My solution to the GW gold for RL cash problem.

My solution to the GW gold sales/bot problem:

It’s pretty simple really.

Step 1: Higher an intern. Pay him/her slightly better than minimum wage. $7.93 is the min wage I could find for Washington State, so let’s say A-Net is generous and gives the kid $10/hour.

Step 2: Equip the intern with a few corporate credit cards. Any money spent can be claimed as business expenses as far as taxes go.

Step 3: Equip the intern with a series of account keys. A-net can generate these on a whim, and can also add them to their business expenses for tax purposes.

Step 4: The intern will locate various websites that offer to sell GW gold for cash. Set up a purchase for the smallest amount possible (typically between $5-$10).

Step 5: Meet with the seller in game, make the trade, and record the name of the account selling the gold.

Step 6: Ban the offending account.

Step 7: Repeat steps 1-6.

Assume that the intern can facilitate trades with 10 accounts in a four-hour day (part-time intern). Also assume that professional gold retailers expect to have accounts banned, and buy new accounts to continue to facilitate trades/continue farming.

So, for those of you who like problem solving:

Let C= the cost of running the 7 step program.
i = interns wages
g = the average amount to make a small GW gold purchase.

So in a 4 hour day our intern nabs 10 accounts. The average cost is say $10, and we already set the wage at $10.

C= 4i + 10g
C= 4(10) + 10(10)
C= 40+100
C= $140

Therefore the cost of running that program is $140/day. Now, I understand that A-Net doesn’t want to fork over $140 dollars a day to ban less than a dozen accounts that will just start farming and selling again. But that’s the thing… they WILL start selling again. And to do that they will have to buy new GW accounts. Can’t farm without an account. The online store sells copies of Guild Wars for as low as $30 US. So, if ten accounts get banned and replaced, that’s an income of $300 US. Now, games sold from the online store don’t require the cost of making discs, packaging, and shipping, so there is minimal cost and mostly profit from sales from the online store (which is the fastest and easiest way to buy GW if you have a credit card, and gold retailers likely have access to credit cards).

So let us run that cost analysis.

C = cost of 7 step program.
P = potential sales of GW software as result of 7 step
T = net profit or loss of running the 7 step program.

T = P-C
T = 300 – 140
T = 160

So, when actually put together the whole process would be giving A-Net a potential profit of $160 per day for running the program. That’s if you pay more than minimum wage, and if the intern is only able to nab the small number of 10 accounts in a 4 hour shift. A reasonably clever intern could more likely set up trades with 4 separate retailers in an hour (a simple web search turns up several dozen different websites). And that would look more like this:

C= 4(10) + 16(10)
C= 40+160
C=200

P= 16(30)
P= 480

T= P-C
T= 480 – 200
T = 280

So if A-Net is fortunate enough to select an industrious intern, they can actually gain a profit of $280 per day. The only time they would stop seeing this profit is if the retail farmers stop buying accounts to replace the banned ones. At which point A-Net will have eliminated the retail gold market from the game. Mission accomplished. And all this without altering the game experience for honest players. And if the program is found to be successful, they could actually higher more than one intern, and multiply the profits by the number of interns. Four interns would be bringing in close to $1000/day. Amazing!

Now, I supposed a cost of $10 per purchase of GW gold, some sites sell for less and some for more. I recall a few months back many places selling for as little as $5 (no, I didn’t buy any – just saw it listed when I did Guild Wars search in google). I would suppose that the increased difficulty to farming has resulted in higher prices for the farmers. If GW were to turn around and make it easier to farm for gold, it might actually lower the costs that people would pay/sell GW gold, and thus make the program even easier to run.

Now, this idea just hit me while I was in the shower, so there may be some bugs. If you know of any, feel free to post them. Try to be kind, as I have no intention of insulting anyone with this thread. =)

Theory it is good but fails in practice (unless they get a lot people for free to do this).

Actually, I already do this for free in a way whenever I send in a screen shot of someone selling GW gold or advertising a website that sells GW gold. My solution just offers a more "pro-active" solution on A-Net's part.

Also, they already employ people to read through the screen shots I send in. If other people are sending in screen shots of the same player doing the same thing, that's one more employee looking at just one retailer for each player initiated report. This creates a lot of redundancy - several agents looking at one retailer, and then each spending the time to confirm the report. It may actually be more cost effective if an employee was meeting with the retailer via a website initiated contact. The employee could immediately confirm EULA violation on transaction and ban the account right away. One employee seeking out retailers is likely more efficient that 5 employees tracking down and confirming alleged rules violations of just one retailer.

The only part where the theory seems weak to me is the ability to track sales of GW accounts by gold retailers. But this is probably not that hard to do either. A-net could keep a record of access keys that get banned. They could later track these keys from sales in the online store (or possibly other game retailers). If the accounts are purchased through the online store with a credit card, they could see if a number of banned accounts are being charged to the same credit card. I'm not sure if that violates credit card information policies or privacy policies, but if it doesn't it wouldn't be to hard to do. Simply generate a list of banned accounts and compare that with the purchasing info for those banned accounts. You find a card with multiple banned accounts attached to it (accounts banned for selling gold) and you've proven that this is the card of your professional gold retailer and s/he is indeed buying replacement accounts. This would only have to be done if you wanted to audit the cost effectiveness of the 7 step program, and whether or not it was actually paying for itself.

Looks really nice in theory, but I doubt that it'll work in practice.

Not sure why, but I just doubt it.

Most of those accounts used to make trades have been stolen from retards that fall for the dupe hacks, item hacks, or other silly scams and end up installing a keylogger. Those accounts would be lost/banned/replaced anyway, so the gold sellers aren't actually out of anything.

Yes, there are many people that fall for those scams. I know of one person that reversed engineered one of the hacks that was being spammed in Ascalon or LA. It was nothing more than a keylogger with a small ftp client built in. A hex editor(or something, it's beyond my abilities) got the ftp info. There were over 100 acounts already there, user names and passwords. That's 100 suckers that may have lost everything they earned. FWIW, he forwarded all the info to Anet to deal with.

I'd do that for free, if someone paid for the gold of course. Hell, I could stand in a popular farming outpost and ban monks as they enter.

I understand what your saying and I think it's a great idea. I assume Anet or NCSoft does this to some extent already. I've often wondered the same thing myself ever since the Diablo 2 days because it just seems so easy and feasible to do. But there's one issue I have with these sites offering gold or leveling services.

How do they stay out of trouble? Do they own these companys offshore with lenient laws or what? I don't understand how these sites can have friggen' Verisign and other things of that sort on their sites. Here's a quote I found interesting off of a FAQ section on one of them.

"I'm worried about the privacy of my details?

Client confidentiality is our top priority. Our company has imposed very strict rules with regards to disclosing or selling of any client information whatsoever. Offenders will be charged and prosecuted in court for breaching of trust."

That's almost laughable. How could they possibly take someone to court for that if what they do is illegal? It almost makes one assume that by Anet and NCSofts inaction to prosecute these people that they are somehow compensated by them. I know that sounds harsh but it's the only thing that makes sense. I played Diablo 2 for years and online gold selling was around for a large part of it. I never heard of Blizzard taking the site owners to court. In fact the only thing I ever heard of was when Blizzard threatened blizzhackers with legal action. Like Hockster mentioned they more then likely use stolen or ebayed accounts to transfer the ingame funds so while it does indeed help it doesn't solve the problem.

So I guess a good question to ask is why don't gaming companies go after these webmasters aggressively? As i've already stated, I have my suspisions as to if these companies are being compensated in some form or another. For all we know the gaming companies are the ones running the sites! What better way to make a couple extra bucks then to secretly sell your consumers virtual items that you can create at a whim? Now I love Anet. They make quality products and bend over backwards for their consumers. But it does leave one to wonder....

What people fail to see is that NC Soft/Anet's a business and all they're interested in is making money regardless of where it comes from, be it legit players or botters buying new accounts where the previous one got banned.

Here's a formula of my own, BannedBotter=RepeatBusiness = ££$$$ for Anet

@Tarus, Not being funny but they're hardly going to prosecute them when they're buying product, which technically means Anet is being compensated by them.

I understand that but think of it like this. If Anet had no affiliation with these sites why not sue? Now obviously a small online store doesn't have much money but some of these sites have been around for quite a bit it appears so I believe they could possibly have a large cashflow. Is it not worthwhile to sue and get MORE MONEY from them then to just let them go? It isn't like they have to sue all of them. Once one or two get hit and the rest know about it a simple cease and desist letter may be enough to diminish the problem. So if that were the case Anet could make more cash and look more reputable to consumers. Now I don't know much about how these places operate or even know much law for that matter so these are only assumptions.

I guess you could ask... What's more worthwhile to Arenanet? They can continue to ban accounts and get repeat business in the face of new cd key purchases or to go after these sites and get money out of a lawsuit. Both results will yield respect from their consumers but I personally would prefer the later. I just wish Anet felt the same.

The "get out of jail free card" most commonly used is that your paying for someones time as the Gold is virtual and not actually a real or physical product.

By the time a cease and desist letter is not only sent out, but by the time someone actually takes a blind bit of notice of it, they've got the next business ready and waiting to go, so it's a never ending circle on Anets part if they decided to pursue that course of action, as the traders up and trading again within seconds of agreeing to shut down the first one.

And you would likely ban 100 innoccent people. Monks are one of the greatest farming classes, if you weren't so ignorant you would know not every monk is a bot.

Gold selling is only legal if the EULA is an enforceable contract in whichever county the seller is in. This varies from some areas where shrink-wrap (by opening the box you agree to the terms and conditions contained within, despite being unable to view them until you open the box) licenses are enforceable, to regions where its not enforceable unless you actually sign it.

Also in most countries if you sign a contract while your not in a position to freely decide (eg. while drunk) its not enforceable, as you weren't able to make an informed decision.

And then there is the problem of forcing the ISP's/proxy servers to give ANET the information needed to track down the sellers. This will likely require a court order in most countries.

And even if those problems are dealt with, ANET still has the cost of suing those people in their countries legal system. If ANET wins I don't see them getting much other than the court/attorney fees and a court order banning those people from playing Guild Wars, which that countries legal system might be unwilling/unable to enforce. But ANET loses not only are they hugely out of pocket, they might be facing some countersuits. Banning seems much easier and cheaper.

Also remember that even though two gold sellers might seem separate, they might be sharing their data to spot suspicious things like one account/credit card buying much more gold than most people, or one account that traded with many banned accounts shortly before they got banned. Besides it might be easier to find a few people known for gold buying and watch them while banning everyone they buy gold from but leaving them alone. Just remember ANET has logs of everything we do in game, and regular transfers of large amounts of gold probably set off an automatic warning to ANET to take a closer look at the accounts involved.

"I'm not selling cannabis, I'm selling the my time spent in growing it"

Do you see that argument working to defend someone selling cannabis in a country where its illegal ?

If not, what makes the time argument any different for gold sellers ?

another big problem is that the accounts that are being used are stolen, with a crap name like Whdfue Asdf.

Theres a big problem of this going on right now in Granite Citadale, I've already sent screen shots everytime i go in there, but if anyone else wants to help me get those guys banned. Granite Citadale AD1

A-Net can't just randomly ban people that you as a player think is a bot. Sending in Mass Screenshots of Monks leaving a district proves nothing at all, except that there is something to farm. Banning innocent players along with Botters is just not the way to go. Yes I know, THEY are sacrifices YOU are willed to make but the sacrifice most likely doesn't agree with this.

Ok so then we have the report a player feature, quite good i might add, I reckon that if they received enough evidence of scamming, flaming and advertising that they will look into it and possibly ban the user, for that they need a name first and that makes sense.

So what about Gaile goes to The granite citadel. pick up some names, investigate and then just ban the accounts, or disable them?? i mean i've read from users that some have been banned for being a dick in the game, or having offesive names, so i reckon why woudnt you just go out there and do what you have to.

Though it's possible, and even likely that these guys are bots (I've seen the perculiar movement patterns too), your suggestion targets farming. People farm too. Looking at farming trends doesn't always mean that gold selling is invovled. My suggestion looks specifically at actual transactions. THe point of sale when someone hands over GW gold after receiving a cash payment. That's confirmable without question, and makes for easy banning. Smart sellers aren't advertising the sales in game. Instead they lead you to a website, and then quietly make the trade in game (if they aren't just ripping you off at the website). And even if the accounts they are using are stolen, once those accounts get banned they must either steal new accounts from foolish doops who ignore multiple warings or buy new accounts. If they aren't actively sought out, a $30 account isn't much of a cost. But if they are getting hit by more bans than their farming/selling can keep up with, they will focus their attention on other games that aren't as zealous in their efforts to stop this problem.

I did consider that first but then I realized that they are still farmers so it's no problem.

I just love how people think that the gold sellers MUST be using stolen accounts to complete the transactions cuz y'know....they don't want their own accounts that they use to play the game with to get banned for transfering money. :rollseyes:

Bilateralrope: Well....the problem with your assumption is that you seem to be assuming that the plant is legal to farm and cultivate in any amount. Most countries have a limit to what they ignore or consider not worth the effort. It's also making the comparison to a physical object....no matter what you claim it to be...if it can be proven as cannabis, guess what....your still in violation. So why don't you download your gold coins and play with them a bit...outside the game. Because you can't...there is no physical, tangible property being exchanged.

Why is it that soo many people want to eliminate the farmers and gold re-sellers from the game? Do you think they adversly effect game play somehow? Or perhaps have a detrimental influence on the economy? Or are you just upset that someone is making money playing a game?

Whatever happened to people just playing the game how they want to....regardless of how someone else thinks you should or plays it themselves?

Because as Necrotic has already stated, Cannabis is "real", unfortunately Gold in GW isnt

Countess:

Are you volunteering to be the intern? lol

I've thought about such an idea before.
However, wont the credit cards be quickly blacklisted?

Its really interesting kind of "sting operation" but seems a bit too large of a thing for Anet to do with just 1-2 interns.
---------
On a seperate note, ive mentioned before that Anet needs to sue these sites based on copyright infringement.

The GW game client, game, artwork, all its content, etc. is copyright by Anet / NC Soft.

If my artwork was being used without my permission in any sort of business application, thats a violation of my copyright.

The gold in the game IS work that belongs to ArenaNet.
The client being used by botters belongs to ArenaNet.
The server being used by botters belongs to ArenaNet.

They have no permission to using someone else's copyrighted property to make money.

Thats the same as taking my paintings and selling them without my permission.

Aren't the majority of accounts that these sellers use hacked? They'll never use their real account to sell. They're not that stupid. Go to their website and they'll get your info and they'll use your account to sell their dirty money.

Just banning account that delivers money is nothing ... you need to ban related accounts (money dump from where delivery accoutn got his money, bot accounts that put money into dump ...)

Why do you think "recent party members / recent trade partners" feature was created? Yeah.

U R Ingenus No1 Thot Of Dis 1 B4!

Good way to add on to this... buy from an eBay account, and right before you actually perform the transaction have the account banned.

Then give them a bad review in eBay for not delivering.

Sue someone in China/Korea/even Europe? Good luck. With the differences in copywrite laws & policies not to mention international relations, trying to stop someone from doing this through a legal channel must be a total nightmare.

The way people look at dealing with this is pretty unrealistic. Stopping these people (outside of seeing the eula breech first hand & banning) is very hard.

When this wee intern isn't busy slapping the sites themselves, It's not hard to spot 40 monks using the exact same walk path, every single run, inside a zone. Just go stand in granite citadel for 10 minutes and you'd see them. They take the EXACT same path every time, like clockwork. Easily nab a load of people a day.

If i don't have to move to washington, sure, I'll be one of the interns.

Blacklisted:
Credit cards: Well, the seller doesn't necessarily know which buyer reported him for banning so blacklisting would take a while. If the card gets blacklisted from a site, use a new card for that site and take the blacklisted oen to another competeing site. Repeat as needed.
Accounts: Again, sellers don't know exactly which buyer lead to the ban. Even if the got suspicious, A-Net can generate a whole pile of access keys to make new Sting accounts with. Doesn't cost them anything much to generate a new key, especially when they know what it's being used for.



On the question "Why do people want to get rid of professional retail gold farmers?"

Well, A-Net has stated many times that changes made to AI and drop rates are put implace to combat professional retailers. They have there reasons for wanting to put a stop to them. The measures they've been taking are from a "progamming" point of view - which is understandable because most of the people who work at A-Net are programmers. I was simply offering something that could be done that would not require alterations to the game's mechanics.

On the matter of "stolen" ad "hacked" accounts.

This measure would also serve to round up and remove these stolen accounts. People who have had accounts stolen are less likely to be duped again. The rest of us are smart enough to not get burned the first time. That means that the retailers would have to actually BUY new accounts if they wanted to continue to sell gold. At first they might consider this the cost of running their business. Later, when they see they are getting hit too frequently, they should realize that it isn't cost effective to sell GW gold, and just focus more attention into selling gold from other on-line games that are more profitable.

Is 1 or 2 interns enough? Probably not. But 100 might be too many. There is going to be a number of interns that would achieve maximum efficiency without running into redundancy. Without all the facts I can't say what that number is. But 1-3 interns isn't a bad place to start. If the problem is as big as some people think it is, maybe start with 10 interns. 10 interns, working with a little bit of co-ordination (so as to to overlap the targets) could potentially knock out 150 illagally used accounts in one four hour shift. If those accounts have to be replaced right away in order to keep up with sales requests, that's $4500 in sales from the GW store. The cost of running that "sting" would be about $1900. So sales minus cost is $2600 in new income.
Better still, as someone pointed out they have the "recent trade partners" feature. For everyone one "selling-gold dump" account they find, they can track it to numerous "farm-bot" accounts that do the harvesting. If we assume 3 farmers for every 1 trader, that's four accounts banned for a cost of $12.50 ($10 for setting up the sale and $10/4 for the wage time of the intern). Four replacement accounts being purchased are $120. Well if that actually works, the profits from running the program are almost 8x the cost. Making use of the recent trades feature can reduce the cost impact of running the program dramatically - even if half the accounts used to replace banned ones are stolen there is still a profit to A-Net from account sales.

This idea just keeps getting better. Hey A-Net, if you use this could you maybe thank me by naming an NPC in the next game after me? Just a thought.

This screams faliure and holy mess you took some time to think this up.

And that's pretty much what my suggestion entails. Direct observation of illegal account use. It's not like the gold seller can cry "entrapment." For one thing, they are the ones initiating the illegal actions by advertising the sale, and for another, the A-Net rep/intern is not an agent of the police. They are simply a company preserving the function of its service. Kind of like security guards in a health club. They hear about a "customer" smuggling in fatty foods, and after meeting with him to make a buy, they give him the boot for clubhouse violations. They already have the right to kick anyone from the game for pretty much any reason, just now they would be assertively excersing that right. And in exactly the way it was intended to be excersied. All sounds good to me.

I especially like that "recent traders" addition. Makes the whole thing even better.

I don't and won't buy gold, but I have no problem with it existing. If people are well enough off that they can waste money just to make their GW characters look pretty without burning hundreds of hours to accomplish this, then so be it. Honestly, its existence doesn't effect me in the least, other than the annoyance of seeing advert bots in certain areas of the game (which can be easily solved by having an anet employee hop through districts once every couple hours).

I have fow armor for one pve character and 15k for the rest (through legitimate farming), but if I; had nothing, loved guild wars but hated farming, and was well off (poor student ), I'd probably plonk down a few dollars for a storage full of gold too.

The problem/reason I think is because alot of the prestige and sense of achievement is lost when you've been working your little fingers to the bone to obtain a set of obsidian armor, and it would have taken you ages.. and then little Johnny grabs his dads' credit card, buys is gwgold, map travels to the nearest Rare Material Trader, goes to ToA, and buys his prestige.

I remember back when I played Runescape they did that. Friend got banned for buying Ebay gold and he got an email from the companty pretty much stating that they screwed him. xD If Anet does it, it will seriously cut down the amount of gold bought online. Great idea.

The more obvious solution is for Anet to sell gold cheaper, thereby driving the gold farmers out of business.

To the OP... I agree and posted this same suggetion more than once.

So this is my question. WHY do they feel a need to concern themselves with the gold farmers?

I dont want to hear about the economy. THe economy has been like it is since the beginning. And quite frankly it is more screwed up for the average joe today than ever before because of the latest attempt to eliminate bots.

So why eliminate bots? They dont hurt us, they are not responsible for the economy. Is this a social thing? Are we trying to feel better about ourselves by helping some 10 year old chinese kid out that slaves over a GW terminal 12 hours a day? Thats it, crush that GW sweat shop... that 10 year old belongs out in a rice patty 12 hours a day. The GW gold farmer in the sweat shop may be the envy of his neighborhood, all of his friends in the rice patties wish they had his job.

Remember "be careful what you ask for". Your attempt to eliminate sweat shopping in China may do more harm than good.

No offense meant to any Chinese, or anyone that eats rice.

well, most MMOs have people doing this. I remember WoW making a huge ban around the same time GW made the 2nd big one. It takes time to observe & catalog all the names & actions then go through with the banning.

hire me (not higher).....I wouldnt mind getting $10/hour (damnn, that is what I make, and I dont have fun at my job!).

I'd take sub-minimum wage if I could keep the in-game gold, hahaha!

Check the current price-to-purchase GW GOLD online, 4/24/2007. Notice the dramatic increase? Those businesses are booming, and the game itself keeps increasing their reason-to-live, not to mention the booster-shots given to the demand that drives them.

The rate at which new in-game items are added has been increasing steadily (e.g. Rare Weapons, Armor, mini-pets, Green's). Every new item increases the demand for GW Gold. Lol...the expansion mentions, just as an example, 40 new armors.

Banning accounts as a way to shut down GW Gold seller's? I don't think so. 100 accounts cost less then $5,000. Chicken feed to a GW Gold supplier. And what is the rate of account shutdown that ANet can maintain? Your guess is as good as mine, but 500 a month isn't my estimate and 1,000 a month wouldn't, in my opinion, cause them to do anything except reduce the wages they are paying the human farmer's, move farther into the countryside for cheaper rent, or replace Grade-A rice with something inferior.

Sue them? For what? And, how? The ANet census would have to grow by an order of magnitude (read: legal personal and supporting services) to handle enough cases to make a difference. You generally pay up front for that (promise to pay is not a differentiator). If that happens, hello to a monthly gaming fee for GW, good-bye to that glow-in-the-dark P&L. Ever try to sue a fly-by-night LLP (it they are even that) in a foreign country, much less China? By the time the case is decided, we will all be playing GW25, assuming they don't get thrown out of court. And what are the consequences (think finances) if ANet loses? Lot to think about for someone who assumes that because they bought a big table for their board room that they are now somehow level 100 Wammos in the world of Corporate Warfare.

That GW Gold is available for purchase online is not all bad for the average gamer. The more GW stuff those people who get money online buy, the lower the cost of re-purchase, or even initial purchase, is to the honest, day in and day out grinder like you.

Forget the bots and forget the gold miners. Petetion ANet to open it's own GW Gold store with really cheap prices. That will put the hurt on that League of Evil Doers like nobody's business, it will provide Anet with a steady income in line with their GW Evolution vision, and it will ensure that all of us can continue to while away the hours playing GW for free instead of wasting time doing meaningless stuff.

Take care...namaste...film at 11:00

Bingo Canada ftw.