Guild Wars 2

wintermute.4096:

Wow, the stubbornness is strong in this one… It is not about a data trail, and it never was, you completely fail at logic.

Ok, listen closely: There is no way to trace a purchase outside of the game, therefore there can be no way to trace it ingame. You would have to entirely block people from transferring money or goods to one another, shut down the trading post and make every single item in the game bound to account to achieve any sense of blocking illegitimate transactions.

Still don’t believe it? Let’s give another practical example: Imagine you were a gold seller, and you know someone is about to ban the people you hand gold to. The simplest way to get around it would simply be to go around town and hand out gold to random strangers, problem solved.

It does not have to be much, so lets be generous and say you hand out 10% of the gold you sell, and you always approach people with the same sentence about how you give up the game and want to give away what you have, and simply make sure your customers are among those people.

If Anet now really proceeded to ban people for taking something from a random stranger, well the kittentorm would be a sight to behold…

And to anyone who now says something among the lines of “well, it would at least drive the black market gold price up!” – No bobo, it won’t. Like, not at all. Because acquiring the actual ingame currency is not much of an issue, and the number of “fake handouts” could be significantly smaller then 10%. Oh, and no, you can’t just message everyone to not take gold from strangers or face the consequences, people are too stupid for that.

Ok now YOU listen closely. They dont have to trace the transaction from outside the game. A known Goldseller is going to be known privately to ANET long before they realize someone is onto them. Also Gold sellers wont cut into their profits by handing out freebies …EVER …. you fail at that logic. They dont care.They just hack another account. The illegal gold buyer is the only one truly at risk and the only one a ban will have a real effect on.Chat logs are just as reviewable as any other data stream so even if a gold-seller were to try your extremely far-fetched scenario ANET has proven deliberate enough in their data gathering to avoid the massive ban of innocents you seem to think will come.

Negativity such as yours is what goldsellers rely on to prevent a proper concerted effort by the community and the game maker to successfully curtail illegal activity. You can either help or not, but when it comes right down to it I would rather go down swinging on the right side of an issue than toss out a “give up you can’t win” viewpoint as you so smugly put forward. Lead , follow, or get out of the way … right is right and wrong is wrong period.

ounkeo.9138:

Gosh you people are delusional, and I mean it from a clinical pov.

Something as “simple” as banning the buyer isn’t as clean or as easy as you think it is. If normal innocent players are get wrongfully banned for botting/gold farming/selling, do you really think banning the buyer will be any more accurate?

Well, Anet has the digital data trail!
Yes they do, and do you honestly think the gold sellers don’t have ways to thwart this rather easily? Ever heard of money laundering? It’s also done for online gold so the system can’t easily or cleanly trace it. You cast that net and a lot of innocent players get taken down as well. Maybe even yourself – and I’m sure you’ll be man enough to just take it on the chin to be banned because it’s “for the greater good.”

they also have an army of hacked accounts through which they use to trade their gold. Not everyone even knows their account is compromised. As long as the accounts are managed properly, the owner of the account is unaware, the transactions are totally legit and Anet would be banning someone who really shouldn’t be banned.

Anet knows who bought gold!
For some instances they do. For other, there’s no clear way to tell due to how the sellers can obfuscate their activities and the actual gold data.

Here’s one very simple, easy way to defeat the system. Ask the buyer to trade an item of value for which the seller will “buy it from you for gold”. For larger transactions, you make multiple trades over the course of days/weeks using different items and different accounts with the items being valued in the game market (auction house etc – though it could work with just low end items as well). Technically, this is a legit trade.

Anet also has no evidence that real cash changed hands between seller and buyer because the real cash is transacted outside the game; hence it is a legit trade. There is no way to tell.

well, they have data to show pattern on account X that it is a Gold seller
Sure, I’m sure they do but that data isn’t an all knowing, all seeing overmind. It’s data that still has to be interpreted and often, the interpretation of such data is an artform iself susceptible to bias and human error.

Also, just because that account is flagged as a seller, does not mean that the trade he just made is illegal. It could be a legit trade. the system can’t know that. It doesn’t know that. Nor would a live GM.

if gold seller kills a mob and an epic item drops (for example) and sells it to another player, that is a legit trade. Just because his account is a gold trade/sell account doesn’t mean some of his transactions with other people aren’t legit. You know, like how in real life, a drug dealer going into 7-11 to buy a pack of gum is still making a legit transaction.

the way you guys are going on, the poor cashier would be considered a drug buyer when all that happened was the drug dealer bought gum from him.

THIS IS WHY THEY DON’T BAN BUYERS – PRACTICALLY, THEY CAN’T DO IT.

In RL, drugs are illegal. These guys get busted because they get caught with the contraband or trying to trade the contraband. in-game gold is NOT contraband. Simply because one has gold (even a lot of it) isn’t illegal or immoral. All any developer can do is to build a pattern based on history and make an educated guess on it. Some will be more obvious than others. And even with that info, it’s still an educated guess – they still don’t have hard evidence of actual RL money trade. It’s just a pattern. And even then, that pattern can’t distinguish between a legit trade a non legit trade.

Well I say they have the ability to follow their own digital data trail and you say its not that easy. What you express is merely YOUR opinion of what can or can’t be done as you are not part of ANET. Neither am I , but at least what I am proposing has some teeth to it because gold buying is just as much a violation of the TOC or terms of agreement as gold selling.

If it were so hard to decipher the data trail then ANET would not have been able to confidently ban around 1000 accounts who were exploiting the Karma vendor now would they. Seems to me they are quite up to the task. This is one example that your logic of what ANET is not able or willing to do is apparently flawed.

Very constructive and for the most part civil discussion of this topic. Let me clarify a few things or simplify, as it were.
1. I feel it is much more effective to ban illegal gold buyers in addition to the sellers. The reason is a seller hacks and steals accounts and experiences little if any setback. An illegal gold buyer will be spending 60 real dollars to buy a new copy of GW2 if he wants to play again. Thats a real concrete setback that would make you think twice about dealing with gold-sellers.
2. Tranactions between legitimate players would not be in jeopardy as only transactions involving known gold-seller accounts need to be investigated. The point of possibly selling garbage through the TP to complete a transaction was brought up. Again since this posting originated with a known gold-seller it could be investigated.
3. If , as a player you are aware that there is a very real chance buying illegal gold will cost you your account, you will not be as likely to try this.
4. The residual effects are : A drop in hacked accounts when the demand for illegal gold drops because the goldsellers don’t care what game they make money off of as long as they make money. They will migrate to a less “secure” game. If the gold-sellers don’t see an EASY dollar to be made and leave, then things like chat suppression go away as chat spam is no longer a major issue. The sweet spot areas that were intended to reward legitimate players can begin to thrive again as the anti-farm code could possibly be looked at and maybe loosened. Many things that negatively affected legitimate players were put in place due primarily to botters that generated gold for their illegal gold selling and spammers to advertise their illegal gold selling. Gold selling has been next to impossible to control because banning only the sellers has proven over and over again in game after game to be futile. Banning the buyer and killing the demand is the real “silver bullet” solution that from what I have read in this thread only a couple games have done. It worked too according to the info posted in this thread.
On a closing note I am happy to have seen a RED response in this topic. It shows they are listening. Some of you dismissed Gaile’s comment but I for one do not. There is a required decorum for the professionals who represent ANET when they respond in a thread. Read her comment again ….. it’s all said very politely but it is there… don’t ignore the TOC.

@ lurinna.4306 How much bang for your buck do you get if your account is banned? “x” times more gold for your dollar is worthless if you have no account to play on. Gaile did point out that it is a violation of TOC. So to me ANET is well within their right to ban an illegal gold buyer. As far as your scenario of a setup goes, it won’t work. If the person sending the money to the player has come by it legitimately it won’t be flagged. Only transactions involving known Gold-seller account will be flagged for investigation. In the end the person receiving the money has the option of returning it. Honest players will……. and if it is known that illegal gold-buyers will get banned, even slightly shady players will opt to protect their priviledge to play.

Pandemoniac.4739:

BrienBear.6073:

No game, as far as I’m aware, has ever banned buyers. See, here’s the thing. Those buyers, they’re also customers of ANet. Those buyers, I’d assume, will continue to play longer because they have their (wrongly acquired) gold. So as much as it sucks, it’s somewhat counter-productive to the game-makers to actually kill the buyers.

This only applies to games with a subscription. Having players that buy gold outside of the game then use that gold to inflate prices on the TP or buy gems would be bad for the game.

The only reasons I see to not go after the buyers are that it is difficult to distinguish them from innocent players who might have traded with and account before it was compromised, or that closing the holes gold farmers are exploiting to make their gold is consuming most of the resources ANet has to dedicate to the problem right now. I hope we’ll see some action against the buyers once the bigger fish are fried.

The ability to distinguish gold buyers and legitimate players is easy enough for ANET. It will be easily apparent whether a standard account trade or a goldseller trade has occurred by timeframe and size of trade. Trades occurring with an account before it was identified as compromised would not be open to a ban. Fish will die faster if the is no water to swim in ….. no buyers. ANET will expend less resources in closing gold farmer exploits because with the gold farmers gone, a regular player is not going to “bot” an area. They will tend to play the game as intended. I view this method as a better solution to many of the botting and gold selling issues out there. It will be much less intrusive to legitimate players as well.

Promega.7628:

Remove the ability to transfer gold/items between players. Problem solved.

Create systems where players can still contribute to guild upgrades and commander etc.

Sorry , but any solution that punishes 99% for the actions of 1% is not a proper solution.

@ Evil.9061 At a more fundamental level if the buyer understands that getting something for less through illegal methods comes with a high risk of losing that something plus more in penalty,then that is not odd at all. Gold sellers and botters have almost limitless methods of illegally securing accounts in order to sell to buyers who have gotten used to violating TOC with almost no chance of punishment. How many buyers have those same methods of gaining new accounts. I would propose next to none, otherwise they wouldn’t need to do business with the gold seller in the first place. End the demand to end the supply. Nothing odd to that at all either.

Manifoldgodhead.2356:

The full might Blizzard had spent the better part of two decades combatting Real Money Trading and failed. A War on Gold Farming is like the War on Terror it will never end because you are attempting eradicate an idea. It’s impossible.

The full might of blizzard NEVER landed on the gold buyer. ANET is not Blizzard. I see no real money auction house run by ANET. Another difference, I DO believe ANET listens to its players. Blizzard stopped effectively doing that after Activision absorbed Blizzard and dissolved Blizz North. I could say more but thats off-thread.

Cyrus.8261:

I’ve wondered about this too, why not take action against the gold buyers? Someone else had a good answer to that though:

It’s almost impossible to do this without harming innocent players as collateral damage.
If Anet bans players that receive gold in the mail, RMTs could simply start mailing random players gold. Sure, you can post on the forum that people should return the mail, but people are gonna be banned undeservedly.

Another example: suppose I finally convince my RL friend to buy GW2. To get him started I mail him a few gold. Bam! Banned!

The bad PR and whinestorm this will create by far outweighs the benefits.

This seems to be a very extreme course of action and one I don’t believe profit oriented gold-sellers would be willing to try. On top of that we a already receiving ingame gold-seller email spam that include 1 copper. ANET has already stated take the copper and report. That course of action can easily be reviewed and eliminated by ANET. I would also ask what the benefit would be to a gold seller to do this and possibly eliminate his own customer base?

BrienBear.6073:

No game, as far as I’m aware, has ever banned buyers. See, here’s the thing. Those buyers, they’re also customers of ANet. Those buyers, I’d assume, will continue to play longer because they have their (wrongly acquired) gold. So as much as it sucks, it’s somewhat counter-productive to the game-makers to actually kill the buyers.

No game has banned buyers and no game has eliminated a majority of gold-sellers. See the connection? I will also put forward that ANET did ban the Karma exploiters who WERE also ANET customers. Do we split hairs or uphold the TOC?

Cyrus.8261:

I’ve wondered about this too, why not take action against the gold buyers? Someone else had a good answer to that though:

It’s almost impossible to do this without harming innocent players as collateral damage.
If Anet bans players that receive gold in the mail, RMTs could simply start mailing random players gold. Sure, you can post on the forum that people should return the mail, but people are gonna be banned undeservedly.

Another example: suppose I finally convince my RL friend to buy GW2. To get him started I mail him a few gold. Bam! Banned!

The bad PR and whinestorm this will create by far outweighs the benefits.

You are not an illegal gold-seller that has been banned by ANET therefore your transactions will not be flagged

Bots are created to unfairly create income and spam advertise in channels for illegal gold sellers. This is understood by all players so it really doesn’t need pounded on. We all understand it is a violation of TOC and a bannable offense as well as draining server resources that should be intilized by honest players.

After reading the official post on botting and what ANET is doing about it I wish to bring up one point. While satisfied with your focus on gold-sellers, I see nothing about what you propose to do about gold buyers. Gold buyers are the cause of the issue. If there is no demand for a product, the product ceases to exist.
ANET provides a method to legally purchase gold through the TP. There is no reason to be lenient on illegal gold buyers. If you can identify and ban gold-sellers and botters then you have the capability to follow the electronic paper trail generated by the illegal tranactions and ban the gold buyers accounts as well.
Wrong is wrong , be it buyer or seller and I am asking for and advocating a strong firm response to gold buyers. Just as strong a response as ANET took toward a karma exploit. That is in fact what a gold buyer is doing. It is an exploit of the way the game is intended to be played and a clear violation of TOC. As the saying goes, “Cut off the head and the body will die”. Its time to let some heads roll.

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.

Not everyone believes dominating your fellow man equates to success. How many nations have fallen due to an uprising of the dominated against the so-called successful?
Nietzsche’s time has not stood the test of time.

As far as WoW goes, it does the things it’s meant to do very well. However, since the WoTLK any subsequent expansion has been pretty much more of the same thing with extra cheese. Cheese being roller-coaster Goblins and Kung-Fu Pandas.

Not everyone in the MMO world thinks their success needs to be measured by a bunch of gear-checking, elitist snobs in order to join endgame raids to get better gear. The catch being, in order to get accepted into those raids you pretty much have to already have the top-end gear that you are trying to join the raid to get. If anything better happens to drop you can bet it will end up in the loot master hands and not yours.

In Guild Wars 2 everyone can craft-up, gear-up, and level-up without having to step on the face of someone else who just wants to enjoy their game as well. I consider this version of the MMO to be much better suited for how I choose to play than WoW ever was during the 2 years I played it.

Quote whoever you wish but as your thread states this is your opinion of how you feel an MMO is meant to be played. In my opinion you have plenty of choices already available to you. Unfortunately GW1 wasn’t like that and and GW2 is not going to be like that either. In MY opinion your opinion is outdated and time has passed it by.

Maximus.6945:

@VendettaDFA:
Bots could even drop loot after they’re killed, everything that was farmed.
It would be called PvB(Player vs Bot). Speciall feature, unique to GW2…
How that can be a bad idea?

Well you just changed your idea from PvP to PvB which is entirely different. It also brings us back to the same issue of identifying bot’s. The OP is pointing out the downside of those kind of measures and I tend to agree with the majority of his thread. Personally many of the measures taken so far have impacted actual players more than bots. There should be areas worth farming in any game. A regular player has a need to generate a reasonable amount of coin and mats for gear, crafting. buffs etc… Unfortunately bots dont get bored in an area and will ceaselessly farm it. I report goldsellers and bot activity, but to be blunt, having all avenues of decent resources taken away will impact my personal enjoyment of the game far more than any bot ever will. Report the activity and let ANET do the research and deal with the cause and effect here. The bots and goldsellers are the effect. The cause is the player who is unwilling to play an honest game and does business with goldsellers. Remove the demand by banning the buyer through tracing in-game mail transfers involving known goldseller accounts that are or will soon be banned and then you have a decent handle on the issue.

The area where the blood witch event occurs is a big respawn problem. Barracudas respawn like crazy and appear out of nowhere as well . The vet krait in the cave are just as bad too. I realize the thread refers to non event spawns, but hey if you can’t even get in a shot at the witch with all the fast respawns are you really in the event?

Maximus.6945:

There is one simple solution to boting – open world PvP.
Give it, and i gather my whole guild to terminate them…

Nope … open world PvP is not going to ever solve botting. All it would do is wreck the social aspect of a PvE environment as a bunch of bad attitudes would seek to ruin other players enjoyment of the game. Ask for open PvP servers if you want, but don’t try to use this issue as a thinly veiled excuse for what you are really after.

I gave this game a 10 on a metacritic user review after playing the headstart and a few days of actual release. I wont discuss perfection as I feel a 10 represents the best offer of a genre and not that the game is flawless,because no game is. At present I would still easily rate this game a 9.8 due to the amount of time I still spend in this game compared to any other I have. It is an evolution of the MMO and the best one I have played.

I am not even seeing the point of mobs being invulnerable. Once you inflict damage or initiate a battle by being in range of any mob there shouldn’t be a non-skill caused invulnerability. This happens a lot underwater especially with sharks. It also is happening on land to a lesser degree. Dying due to a sudden breakout of mob invulnerability is unacceptable and surely needs to be considered a bug. I died during the dynamic event in Lornars pass on the imp event at researcher Suki. He was 2 or 3 hits from death and suddenly goes invulnerable and reloads on his summoned imps. If its some sort of server issue where hit tracking messes up and causes him to go invulnerable then so should we until he can take damage again. One way or another this bug needs permanently squashed.

The OP obviously has never dealt with Blizzards “you can’t play on Tuesday” 6-9 hour weekly maintenance. ANET’s updates , regardless of the time of day they roll out, are cake compared to that.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

1. What can be done to bring new players together when they start new maps?
2. Is there anything ANet can do to encourage high level players to go back and revisit these maps without ruining it for low level players?
3. Level 80 players seem to be hurting for stuff to do, has anyone tried organizing a group to help new players feel welcome?

.

1 – Starting areas already group the new players together. Where they go from there is up to them, but heart quests, points of interest, and vistas are in place to encourage each area to be fully explored

2 – ANET levels down high level players who visit lower areas so they really arent ruining anything for low level players. As far as revisiting goes, the map explorations are there for that as well if the player chose to skip content in favor of the “old” MMO method of powerleveling to cap.

3 – Those would be called guilds and among its purposes would be helping new players out.

I personally don’t see any major population drops, but anyone worried about lack of population has the option of choosing or moving to a high population server.

I dont have any problem with a proper review that discusses the pluses and minuses of a game. Yahtzee is not one of those proper reviewers whose opinion I could respect. He outs himself as not being a fan of MMO’s right at the beginning.

Several reviews that have a negative slant to them are also written by those who have similar issues. A critic at forbes who wrote about the PvE weaknesses of GW2 admitted at the start of his article that hes not a PvE fan but prefers PvP .

Well then …. write what you know about. Someone who writes a negative review about something he is consistantly negative towards is obviously not a person whose opinion will matter to me. A troll is a troll….. whether it be in chat , in the forums , or in a supposedly legitimate article.

As an altoholic I always tend to level slower than most in any MMO I play, as I tend to dabble in all classes until I find the one (or two) that suits me best. Kudos to ANET on their design of Guild Wars 2. For the first time in an MMO , players like myself are rewarded for being curious about what might lie in the upper corner of an area instead of being concerned with how fast they can get to cap. I pre-purchased so I could play in the head start and my main has crossed into the 40’s. These are my impressions to this point based on what I have done as an exclusive (to this point) PvE player.

My main is a warrior and by about level 6 had unlocked all weapon skills. I had a blast just grabbing the basic version of each weapon and finding out what could be done. I settled on a rifle/dual axe warrior. Rifle butt to the face……. so satisfying

As these were my first few days playing, all the dynamic events alnog with the personal storyline,map exploration and the overall graphical beauty of the areas were a sensory overload of the best kind. I was confused at times but I didn’t care because I was having too much fun. At first I tried to keep my personal storyline up to date, but since have let it slide because I was more involved with exploration and dynamic events. Plus the scale down still lets me enjoy a relatively good experience in lower areas with just the benefit that my weapons, skills and traits provide. In short my journey to the point I am at now has been quite good with a variety of things to do and many more ways to level up than I have ever had in any other MMO.

The list of things I enjoy is almost endless. Dynamic events top the list. The Swamp Behemoth was my first big one. Being involved with around 50 players taking down that creature was just amazing. Finding another one in my 40’s in a line of centaur events was a surprise, and if I hadn’t been busy looting bodies I might have even missed out, so make sure you don’t rush out of an area too soon. The heart quests, points of interest, and vistas keep you moving around and gaining experience. This works great for me since, as stated, I am not a fan of power leveling. There are many more positives in this game than I can list, but those are my highpoints.

There are a few things I do feel need some attention. Mobs that go invulnerable are currently my most annoying feature. I feel once you engage and inflict damage, unless invulnerable is a skill of that mob, the fight should count all damage inflicted to its conclusion. Blowing your best attacks to an invulnerable response puts you in a bad position. This occurs more underwater than above, but I had to leave a cave due to an invulnerable veteran ice imp who spawned minions.

One event, Blood Witch, has problems to the point of frustration. Barracudas spawn quickly in droves and if you do manage to get into the cave Vet Krait join in the spawnfest with the ‘cudas. I basically had to get in for my POI and then I just left. I hope if this isn’t already fixed, that it will be soon.

There are a few more minor things that could be adjusted, such as more recipe drops from humanoid mobs and more variety in beast drops. Leather and meat drops but I personally havent come up with much, if any wool or other textile basics for crafting. These are very very minor though and don’t affect my overall enjoyment.

I hope everyone else has found their way to enjoy this game. I know I have and I am planning on enjoying all Tyria has to offer for a very long time.

GaileGray.9587:

VendettaDFA.9368:

The Email verify is NOT working as advertised. I didnt sign up to have to verify thru an email link EACH and EVERY time I log in to the game, the website, the forums etc ad nausium. The following is a copy of the email I receive (asterisks added to protect my security in place of true IP address and email link)

A log-in attempt from the following location is currently awaiting your authorization.

Address: **********
City: *********
Region: *
Country: *

This location is approximated based on information provided by your Internet Service Provider. If in doubt, deny the request and try again.

If you are certain this log-in attempt was not made by you, then someone else knows your log-in credentials and you should change your password immediately via Account Management.

For security purposes, we alert you each time your account is accessed from an unrecognized location. To authenticate this log-in attempt, please click the link below:

https://account.guildwars2.com/allow-login?token=************************************************************************************

Need help or have questions about your Guild Wars account? Visit our support site: http://en.support.guildwars2.com/
Thanks!
—The ArenaNet Team

This is my current and ONLY IP address I use. I have a cable connection and a static IP address. Your whole premise for email verification is in the event of a login attempt from a different IP. When I first verified my email you should have stored my IP address as approved and ONLY required email verifications on IP addresses not matching the original. If you can’t fix this issue then I want the verification disabled on my account until such time as it works as advertised. I am SICK of jumping through hoops and opening my browser to access my email EVERY SINGLE TIME I log in to the game or website.

You are correct — that is not working as intended. I’ll pass this along to the devs.

Thanks to one of the other links in this thread I was able to correct this issue. I was not aware of the “Remember this Network” checkbox as it was below the deny and approve access buttons and didn’t show when I followed the link to the page. So basically it does work now, but I would say that a more clear explanation on that link page concerning the available options would have been helpful and would have entirely eliminated my source of frustration.

The Email verify is NOT working as advertised. I didnt sign up to have to verify thru an email link EACH and EVERY time I log in to the game, the website, the forums etc ad nausium. The following is a copy of the email I receive (asterisks added to protect my security in place of true IP address and email link)

A log-in attempt from the following location is currently awaiting your authorization.

Address: **********
City: *********
Region: *
Country: *

This location is approximated based on information provided by your Internet Service Provider. If in doubt, deny the request and try again.

If you are certain this log-in attempt was not made by you, then someone else knows your log-in credentials and you should change your password immediately via Account Management.

For security purposes, we alert you each time your account is accessed from an unrecognized location. To authenticate this log-in attempt, please click the link below:

https://account.guildwars2.com/allow-login?token=************************************************************************************

Need help or have questions about your Guild Wars account? Visit our support site: http://en.support.guildwars2.com/
Thanks!
—The ArenaNet Team

This is my current and ONLY IP address I use. I have a cable connection and a static IP address. Your whole premise for email verification is in the event of a login attempt from a different IP. When I first verified my email you should have stored my IP address as approved and ONLY required email verifications on IP addresses not matching the original. If you can’t fix this issue then I want the verification disabled on my account until such time as it works as advertised. I am SICK of jumping through hoops and opening my browser to access my email EVERY SINGLE TIME I log in to the game or website.

Let the other MMO’s keep the roles. I like this way much more. Learn when to back off and self heal, weapon swap , avoid a hit etc… I’m not gonna say then go play this or that game instead, but I am gonna say don’t expect GW2 to turn into one of THOSE games.

No thanks. Sorry you got hacked, but adding a password within the game isn’t going to magically keep you from being hacked. It will only provide a nuisance that 2 million players shouldnt be dealing with. Strengthen your account password, chalk this one up as a learning experience, and mostly take responsibility for keeping your account secure.

@ Blaeys

Your first misconception – you think i deliberately chose the least efficient method to prove a point that isn’t valid. Well my friend the point I am attempting to prove is that the BETTER alternatives such as the TP need to be allowed to flourish and generate profit instead of getting watered down because someone thinks flipping items shouldn’t be allowed. Letting the TP operate in all aspects is what should be allowed.

What I demonstated was a “scenario” of what could happen if all avenues of decent profit keep getting strangled. You fail to realize I am supporting free enterprise and showing the downside of heavy-handed profit sontrolling based on a few QQ threads about this or that shouldnt be allowed, when in fact it happens in the real world and its legal. I feel some never really got what I was saying in my last paragraph as you were too busy nitpicking my method.

Liarian.4891:

If your idea of farming gold is to farm random mobs and vendor everything you’re doing it wrong, lvl 34 or not

After 2 years of WoW I am very well aware of what proper gold farming is. My experiment was done with the average player in mind and with the parameters I outlined. nothing more. nothing less. This isn’t about how to farm and if you thought it was you are missing the point. It is about keeping enough ways to generate a proper amount of gold to get gear or at least keep getting gear achievable without the GRIND of farming gold.

Eochaidh.4106:

You don’t farm gold at level 34.

I’ll accept that YOU don’t farm gold at level 34, but for the sake of my experiment I did Do I do this all the time? No, but income generation is a concern of players of all levels.

I decided to find out how much coin could be made in one hour by simply farming and vendoring every drop. Exceptions being any item deemed an improvement of my current gear and any dye dropped that would be new to my collection. I was curious about this due to the multitude of threads concerning players ability to generate income vs. cost of desired items. This is nowhere near a scientific study. It’s just my results from a random area with no knowledge of whether or not it was a good farming spot.

I started at level 34 with 79 silver 10 copper. I farmed mostly beast types for one hour. I ended up with a few humanoid mobs from a dynamic event that decided to include me, and one port cost from death due to the ambush at the start of the event.

At the end of one hour I sold every drop to a vendor with the exception of one axe and one dye. I incurred one port charge of 29 copper during that hour. I had 92 silver 50 copper for a one hour total earning of 13 silver and 40 copper. I also leveled up to 35 which made tier 1 cultural armor available.

Based on this, if I were to purchase a fullset of tier one armor, I would need to farm for about 22 hours to get this armor. The downside being by the time I could afford this armor, I might possibly be at a level high enough that tier 1 just wouldn’t cut it anymore.

My thoughts are that if money generating methods continue to be watered down to the point where this is seen as the most efficient method to get your desired items, then we may well be approaching grind territory. I don’t support allowing dungeon farming, I’ll put that out front right now, but there needs to be allowances for money making methods in order to keep some excitement in the game. Let the Trading Post do it’s business as the players see fit. No one has to buy the overpriced and no one should be dictated a min/max price to sell. I want a TP that functions like a real commodities exchange. Economic laws of supply and demand will stabilize the TP given time. Possibly event loot should be examined and adjusted with more of a financial boost as a reward.

I personally feel that the Trading Post , being part of a role-playing MMO, should emulate or play the role of a real world commodities exchange. I think some true perspective need to come into play sooner than later. If it can happen in the real world it should be ok here. Buy low sell high is standard business in markets. Flipping should be allowed. I would like to see a finalization on the Trading Post setup in order to keep from watering down aspects of this game to the point of being mundane. Frankly the OP wants to play this game his way and I have no objection to it.

Crafting exists so players can craft gear and farm mats if they dont want to pay the TP price. If enough people do this instead of buying from the TP, the basic law of supply and demand takes over. The seller sees no demand for his supply at his asking price and must re-evaluate his pricing. There is too much adjusting going on this early. Everyone needs to just let the economy settle before all the knee-jerk adjusting. As it stands right now, I certainly wont sell and I have only bought 2 times, because of all the fiddling and adjusting. Let it run and let the players shape the economy for a while before any more tinkering occurs.

Arsenic Touch.7960:

It does this on all servers. Most people skip it. Good thing there isn’t an achievement for doing every event.

Well then I’m glad I am not the only one having such a problem with this event. I realize it takes a good sized group, but if most people are skipping it like I was thinking as well, then it obviously needs some adjustment. Dumping the instaspawn cudas outside the entrance and eliminating the short respawns on cudas and vet mobs inside should solve this issue and allow for a proper battle. IMO this needs to be set for 8-10 properly leveled players to handle. Thats seems like a small number but I don’t often see large numbers of players in this area, and it may be due to the problem with this event.

Barracudas spawn 3 at a time from nowhere as you get near the cave entrance. This occurs everytime. If you do happen to get inside the veterans respawn in under 30 seconds as well as having more barracudas spawn in. This is an event and the Blood Witch should be the focus , not the secondary mobs, but you’re lucky if you get one shot off before you are covered in instaspawns. At this point I will only swim in to get the poi , dying several times , and once thats done so am I. This can’t be the way its meant to work.

Sorrows Furnace server if that has any bearing.

1. The content and dynamic events are more changing than previous MMOs. In addition ANET has already commented that they are going to add content in the future for free.

2. This MMO is set up to be enjoyed and explored. Those who were level 80 in 3 days , while playing the game their way, most likely missed a ton of endgame quality content. (Side note – played WoW for 2 years – GW2’s method of delivering content is so much better for me)Other MMO’s prior to this had to make the cap harder to cover up the the fact that the only QUALITY content they had was at cap. The other “x” number of levels was just typical grind or step and fetch quests.

3. See answers in 1 and 2. There is 80 levels of endgame content throughout this game , plus pvp , plus WvWvW. This game actually delivers exactly what you are looking for and only asks that you change your perception of what an MMO should be. My perception enjoys this concept of an MMO over the “old” concept.

No you don’t hit the reset button on an economy and expect it to be the cure all. If you want the Trading Post to stabilize then do your part. Someone floods the mkt with underpriced items, take the opportunity to buy it for craft or resale. That’s just good basic business.

Keep in mind you are dealing with a fledgling economic state that hasn’t stabilized. Some avenues of profit may be short-lived and some may not have even opened up yet.

As far as I am concerned this is just the Trading Post operating as intended. Speculation will happen. Someone will try to buy out an item and then resell for a profit. Someone will overpay and try to resell only to see their items value has crashed and they get stuck. It mimics what can happen in an actual commodities or stock market. Get used to it and play your game your way.

Take that into account when you put an item up for sale. Basic business takes ALL costs into account and then sets an appropriate price to yield the expected profit margin. It’s an RPG MMO gang and you have to role play the Trading Post too. Those NPC’s are in the business of providing a service(s) for a fee(s). You always can trade by mail and pray the guy on the other end of the deal doesn’t scam you blind.

Same deal here no inventory shows up in the TP sell window

What you did was basically use a legal exploit to gain an unfair advantage and now that you have to deal with the reality of a fledgling economy its too unfun now. This isn’t an info thread either. I would actually suggest you consider deleting it as its makes no contribution.

Number 1 – No No and again NO inspect. Be social ask them or send a mail. Frankly if I devote time and effort in a “look”, I think its pretty awful to suddenly have 100 clones of my look because of inspect.
Number 4 – Yes I am all for that option. In the middle of a huge brawl it helps me find my character.

All other suggestions I have no strong opinion on for or against.

If the chat system could recognize total chars used in a chat msg and then mute a player who spams the same msg in “x” amount of time, that could be a workable solution. Though it could hamper guild recruiting messages as a side effect.

The statement "I don’t want an inspect feature " is all the argument needed. It’s not a fanboy response. Their is no legitimate reason to include inspect. Send a mail is a perfectly good alternative to inspect and promotes the idea of a social MMO. Stop being sneaky and try to be social if you want to know what someone’s gear set is. Maybe they will tell maybe they won’t but hey thats life

I find it quite fun. I will start at range w my warrior with a rifle …. use my shots until they close in , whack em with the rifle butt switch to axes and finish em off. If they still have some life I can switch back hit w rifle butt and shoot at range all over again.

I am actually hoping that not only is ANET accumulating these accts for a mass ban hammer, that they are also tracking the activities of theses accounts to also ban the accts of people doing the gold purchasing. The best way to stop the sellers is to stop buying and ANET could ban both ends of it quite effectively.

Knighthonor.4061:

Bobby.2918:

It’s two different systems. The thing with the trinity is that it’s been done to death so GW2’s system is a breath of fresh air.

non trinity been done to death, since MMOs started with non trinity in the first place and moved away from it.

I still believe Dusk is being sarcastic. Stealth trolling.

The system that GW2 puts forward is a very fresh approach to MMO’s and I think you would be hard pressed to prove your assertion of non-trinity in any older than 2004 MMO that had any sort of popularity as the classes and role of each class were extremely specific.

BTW Knighthonor , after reviewing your posts I think there truly is a troll in here …but its not dusk.

Sorry , completely disagree. As someone who played GW1 from beta period forward and loved every minute of it. GW1 was a great game in its time and is still worth playing.

GW2 resets the genre and delivers fun and varietry in a package like no previous MMO has done. This is 2004 all over again and I am more than ready for the rebirth of the “truly” social based MMO. Kudos to ANET for this game.

Kalo.4735:

DusK.3849:

Kalo.4735:

They don’t really have any PvE content so there won’t be many players who bought this for that.

What is this I don’t even

Tell me, how many dynamic events did you finish in your 4 small PvP maps and two WvW maps? How many renown hearts did you fill? How about skill challenges? Was in more than I did in the game’s 30 or so massive PvE maps? How many PvP dungeons have you run recently?

“They don’t really have any PvE content”. Most hilarious thing I’ve seen posted here all week.

When people refer to PvE, or at least myself, they often mean end game content. Most MMo’s survive and thrive on their end game PvE content and thats why many users buy the game. I was attracted to Guild wars 2 because the ethos was around PvP focus with a little bit of PvE on the side.

My statement is merely saying that I don’t belive many people would buy this game for the dungeons at end game. If its the leveling process they like then its more like an RPG.

Anyway we are going offtrack. I will rephrase my initial statement;

For anyone that bought this game for the PvP (Not WvW) content, will already be getting pretty bored with the lack options available in the Hearts of the mist.

I’m not exactly asking for them to redesign the entire game, implementing such a rating system or different tournaments has to be one of the easier things to do and wouldn’t require a major content patch.

That concept is the misconception you are operating under “end game quality content” is readily available from starting lvls all the way through the cap which is something traditional MMO’s NEVER had. If you powerlevel in this game , as others have mentioned, you are missing out on quality content. This isn’t 80 levels of GRIND to get to endgame content, this is 80 levels of endgame style bliss. This is the next generation of MMO , so you should adjust your preconceptions accordingly. Have fun!! I know I am
As far as your concerns of PvP ….. honestly it is called Guild Wars 2 for a reason, Group and Guild based PvP is going to be the primary drive here, just as it was in the first one.

Not everyone playing this game has a previous TP (AH) experience to draw from. The economy of the Trading Post will even out over time. Until then, do what proper business people do .. buy low, sell for higher. Eventually the market will catch up. You may also have to take into account that the vendors may actually be overpriced and those NPC’s may have to deal with basic supply being higher than demand. This is an RPG after all and markets could change.