GW2 and EBay: A speculative analysis thread.

how was ever trading supposed to be community building?
umm ... right what we have now? the wider spectrum the better ... if you have say Sska sword for 1k and is crystaline clone for 10milion it matters little ... what matters is lowest cost of equivalent item.
Proper place is to prevent mudflation. It fullfills that place perfectly. and no, de-customization will only fuel mudflation.
Umm .. it was there from begining, it worked quite well and inscrptions/insignia rounded player customization of stuff quite nicely
in like ... no way? Having new stuff overpriced is in no way bad ... it fuells inital exploration of content and new strategies. prices always stabilize later and become accessible.

Somehow is see theese all as nonisues.

1) You see how "peope-fieldly" traders are just by visiting any big trading town and having all chat open.
2) Costs if similar items being dramatically different ... somehow having problem with that is a bit ... whiney. in game where you can have everything for very little effort, items that are completelly out of reach of most of players are just ... right. It actually test of character: will you a) fail and ebay it b) fail and whine about it or c) live on and accept you are casual player or that you are not item hunter.
3) there is little to say about it ... bound or cutomized items are best way to stop mudflation. decustomization make customization pointless. with mudflation, lots of items get out of purchaseable range for casuals: a) low priuced items with great stats that mudflate too low to be worth attaining/trading will be inaccessible to em by purchase as none of nore asctive players will bother getting em b) new hot stuff will always have million pricetags bnecause there owuld be too mcuh gold in hands of few who surf on mudflation wave.
4) no?
5) Demand spike is part of introducion new stuff anyshwere. see 2) and test of player character, with excpetion that c) reads: move on, wait a week or two, in month someone witll give it to you for next to mothing possibly.

Ok, assume that "l33t stuff" will be reward based ... coillceting tokens, finishing had quests, etc.

guess what? iut will work just like ebay. exactly like that.

by buying egold you dont buy gold, you buy gameplay time someone invested to it.

you can buy someone elses gameplay time ... say, what if i pay someone to do all of farming to obtain me FoW armour?

yep, that will happen. You go to egold site, pay X $$$ and give desired character name and list of what that character should have. few days later you receive email with usename, password, cdkey and username/password to associated email. Sweatshop farmers will simply complete all necesary gameplay tasts as fast as possible, propably having decitated tean of couple of players to power though hard stuff.

if you trust eGolders more (you could trust em more as there would be nothing to gain by clealing you account white, an they couldnt resell you account because you still have cd key, etc.) give em username, password and desired item - in morning log in to see that someone played overnight and you now have l33t sword. and miss few $$.

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Also, reward based system depends on all stuff being fun. Trading system allows you to have fun where you want and recieve reward you want.

i.e. I have more fun doing Urgoz than DoA, but i desire Razah. solution? miracle of trading allows me to sell Urgoz longbow for sum of gold that i can use to buy gems from someone who enjoys DoA...

now, if game forced me to go trough DoA and give reward i hate for Urgoz, what is point of me beign interested in either of those areas?

Thats miracle of currency - you can do one thing and chose from tons of rewards in the end. nothing beats it.

This is a very interesting thread- thanks to the OP for creating.

My take is this- if you have the opportunity for exchange of anything between players- one way or two- some sort of medium of exchange will evolve, and you have an economy. Whether it is gold, ectos, or Charr Carvings, as long as players can pass something back and forth, people will find a way of trading objects of unequal value.

In Guild Wars, an item's value has almost no relationship to its actual game utility. FOW armor protects you no better than droks. My max collector's sword does the same damage as the gold fellblade that cost someone else 100 ecto. So most players don't need to participate very actively in the economy to enjoy the game. Superior vigor runes are really the only items that cost significant amounts of gold that actually make a difference in performance.

What gold sellers allow players to do is to buy the elite items without putting the effort into the game that acquiring those items would usually require. If players can transfer items to others, this will happen. Anet can try to make it difficult, but they can't stop it completely.

I seriously doubt that Anet will choose to have no economy at all, or even a strictly game controlled one (only transactions between you and a merchant, at set prices, allowed). That would prevent people from helping their friends get started, and make game play extremely frustrating for many- like the example above with Urgoz and Razah. And I would be surprised if Anet wants that.

I don't really care... at all.

In fact, I'm sure these "Chinese slaves" would rather be farming gold than working in a brutal sweatshop. GW gives them dreams, lets hope it continues to do so.

IMO you're all making a mountain out of a mole hill.

This is possibly the killer idea of the thread. I say this because anything in-game is the intellectual property of Anet, so theoretically selling it on Ebay is like selling books you borrow from a library. Following this logic, Anet have a fairly strong legal ground for requesting all in-game items to be removed from Ebay, and to have gold-selling websites shut down (and Ebay would be more likely to accept if Anet provided the team to sweep for the items).

There is a "grey" area in legal terms which stops this from happening. There is always a loophole and there will always be people to exploit them.

Gold buyers make up a very small minority of the overall GW population, some of these ideas are very "extreme" to say the least.

You need to be neutral whilst making such decisions and all I see is biased opinions.

For some of you trading isn't part of your game so making everything customised to you as soon as it drops does not effect you, but have you considered the other side, the people that play for drops?

There is no one solution for this problem, have fun speculating though.

Heres how to prevent ebay.

Make the EULA a binding legal contract.

this would mean that Anet would physically mail you the EULA and you would sign it and send it back to them and they would send you a end user license.

Breaking the EULA would mean violating the contract and allow them to bring you to court without any trouble whatsoever.

Voila. I dare you to break the EULA now ;p

That may be more difficult than it seems, firstly the laws in every country vary depening on whats in the EULA. Therefore the EULA you need will need to be worded differently. Thats a lot of Lawyer money. Secondly, do you really want to wait a few days before you can play the game?

Firstly: Yes. Not to mention the fees of customer service reps.

Secondly: Yes, if it means morons will be held accountable for their actions.

Won't happen. I'd never sign a contract to play some game, and I wouldn't be alone in that.

Guess youve never done a closed alpha test....the kind with a NDA


What price would you pay for some peace and quiet.

I am going to throw out my opinion just because it differs from most here and might add to the debate. I did not find the ebay sellers detrimental to the game at all. In fact, I thought it enhanced the game. When the ebay people were selling items, I could actually give my items a real life value which was an interesting aspect of the game.

Once anet complained to Ebay and had them pull the items, they ceased to have a real value anymore. Hence, at least from my perspective, gold had significantly less value to me. Before, I would try and get the best possible deal in town because I knew that the gold/items had real value (sure it was 50 cents or a couple of dollars, but it was fun!) Once those items did not have real world value, I didn't care how much I paid for the item anymore. If my reaction was somewhat typical, then banning Ebay sales will actually INCREASE the cost of items, instead of decreasing them because the items have ceased to be easily converted into real life value.

For the life of me I do not understand why people have this hatred of Chinese farmers on Ebay. I personally think the hatred of Ebayers had more to do with jealousy or some other emotional knee jerk reaction than anything else because I saw nothing detrimental in their existence. They do not harm my personal playing experience. To me they made the game unique by letting us see a real world value to the items which was an interesting aspect of the game. And in my opinion, when people could translate items into a real monetary value, this kept buyers from spending the gold foolishly.

Oh, and as an aside, I travel to China several times a year for my business and see the working conditions in a lot of factories. The girls getting paid $1.50 a day to play video games have it really good compared to the girls getting paid $1.50 a day to work in the production factories. If I bought an item on Ebay and helped to keep a girl in China out of a production factory and helped her family in her village (the factory girls send money back to their families in the countryside) then that is not a bad thing. I could have fun in the game, and someone in real life benefitted. That sounds like a win-win to me. Now, with Ebay gone, those girls will get to go work in a different factory and it just might now be as nice as playing video games.

I would be interested if someone could tell me how their personal gameplay has been harmed by Chinese farmers? I bet no one can. It never harmed me and I would think my gaming experience is fairly typical. I see gold having less value going forward and prices in town will rise. And in real life, some people's lives in 3rd world countries are going to get worse.

This would be the ultimate example of unintended consequences.

Food for thought...

Just make gold give no physical advantage to the game, and people can sell and trade it all they want - it won't affect actual gameplay. From there on, Anet can ban as they find the situations, but a huge push against the problem isn't as necessary as games where items give hard advantages.

Then again, if they make GW2 in opposite of the GW1 idea of rarer items not giving special bonuses, there will have to be more action.

Whoa! Where's it state that??

Nice items never actually hurt anyone as they are no better than collectors or greens.

Ebayers are a small proportion of Guild Wars.

Why ruin such a large part of the game i.e. farming, trading etc due to the minority?

Im all for preventing people buying gw gold but I do not support the idea of removing trading and farming.

so what would happen then...
since this uber leet weapon is bound to myself, and i get it from crafting, i will buy gold to buy all the crafting materials...

if i cant buy the weapon then i just buy the materials to craft it!

Lol, so much crap flying around in this thread its funny...

It's not exactly that big of a problem. Who gives a damn if they're are 100s of places to buy gold... not that many people actually buy it. Tbh i couldn't give a damn about them, i've seen so many warriors this last week using Sundering *insert rare skinned Sword* of Fortitude, they only ruin whatever they buy with crap mods anyway, its not like they become superior players either.

Take pride in that fact. Anet don't need to change anything... making rare items account specific and untradable would give more reasons to not buy GW2, so far with all the shit about level cap and races making this game sound like a WoW rip off i'm already unsure if i want it.

Well getting rid of all the gold is no option.There is no RPG game without gold.

Having to complete the whole campaign before you get a trading option would be nice though.

In all technicality, the EULA is already a binding legal contract. Enforcement is just a pain as they have to catch you, prove you broke it, and then get the local legal system to actually care in light of higher priority crime.

To get actual enforcement of anti-piracy laws required a lot of political palm greasing to get congress to think that stealing music and movies was worthy of being put on the same list with the Ganja, and trust me, ANet does not have the same spare cash as the music and film industries.

The fact is, to rely on legal channels for enforcement of their in-game economy is a futile effort, and I guess by now that ANet knows that. In the end, ANet can't really do anything about gold farmers. That's our job.

For gold farming to end, first gold buying must end. That requires the community to take a collective stand. If you see gold farmers, shout them down. If you find out who a gold buyer is, your guild should blacklist them, and word should be passed until no one at all will party with or trade with that person.

And here is the real hard part. If you suspect that that person offering 70K for your Rago's Wand didn't earn it (because he's still wearing scrub armor and is only level 11 in Droks for example), you do not sell him the item.

That's what makes it a real problem. The people willing to sell items to scrubs with e-bay gold just to move their rare crap faster.

Thank you for winning the hypocrite of the year award. Really.

I love the people that complain about 'poor 3rd world workers rights' on the internet, from their fancy apartment/house, in a nation where our biggest disease is being fat, and then try and claim that our corporate imperialism is being kind and generous.

If you really want to help these people, start paying the world average for gas first. Oh, we can't because our stupid short sighted nation is subsidizing the gas prices. Stop using so much resources to feed your petty, empty lives. We waste resources on new buildings that no on will use because there is not enough to use the old ones, while other nations might be willing to kill for those resources just to finish the roof on their homes.

Don't try and use, "But exploiting these people is good for them" as an excuse for you being an jerk. It's people like you that ruin the free market system.

People will always sell to ebayers and that will never change.

This thread should be killed in pre-searing and allowed to remain dead.

All trades done through NPCs only (not auction houses) and no inter-player trading or drop/pickup of items.

The single best part of the current GW trade system is the NPC Rune/Mats traders. All Anet has to do is extend this to everything...and problem solved.

(This also solves in-game inflation by taking a small part of each trade out of the economy, also by altering the percentage it can be tweaked as needed. All common MMO economy problems solved in one hit, along with the gold-sellers dead in the water)

I wont even begin to explain how bad this idea is and why it would fail.

Most of the suggestions in this thread are totally over the top. If you have a pest infestation in your house you dont need to destroy the house to get rid of the infestation. Just like in Guild Wars, you dont need to destroy an economy and wipe out trading because of a few bad apples.

Brilliant reasoning...I bow to your superior logic *cough*

You do if you want to eliminate ebay Gold.

Your views (I assume it reflects the majority of players?) is an example of why it will never happen.

But, that's the bottom line: If you like tading items, then expect ebay Gold to come with the territory.

Seeing as you are unable to see how awful this idea is please allow you to spare some of my valuable time to explain to you.

Assuming the weapons will have varying inherent damage modifications, for example the Wingblade sword will have to have the following inherent mods available at the trader: -
15>50 R7
15>50 R8
15>50 R9
15>50 R10
15>50 R11
15>50 R12
15>50 R13
20<50 R7
20<50 R8
20<50 R9
20<50 R10
20<50 R11
20<50 R12
20<50 R12
15% -5 Energy R7
15% -5 Energy R8
15% -5 Energy R9
15% -5 Energy R10
15% -5 Energy R11
15% -5 Energy R12
15% -5 Energy R13
15% -10 Al R7
15% -10 Al R8
15% -10 Al R9
15% -10 Al R10
15% -10 Al R11
15% -10 Al R12
15% -10 Al R13
15% +5 Energy R7
15% +5 Energy R8
15% +5 Energy R9
15% +5 Energy R10
15% +5 Energy R11
15% +5 Energy R12
15% +5 Energy R13
15% Enchant R7
15% Enchant R8
15% Enchant R9
15% Enchant R10
15% Enchant R11
15% Enchant R12
15% Enchant R13
15% Stance R7
15% Stance R8
15% Stance R9
15% Stance R10
15% Stance R11
15% Stance R12
15% Stance R13
15% Vs Hexed R7
15% Vs Hexed R8
15% Vs Hexed R9
15% Vs Hexed R10
15% Vs Hexed R11
15% Vs Hexed R12
15% Vs Hexed R13
20% While Hexed R7
20% While Hexed R8
20% While Hexed R9
20% While Hexed R10
20% While Hexed R11
20% While Hexed R12
20% While Hexed R13

K, that’s 63 possible combinations for perfect inherent damage modifications alone. Looking like a pretty sweet idea atm. Especially considering positive inherent damage modifications can be 10%, 11%, 12%, 13%, 14% as well as 15%. It gets even better with negative inherent damage modifications as there is for purples afaik 14%, 15%, 16%, 17%, 18%, 19% and 20%. Please bear in mind for blue items the inherent damage modification will be somewhere below 14%.

Oo lots and lots of possible inherent damage modifications for just one sword. For positive inherent damage modifications on wing blade swords there will be 252 different possibilities. Great idea, I bet anet would love to research prices for each one of those.

OMFG, don’t let me forget that I was only talking about max dmg wingblades. Hey I guess there will be thousands of possible wing blades if we include non max as well. Lets say there are 40 swords now we will be looking at possibly hundreds of thousands of price Anet will have to set. Then we have hammers, bows, axes, staffs, offhands, wands, daggers, scythes, spears and shields.

I bet Anet would love employing staff to research what prices the item traders should buy and sell items at. Gee, tens of thousands of possible items to have a price put on them sounds fun. I somehow don’t think a few staff can do all of this maybe tens of people will be needed to work out and set prices. The costs will be huge. Anet does not lose anything due to gold selling.

This is assuming Anet keep a similar system with items in GW2 as they have in GW1.

O, wait there is more. You say it would solve all MMORPG problems. Great man, you have single handedly solved the problem which virtually plagues all popular MMORPGs. I wonder why if it is so great if all the companies havnt already implemented it into their games? Maybe it is because they don’t want to piss off thousands of their customers through ruining the economy and item market. I mean hey, not many people enjoy collecting items, its not like it matters if they quit huh? The Ventaris Sell section of GWG shows how popular trading is and it is a part of GW which cannot be taken away without massive outrage.

Trading is a huge part of virtually MMORPG and it would only be as popular if it is if people actually like collecting items. Buying items at a trader really is not fun and it would remove a section of the game which many people enjoy. It increases end game content and keeps people interested in GW.

I havnt slept for well over a day now so forgive me if I have missed out a lot of stuff.

you are just so close minded...

there is no need for a trader for every kind of sword.

the only thing that is necessary is to creat a big auction house, were you can sell and buy all the stuff you want from other players.
Will it have a lot of waepons?
yes, but if you keep good sections it would be nice. (more or less like guruaction).

so, what's the problem now?

Coran, Herbalizer is responding to players who have posted ideas about eliminating goldbuyers/eBayers by eliminating trading between players.

some of those ideas included:
NPCs that sell weapons with all mods (as Herbalizer listed, although i must disagree, i think NPCs would only sell req 9 weapons)
Customizing items to players to prevent trading

Herbalizer's arguement: Removing player interaction through an in game player controlled economy is bad.

And i agree.

Those of us who like to collect and buy stuff in game should be allowed to, granted that rare items do not give any sort of advantage over generic skinned items.

Collectability and rarity in items gives players something to strive for and quest for.

I like my idea best ;P Make every EULA a full binding enforceable contract that requires your signature. I know some MMORPGS in korea require your SS number to play.

Accountability and lawful punishment of violators should be the deterent (warning, ban, second warning, second ban, third warning, third ban, lawsuit)

sorry lyra but your idea is terrible. that will maybe help a little on usa only, but what about other countries?
like taiwan, china, cora, japan, do you have any idea how much will cost to anet to have a court for 1 player of this countries? that wont happen.
and also that will decrease sells to ... very very very few people left. ncsoft will never do that.

I still sign this,

just dont add trader like the other ones, add a big auction house were everybody can put anything, mark its price and sell it.

and you will be perfectly be able to do it. you can even see now people selling that stupid zetukas bags and red iris flowers on guruaction, it will be the same.

Read FTW... If you would have actually took the time to read Jaziel's post he clearly states he is not talking about auction houses. I am responding to the suggestion of create an economy solely based on NPC traders.

See if you would have read his post instead of just mindlessly jumping into the thread and throwing around insults (me being close minded) you would see the discussion is about something specific, something which is not auction house related.

If auction houses were being discussed that would be different.

I was responding to the idea of NPC traders.

Actually you will find I support the idea of auction houses and have done for a long while.

Auction houses wont remove the gold selling problem which this thread is about so I dont really see why you brought it up

This thread is regarding the problem of gold selling/buying not how to "fix" the economy. Auction house will do absolutely nothing to stop gold sellers making gold.

You do understand Jaziel's idea right?

Jaziel is proposing removal of ALL INTER-PLAYER TRADING. He wants to remove dropping/picking up items also. All trading would be done through NPCs.

Which means....

You cant transfer items to your guildmates unless its via an NPC.
You cant transfer items between accounts if you have 2 accounts.
You cant play a mission, and drop items that dont fit in your bag (maybe your guildmate can hold for you)
You cant drop keys and have other people open chests for you.
You cant trade in combat zones.

Do you really wanna advocate this?!
Its absurd how crippling to the game this would be. Not just to the economy but player interaction.

if I said "close minded" it is because instead of proposing a solution to the all-trader system you gave a refunding "no" with a very long explanation. well it was not nice of my part, so sorry i guess.

yes, and yes.

let me well write my suggestion then:
All trades done through NPCs and auction houses only and no inter-player trading or drop/pickup of items.

(You cant transfer items between accounts if you have 2 accounts.) I really dont see the use of 2 accounts anymore, anyway. but if you have them, you play them like the are, 2 different accounts, 2 different things.
(You cant play a mission, and drop items that dont fit in your bag ) -> you can delete items, so no problem.
(You cant drop keys and have other people open chests for you.) -> emm, so what the deal here? if you want more than one reward for a chest then that is a chest-related design problem, not trading problem, and considering this is for gw2 we dont even know if there will be chests or if they will function the same way.
(You cant trade in combat zones.) nop, and the problem is?


you cant transfer items to guildmates => ok, this is actually the only issue i see.

so we need to evaluate if a online buyers-free game is worth not being able to transfer items to guildmates.

I go for the online buyer-free game.
(actually i would be glad not to see those "i am poor, please give me money", "what is the guild for if you dont assist your members with items and money"...

I dont believe a non-buyer game would eliminate ebayers.

You can sell accounts. You can manipulate trades even if its through a third party is involved (Shill bidding). etc.

All this idea would do is cripple the game and make it more frustrating, more limited and not fun. If i want to trade with someone, i should be allowed to trade with them.

Instead of stopping the cause of problem (idiots who want to buy gold), you are proposing a change that ruins the fun of some players in the game.

yep, I can't think of a way to prevent that, but the market will decrease a lot. Very very few of the people who already buy online are willing to buy a complete account.

i dont understand that.


why for?

please explain how this reduce fun, because i dont really have fun going to a city and yelling for so long to find someone to trade with.
What is the fun of trading?
i dont find it.

Herbalizer - the problem with your argument is that although you are partially correct (it would be a massive undertaking to have one or many NPCs trading for every single possible weapon and mod), you are not wholly correct.

There is an alternative to having NPCs that trade for every single possible weapon and mod - which would be to build on the system that already exists, where a particular NPC will cover a narrow range of items. You can attack the problem piecemeal, bit by bit, rather than assuming it's an all-or-nothing proposition.

For example, instead of "NPC [trader of any and all weapons]" you might have...

NPC [bow string trader]
NPC [fortitude mod trader]
NPC [zealous mod trader]
NPC [enchant mod trader]

etc.

Personally, my problem isn't so much that I care about the trading clogging up chat, but that I don't have the patience to sell anything on the trade channel/search feature. When I get something that isn't obviously extremely valuable, that I can't give to my heroes, I sell it to the merchant. I know a lot of the time I could get (at least) 10 times as much if I tried to trade it, but...not my idea of fun.

If I could funnel even a small portion of the things I sell to a merchant through a trader, it would make a big difference to my generally miniscule guild wars gold horde.

Most problems are much more manageable if you start small. The NPC trader option is a good start...enlarge it a bit.

quit pulling generalizations out of your ass without citing your sources.

What im basically saying is. Any system can be broken.

Using NPCs and an auction system, even without direct player trading can be used to make bought gold transfers.

First. You must understand what a shill is.

Ok? Simple. Now on to Shill bidding.

How would I use Shill Bidding to transfer gold?

Gold Buyer puts up an auction for a common item.

Gold Seller bids on the item at an extraordinarily high price and uses shill bidding to raise the price to the amount that the gold buyer paid for + the cost of the item.

so say i buy $10 worth of gold. i put up a stack of dust, and the gold seller bids on it so it costs the $10 worth of gold.

Voila.

Why is shopping fun? You must not be a woman? :P

Digging around for a long time and finding a good deal feels REALLY REALLY good. Finding what you are exactly looking for amidst a pile of junk can be quite satisfying. I actually was at Marshall's yesterday...*cough*

The current system of trading in GW can be very frustrating and any new system that Anet implements should help bring buyers and sellers together (such as an auction system) and make trading easier, faster and more pleasant.

It should help player interaction, not hinder it.

-------------

As a side note, this idea reminds me of dating websites (using Yahoo! Personals as my example).

Dating websites allow people to search profiles. (Buyer looking for a seller)

But they cannot communicate directly. They must communicate through the website initially. (Buyer must use NPC)

But once they have started communicating, they can exchange information and decide to use their own ways of talking to each other outside of the website. (Use direct trading)

This idea would be as if the two people who wanted to know each other had no other way to exchange information (trade items) except through the dating website. They couldnt exchange phone #s, emails, or anything. They could only use the dating website.

*shrug* kind of a vague analogy, but you get my point.

I dont like the idea of such a stranglehold.

...Um so is this true or not? I haven't found it in the article yet...

Why is shopping fun? You must not be a woman? :P

aamm, nop i am not. =p

but, do you go to the guruaction in times?
i expend like 45 minutes everyday looking for items that i want (ok, it would be like 15 minutes if the site were fast)

and even when it is not a thing where i have much fun, (maybe the fact that lag and slowness can get me mad sometimes there has something to do) it is not bad and finding something interesting and cheap is enjoyable.

but, that can be inside the game on the auction house, and you even would have it a lot easier to "go shopping" and search for what you want.

-------------

about the inter-personal thing...

well it is not that you are going to do quest and missions with them, just a silly trade.
i dont find that important on the trading thing.

I never disagreed to the auction house. I would LOVE an auction house. I dont see it happening anytime soon though...

I am against the idea of removing player interaction.

Just a silly trade?

I have a bow. My friend Haagan gave it to me. Its an Amber Longbow +5 energy. He gave it to me out of nowhere. I will never sell this bow because he gave it to me.

Theres something about taking away my ability to give gifts to my friends that really really really pisses me off.