champions, veterans, dungeons?)
c: remove DR it only punishes legitimate players.

Also I do wish everyone would stop using the word “Illegal” as someone who works in law I find it incredibly annoying. Buying gold is not illegal, selling gold is not illegal, breaching the ToS is not illegal. At worst all of the above are breach of contract but not even breach of tort since the maximum penalty is banning of account (and even that is dangerous from ANet’s perspective and is challengeable in court for any Pay to Play game (ask Blizzard who lost a similar case)).

You might not like Gold Sellers/Buyers (I am not particularly fond of them myself) but please do stop accusing them of criminal activity (which is what illegal means – breach of civil tort is unlawful – buying/selling gold is neither).

Having the gold to gem/gem to gold conversion rates decided by players likely won’t have a large affect on third party rmt and it definitely wont stop it completely. EvE has been mentioned as an example of this working yet one search will show that it still has third party rmt. Plex also has a useful purpose- you need it to play the game.

Gems have uses, some people may find what they can buy with them very useful but for most players this is not the case and this is where a problem lies. If you want to make them more useful, aside from cosmetic items what exactly can you do? You could add more boosters, increase their effectiveness, add stated items but these are all advantageous. The game is already pay to win, if you want to increase gem sales without making it more pay to win you would have to rely on cosmetics.

One of the few options which could be effective is reducing demand for gold.

What I find particularly interesting from a legal standpoint is the state of play with regards to anti-trust. From a legal perspective it is more likely that ANet/Blizzard et al are in breach of anti-trust laws by banning gold sellers than the gold sellers are in breach of any laws. I suspect it is only a matter of time before a group of these gold selling companies band together their resources and file a lawsuit against one of the big MMO companies on anti-trust grounds.

And speaking as someone who knows the FTC and the EU Commission very well indeed, I suspect that any such challenge would stand a very good chance of succeeding.

Paladine.6082:

What I find particularly interesting from a legal standpoint is the state of play with regards to anti-trust. From a legal perspective it is more likely that ANet/Blizzard et al are in breach of anti-trust laws by banning gold sellers than the gold sellers are in breach of any laws. I suspect it is only a matter of time before a group of these gold selling companies band together their resources and file a lawsuit against one of the big MMO companies on anti-trust grounds.

And speaking as someone who knows the FTC and the EU Commission very well indeed, I suspect that any such challenge would stand a very good chance of succeeding.

Realistically? No. I’m not sure about ANet, but Blizzard can definitely afford legal immunity the best lawyers.

Besides, the boilerplate EULA for practically every online game is that the publisher/developer reserves the right to terminate your account for any reason*. While I’ve heard it gets trickier in the EU, at least here in the US, that’s good enough for just about any judge.

* And I see no problem with that. Do we really need a substantial burden of proof for banning bots?

GranoblasticMan.2514:

Paladine.6082:

What I find particularly interesting from a legal standpoint is the state of play with regards to anti-trust. From a legal perspective it is more likely that ANet/Blizzard et al are in breach of anti-trust laws by banning gold sellers than the gold sellers are in breach of any laws. I suspect it is only a matter of time before a group of these gold selling companies band together their resources and file a lawsuit against one of the big MMO companies on anti-trust grounds.

And speaking as someone who knows the FTC and the EU Commission very well indeed, I suspect that any such challenge would stand a very good chance of succeeding.

Realistically? No. I’m not sure about ANet, but Blizzard can definitely afford legal immunity the best lawyers.

Besides, the boilerplate EULA for practically every online game is that the publisher/developer reserves the right to terminate your account for any reason*. While I’ve heard it gets trickier in the EU, at least here in the US, that’s good enough for just about any judge.

* And I see no problem with that. Do we really need a substantial burden of proof for banning bots?

You are making the mistake that many make in that you are assuming a EULA stands up in law and it doesn’t always. Blizzard lost 1 case and have settled numerous others and that is just for banned accounts.

When you start to look at it from anti-trust perspective it gets even more interesting as I posted above.

No company by law has the right to prevent other entities from doing business by abusing their market position (or give themselves an unfair market advantage). The fact that ANet sell gems for real world currency and allow players to convert those gems into gold is a direct real to virtual exchange – they profit from this, it is a legal business. By banning other entities that try to do the same, they are giving themselves an unfair market advantage and preventing other companies from doing business – it is the very definition of anti-trust.

As I said I have worked directly with the FTC and EU Commission and know them very well – I also know one of the lawyers who worked on the Microsoft vs DoJ anti-trust case so I will have a chat with him about this, I am sure he will find it interesting.

I am just interested as someone who works in law and plays this game and as I said, I think it is only a matter of time before the gold buying companies pool their resources and file suit.

yarn

Having the gold to gem/gem to gold conversion rates decided by players likely won’t have a large affect on third party rmt and it definitely wont stop it completely. EvE has been mentioned as an example of this working yet one search will show that it still has third party rmt. Plex also has a useful purpose- you need it to play the game

It squashed it by 70%.
Do you prefer RMT squashed by “just” 70% or go on like now, with RTM totally free, rampant and laughing?

@Paladine

Assuming you are technically correct, there is a difference between Gold sellers using hacked accounts to obtain their gold then selling through what you claim is a legal channel.

It is like buying stolen goods then laundering it through Amazon.

In either case the problem is that genuine players are being affected by the incompetency of Anets handling of the issue. DR for genuine players trying to get gear, or over priced Gem>G conversion.

NinjaKnight.1340:

@Paladine

Assuming you are technically correct, there is a difference between Gold sellers using hacked accounts to obtain their gold then selling through what you claim is a legal channel.

It is like buying stolen goods then laundering it through Amazon.

In either case the problem is that genuine players are being affected by the incompetency of Anets handling of the issue. DR for genuine players trying to get gear, or over priced Gem>G conversion.

You are wrongly assuming that all gold sellers are using hacked accounts. I very much doubt this is the case. Sure there may be some but there are certainly those that aren’t. Of course ANet/Blizzard etc. will play up that urban myth because it creates moral panic but don’t believe everything you read from an entity that has a commercial advantage in making you believe it

As I said, I am no fan of gold sellers or gold buyers and I hate the bots as much as the next guy – but that doesn’t mean they are not legally entitled, neither does it mean ANet (or any other MMO company) have the right to stop them doing business or are handling the bot problem in an efficient and/or satisfactory manner. I am merely posing my thoughts from a legal perspective.

Vaerah.4907:

yarn

Having the gold to gem/gem to gold conversion rates decided by players likely won’t have a large affect on third party rmt and it definitely wont stop it completely. EvE has been mentioned as an example of this working yet one search will show that it still has third party rmt. Plex also has a useful purpose- you need it to play the game

It squashed it by 70%.
Do you prefer RMT squashed by “just” 70% or go on like now, with RTM totally free, rampant and laughing?

What would you add to the shop that is “worth spending gems for”?

yarn.3427:

Vaerah.4907:

yarn

Having the gold to gem/gem to gold conversion rates decided by players likely won’t have a large affect on third party rmt and it definitely wont stop it completely. EvE has been mentioned as an example of this working yet one search will show that it still has third party rmt. Plex also has a useful purpose- you need it to play the game

It squashed it by 70%.
Do you prefer RMT squashed by “just” 70% or go on like now, with RTM totally free, rampant and laughing?

What would you add to the shop that is “worth spending gems for”?

Nice skins for armor and weapons, appearance change items, exclusive pets that you cannot obtain if you didn’t play GW1 or buy the next version up of GW2 etc.

There are plenty of things they could include in the Gem Store to make it more attractive.

There are also changes they could make to existing items – for example, Black Lion Chest Keys are way to expensive and rewards from the chests do not make it even remotely worthwhile buying them.

They could even sell Skill Point packs for crafting purposes (it would create no in game advantage as the items crafted are just the same as Exotics with nicer skins).

Lots and lots of things they -could- do to make Gem Store a more attractive service.

How about nice particle effect addons where you can choose the colour?

So many things they -could- do….

Paladine.6082:

yarn.3427:

Vaerah.4907:

yarn

Having the gold to gem/gem to gold conversion rates decided by players likely won’t have a large affect on third party rmt and it definitely wont stop it completely. EvE has been mentioned as an example of this working yet one search will show that it still has third party rmt. Plex also has a useful purpose- you need it to play the game

It squashed it by 70%.
Do you prefer RMT squashed by “just” 70% or go on like now, with RTM totally free, rampant and laughing?

What would you add to the shop that is “worth spending gems for”?

Nice skins for armor and weapons, appearance change items, exclusive pets that you cannot obtain if you didn’t play GW1 or buy the next version up of GW2 etc.

There are plenty of things they could include in the Gem Store to make it more attractive.

There are also changes they could make to existing items – for example, Black Lion Chest Keys are way to expensive and rewards from the chests do not make it even remotely worthwhile buying them.

They could even sell Skill Point packs for crafting purposes (it would create no in game advantage as the items crafted are just the same as Exotics with nicer skins).

Lots and lots of things they -could- do to make Gem Store a more attractive service.

How about nice particle effect addons where you can choose the colour?

So many things they -could- do….

They could add what you say, but will it be enough?

Paladine.6082:

NinjaKnight.1340:

@Paladine

Assuming you are technically correct, there is a difference between Gold sellers using hacked accounts to obtain their gold then selling through what you claim is a legal channel.

It is like buying stolen goods then laundering it through Amazon.

In either case the problem is that genuine players are being affected by the incompetency of Anets handling of the issue. DR for genuine players trying to get gear, or over priced Gem>G conversion.

You are wrongly assuming that all gold sellers are using hacked accounts. I very much doubt this is the case. Sure there may be some but there are certainly those that aren’t. Of course ANet/Blizzard etc. will play up that urban myth because it creates moral panic but don’t believe everything you read from an entity that has a commercial advantage in making you believe it

As I said, I am no fan of gold sellers or gold buyers and I hate the bots as much as the next guy – but that doesn’t mean they are not legally entitled, neither does it mean ANet (or any other MMO company) have the right to stop them doing business or are handling the bot problem in an efficient and/or satisfactory manner. I am merely posing my thoughts from a legal perspective.

Rofl, did you notice how many spam chats and mails came from hacked accounts? As soon as one got reported and blocked another popped up. Now it doesn’t take a genius to realize that every single one of those accounts was stripped of their gear and Gold.

No doubt their are a few genuine accounts, they need them to provide a legit looking front and to post on forums promoting their cause indirectly. Or to trade on the TP to multiply their Gold.

NinjaKnight.1340:

Paladine.6082:

NinjaKnight.1340:

@Paladine

Assuming you are technically correct, there is a difference between Gold sellers using hacked accounts to obtain their gold then selling through what you claim is a legal channel.

It is like buying stolen goods then laundering it through Amazon.

In either case the problem is that genuine players are being affected by the incompetency of Anets handling of the issue. DR for genuine players trying to get gear, or over priced Gem>G conversion.

You are wrongly assuming that all gold sellers are using hacked accounts. I very much doubt this is the case. Sure there may be some but there are certainly those that aren’t. Of course ANet/Blizzard etc. will play up that urban myth because it creates moral panic but don’t believe everything you read from an entity that has a commercial advantage in making you believe it

As I said, I am no fan of gold sellers or gold buyers and I hate the bots as much as the next guy – but that doesn’t mean they are not legally entitled, neither does it mean ANet (or any other MMO company) have the right to stop them doing business or are handling the bot problem in an efficient and/or satisfactory manner. I am merely posing my thoughts from a legal perspective.

Rofl, did you notice how many spam chats and mails came from hacked accounts? As soon as one got reported and blocked another popped up. Now it doesn’t take a genius to realize that every single one of those accounts was stripped of their gear and Gold.

No doubt their are a few genuine accounts, they need them to provide a legit looking front and to post on forums promoting their cause indirectly. Or to trade on the TP to multiply their Gold.

Most of the emails and spam I see are from fake accounts not hacked – those with names like ASDFASDF – same with the bots. Gold selling is a multi billion dollar industry, they can afford to register legit accounts.

VendettaDFA.9368:

Ok now YOU listen closely. If we all work together… blah! Blah blah blah!

No. Calling pragmatism negativity does not make a completely moronic and illogical plan that mainly consists of loopholes work. I merely tried to point out that, as long as there are player transactions of any kind, you can and will have ways to circumvent anets monitoring. And I’m pretty sure they will not any player bans based on a hunch because of the hustle that would certainly create, that would be the last thing they’d want on the pr side.

You should consider a career in politics though.

Paladine.6082:

NinjaKnight.1340:

Paladine.6082:

NinjaKnight.1340:

@Paladine

Assuming you are technically correct, there is a difference between Gold sellers using hacked accounts to obtain their gold then selling through what you claim is a legal channel.

It is like buying stolen goods then laundering it through Amazon.

In either case the problem is that genuine players are being affected by the incompetency of Anets handling of the issue. DR for genuine players trying to get gear, or over priced Gem>G conversion.

You are wrongly assuming that all gold sellers are using hacked accounts. I very much doubt this is the case. Sure there may be some but there are certainly those that aren’t. Of course ANet/Blizzard etc. will play up that urban myth because it creates moral panic but don’t believe everything you read from an entity that has a commercial advantage in making you believe it

As I said, I am no fan of gold sellers or gold buyers and I hate the bots as much as the next guy – but that doesn’t mean they are not legally entitled, neither does it mean ANet (or any other MMO company) have the right to stop them doing business or are handling the bot problem in an efficient and/or satisfactory manner. I am merely posing my thoughts from a legal perspective.

Rofl, did you notice how many spam chats and mails came from hacked accounts? As soon as one got reported and blocked another popped up. Now it doesn’t take a genius to realize that every single one of those accounts was stripped of their gear and Gold.

No doubt their are a few genuine accounts, they need them to provide a legit looking front and to post on forums promoting their cause indirectly. Or to trade on the TP to multiply their Gold.

Most of the emails and spam I see are from fake accounts not hacked – those with names like ASDFASDF – same with the bots. Gold selling is a multi billion dollar industry, they can afford to register legit accounts.

I see you have been on Wikipedia. Multi billon industry if Wiki is accurate but across ALL the MMOs and world wide. Plus these companies are in it for the profit. Revenues =/= profit. a $60 perma banned account hits hard on the profitability.

And my e-mails, blocked spam chats have very playerish sounding usernames.

Bottom line there is a ton of profit to be made if you hack accounts and steal gold. Why do you think GW2 was hit so dang hard by hacked accounts? Do you really think all the complaints from players and all the anti-hack measures they had to rush to put into place were just for PR?

In another game, I have left guild when guild’s leader confessed that he has bought gold. In process, I lost many friends, but I couldn’t stand with those guys anymore. I think that is generally only way to fight against gold sellers and cheaters – stop playing with those that are buying gold or cheating (and report them). I wonder how many of you is really ready to choose between friendship and your moral code.

In EvE online – there are still lot’s of bots and gold sellers – even when RL —> game currency market is unregulated by CCP. And even, if you could somehow find perfect solution to remove gold sellers, that would still leave cheaters and those who are selling their max level characters.

NinjaKnight.1340:

Paladine.6082:

NinjaKnight.1340:

Paladine.6082:

NinjaKnight.1340:

@Paladine

Assuming you are technically correct, there is a difference between Gold sellers using hacked accounts to obtain their gold then selling through what you claim is a legal channel.

It is like buying stolen goods then laundering it through Amazon.

In either case the problem is that genuine players are being affected by the incompetency of Anets handling of the issue. DR for genuine players trying to get gear, or over priced Gem>G conversion.

You are wrongly assuming that all gold sellers are using hacked accounts. I very much doubt this is the case. Sure there may be some but there are certainly those that aren’t. Of course ANet/Blizzard etc. will play up that urban myth because it creates moral panic but don’t believe everything you read from an entity that has a commercial advantage in making you believe it

As I said, I am no fan of gold sellers or gold buyers and I hate the bots as much as the next guy – but that doesn’t mean they are not legally entitled, neither does it mean ANet (or any other MMO company) have the right to stop them doing business or are handling the bot problem in an efficient and/or satisfactory manner. I am merely posing my thoughts from a legal perspective.

Rofl, did you notice how many spam chats and mails came from hacked accounts? As soon as one got reported and blocked another popped up. Now it doesn’t take a genius to realize that every single one of those accounts was stripped of their gear and Gold.

No doubt their are a few genuine accounts, they need them to provide a legit looking front and to post on forums promoting their cause indirectly. Or to trade on the TP to multiply their Gold.

Most of the emails and spam I see are from fake accounts not hacked – those with names like ASDFASDF – same with the bots. Gold selling is a multi billion dollar industry, they can afford to register legit accounts.

I see you have been on Wikipedia. Multi billon industry if Wiki is accurate but across ALL the MMOs and world wide. Plus these companies are in it for the profit. Revenues =/= profit. a $60 perma banned account hits hard on the profitability.

And my e-mails, blocked spam chats have very playerish sounding usernames.

Bottom line there is a ton of profit to be made if you hack accounts and steal gold. Why do you think GW2 was hit so dang hard by hacked accounts? Do you really think all the complaints from players and all the anti-hack measures they had to rush to put into place were just for PR?

I didn’t go to Wikipedia actually, it was just an educated guess having some knowledge of how many people play MMOs and understanding the concept of supply and demand.

Also your assumptions are unfounded. You state it is not profitable for a $60 account to be used I would argue it probably is. If they reach a couple of hundred thousand players with their in game spam and just 0.1% of those players buy 10G at $16 a pop that is a net revenue of $3200 (and given how long it takes for ANet to ban these bots it is reasonable to suggest they can reach a substantial percentage of the player base before the account gets banned. Still think it isn’t profitable?

Now add into the equation all the out of game marketing, selling of items as well as gold and the state of the GW2 economy and you would have to be a fool to think it is not profitable.

As I said, undoubtedly some companies are using hacked accounts but to say they all is stretching it a little.

I don’t buy gold from any source, it cheapens my experience. But if I were going to buy it, I’d buy it from ArenaNet, in hopes they’d hire some more people to fix orb hacking and rendering in WvW!

Seriously, people complain about bugs hanging around and not getting fixed, then go buy gold from some thief or sweatshop operation that invests nothing into the game and in fact hurts it.

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

Paladine.6082:

NinjaKnight.1340:

Paladine.6082:

NinjaKnight.1340:

Paladine.6082:

NinjaKnight.1340:

@Paladine

Assuming you are technically correct, there is a difference between Gold sellers using hacked accounts to obtain their gold then selling through what you claim is a legal channel.

It is like buying stolen goods then laundering it through Amazon.

In either case the problem is that genuine players are being affected by the incompetency of Anets handling of the issue. DR for genuine players trying to get gear, or over priced Gem>G conversion.

You are wrongly assuming that all gold sellers are using hacked accounts. I very much doubt this is the case. Sure there may be some but there are certainly those that aren’t. Of course ANet/Blizzard etc. will play up that urban myth because it creates moral panic but don’t believe everything you read from an entity that has a commercial advantage in making you believe it

As I said, I am no fan of gold sellers or gold buyers and I hate the bots as much as the next guy – but that doesn’t mean they are not legally entitled, neither does it mean ANet (or any other MMO company) have the right to stop them doing business or are handling the bot problem in an efficient and/or satisfactory manner. I am merely posing my thoughts from a legal perspective.

Rofl, did you notice how many spam chats and mails came from hacked accounts? As soon as one got reported and blocked another popped up. Now it doesn’t take a genius to realize that every single one of those accounts was stripped of their gear and Gold.

No doubt their are a few genuine accounts, they need them to provide a legit looking front and to post on forums promoting their cause indirectly. Or to trade on the TP to multiply their Gold.

Most of the emails and spam I see are from fake accounts not hacked – those with names like ASDFASDF – same with the bots. Gold selling is a multi billion dollar industry, they can afford to register legit accounts.

I see you have been on Wikipedia. Multi billon industry if Wiki is accurate but across ALL the MMOs and world wide. Plus these companies are in it for the profit. Revenues =/= profit. a $60 perma banned account hits hard on the profitability.

And my e-mails, blocked spam chats have very playerish sounding usernames.

Bottom line there is a ton of profit to be made if you hack accounts and steal gold. Why do you think GW2 was hit so dang hard by hacked accounts? Do you really think all the complaints from players and all the anti-hack measures they had to rush to put into place were just for PR?

I didn’t go to Wikipedia actually, it was just an educated guess having some knowledge of how many people play MMOs and understanding the concept of supply and demand.

Also your assumptions are unfounded. You state it is not profitable for a $60 account to be used I would argue it probably is. If they reach a couple of hundred thousand players with their in game spam and just 0.1% of those players buy 10G at $16 a pop that is a net revenue of $3200 (and given how long it takes for ANet to ban these bots it is reasonable to suggest they can reach a substantial percentage of the player base before the account gets banned. Still think it isn’t profitable?

Now add into the equation all the out of game marketing, selling of items as well as gold and the state of the GW2 economy and you would have to be a fool to think it is not profitable.

As I said, undoubtedly some companies are using hacked accounts but to say they all is stretching it a little.

Your assumptions are simply that. You ASSUME it is a 0.1 response rate. I would argue it is MUCH lower. Besides spamming chat and e-mails they need accounts to be botting too. Also, the ave wage according to Wikipedia is around $145US per month per person (in China) so one account is almost half a persons wage. A huge percentage of cost compared to manpower.

BTW. I have a lot of experience with internet marketing. Spam (not opt-in) marketing has a horrendously low response rate. People are conditioned to simply delete spam mail. Add to that the fact that there is so much talk of the ability to track and eventually permaban Gold buyers, only the dumbest players with more money than sense would respond.