Guild Wars 2

This is your friendly neighborhood Zera with a public service announcement:

ArenaNet will not reimburse you for any items that you mail to another player as a ‘trade’ for something else even if you get nothing in return. ArenaNet has deliberately designed their game’s economy (no I’m serious, they hired an actual economist to design the entire economy including the gem/gold exchange rates) to exclude player-to-player trading so that you HAD to use the trading post. The trading post is one of many gold sinks in the game.

IF you ‘trade’ *cough*mail*cough* with another player and you do not get the gold/item that you agreed to exchange, it is all on you. ArenaNet will give zero effs about it. Use the trading post to trade your items for coin, or keep your items (or destroy/salvage them, I don’t care.)

And now, we return to our scheduled public broadcasting.

Copyright: Zera
Dawn of time – End of time
All rights reserved

Tom Gore.4035:

Or just use a reliable middle man. Live and learn.

There is no such thing. Don’t lie to these people. They have very little hope as it is.

Meh, by adding a middle man to the action you effectively double the chance of getting scammed.

There is NOTHING stopping a middle man from walking away with the items that both players give them.

Use even gnasherblade – the BLTP !

TPMN.1483:

Use even gnasherblade – the BLTP !

Yes, that’s what I said to do, but using another player as a middle man is a bad idea.

MMOs have a lot of introverts. Some are such extreme cases to the extent that they close off completely thinking nobody could possibly be trustworthy.

Tom, your logic is not going to work on these people.

Tom Gore.4035:

Zera Allimatti.2541:

There is NOTHING stopping a middle man from walking away with the items that both players give them.

Other than his reputation, yes. For the major TP players their reputation is worth a lot more than a puny precursor or even a legendary.

Middle Men are used in all MMOs to do major transactions where the in-game system is either too expensive or limits the trade in other ways (such as maximum amounts).

Reputation doesn’t matter, there is still nothing stopping the middle man from doing what I described. Sure, maybe this Wanton guy or whatever his name is has a good reputation, but I this person is a nobody to me and as such cannot be trusted.

Use the trading post.

Tom Gore.4035:

Zera Allimatti.2541:

Tom Gore.4035:

Or just use a reliable middle man. Live and learn.

There is no such thing. Don’t lie to these people. They have very little hope as it is.

Since ANet’s policy is to ban scammers (even if they don’t return the goods) I’m pretty sure you could use a reputable BLTC trader like Wanze (just as an example, don’t know if he does middle man trading) without much risk.

Obviously the risk is always there for using anything other than the TP, but it can be mitigated to be almost risk-free.

Could be, of course, that the middle men charge almost the same premium as the BLTC, but that’s another discussion.

Before people start contacting me in game to be a middle man:

I am happy to help out, for a fee of 20%.

Seriously, use the TP, its fair for everybody and serves a purpose (gold sink).
I wont dedicate any time for people that want to circumnavigate a system that was implemented for their protection, promote map spam and be involved in a practice that usually ends up in forum infractions and in game bans.

I get enough people that i dont know asking me in game for advice on which my time is better spent.

Tom Gore.4035:

Since ANet’s policy is to ban scammers (even if they don’t return the goods) I’m pretty sure you could use a reputable BLTC trader like Wanze (just as an example, don’t know if he does middle man trading) without much risk.

maybe he’s rich for a reason other than what you think.
j/k, he knows his TP stuff well and if he didn’t get rich off trading, he should go try it as he’d do well.

You should think of p2p trades like the Dothraki (Game of Thrones) think of trades: “I give you something, you can then choose if you want to give me something, I can then choose if I ever want to give you anything ever again”

There are people I know and trust.

There are people you know and trust.

But if we don’t know or trust each other, then I don’t see how we’re going to find a reliable mediator that we both mutually know and trust.

If only there were some sort of TRADING service in-game, where you could POST your items for gold…

Isn’t this thread going a little off-topic?

Also, I believe that advertising yourself as a middleman comes under “grey-market”… which is against the forum rules.

Trading by mail to avoid TP fees has a 10% chance to result in a 100% listing fee instead, and a 75% chance to result in a long grieving process.

Gaile Gray.6029:

It’s so simple. John said it above: If you want assurance that things will go as you intend, use the Trading Post. If you’re worried about the fees, make an offer on something that is somewhat below full price. Consider the savings on that your “pay back” for fees.

I’m not a designer, but you know what? When I heard about the development of the TP, the first thing I heard wasn’t “It’s a great gold sink!” but rather “It’s a way to keep transactions legitimate, to protect players and make sure their transactions go through properly.” I’ll be honest, the TP also helps us reduce customer support costs, because if there are fewer scammers the CS team is not researching bad guys and gals and answering tickets about scams. But really, as far as I saw it, the first consideration was… you! You and your satisfaction with each and every trade and transaction.

I use the TP about 10 times every day, and it works. I turn a blind eye to the fees because I consider them my insurance for a successful transaction. And I seldom buy instantly because, well, I like to save a few coppers as much as anyone and I sort of like the whole “Will I get it for that price?” experience.

I encourage you guys to stop looking for work-arounds, likely third-parties, candidates for how to “beat the system,” etc.

The TP system is solid — use it.

So is the system used by WoW and many other games that provide safe player to player interaction, and a similar TP/AH.

Like other posts on this forum about inflation, the tp seems to serve the gem store and whales more than the community when you see items reaching 1-4k gold, and single t6 materials reaching 60s-1g, it’s obscene.

It’s a little more than saving a few coppers.