Guild Wars 2

Say I have an item I want to sell. And it can be sold on the TP for 500 gold. So 75 gold is going to be taken away from my profit.

If I don’t use the TP though I don’t have to pay that fee. Is it against the terms of service to trade with another player? Will I be penalized as a gold seller?

Is there a way to trade outside of the TP ‘safely’ (without the wrath of anet). I’m not worried about the buyer conning me, I’m worried about anet and the game itself penalizing/watching me. I want to know if there is a method to avoid anet being angry.

Also is there a place on the lfg to advertise this stuff? and if there isn’t do you get penalized for putting it up?

No, it’s not against the TOS to trade with other players. However, trading directly (ie. not using the Trading Post) isn’t supported, and so if either party ends up getting screwed over, Anet will not replace the items or gold. They can discipline the person who did the scamming if they’re reported, but that’s it.

Edit: Sending/receiving a large sum of gold MIGHT trigger some of the RMT flag, but you can contest it with proof of your transaction with another player. Another important thing to keep in mind is that you can only take 500g from your mail and guild bank per week. So, if you try to trade your item for more than 500g, you’ll have to wait for the reset to get the rest of your gold.

RoseofGilead.8907:

No, it’s not against the TOS to trade with other players. However, trading directly (ie. not using the Trading Post) isn’t supported, and so if either party ends up getting screwed over, Anet will not replace the items or gold. They can discipline the person who did the scamming if they’re reported, but that’s it.

Edit: Sending/receiving a large sum of gold MIGHT trigger some of the RMT flag, but you can contest it with proof of your transaction with another player. Another important thing to keep in mind is that you can only take 500g from your mail and guild bank per week. So, if you try to trade your item for more than 500g, you’ll have to wait for the reset to get the rest of your gold.

It also wouldn’t hurt to put a blurb in the mail describing why so much money is getting sent…. just in case the item/money does trigger on ANet’s radar, at least there’s some additional context for them to have when they’re initially looking into it.

~EW

So if I’m trading a weapon to another player for 600 gold. The other player will be able to send 600 in the mail. I will get 500 gold immediately, and the other 100 at the start of the next week? Or do they have to send 500 gold one week…..then in another separate mail send the rest the next week?

And I should put a blurb saying I sold this to them and I’m not a gold trader?

Putting that in the LFG would fall under LFG abuse. That will definitely get you in trouble. Spamming in map chat isn’t likely to end any better.

Cerby.1069:

So if I’m trading a weapon to another player for 600 gold. The other player will be able to send 600 in the mail. I will get 500 gold immediately, and the other 100 at the start of the next week? Or do they have to send 500 gold one week…..then in another separate mail send the rest the next week?

And I should put a blurb saying I sold this to them and I’m not a gold trader?

Whenever you recieve more han 500g in one week you will partially take the money form the mail and the rest will wait in your inbox until the restriction lifts. Bear in mind that it counts for mail and gild storage combined, meaning you won’t have access to guild gold storage for a week.

As other people have said it’s not against the rules to trade items via mail, people do it all the time (both ‘swapping’ one item for another, trading items for gold and simply sending items or gold to someone and not getting anything in return).

The only ‘catch’ is that Anet don’t support the practice either so if anything goes wrong they won’t help you. They have banned repeat scammers (people who offer to buy/sell something, receive something from another player and then block them and log off) when they were reported but even then the ‘victims’ didn’t get their items or gold back.

Using the LFG tool to advertise items for sale isn’t permitted and can get you reported. You can advertise in map chat, guild chat (if the guild allows it) and other chat channels but people are likely to complain if you’re spamming the same message every few minutes.

In other words there’s nothing to stop you trading this way but Anet do absolutely nothing to support or encourage it. It’s very much in their interest to encourage everyone to use the TP because that gold sink is important to counter gold that’s constantly entering the economy from enemies killed, events completed etc. and because it’s almost impossible to scam someone through the TP and the scams that do exist are generally much less harmful, which saves them a lot of time sorting out support tickets and trying to work out who promised what to who from chat logs.

Just understand that there is nothing that prevent either you or the buyer from not acting on their part. You can send the item to the player, and he can take it and then block you and your item is gone. He might be banned for it, but you wont get your item back. There is no safe way to send stuff in mail and get gold back for it.

One of my buddies used to do most of their trading outside the TP. They never had any issues from ANet.

They developed a reputation, which made it easier to do business with ‘strangers’, since they could trust to send their gold|items first, knowing that my buddy could be relied on to complete the transaction successfully.

Without a reputation of your own, there are a couple of ways around the issue of ensuring that both parties stick to the agreement:

• Just trust the stranger — of all the people I know who trade outside the TP, I only know of one who got burned (and only once).
• Ask a trusted 3rd party — WvW leaders are a good choice.

In the end, you have to ask yourself if it’s really worth the risk. My feeling is that, unless you plan to do this repeatedly, it’s not. For any single transaction, the TP fees are worth the trouble to ensure that neither party gets scammed.

Anyhow, good luck OP. Please let us know how it turns out.

It won’t get you actioned, but if someone scams you you will not get your stuff back, even if they get banned for scamming.

Anet adopted this policy specifically to discourage people from trading outside the TP, and thus discourage people from filling up LFG and chat channels with market spam.

So you are fully allowed to trade this way, but you trade at your own risk.

High value item prices on the TP are generally adjusted upward to account for trade fees anyway, so if your item is listed at 600g, consider that its trade value is generally based upon the (taxed) cost of buying its resources or the opportunity cost required in terms of gold over time to farm for it.