Guild Wars 2

Let’s make it short:

Wanted to buy ectoplasm, made a leap of faith ‘cause there is no trade window and sent the money – of course the player went offline. Gold lost, no items recieved. So I was curious and wrote to the support, interested if they’re doing something about such a blatant scam. After all, the deal was documented via screens.

Short answer: No, they don’t.

Long answer: No help at loss of stuff no matter what kind or circumstances (wich seems to include griefing and scamming as well), thanks for your understanding, there’s a ton of useless links on totally unrelated matters have fun and never bother as again, etc, etc.

Screenshots, but beware: It’s krautspeak, it’s highly unlikeley for your to understand more then a bunch of words. Independent of the language of the server where it happened, I felt it’s interesting for everyone on every server, since it’s been an official response to that matter.

[Moderator edit] This post has been edited to remove personally identifying information

you can buy ectos via the trading post.

Why would you expect them to waste resources on this?

YOU took a big risk trusting a player instead of using the market. The risk turned out badly – move on.

One of the reasons there’s no trading is to prevent scamming. You chose to use the “black market” and as such, the risk is entirely on you.

I thought scams were against the TOS.

You can’t expect ArenaNet to look after all the player-to-player trades. They implemented an entire trading post system to handle this stuff. That’s why it’s there.

They can’t even afford GM’s and you want them to use the 5 or 6 specialists they have on payroll to look into some 18 silver ectos lawl.

A trade window is not the solution. It is only another opportunity for scammers to scam unsuspecting players. I have yet to see a game that uses player to player trading without having chat filled with “so and so player ripped me off blah-blah”. Sorry if it sounds harsh but the only secure method to get your desired goods is the trading post. If you enter into a mail to mail trade, you are accepting all possible outcomes, good or bad, in advance.

In GW1 both players got to see what the other was giving them at the same time, and both had to confirm it again if any changes were made. I think they intentionally didn’t include that to force people to use the TP instead, which is rather… yeah. People still got scammed in GW1 if they were in a hurry and didn’t check what was being exchanged, but it was their own fault, in that case.

You can’t trade directly with other players in this game, you can only gift them something. You gifted him your money, and were hoping he would be kind enough to gift you some items back. He chose not to, and he was never required to. Hopefully this will serve as an example to other players.

For some people scamming is they way they play the game. To scam is part of the reason they paid sixty bucks for the game and is how they have fun. Maybe he is role playing a thief idk.

This isn’t right. Trading and the possibility of mail scamming has been discussed on these forums before, and a staff member outright said that scamming via mail as discussed in the OP is against the rules and, paraphrasing a little bit here, will be handled – to the victim’s benefit – by support.
(Though, doing a couple quick search of the forums, I don’t see an official staff post on this anymore, which makes me wonder if the post was removed. It’s also possible I am using the wrong search terms.)

In fact, there’s an ingame option to report for scamming; of course contacting support via a ticket will, I imagine, get you a quicker response and solution.

I can’t understand German so I don’t know exactly what support said to you, but based on your description, something’s messed up.

I’d love to see an official staff response on this.

If you have screenshots of the conversation where you both agree to a trade through the mail, then it isn`t hard to see that the guy got shafted. The only reason they don`t have trade in the game is because they want to monitor everything easilly and control it. Having a no trade system makes it very difficult for gold sellers to move gold from player to player. They can scan ingame mails to detect what`s attached and view the relationship history between the two involved to make it even harder on gold sellers.

You should get your coin back and the thief should be banned.

there is always a huge risk when you do character to character trades. If you have played MMORPG’s long enough (especially the early days), you learn quickly not to do it if at all possible and there are other alternatives.

the trading post is a viable place to buy your items. You took the risk, probably because he offered a much lower price, and the risk didn’t pay off. Anet isn’t the police in this sense. they clearly have the TP just so these things are minimised.

their task is more broad than whether you got scammed or not on a 1 to 1 trade. That is for you and that individual to settle. Had the other party used a 3rd party program or developed a system to scam, then I can see Anet getting involved. Otherwise, it’s between you and him.

And how exactly is he gonna settle it with the other guy? He will just be put on the thiefs block list. If someone is downright dishonest in a game and does something to cheat someone out of something, then he should be banned. Even moreso if they had an agreement and screenshots were taken as proof just in case something like this should ever happen. I don`t think Anet wants dishonest thieving people ruining the game for other people, so I think they will make it a policy to step in and take care of buisness. They don`t want a population like that to grow where people think it`s ok they can cheat and scam and get away with it.

Never trust people you don’t know.

It’s a good basic rule to remember both online and offline :P