Online Gold... And the laws behind it?!

I have been playing since beta and I know all about the eula.What I ma saying is to but more way more into the game.

Age other than the 1st bit I wasn't talking to you specifically. So you meant put more basic armors, not reduce the cost of 15k? Is that what the "put more why into the game" means? I can see adding more basic sets, but as I said, reducing the coast of 15k armor takes away the point of it being 15k armor lol.

It's true money=time and vice versa, but some people have neither. Casual players of broad audience do not all have the same amount of free time and RL cash.

A person whose willing to dish out $500.00 USD for in-game gold will not make the game seem fair for the younger players who only have $10 lunch money. These younger players are not going to think their surplus farming time is anywhere fair compared to spending cash for insta-gold... because no one wants to farm if they can just buy gold.

This is a fact, and it's true, but its not an excuse, and certainly not a justification to perpetuate the extent of unfairness. The responsibilities of individuals may be about profit and materialism, but the responsibilities of a governing system is fairness... and fairness doesn't mean Marxism, but equal opportunity, NOT equal profit.

Getting enough time to play may seem hard for us working adults, but getting cash for gold is nearly impossible for younger kids.

Good post, Chthon. I don't think anybody in this thread is pro-botting. So I agree with and concede to all points you make that botting is bad. The OP brought up the issue of online gold so I'll focus on that.
Even if Anet could find a way to stop all the online gold businesses, you haven't removed the incentive to farm massive amounts of gold. People will still farm in ways that don't violate the EULA and this still holds the means to cause inflation within the game.

Somebody's always going to have more gold than you and me. Stopping online gold sales will just change who that person is, but it's likely still not you or me unless you're the guy who can sit there and farm 10 hours a day.
Here lies the basis for one of our differences of opinion. I'm OK with not being able to afford vanity items. If everybody could get them then they wouldn't be vanity items.
I agree that throwing this out of proportion would be bad. However, I suggested an alternative in a post above which doesn't directly affect this proportion.

Anet was smart to make some of the vanity items (expensive armor, guild hall merchants, certain titles) GOLD SINKS. Once these are bought, they take the money directly out of the economy. So this is a force which counteracts the increase in money supply. If somebody buys online gold to trick out their guild hall... it actually gives you a bit MORE purchasing power.
Keep in mind that people can pay real world money now to avoid this deflationary pressure by purchasing extra char slots. At the same time they gain the additional advantage of being able to hold onto more in game gold than a player who doesn't buy char slots. They gain an in game benefit by spending real world cash.

Including Kunnavang in CE is another example of how people already benefit in game from spending real world money and don't break the rules of the game.

Perhaps the biggest example is the big PvP advantage you get by purchasing the latest and greatest campaign since the skills are usually more powerful than older equivalents when it first comes out. I expect this will happen again with GW:EN.
I'm pro loot scaling and against directly throwing a lot of extra money into the economy.

I don't care about the reasons behind why money already in the economy changes hands.

1. Player A gives player B in game gold for real world cash.
2. Player A gives player B in game gold for free.
3. Player A spends his in game gold on the exact items player B would have bought.

Action 1 is banned by the EULA while actions 2 and 3 are not. However, does it really make a difference to you (player c) whether 1, 2 or 3 happened?

And just to point this out, allowing gold sales is a form of Elitism, not Marxism. It rewards those with the privilege to buy gold, while those who can't must work tremendously hard for it.

Without the sales of gold, the reward is based on effort, not rights and privilege.

So flesh out the idea - you think we should have an in-game tax and robin-hood redistribute it to the poor? A new title for gold donations? A robber NPC that targets those with lots in the bank? A new minigame where the wealthy are sucked on login into a special zone where poor people who sign up can chase them and every time they "tag" them they get to "steal cash?

Stop blabbering about how not everyone deserves a maserati. This is a virtual game, and we can give everyone 12 sets of FoW and you'll not only still have yours, your real milk will still be in your real fridge too. Zero cost to you.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

Ummm ...wow Tabasco you pulled that whole robin hood/ in game tax/title/minigame thing outta nowhere. My comment about gold sinks referred to, well, gold sinks. 15k armor, the uber skin weapons etc and that not every player needs them. Nothing to flesh out as you put it really, it was there for the reading. Gold sinks are things to sink gold into. They are meant for those who have alot of gold to spend to have somthing to spend it on. They aren't supposed to be quickly and easily obtainable. If they were cheap, they wouldn't be...well..gold sinks. The "blabbering" as you so politely put it, was regarding the statements made about "needing" these epeen items. They aren't needed, they are wanted.

I think Shakti is talking about promoting more high end gold sinks rather than the ones that hit everybody. Some existing gold sinks are already set up to just hit people who want to take advantage of them. FOW armor, the guild hall merchants, the gambling title.

Just taking the gold out of the game in return for this stuff makes the gold that poor players have more valuable.

Gold sinks like traders and salvage kits hit everybody.

I think Shakti is saying put more high end gold sinks in so we could lessen or remove the ones that also hit the poorer players. It's a good idea.

Except that if everybody has it, it's not a luxury item. Some people are into having the items they can flash around and make people jealous... it's the part of the game they enjoy. You turned the Ferrari cake into the Acura cake.

Diablo's right, gold sales are a form of elitism.

My bosom friend's dad plays GW whenever he can.
He also earns $600+ an hour.
He plays maybe 3-5 hours a day.

He could outfit his entire troupe of toons with FoW and tormented weapons from 1 day of work. (He doesn't though, and only has 15k armor lol)

Should he be able to do that, just because he makes an amazing amount of real life money? Should he have that advantage over kids, who in turn might bug their parents for cash to spend?

Yeah I got on a knee-slapper roller coaster there. I figure, if you want to reduce the stockpiles of in-game gold, then simply offering more luxury items will probably not do it. Players swapping gold does not pull it out, so the most literal interpretation was....robin hood like. Well I thought it was funny.

So, why support a stratified virtual society? Why does there always have to be rich and poor? We get that for free in real life. That is what blows my mind - in a virtual reality where everything is zero cost, why would you want to have, when there are have-nots?

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

If you give all the items to everybody, you just ensure that items aren't a status symbol of the game. People would then care about getting the coolest title, or having the best PvP emote and start farming that instead.

And if you give them all that stuff maxed too, everybody wins and you have to rename the game from 'Guild Wars' to 'Special Olympics'.

Because when you get lazy, the have-nots might just catch up one day, and turn into the haves... and they're not going to return the favor.

Work tremendously hard for it? Or play tremendously hard for it? Just as an FYI... those of us who really do work tremendously hard (really... in the real world... for real money)... or maybe not so tremendously hard ... generally don't have the time to play tremendously hard for play money. So... if we could buy gold in-game, it'd actually be a trade off. Time is money.

Edit:

PS... and if we could buy gold in-game, there'd be no market for the gold sellers and, therefore, no reason for gold-farming bots. But I'll bet that argument has been said over and over and over and fallen on deaf ears.

If farming seems like playing to you, then it's just a matter of opinion. Me and many others, do not think farming is fun, no one wants to farm if they don't have to, but that is a choice.

You, having a job, and able to work for money, is not a choice everyone is so fortunate to have.

True, but we're summoning a monster to kill a beast. In the end we're still left with a different problem. Time is money, but not everyone's time is worth the same.

For starters i thank all of you for your input.

And Serenity Silverstar, i HAVE openly admitted purchasing gold in the PAST, but may i make extremmely clear that NOW that i know the reasoning behind it i agree 100%, and certainly WONT purchase online gold again.

Its not a case of me being bothered that i cant purchase online gold again, it was simply a case of knowing that ive bought it in the past, obviously not knowing that it was "illigal" and now that i know ive learned from my mistakes, and will be diving head first into any farming builds i can get from my colleages.

And please be aware (Anet) that this will clearly not happen again, and it is not at all needed to boot me from the game.

Thx for all input, and i must say that its been great to hear all sides of this apparently heated topic.

Thanks again!

~ M. t. W.

OK, I think this is the shortcoming in your understanding is. Take one step backwards and ask how the gold in each transaction came into being in the first place. Now take another step backwards and ask why that gold came into being. The answer, I contend, is that nearly all of the gold used in a gold-for-real-world-cash transaction came into being when a third-world gold-farmer cashed in a vendor trash white item at the merchant, and only because someone could get real-world money out of the deal. That gold would have never entered the economy without the incentive of real-world cash.

Let me provide a couple of illustrations. (These numbers are completely made up; they're merely illustrative.)

(A) Presume that you, and I, and every other "legit" player can make 5k per day. Further presume that there are 200 legit players who make up the entire population of GW. Also assume that, in the aggregate, we spend 900k per day on ID kits, armor, and other gold sinks. Finally, presume that a-net is able to perfectly enforce their no-gold-selling ban, so all the third-world farmers have gone over to WoW since they can't make any money off GW. Where would this leave us? That's 1 million in, and 900k out. So, the money supply would be increasing by 100k per day. Slight inflation occurs.

(B) Presume all of the same, except that there is one gold-seller whose operation farms 1 million gold per day. What happens now? That's 2 million in, and 900k out. So, the money supply increases by 1,100k per day. The inflationary force would be 11 times as strong.

Now, of course these numbers aren't accurate, but the general principle it illustrates holds no matter what numbers you plug in: When they create gold that would have otherwise never existed, with no intent to ever spend it on gold sinks themselves, gold-sellers cause inflation.

I wasn't complaining about their unattainability. I was merely citing them as an example of something that's unattainable as evidence that we are in an inflated state. I'm glad their unattainability doesn't bother you. But whether they bother you or not, their prices are astronomical.

Thats the thing with this topic i brought up.

Im not trying to be bold! Im simply being honest, and i was completly oblivious to the fact that its not permitted, and yes i SHOULD have read the rules behind the game, but ill be damned i skipped it because i was so excited to play the game.

I have nothing to hide
Yes i purchased online gold last year,
and yes i was oblivious to any rule against such until it was announced on the message board on the right side of Login.

But i strongly believe in second chances and i also strongly believe that ive learned somthing from this.

Let Anet do the finances for their own game,
and make sure that all i have to do with the game is to play it
not messing up the market.

And ill admit i was stupid to be so blatently oblivious to something that should be comon sense! Gold should be earned not bought.

I can only finish by saying that i hope that Anet is understanding, when they no doubt will read this Thread.

~ M. t. W.

Hi Diablo...

Yeah... I agree... only I think I'd use the term perspective rather than opinion. When you work and are your own sole support or supporting a family the stress is different than the stress of farming and therefor the perspective is different too.

QFT. I am so lucky. Not only do I have a job, but I have a job I really like a lot. I was very lucky to get it, and I have no desire to leave any time soon. It just keeps changing for the best, and I get a lot of my needs met here.

I'm actually not that concerned about whether I can buy gold or not. I just enjoyed throwing "perspectives" out there. I know there's a gaming credo that I think the first answer to the OP by Mr Groovy summed up most succinctly... "Because like most games gw is about timespend to earn items/ armor. Not money spend :/." And I can live with that. I can appreciate it too...

Actually, I've been farming in HM so that I'll have enough gold for armor for my main character when GW:EN goes live. Do you think 100k will be enough? That's what I got up to last night when I decided to take it easy from now until GW:EN is released.

At any rate, I'm happy Matthew posed his question and started this thread. I've really enjoyed it. I think a lot of interesting points were brought up, and I was especially pleased that this discussion... unlike so many on this forum these days... was, to a large degree, quite civil.

This game will, at some point in the future, be turned off and everything done in-game will go up in a poof of virtual electronic smoke.

Thankfully, the special olympics will continue to be.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

What I mean is the set would cost 15K all 4 pieces of it not just 1 as for say standard sets no the total cast is 5K plus head piece.I am not saying to put more basic set in.It would reduce the cost in way but you can still say that you have 15K.It is like the difference between a Chevrolet and a Cadillac.

if A-net sold gold through the online store i would consider making a purchase. since the loot nerf im having trouble increasing my bank total. i have 12 PVE toons, most are in 15k armor which i was able to aquire through normal game play and some casual farming long before the loot nerf. since then i wouldnt even consider a 15k armor purchase for the 3 toons ive made since the loot nerf. if it wasnt for materials,gold and weapons i already had stashed away it would of been difficult to equip them through normal play. after playing casually for almost 2 years i would like to get FoW armor for one or 2 characters yet dont have the gold or materials to do so because its become harder for the casual player like me to get it. i would buy from a-net and a-net only, knowing the money goes to them. i would have no problem paying $15-20 for 500k in gold if they set it up where you could only do that once a month. a once a month limit on gold purchase wouldnt be too excessive IMO.

Chthon, thanks again for your detailed post. When we give specific reasons, it helps us find specific answers to combat the issue.

I think there's likely a solution that could be coded to further reduce the issue itself.

If this is really the case, then there is a good way to combat the problem. Anet could cut off all the gold farmers at the knees by making it so merchants dont buy trash white items. Gold farmers can only make the prices they can get from salvaging them and selling the components. This would affect normal players too, but to a lesser degree since they also get cash from quests, trading, etc.

I think it would help to break this further up. (A) has two groups, the casual gamer (A1) and the guy who farms like crazy within the rules (A2).

If (A1) farms gold within the rules for 2 hours a day at an optimal rate and (A2) farms gold within the rules for 10 hours a day, then (A2) will likely add five times as much gold into the system as (A1).

(A2) hasn't broken any rules but inflation is still increased.

Anet could actually kill both cases, (A2) and (B) by adding a code implementation where you can only get a certain amount of gold and items a day and after that farming does nothing for you. The ability for players to greatly inflate the economy has been cut off. Importantly, this solution can still work even if online gold sales continue to happen.

Would you be OK with a specific solution like this?

Why do people think the OP will be banned? Admitting doesn't automatically mean you're guilty.
In a murder case, you still need evidence to convict a suspect who admitted to the murder himself.

Screw going against GuildWars EULA, you really think I trust those mofos with my credit card/debit card info?
Or keylogger that downloads as I go to the website.
Forget that..
**
After 3,500 hours, I'm wealthy, so I really can't say yes or no to someone that wants to buy it.

I see no problem, doesn't affect me any.
I don't buy anything high priced, so any sort of price difference because of someone buying gold wouldn't affect me.
Any of the mediocre -> hardcore farmers already have money from the previous years before loot scaling.
So I doubt they really care.

**But put me into the group of "I'm not spending real money for in game money"

And everything in the game is logged. That would be like confessing to a murder that was recorded on a security camera. All they have to do is rewind the footage and see it happen. That's pretty much all the evidence you need.

Still, I doubt it will happen. I just don't see Anet actively pursuing an incident that happened last year. Especially when all they do is temp ban. Kinda pointless now.

You connect two different worlds unrightfully together. In the real world you can get good care if u are having A) "old" money b) nice income c) less nice income but good management of said money. If you are taking less risks in life you are less likely to end up in hospital. In, conclusion you can determine a lot yourself to not end up in hospital, say it is skill in life. Now in game skills shopuld be disconnected from outside resources, so you should be able to garner wealth based on you in game time or ability to produce resources. If this would mean that guildies pay contribution to you then that is a fine in-game mechanic, but if you connect two unrelated worlds together the "balance" of things becomes upset. Anet chooses to have this disconnection in their game as they want a stable economy for players who earn money based on skill or time spent, they don't want people to just buy stuff from gold that was obtained in illegal ways (according their point of view) and therefore can outperform players that use their skill as a means to create wealth.

This is where liberalism and capitalism clash. But liberalism is a more "natural", it is not about accumulation of wealth, but the ability to produce wealth (like E-management versus a big E-pool). New money versus old money. In life there are a lot of things clashing with liberalism, money, nepotism, which can go back several generations, etc.. Liberalism represents a more darwinian mechanism, where u use the skills you possess and that determine whether you will gain resources. Don't confuse mainstream liberalism with the American liberalism. There is but one central theme in liberalism and that is personal development and ability (and therefore also personal freedom). It is the best way to elect/select the best people for any position.

That's not very realistic.. in game time is already an 'outside resource' since it comes from a finite pool.

Life is finite, it will always be. Its still a choice to devote less or more time to game or not. Technically it doesn't matter if you would be able to use real money to buy ingame goods (esspecially not because they are usually just vanity related), but u disadvantage the players who don't have such resources, due unfair competition.

Matt...trolling outside of GF? No wai.

With this argument, you'd be opposed to slot buying, PVP unlocks and what not as well?

If we were talking abt destabilizing the game or generating rampant inflation, I'd be more easily convinced. I can't buy the "unfair competition" bit though, especially when most items are vanity related.

I could also say that players who have more free time to play the game than me put me at a disadvantage and call that unfair competition. You're right that it's a personal choice to devote less or more game time. How does this not apply to real life money? The only reason I can think of is that some people regard time and money as disparate types of resources (intangible, unrecoverable etc etc), while others view them as more or less equitable and exchangable.

Buying of skills saves time, but still doesnt allow you to become better in using these skills
slot buying does not allow you to have a disadvantage at the cost of others, nor does the buying of PvP packs disadvantage others, as you still need to play builds with skill, and unlocking specific skills is easily achieved. Skills do not become more expensive if people decide to be lazy and buy PvP packs. Buying gold, however, devaluates the gold other people have acquired, as bought gold requires no activity of said player nor from the bots. It is an automated process undermining the economic position of players who do not buy gold. So buying gold affects others. You should always consider whether real life currency input will affect others or not, if not it is ok to implement it. However, if real currency input does affect others, you should refrain from it.

I would remove your character name from your profile if I were you.

Key thing im curious about now... is if they do boot me from Guildwars, they will be most likely to send an email?

Im actully keeping my fingers crossed that they wont pursue it like Arcanemacabre said

~ M. t. W.

though i dotn condone it in any way
all you guys going on about the sweatshops
educate yourselves
there is more than one interview and /or article on gold farmers in china who live a moderate, comfortable middle class life
goglign sweatshops is not information
its googling, jetdoc

You and your account will be fine.

Just checkout no gold.org.
I guess that China don't have a law to deal with gold seller yet.Also that site tell me that there is a evil-mastermind in MMORPG gold seller company that do take over many MMORPG fan sites to generate traffic to gold selling site.

Well thats random stuffs on the net.I just bored and don't have anything to do

may i ask what trolling means?

This would undermine the bots and put them out of business. Anet claims they take a stance against bots because of sweat shops. Trying to fight them is what actually keeps them going. Its very much comparable to illegal drugs. The more you fight it the more the price and demand goes up. Whereas if it was legal the demand would go down along with price.

Paying for items or gold when you want to is still an advantage over a monthly subscription. Anet is still close to monthly if you bought all the chapters.

This would cut down on time people spend online eating up bandwidth that cost Anet money. Would have no affect on casual players because pvp templates give us all the best items. Would give kids more time to do outside activities and homework. The list goes on.

I have never bought gold myself but I can completely understand why some one would. I make a lot of money everyday. GW actually takes money out of my pocket because it is taking up my time. It would be much cheaper for me to buy the gold to get the items I want rather than spend the time to grind for it.

As for the economy that was pretty much destroyed with the merchant prices being reset. Inscriptable armor destroyed runes. Dyes continue to go down. FoW armor is uninspiring with falling ecto prices. Loot scale being added making gems easier to get. Nothing in the game is very expensive despite raw gold being pumped into the market by farmers and bots.

Okay...well i'm just going to give you a small little answer...BUYING GOLD WILL DESTROY ITS VALUE!

Clearly Matthew The Wise is not particularly wise for leaving his in-game name for all to see...

Anyway, I dislike people who purchase gold as I hate auctions which turn into "Credit Card Wars" / "Bank Balance Wars". Although this has not happened for quite some time due to all the big gold buyers quiting.