I am the person whom was banned for selling end-game scythes.
The whole story is quite simple. The day after Nightfall was released I stood around in Abbadons Gate and spammed "WTB - BOOK OF SECRETS". People were very willing to sell for 50-75k because they wanted to get thier endgame armors as fast as possible. I knew the demand for perfect Paragon and Dervish weapons would be tremendous, and I recognized a good oppurtunity to make some fast, decent cash.
I was there and available and paying cash, and I was able to buy books as fast as was necessary to my plan.
I would buy 4 or 5 books of secrets, then go and sell the Scythes and Spears for around 150k apiece. Others were spamming them at 100k +20-30 ectos, which helped my business tremendously. I found that i was selling the endgame items so fast that it was prudent to spend all my profits on books as to save time needing to kill Abbadon with henchies everytime I needed to restock spears and scythes.
I sold more than 40 endgame items at a profit of 75 to 100k each over the first weekend, and then decided to close up shop, as slower players were starting to finish the game and the value of both the books and items were certain to drop soon.
Over the course of that weekend I had encountered someone who begged me to sell him one of the scythes for 127k (I assume it was all he had.) I didn't really want to sell at that price, because it was not difficult to sell them at 150k, but he promised me he would get another guildie to buy one when he came on, and I am really not a greedy guy, so I went ahead and gave him a discount. Later that evening his guildmate DID contact me about buying a hand Of The Forgotten Scythe, he was offering 135k (again I assume all he had). The weekend trade was waning and my tolerance of jealous people who need to harass high-end sellers in the all chat channel for selling thier wares at a fair price was growing thin, so i let him have one for what he was offering. Later that evening a second guildmate of his contacted me wanting a scythe and willing to pay the 150k i was asking. I happily sold him one.
3 days later the harassment started. The 3 guildmates started driving me nuts in whispers, calling me every name in the book, accusing me of being a scammer, etc etc.
I tried to rationally explain to them that the price of something is relative. the actual value of an item is determined by how much the buyer desires it, and how impatient/vcagey/sly the seller is. They got those items very close to the release of the game, while most people were still looking for Iboga poop and Drake Flesh. there were PLENTY of people willing to buy them at the price i had set and they had agreed on the price , purchased ectos from me in order to facilitate trade, and then traded the 100k +the ectos I had sold them for the Scythes. There is no kind of scamming there.
They insisted that none of that mattered. They insisted that because now, 2 weeks later the prices had dropped to 35-40k that that was all they were worth and that selling them for 150k 2 weeks ago was a scam. they started with all the noobie talk, GURU SAYS IT IS WORTH THIS, EVERYONE IS SELLING FOR 5k AND 2 ORANGE DYES NOW. Blah blah blah....
I got sick of trying to reason with them, and I told them to go to hell and to stop bothering me.
Less than 10 minutes later I was inundated with PM's from them and thier guildies. Telling me i had better give them thier money back or they would continue to harass me forever and that they would report me and get my account banned. Tho I hate to give in to such terrorism, I was done with trade and playing the game again; and since I mostly only associate with guildmates in the guild channel, it was not a hardship to simply go on DnD or offline.
It started to become a hardship after 2 days though. Still i simply ignored them. I really didn;t think much of the threat to report me. I know the GW developers don't really care much about individual fortunes and such, but I had faith in them to see this incident for what it was: Some people who bought stuff when the demand was high and paid a premium. there is no kind of scam here. I just ignored them and got my other characters thru the game.
This morning, while taking my last character, a Ritualist thru to endgame i was disconnected with an error i had never seen before, saying that my account was banned for Unnacceptable behavior. later the message changed and was a little more descriptive and included the amount of time I was going to be banned (blocked as they put it) 68 hours. (I assume it was a 72 hour ban to begin with)
I don't need to tell you how i feel about GW and the developers "war on the rich" attitude, or the way I feel about being banned for completely ethical trade practices.
I only posted this so the facts would be clear.
Warcraft is sure sounding better and better.............