GW2 and EBay: A speculative analysis thread.

OK, let's take a breather and forget about the level caps, item and character transfer, etc. Forget all about that. Cleanse the brain.

Good.

Now, let's consider possible ways to neuter EBay's affect on a new GW. As we all know all too well, you can buy, for example, GW gold on EBay, which is gathered by farmers through slave labor in foreign countries blah blah blah...

How would you design a game to prevent this from happening? What changes, no matter how radical (we're for the most part stuck with a life-long capitalistic training)?

For example... get rid of gold altogether. Get rid of values on items, get rid of merchants. Allow traders (such as material), and have all the traders accept barter for all items on a one to one scale and make these items available for others.

This is, of course, one speculative idea. Take your neurons for a walk and see what they come up with!

Thoughts?

Ban ebay......

The only way to TOTALLY remove the threat of Ebay, is to make ALL items Customized. If you have no way to trade another player anything, there is no way to make profit off it.

Otherwise, any other system will have loopholes. Material traders for bartering? As long as I can go to Tony Snowjob to buy my 1k of Iron for $xx, Ebay will have a place.

Honestly, it's the price MMORPGs pay for having trading in-game. The only way to get rid of ebay, is to get rid of trading.

And I don't think anybody wants that...

My thought: Make all items "bound" to you, like some items are bound in World of Warcraft. Most incredbily rare items in World of Warcraft cannot be traded with other players, this makes buying gold alot less interesting. I'd say if you make most items that are rare bound to yourself, noone would be interesting in buying gold, just make gold something you can waste on things like titles, minipets and hats.

I'm more scared of buying "powerlevels" on Ebay though. Paying someone to level your character to a certain level. If this'd happen on large scale (which is very possible, alot of Guild Wars "farmer slaves" will likely move to Guild Wars 2) it'd be quite sad.

Staff buys gold from farmers -> bans farmer / dealer on contact.

It doesn't work. You cannot remove the value of an item, as the market, supply and demand set the value. If you remove gold, something else, with rather stable prices, will take the role of a gold equivalent (like Ectos do now).

I see only one way to shut down Ebay's ingame influence: Disallow direct trading or item transfer among accounts completely, and trade only via NPCs. But that would take a lot of fun out of the game for many people (not me though).

only way to stop ebay sales is to have the cooperation of ebay. we'll need ebay to monitor auctions posted on their site to shut them down. even if you do that though, there'll always be websites selling stuff.

Or ban China altogether... Hmm...

I think that the point there was missed... if the traders will trade any and all items at a one for one basis, supply is irrelevant. For example, if a materials trader never ran out of ectos and would trade them 1 for 1 with bolts of cloth, then ectos are worth the same as cloth, leather, monstrous claws, etc.

However... that was just one idea.

The hardest part to this is to break your thoughts from what we're used to seeing and even dealing with in real life. Create a new paradigm for a game two years out.

Huh, I was wrong.

I doubt a petition to ban trading in GW2 would get very far, but for the record, I have no problem with forcing everyone to "earn" what they have by just playing the game, and not by scamming, ebaying, or anything else people can think of to cheat the system...

Especially in a game like Guild Wars, where you don't "need" elite stuff. (Assuming Crafter items carry over to GW2).

Hire a sizeable staff to browse websites for gold-sellers and ban them as they appear. Also give them access to delete eBay auctions and ban their addresses.

Well, then, there would be no point for different materials. There would just be "gold" that buys everything... and we're back to square one.

(assuming you could trade this "gold" with other people... if not, then it's no problem).

Corinthian - You'll just force it underground. Where there's a will, there's a way.

The only way to stop people from buying Gold online is to eliminate the universal use of Gold.

Again, the question remains, is that a game you're willing to play? You only have access to what you earn.

It sounds like an exciting concept, but I'm guessing since a large number of people play MMORPGs for the sole purpose of buying and selling stuff, it wouldn't fly.

In that case, what's the point of having different types of material in the first place? Or any material at all?

I take it, your trader wouldn't trade anything other than material, would he? Weapons, for example? How would you handle that?

Ebay recently announced that they were banning the sale of items and gold from online games as it was effectively selling game code which belonged to the game developers. Therefore hopefully by the time Guild Wars 2 is released this problem will have completely disappeared, if not sooner.

Well, that's good news, and it will certainly hurt the Gold farmers.

But it will not end Gold farming totally. Email spam, adds on websites, heck, even adds in less reputable magazines will continue.

Again, as long as there is a market for their services, gold farmers will continue to exist.

Again, this is only one thought out of the dozens yet to be thought of... but...

You could simply have set barter rates. As a hypothetical (and not a real number), you could say that the traders would exchange a primary weapon for 'n' materials, or 'n2' minor runes, or perhaps a superior rune gets you a sword and shield set.

Again, this is a hypothetical, not a fully and completely thought out plan. I'm just considering concepts that would have the potential to be fully thought out and implemented. Something radical and different. Anything will have it's pros and cons. With a regulated (almost communistic) barter system you would lose likely the entire group of hard-core farmers from the game. Some people would miss out on something they consider fun (the whole fariming for imaginary wealth thing). But... you'd also remove an unwelcome outside influence in the EBay buyers.

A different hypothetical mentioned was the instant customization of items. Also not a bad idea, except I'd like to see that customized to an account, not a character. If my mesmer find a necro item, perhaps my necro would like to use it?

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the state of the current Guild Wars economy and the difficulty of managing and reforming it played some role in the decision to create an entirely new game. The associated problems can be very subtle and interesting.

Given Arenanet's experience with Guild Wars 1, I expect they will do a much better job the second time around. Some of the issues I hope they address directly:

1. How to make trading more of a community building activity?
2. What is the right cost spectrum for a family of technically (but not aesthectically) similar items?
3. What is proper place of armor and weapon customization? Is there a role for what might be called "de-customization?"
4. Is there a role for player customizers? (I know WOW has something like this although I've never played it and don't know how successful it is.)
5. How should demand spikes, (i.e. the demand for Paragon and Dervish runes immediately after the release of Nightfall), be managed?

If Ebay bans it, other places take over. Googling "guild wars gold" yields 1.280.000 results for me.

Again, ONLY if you cannot trade this material between people!

Otherwise people will just buy "X" material from the Farmers instead of Gold.

Sure, but we're getting ahead of ourselves. This fist question is whether the majority of players would even be willing to ONLY have Customizable items. Then we could discuss the specifics (again, I'm all for this idea).

Believe me, Mordakai, I am not by any means saying that the idea I posed is the best one, or even a good one. Simply a concept.

Here's a thought... if GW started from day 1 with having only customized items (to an account perhaps), that would be all people knew so it would be universally accepted. If GW2 comes out of the gate a certain way, that's all that GW2 people will know.