The following is a way to greatly hinder gold sellers and buyers while not hindering guilds. Though this idea does hinder gold sellers by slowing their ability to transfer money, it will not stop ability to sell or transfer gold, but does allow ANet to track their sales with more ease.
- Convert money account wide. No more separate coin counts per character. All money is account wide and each character can spend that gold and all money earned is put to this total.
There really is no reason to have money restricted to each character. I do not see any player buying Bank Access Express items from the BLTC just to transfer gold between their characters when they can just recall to town and do it at one of the bank NPCs. This “feature” really serves no purpose in a modern MMOs where every character is tied to a single account name accessible to any player.
- Money can not be sent through the mail. No more mailing money to players. You are still able to put money into the guild bank and others can withdraw that money, but players can no longer mail money to each other.
Note: Players can join more than one guild at a time and can switch between guilds anytime they wish.
By only allowing money to be transferred between characters through a guild bank, ANet gains more control over the ability to transfer gold and can more readily track and ban accounts that purchase gold from gold sellers.
This slows gold sellers down because now there are multiple steps to transfer money.
First a guild has to be created (costs money). Then a guild has to wait through the progression period so guild banks can be accessed (costs money and takes time). Then the gold sellers have to wait for the gold purchaser to get online, invite them to a guild, transfer the money to the guild bank and make sure only that person can access the gold so no other player can take it. This is a huge inconvenience to both the gold sellers and players that purchase gold.
Restricting gold transfers to only guild banks also allows ANet to track these guilds and bank transfers and ban any accounts which have access and retrieved gold from those accounts.
Arguments against the restriction of mailing money:
- I like mailing money to friends for crafting or so they can purchase items off the venders. You can send them the items directly or have them join your guild and using the guild bank allow them to withdraw as much gold as needed.
- I want to purchase an item from a player without going through the Trade Post. You can still do this, have them temporarily join your guild and using the guild bank allow them to withdraw a specified amount of gold. They can still mail the item directly to you.
- I do not have a guild or access to a guild bank. I would suggest creating one, and if you can not afford to create one then you can not afford to send your friend money to begin with.
Why do I care so much about gold sellers and gold buyers? Because they hinder the economy for legitimate players.
Do I want to purchase gold and convert that gold to gems and gain four times my value versus going through ANet? Yes, but I will not because it does not support ANet.
Do I want to convert the gold I have now to gems? Sometimes, but due to the low value I won’t. Why is the value so low? Because there are so many people purchasing gold from illegal sites and converting those to gems that again, legitimate players are being put at a disadvantage.
I dislike gold sellers, they have a negative impact on every part of our economy, and if giving up the ability to freely mail money to other players will help stop them, I am willing to sacrifice a small freedom which can easily be bypassed by using a guild bank.
(edited by illgot.1056)