Breaking News: Death of Taiwan, Macao and Hong Kong Region!?

You are all wrong - and you allow ppl from An to manipulate you. Why ?

In real life economy the more money flowing into the market means INFLATION - prices rise. Real money traders have been operating in GW almost since the beginning of the game, with apogeum of their business right before AN implemented new RMT policy.

What could we see during real-money traders intense activities? Have the prices risen? Of course not - they have FALLEN tremendously. Not only materials, runes, but also high end items.

GW is not WOW. More money flowing the market DOES NOT mean destroying the economy - they're used for "vanity sink". The only thing destroying the economy is Arena Net with their zaishens, with their ursan, with their armbrace dupping bug.

There's absolutely NO PROOF that RM traders, that MIGHT operate from Taiwan, MIGHT harm the economy.

Give me a proof of your theory, AN.

會打簡體字那看得懂繁體字吧
什麼叫"他自己没说清楚,以前的事情和现在的事情混在一起说,我说的是之前台湾的玩友自然是可 以密其他 区的人."
標題寫得很清楚~在這樣的標題下當然只會說4/1後被改的狀況
目前4/1後台版是被隔離的狀態~PVP也只能台版角色組滿去跟國際的角色打
如果你認為可以跨區可以到國際區可以跟其他區角色交談或交易這些是特權的話
那麼可以請你告訴我為什麼獨獨台版的沒有這些特權??
難不成台版玩家都是用假鈔買帳號的??
如果說是因為台版比較便宜的話
拜託~售價是官方定的又不是玩家定的
一樣是繳錢玩遊戲~Anet憑什麼剝奪特定區域的權利

After 4/1 , Taiwanese district char can't whisper and trade to other districts char , and Anet cut off the connection of the merchant NPC between Taiwanese and International .
If you think that can travel to other districts is a privilege not right .
Could you tell me why does only Taiwanese district have not the privilege ?
Were we paid fake money to buy it ?
If the reason is we paid few than other district , hey the price of product is set by official not players .
We also paid for playing the same with other district players , how could Anet aggrieve our right .

Sure, but logically, when the lowest common denominator gets too low to be feasible, the territories pushing it that low should not be marketed to. In this case, since the marketing has already taken place, that's not an option anymore, short of pulling the plugs altogether. (Which they thankfully managed to avoid.)

In any case, they did little else other than to revert the game to how it was at the time of release, which can't be grounds for complaining.

That...? Whatever that is, they are following the law of your country. Can't blame them.

Don't know about Taiwan, but Japan has a monthly fee.
￥980($9.80)/30days
can play all campaigns and expantion for 30 days.

Apparently though, if you are still in an alliance, you can still chat on AC between accounts from "either side" Not ideal I know, but still a little work around for you to chat to your friends - at least as far as chat is concerned anyway.

Um I play using a Japanese version of GW and I pay no monthly fee....
There is no such fee.
I think you are referring to the trial discs.


I wouldnt be suprised if they close down the Japanese servers.
Its a ghost town, and trying to find ANY GW product in Japan is quite a mission.
Last saturday I walked around Osaka looking for EotN and Factions, 2 which I dont own.
I went from Osaka to Kobe to Kyoto, 35 minutes by train to each city.
Looked at every software store/mall I could find.
I found 2 copies of Nightfall in Osaka.
Nothing anywhere else.


Japanese are big time gamers, from thier PSP's on the train to thier desktops at home.
Everywhere you see people playing games.
The problem is the games market is MASSIVE here, sadly its mostly for games made in Japan.
There are tons of online RPG's available but only for the Japanese community, they sell big and its a constant battle between game developers here.

The 2 biggest games on the market here are GUNDAM (theyve even got a GUNDAM MMO of sorts) and Final Fantasy, doesnt matter if its FF online or just FF everyone is playing it.
After that its all the FF type wanna be games that people buy.
Metal Gear Solid was HUGE in western areas, here its like pong, the kind of game a person will buy just to play on a rainy day when theyre bored.

International games are hard to get here, online shopping is becoming more of a pain for ordering games from overseas.
Some games can be shipped internationally and some games cant.
Most games from overseas arent even advertised here, youll just see it on the shelf one day and say "oh a new game...".
LOTRO received a small amount of advertising basically because of the movies success here.
But honestly in the 8 years Ive been here I have never seen any other game from overseas be advertised.

hi all... i come from taiwan...

my english is not good, so i may use some wrong word.

here are the pics of new game agreement of taiwan account

http://tinyurl.com/2nvxu9
http://tinyurl.com/3cr669
http://tinyurl.com/3xt9ac
http://tinyurl.com/38rt7l
http://tinyurl.com/3alk45
http://tinyurl.com/2vnn88
http://tinyurl.com/2kt8w4
http://tinyurl.com/3xnbo2

sry i can't translate all of them by english
---------------------------

after one day working, ya... we finally find the "new law of taiwan"

actuality ... it's not a law, it's most like a bond indenture.

some stupid county agent made it to fix the controversy of internet game .

but they even don't understand what is online game.. lol

here is the link of bond indenture from government web : http://www.cpc.gov.tw/detail.asp?id=389
and the documet download link is 線上遊戲定型化契約應記載及不得記載事項.doc (you may save it as a new name)

(if someone can transtale it, you may try it)

after read this.. we found it's totally incomprehensible and nonsense.

but this kind of shit often happen in taiwan department.

so ... ya... if i am anet... i may do the same way to circumvent that rules.

but it's not the good method what anet done this time to asia player.
-------------------

finally i want to say one thing.... don't use China case to this issue.

China are totaly different Taiwan.. we are two different regime.

Taiwan are not belong to China.

yes, the United Nations do not accept Taiwan is a independent nations.

But we don't pay tax to China, all of Taiwan ppl definitely know we are a independent nations.

Actually, the implication is that the money you already own becomes worth less over time. Given that the rarest items in the game have ROCKETED up in value over the last few years, I'd say that there's inflation present. Certainly the dupe had something to do with this, but even since then there's been significant upward motion in prices,

To those of you that will advance the argument that super-rare items have a fixed supply: If there is no inflation, fixed-supply items remain constant in price. Those items which can be REMOVED from the system via customization/dedication can conceivably become more valuable, true. However, if there is no inflation we should not have observed a general upward trend in mini prices before the dupe, nor should we have observed one after the market settled out.

Are we playing the same game? Common mats became far more expensive when consumables hit. Certain rare materials became less expensive when ANet deliberately reduced the supply of gold. Ditto for runes. That has to do with an exogenous shock to the system (loot scaling), and has nothing to do with inflation. You observe inflation in shifts in the price of fixed-supply stuff.

High end items: prices have been dictated by supply. Why is a Runic Blade dirt cheap now? Because ANet increased the drop rate by a factor of thousands.

Generally speaking, if you want to equip your character with a bunch of junk, your money goes further than it did. If you want to equip your character with nice stuff...good luck with all that.

It's a simple proof. Suppose that you can farm X amount of money in a certain period of time. Assume that all players in the system have generated wealth of Y. Your farming efforts are worth X/Y per period.

Add RMT to the system. This incentivizes additional farming. Now the total wealth in the system is Y+Z, where Z is the amount of wealth generated by the online gold sellers. This wealth is particularly problematic because these farmers tend to generate things people use to get the things they want (gold/ecto) rather than the things people actually want.

If the online gold sellers generated an equivalent ratio of things people want and cash, you'd be right that there's little harm done to the economy. The supply of things you want and the supply of cash would grow at an equal rate, and your personal farming efforts would be just as efficient.

Doesn't work that way in reality, though. Actual players farm the things that people want, because only actual players are willing to accept the low mean/high variance nature of such farming. Gold sellers are best served by minimizing labor costs, which means farming commodities and dumping them ASAP at slightly below market value.

The upshot of all of this is that now your farming efforts are worth X/(Y+Z). Since Y+Z > Y, your farming efforts are less effective and you are made worse off.

Note that this holds true whether you farm or not. If you don't farm, the value of your X parameter is simply lower.

Now, it's perfectly legitimate to argue that the magnitude of the Z parameter remains unproven. However, if you know anything at all about commodities trading, you quickly figure out that the value of that parameter is large in this game. (Too many sellers at below market prices, all with no guild tags and Asian names.)

Online gold trading makes you worse off. QED.


Back on topic: One would think that there is some sort of legal workaround. My suspicion is that it's the IP permaban that's the problem. Policy changes; suddenly there are legal problems that weren't there before? Hmm.

This stinks for legitimate players in Taiwan. It's also a testament to the fact that if there's a way to make a buck, people don't care about the externalities they impose upon others. Finally, it demonstrates that ANet knows where they've got large numbers of copies sold and will sacrifice periphery businesses in order to protect the American/Euro market.

This all seems fairly pointless to me; won't the gold sellers simply get Korea/Japan accounts now? Granted, those can get IP permabanned, but that's not too costly to fix. If there's as much money in RMT as there appears to be, inconveniencing the businesses and increasing their costs somewhat may kill marginal operators, but it's not going to eliminate the overall problem.

i know this is a big issue, but we shouldn't put Gaile in such a hard position, if it's the law, we can do nothing about it. if we try to break it, GW will get sued, and, both EU/US servers will be closed too, sure that's not what any of you wants, right?

and we should thank Gaile for all those things she has done for us already

P.S chinese/taiwanese ppl should stop the flaming at each other.... and it's not ANet's fault, it's the goverment. 还以为马英九会好好干的，没想到一上任就有这么多规章……

Japan has 2 payment methods:
1.buy a copy of GW, and no monthly fee. (just like other countries)
2.pay a monthly fee, and don't need to buy a copy of GW.

You can buy any campaign/expantion at Japanese official GW website

Say in brief the bond indenture limited the right of the game provider 2 things:

1. The customers have their right to request a total refund (and they don't even need to provide any reason) within 7 days start from the buying of the game.
2. No matter what reason, the game provider cannot ban a player's account more than 7 days (for one case).

Yes, we (I mean most of the Taiwan territory players) do admit that's much over the acceptable baseline of a commercial online-game provider that really cares in controlling RMT.


Anet use the "isolation" method to avoid the ruin of in-game economy due to the fact that they can't ban a Taiwan territory account permanently even it involved in RMT (at least in GG's explaination said).
(The interesting thing is, up to now, all the official notices regarding this problem from NCTaiwan never stated the real reason of isolation is because of the silly "new law".)

Up to now I think the only arguments are
1. Is this isolation method a good solution?
2. Are there any follow-ups from Anet that will release the isolation?

Maybe they can consider move the server and the whole Taiwan bussiness to Hong Kong (Hong Kong do not have such a silly bond indenture to over-protect the customer right.) :P

P.S. I'm a Hong Kong player with both a Taiwan territory account and a American territory account.

Exactly same as Taiwan territory.

Ah I didnt notice the the 2nd option.

But yea from here:
http://guildwars.plaync.jp/

It would be handy if there was an English version
Took me forever to figure out how to register my GW on that site.
And not ONLY that site, also had to register it through Leivo or Lievo whatever its called.
If I could read kanji that well Id buy from that site but the problem is filling out your details in Kanji is just a tad hard...
Also notice how EotN is not available.

Well, the fault IS due to bots.

Laws that support professional farming in a game it's something like... well... counter-productive.

Many games will leave Taiwan like GW if they keep that.

Once rmt companies see that they can operate in taiwan without any drawbacks pretty much every mmo company will take action. Wouldn't be suprised if a few just suspend services there altogether.

Taiwan's month fee same service as Japan
but the month fee is 12.6us per month

Heard ppl saying this before april fools..

~Prof.

WoW.. the Taiwanese Government is freekin evil. They basically support people illegally making money off game companies. The fact that they do it at the expense of an American company makes a sick sort of sense.. Messed up!

1. Resolution:

Legal resell: Make all copies sold to Taiwan are sold privately by local denizen (which you trust) who bought them all , waited for 7 days and then resold them.

Technically, refund is now void since buyers are not original customers, and 7 days passed already.

Play on fact that it is since purchase, not since game account activation.

2. Resolution:

Wanna permaban someone with this kind of stuff? Follow these instructions:

a) Ban account for 7 days
b) Once ban expired, wait one minute (seccond, miliseccond ...).
c) repeat from a)

Anet can make up bannable case of anything by being creative with eula ... like, i.e. not logging in for 7 days could be bannable offense. Cruel, aint it.

Play on fact that frequency of bans is not take into account for and you can still ban for anything by adding few lines to eula.

---

You CAN fight this battle, be creative about this. Taiwan is ipso facto lost territory for you and most other MMOs companies as of now, so you loose a little but can gain a LOT of positive coverage and hero stuff that people dig.

Honestly, i want to see you win this, not back away.

if this is a gold/economy related issue, why TW server can't team with international server to form pve or pvp group as long as they are unable to exchange items.

although technically they can still drop items on ground in pve to exchange, in PVP this cannot be done...

if technical difficulty can't yet allow pve grouping internationally, I think at least allowing access in pvp outpost internationally for tw server should be done as soon as possible, I mean hindering tw district to team internationally has greater harm to the game itself than how economy in game is affected, given that for example, HA has already had population problem, and pvp playing has none to limited influence in guildwars economy if they cannot exchange item.

official statements and measure had stated that pve in a closed environment and pvp in a global basis, limiting pvp group forming in a closed environment is not pvp in a global basis.

every single day of restriction will lead to more people leaving the game...which I can't see why this should get prolonged in anyway.

I am in an alliance of TW players, and a lot of them wish to play competitively in pvp and careless in pve or items, limiting them accessing international pvp district leads to huge difficulty in international pvp forming with tw server players, examples in HA,alliance battles, Team arenas,etc.

furthermore, the tw server or precisely tw, macao, hong kong version, they are 3 different regions/countries or location regulated by different laws, and how will that be suitable for using TW laws to regulate other locations that are mentioned.

I understand the reasons of resources wastage of trying to control and overcome the problem of different laws and jurisdictions, and economically affecting a country GDP if much US dollars are leaking in the cyberspace to other country without being calculated, ultimately games are for fun, not for politics, letting licensed players to play the game fairly should be put in utmost priority.

why i play guildwar?

no monthly fee, i can play whenever i like

and i can play with everyone from the world in the international server

now, everything is gone......i was cheated by anet...

Anet is wholly owned by NCSoft.usa which is a subsidiary of NCSoft - a Korean company!

Ridiculous EULAs like this would be void by default and NCSoft.tw would be fined for fraud.

I think a bigger stink needs to be made of this. I'm off to submit this story to slashdot and digg. I encourage others to do so as well.

(Note: I don't mean that NCsoft's actions are objectionable, but rather that Taiwan's ridiculous new "law"-like thing needs to be publicly ridiculed.)

1) i dont get really affected so i dont really care (just a little)
2) i think that that law just.. oh well.. i dont wana be murdered but ( s*uK**s)
3)are they tryng to get they citisens some work? so they kick out gw from their country?because gw doenst want to our bad economy become even worst?


god bless europe

you know, you do have a Very good point there. agree with you
the only possiable way for that solution might just be the change of Chinese party.

Read my post on this page again.

Dozens of laws are passed each and every day. Something so minor as some internet law involving NCSoft would not get a lot of public attention. Furthermore, the law could have been passed months or even years ago, but only taken affect reccently (and thus the very specific deadline of April 1st, this could also explain how you have a new government just take power and one law passed by the old admin could have just taken affect).

This situation truly sucks for the legitimate players in Taiwan et al.
F$&%#in rmt/botters, still manage to bollox up the game for people when they are being removed.

Non-Taiwan region players who are members of Taiwan-region guilds have lost the use of most of their own Guild Hall NPCs as a result of this stupid law.

Right now, our guild is following this matter pretty closely and would appreciate it if we can get some sort of word on whether:
1) Our 2-year-old guild, and all of its NPCs, will just disappear at some point
2) We would be able to seek relocation of the guild to a different region
3) We should forget entirely about carrying our guild over to GW2.

Frankly, it really sucks to even think about losing all the effort we put into our guild over the last 2+ years, but it's sounding pretty inevitable at this point.

I thank you for the translation.

That could work, but it would be a pain. It might be easier just to wait till day 8 before actioning the account anyway. At any rate, I suspect it's #2 that's got NCSoft worried.

I don't think this will work. Your pretextual ban for not logging in is precisely that, pretextual. What you're really doing is banning again (and again) for the same offense, and that's a direct violation of the law. As much as popular culture "celebrates" the creative use of technicalities in law, it's not really the way things work; any court that had to deal with repeated 7-day bans separated by one second each time would look at the real reason for the bans and not the pretext you provided.

THIS IS A BRILLIANT IDEA! Please permit me to build on it a little more.

Option 1: Reinstate district travel. TW accounts cannot trade or drop except on the TW servers. All other accounts cannot trade or drop on the TW servers. There, economic isolation accomplished, but you can still play together.
(Variant: Allow other accounts to trade on the TW servers, and then monitor them for gold-buyers. Since virtually no one goes to the Taiwan servers to trade for legitimate reasons, it would be very easy to catch gold buyers this way.

Option 2: OK, so we can't ban TW accounts for more than 7 days, but we can still action TW accounts in other ways besides bans. So, in place of a permaban, why not give a bot account a perma-cannot-trade-or-drop-stuff-status? That would screw a bot account just as effectively as a ban. Now, go reconnect TW to the rest of the world.

I particularly like option #2.

Short answer: On paper, yes; for all practical purposes, no.

History lesson: Up until the communist revolution, Taiwan was, without question, a part of China. As they found themselves on the losing end of the communist revolution, the forces of the previous regime retreated to Taiwan. Hostilities ended with the old regime holding Taiwan and the communists holding the entire mainland.
Today, Taiwan is a totally independent nation for all practical intents and purposes. They have their own governmental system, their own economic system, their own legal system, their own tax system, their own dialect of Chinese, etc. Moreover, the mainland government has zero authority over anything that happens in Taiwan. However, the mainland government has a serious irrational pride thing going on and just can't accept that Taiwan is independent, so they vigorously assert that Taiwan is still a part of China, even though that assertion is quite silly to the outside observer. Because of China's threats to throw a temper tantrum at the UN if other nations officially recognize Taiwan as independent, few countries have officially recognized Taiwan's independence, however most countries' behavior toward Taiwan reflects the practical reality of Taiwan's independence.

Sorry for the semantic oversight; I meant American built STUDIO & the Korean COMPANY that bought them.

New government regulations in Taiwan, which take effect April 1, restrict game companies in that region from effectively suspending or banning accounts for participating in professional farming or real-money trading. Guild Wars is highly impacted by local regulations such as this, because Guild Wars operates in a seamless, connected manner between all territories. We cannot sustain a seamless connection when we are unable to effectively police the game in one territory, because professional farmers in that territory could severely damage the game’s economy throughout the world. Therefore, we are forced to disconnect Taiwanese service from the rest of the game world as of April 1.

Users in Taiwan will still be able to participate in their international guilds and compete in international PvP, but as of April 1, they will no longer be able to enter international districts, trade with players outside Taiwan, or play in PvE environments with players outside Taiwan.


Sucks.. But when the governments decide to step in and make LAW the people don't have much choice but to go along with it unless they kick up a big enough stink and I don't think the gaming community in Taiwan is going to affect the policy decisions of the Taiwanese government anytime in the near future.

I also forgot to mention: Referring to Taiwan as independent is a good way to offend a mainlander; and referring to Taiwan as part of China is a good way to offend a Taiwanese. No matter what words you choose, you can't help but offend someone if you even try to discuss the topic at all.

Pride is something strange especially in southeast Asia. You just call all the asians over there rednecks, or those horses that have the cone over their head, or religious extremists, but they have no idea what those things are. People, over there, need to learn when to throw away your pride and the difference between pride and honor.

This new no trading with taiwan region should NOT have any effect on hk or the other one. Taiwan is independent while the other 2 are SAR(special administration region). This is the craziest thing, one of them should took over the other a long time ago and going by numbers it would have been most likely the communists.

Thank you Gaile and friends from the other side of the world for your awareness of this incident. At this point, we at least found a law that would affect the ability of Anet punishing bot/pro farmers. It forbids game company to ban accounts for more than 7 days. (Note:no official confirmation that this is the new law which Gaile/Anet is talking about.)

I'm not a lawyer or legislative expert, so I wouldn't give any suggestion on how Anet could take to avoid the law, but here is another problem. The law was passed in Nov, 2007. There are 4to 5 months from now. Why did the independent declaration so late? Only NCTaiwan and Anet would know~lol

There is nothing I can do now but to send a "begging/complaining" letter to support and wait for further notice from Anet/NCTaiwan.

The reasons for this are numerous, for one thing to avoid having to comply with various national laws in the various countries, but mostly due to the total disregard for the EULA and ROC developed for this game that has been shown by vast numbers of people in these places (i.e. bots and rms). Remember that these agreements and rules were designed to keep the game fun and as fair as can be for the majority of the player base.

I do feel for the legitimate players in these regions, but I can't say I miss the gold seller spams or the lag caused by the thousands upon thousands of bots running on GW servers.

I think we found the "new law of Taiwan" which maybe is Gaile/Anet talking about on google .
There is a very important point in the new law of Taiwan , "No matter what reason , the game provider can't ban a player's account more than 7 days (for one case)".
We can understand this point maybe will restrict game companies in that region from effectively suspending or banning accounts for participating in professional farming or real-money trading .
But I think that Anet need to do is trying to think how to solve this question , not aggrieve the right of legal players in Taiwanese district .
Why not let the accounts that belong to Taiwanese district become to belong to American district , then the players need to observe Anet's game rules not Taiwan's law .
And there is another question , I don't know when did the new law passed , when did Anet know the new law , when did the new law need to be observed .
I only know that the new law be advertised on 2007-11-16 (found on google) , and we be cut off on 2008-04-01 .
But Anet didn't tell us anything during 2007-11-16 to 2008-04-01 , they only posted an announcement at afternoon on 2008-03-31 and cut off on 2008-04-01 , then tell us "in response to recent changes to Taiwanese law" after they cut off .
When GW came to Taiwan , there is a very important point on their advertisement video (I had the video in my computer and anyone can downlord it on Taiwan official web) .
"GW is different with other online game , it is not independent or regional , only have one consolidated server , even your account belonged to Taiwanese district , you still can play PVE or PVP with other countries players in international district" .
Why I bought GW ont paid every month , because of this , and as the same as other Taiwanese district players who bought GW .
We paid for playing as the same as other district players , but now we are be cut off , we can't go any other district , we can't whisper and trade with other district players , but other district can do that .
Now Taiwan's GW is not primitive GW anymore , I feel my right be aggrieving , I just want to protect my right .

It probably wouldn't be the smartest idea to go telling everyone to transfer their farmed gold over. That would defeat the point. It sucks, but your problem is with your own government, not Anet.

Taiwan refers to itself as the Republic of China. Taiwanese people I know in the US refer to themselves as Chinese, but as a Taiwanese subset, just as Cantonese people refer to themselves Chinese and Cantonese. Taiwanese and Mandarin are fairly similar to each other, enough so that they can generally understand most of what each other say. By contrast, Mandarin and Cantonese speakers can understand almost nothing.

As an Irish-Mexican American, I don't feel that your ethnicity has anything to do with your nationality, and Asian immigrants here feel the same way. However, I am aware that this idea still exists in older countries with a less variable population.

I'm somewhat surprised to see a person from the PRC person referring to politics. I could be wrong on this, but I was under the impression that the average PRC citizen had zero influence on government, so politics would be of no consequence. Am I wrong, or do you feel a certain involvement with your government?

I will call myself Taiwanese rather than Chinese to be more specific and I am currently in Taiwan.

I have an account bought in Australia, and 2 accounts bought here in Taiwan. Like I have mentioned before in the other forum, if Taiwan server becomes one on their own.. then we will be literally playing an offline game! If you have ever had a chance to visit a Taiwanese district, most are deserted! So International District is the only way to party up and have fun..

I must say you are very wrong to assume this, Taiwanese and Mandarin aren't very similar at all! They are quite different..

It's not assumption, a grad student I worked with from Western China spoke Mandarin, and was somewhat able to understand our boss, who spoke Taiwanese. However, neither of them were able to understand the Cantonese spoken by the lab manager.

I could certainly be wrong on this, since that's the only group I know where all 3 mixed.

Also, dim sum is a horrifying experience when your food is being ordered by other people in a mix of foreign languages.