Guild Wars 2

New to the forums. Hope this is in the right place
TL;DR version at bottom

I’ve been trying to get a girl that I’ve been dating to give Guild Wars 2 a try but she spent so much on online games in the past that she just refuses to buy it (or even let me buy it for her) unless she knows she’s going to like it. Unfortunately, it’s a long distance relationship and I only see her once every few months. Last night I tried screen sharing through Skype and it was just a disaster and did a horrible job at conveying why Guild Wars 2.

The only way I think that I can get her to like this game is if she tries it first hand. So I ran a search on these forums using Google and found that it’s been almost a year since the last trial and the general downside was that it would increase gold spamming. Therefore I think a way to counter this is maybe implementing a referral type trial system. So here is how I think the system should work.

First as the name kind of implies, only those that have already purchased the game can send someone a trial which lowers the amount of gold spammers making accounts. The trial should probably last about 3 days.

Then make sure that they agree that if the person they referred is ever banned for gold spamming during the trial period, the referee’s account is also banned as well loses referring privileges for half a year (or more depending on number of repeated occurrences). That means the referee is responsible for their friends.

Finally, the referee’s account has to be at least 3 months old to refer someone and they can only send 1 referral 3 months after their last.

With this system, I think we can get more players to join while at the same time lowering the amount of gold spamming that comes when ArenaNet does trial periods. In my opinion, Guild Wars 2 really needs a lot more trial periods. Even I wasn’t sure the game was right for me when I joined. That’s why I think such a system really would be helpful.

TL;DR
Trial System with following restrictions:

• GW2 players can send a referral to a friend
• Trial will last 3 days
• If person referred is banned for gold spamming during trial, so is referee loses referring privileges
• Has to have been a member for 3 months to send out trial invites
• One referral per 3 months after the last

I approve of this idea. The game should have a trial for friend’s of players.

Dark.1208:

• If person referred is banned for gold spamming during trial, so is referee

No. Just. Don’t.
Collective punishment is not a good approach to deter this behavior as your friends or whosoever can try to get you banned out of spite. Instead, permanently remove the referral privileges.

Trial Accounts will come, see reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2aryqt/datamining_upcoming_features_from_entanglement/

Ettanin.8271:

Dark.1208:

• If person referred is banned for gold spamming during trial, so is referee

No. Just. Don’t.
Collective punishment is not a good approach to deter this behavior as your friends or whosoever can try to get you banned out of spite. Instead, permanently remove the referral privileges.

Hmm.. I guess that’s a good point.

Trial Accounts will come, see reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2aryqt/datamining_upcoming_features_from_entanglement/

Thanks for that info. I don’t follow reddit and didn’t find anything off a quick Google search. Surprised they already put the text into the game already. Is the no team part supposed mean they can’t join a party or something else?

Anyways… if the trial system they’re planning is really coming then I guess it really defeats the purpose of this thread unless they want to take some of my ideas and combine it with what they already have to improve it.

Ettanin.8271:

Dark.1208:

• If person referred is banned for gold spamming during trial, so is referee

No. Just. Don’t.
Collective punishment is not a good approach to deter this behavior as your friends or whosoever can try to get you banned out of spite. Instead, permanently remove the referral privileges.

What kind of friend do you have ?

RedStar.4218:

What kind of friend do you have ?

I suppose he may have one who may be clueless, or careless or otherwise just plain dumb. He may be a friend of a friend, or a clan-mate from another game or a friend on some social media site, as in not a real-life friend but someone you kinda know who asks you for a trial invite.

Anyway, that’s not the point; the point is that people shouldn’t be held responsible for other people’s actions.

Problem with trial is that Gold Sellers use them also.

People will see an uptick in gold spamming.

Another problem is a trial person can be hacked and the account used to sell gold. That gold seller can then get the account banned, leading to the original referring person being sanctioned.

Trial accounts are usually limited in their interaction with full members. Often times, they can’t trade/mail, as a way to hedge out their influence on the economy.

Problem is, goldspammers can use free accounts to whisper/map chat against TOS with very little consequence.

Rauderi.8706:

Trial accounts are usually limited in their interaction with full members. Often times, they can’t trade/mail, as a way to hedge out their influence on the economy.

Problem is, goldspammers can use free accounts to whisper/map chat against TOS with very little consequence.

You could deny them map chat privileges, and even deny them whisper priveleges to accounts that haven’t added them or something. Its a trial account, so some restrictions are normal i suppose, especially to avoid active problems like this.

I don’t care about gold sellers, they are easily blocked.

However, I do think trial accounts should not be allowed to enter WvW. Too much griefing occurs during trial weekends by actual players getting trial accounts on enemy servers and making WvW a mess.

OP, +100 to the whole idea!

To avoid the gold sellers problem, you can do that trial accounts can’t send pms to anyone besides their referer, and that can’t use map chat. Party chat and guild chat are ok.