Your opinion on XTH?

First off, on the contrary back right back at you, and the only logic I'd call bizarre is the one you apply, were it not that I'd rather refrain from calling it logic in the first place.

The bonus mission pack offers content. You pay real money for the privelege of access to that content, which you can then use to your personal advantage, or you don't and you can't. Buying access to that content doesn't offer you any advantage over another player other than increasing the possibilities that you are offered in the microcosm of your own account, and whatever unique rewards it offers need to be played for. Also, the benefits of the bonus mission pack don't scale upwards proportionately to the amount of money spent on it, apart from the initial purchase.

The XTH on the other hand, offers an abusive way of gaining disproportionate amounts of a reward that's a major reward for one of the games major activities: PvP. Someone owning 33 accounts will receive more TRPs than the winner of the monthly 1v1 tournament, by no other virtue than shelling out for 32 extra accounts.

If you can't see anything wrong with that, I see no point in furthering this discussion and will extract myself from it presently.

if you shell out for 32 extra accounts, then you should enjoy the benefit of having 32 extra accounts. if i buy 32 cars, then i should enjoy the benefits (as well as the drawbacks) of having 32 cars. we do, after all, live in a free society. whether having those accounts, or those cars is worth it or not shouldn't matter to you.

See your main argumentative point is a repetition of the already well debated free market, vs regulated market debate. For example If you pay for an AK-47, Cruise missile, or Nuclear Warhead, should you be allowed to enjoy the full benefits of it?
And what was the result of that debate? Well take most of the markets of today as example.
I know that in Most countries owning a semi-automatic rifle is illegal, and for good reason.
Same logic applies. A-net is now the regulatory body for a Society of Gamers.
The argument here is whether or not some of the benefits that you get from purchasing an account should be provided.

edit1: Honestly mate, if your gonna bring up points like that, you aren't adding very much weight to your words nor credibility to your opinion =/

edit 2: Imean cmon.... arguing that the XTH is not RMT based on the EULA definition? Do you know what Cyclical Logic is???

IF you managed to buy those weapons, and IF you somehow managed to get away with buying them, then i guess you'll have the ability to use them. what happens afterwards might not be particularly good for you, nor to anyone/anything around you. it's up to the law enforcement to stop you from doing something illegal. if you managed to do something illegal in spite of law enforcement, then law enforcement have a lot to answer for.

btw, i've already made my point, and is arguing for the sake of arguing now (just like everyone else for that matter). i've been arguing that additional zkeys is like additional swamp flowers: it doesn't do anything except redistributing the wealth already in the game. if anyone is really so keen on getting a bigger slice of that wealth to buy a ton of accounts, then let them. by the end of the day, the amount of gold you have in this game hardly matters. the amount of people who cares for these things are in a rather tiny minority; probably smaller than the pvp community that some of you are so eager to deride.

and btw, i didn't say XTH is not RMT based on the EULA definition. i said XTH is totally legal because YOU accepted it. you can certainly argue whether if it is legal for anet to allow it, in which case you'll lose that argument rather quickly.

rofl.... so, your saying that its Perfectly fine to use Nukes, so long as you can get away with it? anyways on topic....

I very much like your analogy of Swamp flowers.
Given your point about handing out swampflowers every month being the same shit, then we have the following conclusion:

TRP = Zkeys = Swampflowers

Ok now, whats the prize for winning Mats? TRP, ie, Swamp flowers....

Would any1 PvP, when people, even the designers, view the activity to so base, and pointless as to be rewarding swamp flowers for it's top achievers?
I doubt it...

You may say... who cares about PvP, but that would be very selfish and short sighted wouldn't it?


edit: Also let me just point out that if you change your mind and decide Zkeys, do have "Some" value, you contradict yourself in saying that XTH cannot in anyway be classified as a form of RMT.

You can assume away the set of indifferent players, because nothing you do will impact them either way. If we contract the discussion to the only set of players that matters, namely those with a stake: you're outnumbered on this one. You say it's OK, and your position is backed up by the mass of apathetic people that don't care about this argument (whom we can safely assume away as voiceless) and the small subset of people that have purchased tons of accounts.

Further, the set of the uncaring is likely to contract if the present situation persists. Eventually, they will not be able to buy shinies with XTH proceeds due to huge prices, and will be poorer than they were when they started.

I have been rather patient with your complete and utter lack of a clue regarding economics. I've shown that millions of valuable items that are accepted as regular currency are being poured into the market each month. I have further shown why their value does not decline rapidly as this process happens (associated title track and players' intrinsic value on points to title track). I have explained the likely long term impact of this change and demonstrated an observable impact of this change (fixed-supply item price spike) that is consistent with the theory I have put forward.

The scientific burden of proof is now on you. I have presented a theory and shown how this theory helps us understand the virtual world we spend time in. If you want to disconfirm my theory, you need to do two things:

1) Create a new theory
2) Show how your theory accounts for the success of my theory and adds excess empirical content. In other words, you need to explain why prices on limited items are rising AND explain some other empiricial phenomena with your theory that my theory is unable to explain.

If you cannot do that, I am done arguing with you. Anything you put forward that cannot meet the above specifications is, by scientific standards, inferior to a constructed theory with empirical support. You can insist that applying economic theory to the game is fruitless if it makes you happy, but this doesn't seem to be giving you any leverage on explaining what's happening in the game right now.

All of these things are true, but they do nothing to support your argument. Here's your argument: XTH is fine because ANet put it into the EULA. I'll reference a Dilbert cartoon here - if ANet put a provision into the EULA requiring you to submit to a strip search to use the product, this would not hold up in a court of law. The EULA is not ironclad.

Further, we're not debating whether or not XTH is "technically legal". My argument is as follows: XTH is nothing more than RMT where ANet collects the profits. This will have negative long run consequences for the game and for ANet's likely bottom line when GW2 arrives.

I've proven the first two points, and the argument for the third point is reasonably tight but open to debate. Even so, I can't see how XTH is doing anything positive to increase interest in GW2, other than perhaps increasing the number of people able to max the Zaishen title.

you've shown examples from real life economies, which have almost nothing to do with how GW's economy works. really, you should stop drawing useless examples and start THINKING.

anyways, it's pointless to argue with a bunch of people whether a few pixels will decide the future of GW or not. it's already been decided, and the tiny minority that cares about this stuff won't matter in the end anyways. so have fun arguing in circles about a number tally that has no effect on the game. bye.

Your reasoning capabilities are child like...

Real world economic models are in fact, purely abstractions that much Less accurately represent the way the real world economics than a market that is much more controlled and variable free like the GW economy.

You'll find many economic theories started off as a simple thought experiment based on a set of assumptions.

The way you prove that a theory isn't an accurate proxy for a given economy is by checking the assumptions of the theory, and comparing them to the real economy to find out how true they indeed are.

Just saying is gonna get you nowhere cos basically your just giving a child-like"
"
Contradiction.

But you'll find that most basic supply demand models fit the guild wars model, and also, Most if not all definitions of 'MONEY' will categorise Z-keys as Cash. Google 'economic definition of currency' or something on those lines and it'll prolly get you a result.

God.. I feel like the guy in monty pythons who pays for a contradiction, and I'm NOT getting my money's worth, goodbye! :P

My least favorite thing about XTH:

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s....php?p=4559905

The creation of ignorant retards like this. I enjoy to actually watch and actually predict and not just hammer in the most consistent guilds for more free pixels.

heh, calling me childlike. alrighty then, i'll ONCE AGAIN illustrate my theory, JUST so that MAYBE it will sink into your thick skulls.

-GW economy is simple: it is based on a hardwired system, which directly dictates how much gold is created. it also features specific gold sinks which completely destroys gold at a fairly constant pace
-unlike a real economy, gold sitting in storage do not grow. it should be very obvious that the zaishen chest does not pay interest, and also means this gold is static: there are no banks reinvesting that gold elsewhere. this means, that while gold has been accumulating over the three years of GW's existance, only a tiny portion of it has been actively traded. drawing some rough numbers, this means that, if there is 1 billion gold in the system, only about 15 million gold is actually being traded around. the rest is sitting in storage.
-expanding from above, this also means that gold is only significantly injected into the economy when someone actually intends to buy something with it. for instance, i have 600k gold in storage. if i have no intention of buying anything, that gold effectively does not exist in the market. however, if i decide to buy a voltaic spear, that gold instantly becomes part of the market, because it is now being actively traded.
-this also works in reverse: a rare item is worth very little (around 400g at most) in the game engine. it's better to think of them as cheques waiting to be cashed in than the actual gold themselves. if i have a rare item, such as a voltaic spear or obsidian edge, and it is just sitting in my storage, its value and impact on the market is zero. but as soon as i take it out and intend to sell it, it becomes the 100k+300e, or whatever those things fetch now these days.
-and just like a rare item, a zkey is worth practically nothing according to the game engine (this is quite opposite of the ecto, whose market value and actual value according to the game engine are always fairly close). zkeys function the same as rare items in GW: they are cheques that facilitate the exchange of gold. the overall economy does not change after the trade.

given all of the above, here is the result if a lot of zkeys are distributed into the community:
-a lot gold will be transferred (zkeys, after all, have a title attached to it)
-very little gold is generated

the end result of a ton of zkeys put into the game is a redistribution of wealth. that, i believe, cannot be proven otherwise. therefore, the distribution of zkeys into accounts have no effect on the overall economy; it does change the demographic of the market however. this has generally resulted in a lot more people with 300k-600k gold, and also resulted in a sudden spike in the available gold in the economy. after all, the first thing anyone would do if receiving a large chunk of money is to buy something nice with it. this, and really only this, is the cause of the rising prices in the mid-high value market.

once that gold is spent, or saved to storage for later use, the available gold will drop down again, and prices will logically go down with it.

now to the topic of people hoarding accounts for more zkeys:
-remember what i said about zkeys merely drawing gold out of storage? well, that's where the gold is coming from. the zkeys, once again, redistributes the available gold. though this time, that gold goes from a number of players to one player.
-since the available gold in the game still does not change, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't change the economy one bit. after all, we've gone from a rather small number of accounts holding most of the stored gold to.... well, a rather small number of accounts holding most of the stored gold. the end result is roughly the same as the initial conditions, except the gold are now in different storages.

now, some of you may consider this to be unfair. personally i don't. after all, the end result is more or less the same as the initial conditions, just with different people holding onto the majority of stored gold. and let's face it, this trend is not going to continue. zkey prices are sinking rapidly back to the 2k they were going for before, and the payout for investing into a ton of accounts is diminishing as a result. it will eventually come to the point where zkeys won't become the hot sell, and those with a lot of accounts will find that they can no longer move those keys. we are currently sitting at potentially the last monthly payout, because april will be the last month where a unique tonic is handed out. the next monthly handout will move significantly less gold than this month.

so in conclusion, the THX does not change much of anything. if anything else, this suddenly reshuffling of storage accounts have done much to revive the economy. items move so much faster than before, and it is now quite rare to have to spam for hours to move a certain item. an economy is only dead when it becomes impossible to move items, and GW's economy is nowhere close to that.

You are arguing that XTH doesn't affect things economically. Fine...I don't want to debate the economics of it because I don't give a damn about the economy (even though I think you're wrong)...I'll leave that to people like Martin and wu.

The problem I have is you are completely defending the XTH in every way. When all the other problems are brought up you use sketchy arguments such as the EULA or that it isn't RMT (both of which are terrible IMO) to defend all of them. To me XTH shouldn't exist if we are going by Anet's word or just by the foundations the game was built on. You can say "yea well it does exist so there" but that doesn't mean it should.

if you think XTH is cheating in some way, then you should suggest a solution that removes the cheating aspect. in this case, something that prevents a single person to own a ton of accounts to farm it, or something that makes that practice impractical/useless. XTH itself is perfectly fine.

however, then we get to how it should be enforced. it can be quite difficult to prove whether if a bunch of accounts belong to the same person or not. you can make it so that accounts logged in from the same IP cannot trade with each other, but it would also prevent people in lan-parties from trading also.

maybe a counter that will automatically kick you off the server if you attempt to log into more than say.... 5 different accounts from the same IP address within 2 hours.

I think one of the main issues is the participants that play all month towards earning the qualifier points , then give up there saturday to play a 5 hour long tournament (3 if you only play swiss rounds) have a risk / reward system where you could dedicate all this time and still come out with nothing at the end of the tournament.

If you manage to get through to to the playoffs you can indeed earn up to 2k rp but this is no easy feat and requires skill dedication and hard work.

Now lets say you own 6 accounts (I know people with insane amounts but this seems to be about average) , each account yeilds 100rp predictions - thats 600 total ...

Congratulations you've just earned the same amount of rp is a participant who played all month to earn qualifier points then spent his saturday earning them by finishing in the top 16 (out of 50 or so guilds) and entering the playoff stage by simply dragging a few boxes over into another box , most probably based on the predictions of someone else you copied off a forum

My point is theres no risk/reward for XTH only reward - and by doing so this drives down the prices of zkeys which in turn means the reward for the people actually playing the MAT is reduced.

Why do you think guilds and HB players change names and play in smurfs ? - they dont want you to guess correctly because your directly affecting there reward which they >>> EARN <<<

The only people I know of that really want the XTH gone are the ones who do the tourny then sell their keys to Gold/Ecto/Zkey sell websites.. I mean lets face it....the more a Zkey is worth in game....the more a website like that will give you in real life cash...So I say keep the XTH....after all aren't you supposed to be banned for selling to these sites??

I would say its more likely the people buying 20+ accounts and making free money every month would be the ones responsible for this ... but hey im just making judgment calls based on no proof like yourself - but how could we argue with such an informed statement.

moriz,

Gold does not matter as a currency in this game. The cap on the amount in a single trade is too low, and the time price of selling items denominated in gold is too high. Unless you accumulate oodles of low-end stuff and toss up a thread on Sell, you are wasting your time if you bother with reselling these items. Bad players trade in such items anyway and keep these markets on life support, because they're bad. But no one else bothers.

Gold sinks don't matter at the systemic level. The only gold sink that appears to be efficient enough to impact prices these days is Nine Rings. Otherwise, people farm gold, other people farm other stuff, they exchange goods, gold is spent on necessities, and this situation takes care of itself.

This does NOT imply that dumping millions of zkeys into the system is irrelevant. You're thinking about the contents of players' boxes in the wrong way. You don't have to convert a zkey into gold for it to have value, moriz. You can trade a quantity of zkeys directly for stuff you want, or you can trade that quantity of zkeys for ectos, armbraces or miniatures that sellers will take in lieu of zkeys.

What matters to prices is three things: demand, supply, and the capacity constraint. Demand and supply are simply functions of individual players' reservation prices. If a player wants the item and can afford to pay more than an owner's reservation price, a trade happens. Otherwise, the item stays put.

You can treat these reservation prices as exogenously given for the purposes of analysis. In other words, God/Buddha/Allah/whatever tells players how much they want an undedicated Oni. They are willing to spend a fixed amount, but no more, to buy it.

Loosen the capacity constraint, and players can afford to pay more. Trades happen at higher prices, because players with higher reservation prices can now afford to pay those prices. The value associated with items increases, because the true "value" of the item is given by the lowest reservation price of an owner of that item. Therefore, giving players more money results in a sequence of trades that drives up the prices of items.

More importantly, if you give everyone a small quantity of money, that money quickly flows into a very small number of hands. Most people are terrible at trading. Every time some idiot gets swindled, the capacity constraint of a rich player increases. Give the marks more money, and the owner of the carnival makes more money, no? This also drives up systemic prices.

Finally, if it is possible to get large quantities of money by paying large quantities of RL cash, it should be very obvious that those players are going to end up with lots of in-game cash and drive up prices. After all, money is no object if you have access to a printing press and no one else does.

Ithorian makes a valid point on how to solve the problem - if it were costly to play XTH, the problem would be less significant. If you had to run a sequence of quests on an account to participate in XTH every month, and the time price of those quests were just about the time price associated with farming up two dozen zkeys, the problem is solved. Adding 3-4 hours of time sink needed to register for XTH or actually earn the points would sort out the issue nicely.

Same logic does not apply.
XTH isn't against the rules.

The example that would not fail would include something that an individual can do, but people considered it to be bad and they would love to see made illegal.
Like ... abortion in some countries.



This.

What is wrong with the richest people paying more?
I mean, if they don't have enough gold - they need to go out and earn it. Which in return gives them something to do.


Problem:
People want nice rewards.
Solution:
Stop failing.

Sorry honey but, if you aren't the first, you failed.
I mean, that's kinda the point of a competitive game.
To win.
Otherwise, they are more then welcome to just play the XTH.

Now we;re talking

Personally I was hoping the XTH could give out something of meagre but significant value every month, but not TRP, so that PvP will still be prestigious.

Also, I reckon it'd be better if they only Handed out rewards if the predictions are SPOT ON. Hence whatever unique reward is handed out is made more valuable, accurate predictions are encouraged.

As for individuals with multiple accounts, it's impossible to police, But imo once you remove the link between XTH rewards and PvP rewards everything's good.
=============================================
oh and your economic theory... Anything that 1 is a good store of value, is non perishable, and is liquid may be defined as 'Currency'
If you look on any company's balance sheet, It will have an account for Cash and Cash equivalents. Cash equivalents are things such as bonds, and commonly traded stocks, which can quickly be sold off, and converted to cash, because they are 'liquid'.
Zkeys are liquid (have you seen balth ad1 these days?), non-perishable(like all guild wars items), and they are a good store of value (one stack is worth more in gold than can fit in your bank account) as well as divisible.
Hence, Zkeys can be defined as money
But.... when you mismanage currency, their value can collapse just like the argentine/usd exchange rate, which is what you proclaim that Z-keys will do eventually.
When Z-keys collapse, PvP nation will starve =p

edit: anyways, you say eventually, Z-keys won't have much effect at all, trading will cease, cos they'd be worth so little... WHY NOT KILL IT NOW?? while we're still ahead?

and@ upier.... -illegal in most countries/ abortion in some countries.... In any case, its legal some where and illegal somewhere else right...? example=example
how do you know i don't live in one of the states taht hasn't banned semi automatics yet? :P (tbh i don't know if there are any HAHA)

So the whole point of this thread is:

Some players think that buying x amount of accounts for free zkeys each month is cheating (in a sense)

Some players refute this argument as it is upto each individual as to what they wish to spend their money on in the real world and if that is on 10+ versions of the same game to get free monthly cash then that is upto each individual doing this

Some players simply do not remotely care about the whole debate

I place myself in the 2 & 3rd category.

To add a further revelation Guild Wars is a game (so stating economic similes make you look ridiculous tbh), using the rmt or killing the economy arguments is like bolting the door after the horse has escaped, grown up and met up with a mummy horse, had a baby horse and continued frolicing around the meadow until it died of old age (in otherwords the economy has been shot for a long time)

If this is all you truly have to debate then people it is time to open the material covered aperture in your room (a.k.a a window) and look at the outside world as you have simply been playing far too long without a break and need to get out more.

You have been playing 20,000 hours, Please get a life!

(p.s the XTH is there for the fun of it, try to QQ less)

The entire problem here is that Anet does not WANT to enforce it so it won't be enforced. I'm positive one of the reasons they implemented it is to sell more accounts regardless of what it does or doesn't do to their game and regardless of their former commitments to no RMT.


XTH isn't against the rules because Anet just recently said it isn't for them but still is for everybody else, even though they previously said it would always be against the rules for everybody. As long as they come out and admit to everybody that they participate in RMT now, I will be happy.

No one can earn in-game cash faster than players can buy it with RL cash. And that, sir, IS the problem.

A player that buys or otherwise acquires forty five accounts can easily get more zkeys every month than the winners of the mAT. If you bought all three games and the expansion, you paid around $200. With the current going rate on accounts, you can triple up your initial investment and make money just like you won the mAT.

You failed at making an argument. Stop failing.

@ Tonic OnyX: I can summarize your whole post in nine words: I don't care and I think this argument is stupid. You registered just to post that?

Guess what: it is just a game, but people enjoy it in different ways. The ostensible purpose of XTH may be for people to have fun making predictions, but apparent good intentions on the part of the devs can mask very bad effects. XTH also permits players willing to spend a lot of RL cash to buy up everything of value in the game legally. You think that's fine and just, eh?

Just because it doesn't affect you doesn't mean that it doesn't affect other people. Wars are fine as long as it's someone else's kids that get killed, amirite? You're using the same logic here. All I've done is change the stakes debated.

Lol crazy arguments....just chill out and don't flame eachother xD

Only gold that xth adds is 300g per key which is max merch price of the stuff

I wonder, one of the platitudes often thrown around on Guru, "if you want something, don't QQ, work for it", will it eventually change to "... don't QQ, buy more XTH accounts"?

When you purchase a new account you pay for the content that the account provides.
And it's up to the users themselves if they only want to use certain aspects of that content.

Some people should have certain items - and some shouldn't.
As long as the system caters to the basic needs that keep a player competitive - I am fine with luxury having an insane price.

If the guy earns as much by playing mATs as a player can obtain by gambling on 6 accounts - and he feels that he should obtain more - he should start playing better. As you said - the earnings of the best players can only be matched by someone that buys over 40 accounts.
I don't see why he should be rewarded for failing.

Does it really matter? There haven't been any prediction competitions since September last year. At this rate XTH's impact on GW is just going to keep dropping.

Or has ANet announced that XTH is going to be back soon?

Since when is RMT considered content? And it doesn't matter if they choose to use it or not...I can choose to use gold sellers or not too.

It doesn't cater to that anymore. You can't compete with people who spend more money than you.

Or spending more money.

I don't see why people should be rewarded for buying more accounts.

can't compete with people who spend more money than you in what way?

Competition for people who care about the economy being fair. If you don't care it obviously doesn't apply to you. I personally don't care about it...but I'm surprised more people don't care due to the unfairness of it. It is RMT in the disguise of a game. The worst part is most people don't care about the actual game they are playing, they just want the prize that comes with it.

GW's economy is inherently unfair, even without XTH thrown into the equation. GW was never created with much of an economy in mind, so there are no checks and balances in place to ensure that a person can't accumulate a ton of gold for very little effort. that's been happening since GW's inception, and XTH doesn't change a thing.

My 2 penneth worth (having stop posting for a while but what the hell to this).

This is another "cry about the economy" all over again. Yes ok, this is PvP orientated but we've (i.e PvE) have had this all before with the deflation in value of ectos. Only this time, there is a real world business model in place for ANet - more accounts = more cash. They will not get rid of something that brings in revenue to a flagging game that does not generate monthly income for them. So enough of the QQing. This extra revenue can be used for GW1 and development of GW2, so pause for thought there if those of you who wish for GW but are crying about the prices of their keys currently.

Guild Wars has had a broken economy for donkeys years. Some of us have tried (and ultimately failed) to bring some new life into the game with new ideas surrounding this issue but, as so eloquently put earlier in this thread, you are all beating a dead horse here.

Each person is entilted to a.) get the keys and b.) do what they wish with them. If they use, fine. If they sell, fine. Welcome to the world of crappy GW trading. Ectos used to be 10k plus each, now they are 4k ish. All due to PvE over farming with over powered builds and skills (permaform can be done by any Joe really, so it is kinda free cash there). PvP now has the same issues with Keys and too many accounts being used.

XTH is here to stay - deal with it.

Thankyou.

PS: DragonRogue - enjoyed some of your comments here! Hope life is well for you.

What you say about GW not created with much of an economy in mind is true...but I do not see how it is inherently unfair. The checks and balances is supposed to be part of the overall game balance (like nerfing degenerate builds). But even if it is unfair (which I argue it isn't), why make it even MORE unfair? What is not debateable is it is certainly unfair when players are able to get in game stuff for out of game stuff, which is why Anet tries to get rid of that practice and which is why it is stupid that they made XTH.

XTH changes everything because it is the first step in desensitizing people to what is actually happening. If GW2 had full scale Anet sponsered RMT it would not shock me in the slightest.

You are taking part in a gambling game. That's part of the game.
Unless of course you want to argue that just buying an additional account leads to a guaranteed income (outside of the 1 Z-key of course). In which case - I'd argue that the guaranteed income is a sign of skill, which should be rewarded. (Yours truly placed RAWR on the first place in the last mAT. Guess who won't be getting those 100 points this month ...)

Gold sellers are against the rules.

Actually, it goes even further.
People have more money, but the prices are locked. Thus everything that is keeping a player competitive is relatively cheaper - unless of course the mats needed had a spike in their price.
My PvP guys are MUCH more competitive then my PvE guys. And they get everything for free.
Unless of course, like previously noted, we are dealing with luxury items. Which are pretty much defined by not being accessible to everyone. And the XTH doesn't change anything about that.

Like I said - if he sucks, he is always welcome to play the XTH.

That's the content you pay for.
That's like saying that a person can not use his second account as storage because that wouldn't be fair to the guys that only have one account.

Every month you can make predictions in xth if that's what u mean

ANet.. a real life company like all other for profit companies has a goal to conduct business to make money.

Guild Wars, a game they sell which offers an online experience. The more games they sell the more money they make. With the current model of no monthly dues, they can make more money only by selling more copies to either new people or existing customers.

ANet has indicated that it is not going to do more campaigns for GW1 but will roll out GW2 in a year or so.

GW has been on the market for 4 years with three campaigns and one expansion so it has pretty much sold its game to the people in their market niche trying to get more new people to buy GW1 would probably cost more than the profit it would generate.

So, the logical way is to get its current base to spend more real life money on the game. How does Anet do this without having to spend googles of time and money adding a campaign? I am no software geek but I think adding another campaign to this maze that is GW would seem to be an enormous and unprofitable task.

So print your own currency by making more accounts and make them attractive to potential buyers by adding XTH. You also get the benefit of discouraging third party gold farmers that buy and hack accounts for their bots and sell gold to existing customers. Customers will buy an account use XTH rather than pay an off shore gold farmer.

So we know the positive impact what is the down side? Possibly altering the guild wars economy? Keys are worth like on average 300 gp and adding to your title. So if someone spent $100.00 on five accounts they will get 100zkeys on average every month that is about 30,000 gp. If the player gave the $100.00 to a gold farmer the farmer will use bots to make more ectos and gold which will introduce about 1,000,000 gp to the game. Since the monthly XTH is recurring, you do introduce 30,000 every month so in three years you will introduce about 1,000,000 gp in the game. So the negative impact of XTH to the game economy does not hold water.

What or who is really affected by XTH? Gold Farmers, people who sell to gold farmers, and those few that accumulated a huge fortune seeing inflation eat away at their buying power.

You know I've sat and read thru all 16 pages of this drivel of PVP vs PVE, haves vs have nots, OMG Anet lied to us because their RMT and that suxxors and I'm not leaving till they admit it, XTH is killing the economy, yada yada, yada. But the above post is just one example of some of the lame thinking that goes on in these forums. So I'll address it first before we move on to some of the other stuff.

When the Zaishen title was started z-keys were selling for 2k..1.8k, occasionally 1.5k. Who had them all? PVPer's. When demand outweighed supply the price rose to 5k per key. Along came XTH with a chance for people to get their own z-keys. Being a grandfather I'm often surprised by how important it is for some people to have the best pixels in a video game. I prefer taking my grandkids to the zoo, the park, the movies, so I'll save my money for the things that are important to me. Those that choose to waste (my opinion) real money on new accounts to get epeen are welcome to do so. It doesn't affect my playing GW and it certainly doesn't affect my real life. And the only affect it has had on PVPer's is that they continue to make double what they were prior to XTH predictions. God I feel so sorry for them.

As to why PVPer's change their name, tank their rank, play on others accounts, etc, I'm sure there are some that do it for the reason you stated. There has always been a rift between PVP/PVE for some people. If it were black/white you'd call it a racist thing. It's there because people think their way is the best and anything else is inferior. And if you ask a lot of PVPer's why they do those things they'll tell you they don't want to be "buildwars", and most of them are lying about that too. If there was one superpowered build that couldn't be beaten it would be on pvxwiki and every single pvper would use it and the people that had the most skill would win every tournament. The real reason people do those things are to get an advantage in the tournament. If your name is Mary and you change it to Sue you get no advantage in the tournament because Mary and Sue have the same rank and they still get similar ranked opponents. If you tank your rank you get to start off playing your first few matches against those ranked #1000-25000 most of whom can't control 3 heroes much less make them function together well enough to win a match. If your a top ranked player and you play on someone else's account the only people that know are your buddies, the same ones you tie with so they'll make top 16 like the 12 ties that happened in the 1v1 monthly this past weekend...including 5 from the top 3 finishers. So it's not so much to hide from people so they don't get z-keys as it is cheat their way to the top. Because anything you do that changes the outcome of the tournament is in violation of the rules. And about your statement that most of the people make their XTH predictions from others picks on the forum...many of those here that are calling for XTH to be removed are PVPer's that can be found on those monthly prediction threads saying "here's my picks" and using their multiply accounts in XTH too.

1v1 needs help. But instead of you children QQing to mommy (Anet) about it maybe you should clean up your own mess (cheating).
My perception of PVP is that it's about competition and being the best, not being the one that can cheat their way to a win.

On to other things. Powertraders have existed in GW since it began. Powertraders will alway exist in games that have things that players want. Powertraders get off on having everything you want while they look down their noses at you and tell you that you can't have it. Personally I'd rather get laid than spend 24/7 in Kamadan trying to get some noob to sell me something so I can resell it for whatever inflated price I get and run to the forums to brag about how good I am.

The whole point of which is if you weren't here when GW started your way behind the powertraders and most of the masses, and no amount of z-keys will catch you up. GW is much like any other game in that they let items be the most important thing in the economy instead of platinum/gold. If players had unlimited gold items like ecto wouldn't control the game and armbraces wouldn't be duped. Would there still be powertraders? Sure and there would still be items you couldn't afford...get used to it, when you finally come out into the real world you'll find things you can't afford there either.

Anet changes a skill some people like it...others complain.
Anet releases minipets some people like them...others wanted different ones.
Anet adds a bonus mission pack some people bought it and got the bonus weapons that were a reward for ordering it online...others complained they didn't get the weapons because they bought it at the store.
Anet makes something for PVPers...PVEers complain.
Anet bans people for duping...people complain it wasn't enough or they shouldn't have been banned.
Anet trys to stop bots...some people appreciate the effort, others still see bots so it's not enough.
Anet trys to stop RMT, people say their doing it themselves and you lied to us.
When you buy this game you actually just lease the right to use the content that Anet provides. Anything you've gotten since in just a bonus from Anet to keep you satisfied. No one can satisfy 5 million people. And if Anet is making real money because of XTH wouldn't you rather it be them than the 10-13 year old Chinese and Korean kids? Any profit that Anet makes is available to make GW and GW2 better. What do you get from the online sites that RMT after you've given them your $110.00. Absolutely nothing.

Finally my own opinion on XTH. I'm a PVEer and I watch PVP. I don't do PVP because I don't have the time to commit that it takes to become proficent and I don't like doing things halfassed. I do know enough to make reasonably decent predictions and I do make about 40-50 zkeys a month on my 2 accounts. Did I hurt anyone getting those zkeys? No. I used them to by armor/weapons for my Hall of Monuments. Did it affect the economy? No. Are there others that in my opinion abuse it? There are others that will abuse anything they get the chance to so why would this be any different. Do I think it should be eliminated? No.

If you took the time to read this whole thing I'm thankful and sorry I may have rambled on to much. But sometimes you just have to get stuff off your chest.

A couple of days ago a policeman answering a 911 call in a town not far from me walked in on a young boy as he decapitated his 5 year old sister, another sister was already dead on the floor. As he entered the apartment the boy ran into the bathroom and started stabbing his 3rd sister. The policeman shot and killed him. Both sisters and their brother were buried together today.


And here you sit bitching about a video game.

Right now guild wars needs people to PvP period, not to play in mATs. Getting people to follow the GvG scene is going to do that a heck of a lot better than mAT winners getting an extra K per key.

Anyway I don't see how anyone could reasonably believe they have the option to take it away after letting players have it. So there isn't any fruit from discussing whether it should be removed or not.

LoL...so now its just a gambling game? How many things are people going to call XTH to make it sound ok? Ok then...if Anet released a new buyable "content pack" with a god mode ability in it would that be ok too? I am honestly tired of some of the arguments in this thread...most people are either just saying "it is here to stay deal with it" or "Anet can do whatever they want deal with it". FINE! So why don't they come out and admit to us that they changed their stance on RMT (not to mention just about everything else with the game but we'll leave it to RMT for the context of this thread) instead of hiding behind the "game content" that is XTH.

Also if you are claiming that the content is gambling. The problem with this theory is that there is no risk for the purchaser of the content. Gambling by definition has a risk and a reward, and XTH has no risk. So that theory is out the window as far as I'm concerned.

Also...if XTH is a game of "content skill", why is it that almost nobody (judging from forum posts anyways don't give me this "I can't possibly know" crap) cares about the actual skill part of the game and only cares about the reward they are going to get.

Finally, go type Xunlai Trading House into google and see the first word that pops up. You guessed it...Real Money Trading. I guess even Google agrees with me at this point.

No...RMT was against the rules until Anet made XTH.

Everyone should get everything for free, but that would go off topic.

Uh yes it does...I can spend real life money to more easily get in game luxury items.

If he sucks he should get better. He shouldn't be allowed to backdoor out of it.

Technically that is true (because the accounts should be linked and storage should be massive). But I won't go that far. I will say there is a big difference between XTH and storage (that I hope you can see by now). One is abusive and one is simply people trying to get around the game inadequacies.

I actually agree with much of your post...I just have to point out a couple things. You talk about nobody getting hurt with XTH and that may be true. The bigger issue here is that the game has been hurt and nobody seems to care because they get free stuff. The integrity of this game has gone down the toilet, and XTH is just icing on the cake. But hey as long as everybody gets free keys its all right!

You bring up a good point though...I would rather give money to Anet than Chinese sweat shops. The problem? Anet explicitly said they would not do this (that is the reason gold farmers are being hunted down) and they would not do a lot of other things they did to their game. If they came out and said they changed their stance on all of these things I wouldn't care anymore, but I am not going to sit here like a carebear thinking everything Anet does is wonderful. They have done some great things, but this is not one of them until they say they changed their mind on RMT. Kind of like if they came out and said their philosophy is no longer skill>time I would accept that as well.

You also claim that everything we get is just a bonus, and that is fine. But what about the promises made to me before I purchased the game that are no longer in effect? Are you going to hide behind "online experience may change" to explain that away? What should I as a customer feel if I was made promises by a company, spent money on that company, only to have the promises taken away? Should I trust that company with my money in the future or would I be better off spending it on gold farmers for fun? (Not that I would do such a thing its just an example).

Actually I top about those topics you mention on other forums...where it belongs. This is a Guild Wars forum, where people come to talk about Guild Wars, and rightfully so.

There is philosophical fruit. Let me put it this way...IF Anet gave us a 10 million damage skill and everybody loved blasting the crap out of enemies, would they be able to take it away even though it was bad for the game?

NEway...I won't be able to respond to any posts for a little while because I'm going on vacation, but have fun thinking about this.

XTH makes people buy new accounts and new accounts bring real money to ANet which consequently is able to maintain GW and develop GW2. Therefore, XTH is a good thing.

People who accuse ANet of RMT'ing don't realize exactly why gold sellers are banned. The main reason is that gold sellers are selling goods that are not theirs but this argument cannot be applied to ANet since they do own all of it. An additional reason is that an excessive/uncontrollable influx of gold is bad for the game. This argument doesn't apply to XTH either. The only way to create gold through XTH is to sell equipment to merchant, and factoring in the drop probabilities and merchant prices of rare items it comes out at around 150g per Z-key. Considering the per account monthly cap of Z-keys from XTH this is neither excessive nor uncontrollable.

And finally, all skills and perfect equipment are easily obtainable with or without taking part in XTH, so it doesn't give an unfair advantage over other players. If somebody wants to polish his e-peen with real money then by all means let him do so, it's not taking anything from you. Or do you get mad at ANet for releasing collector's editions where, with a little extra money, some people get more shiny things in game than the rest?

I sense a great deal of inconsistency in your post lol (compare points A B and D) As for points C... well sigh i cbf explaining haha.

RMT was against the rules for players per the EULA which they signed and which is owned by Anet.

Instead of spending real life money on a way to make zkeys to get in game gold to buy luxury items just give the powertraders real life money...probably cheaper and a lot quicker. Yeah I know also against the EULA which you signed.


Exactly how has XTH hurt the game? I understand your point about it hurting Anet's integrity if indeed it was put in place exclusively to make money for Anet. But Anet says this wasn't the case and as much as you and others "know" that it was you have no proof of that? According to half the people on this forum GW is a dead or dying game. Anet added new content with the zaishen title so that everyone could have a chance for an emote. They added predictions in XTH so everyone could get zkeys easier. Yet yours and others contention is that Anet knew every live at home 25-30 yr old momma's boy was going to run out and buy $100-$500 worth of a dying game to make a lot of zkeys. Hardly seems what I would suspect if I had a dying game and wasn't adding anything new. And quite frankly I'd be willing to bet more of the accounts being used for XTH predictions are accounts of former players that have left the game than new accounts being purchased. And most of those probably weren't paid for and even if they were Anet never saw dime one from it the second time around. Our former guild leader has 10 such accounts given to him by those that quit Farm Wars, Grind Wars, Inbalanced Wars or whatever reason they decided they no longer wanted to play the game.



Could you please give me a list of the "lot of other things they did to their game", and why you think they would purposely do those things if they hurt their product?



I'm not sure where you got promises from Anet before you bought their game. I have all 3 campaigns and the expansion and no where on the box does it say "Anet promises". And yes it does say "online experience may change" as it should, because if it didn't and they added content or changed something someone didn't agree with they would be complaining about it like has happened since this game began and will continue right on into whatever next game people that like to bitch play.

Like I said in my previous post you can't please everybody, but it's the squeaky wheel that get's all the grease. Those that think these forums are the majority of the community are really mistaken. The real majority just don't QQ loud enough.