Wealth == How many accounts you own. Should this continue?

Since people don't get how profitable this can be, I'll make it simple.

Month 1: 1 Account entered in XTH, ~21 zkeys received. Zkeys sold for ~US$5
2nd Account bought, total cash -US$5

Month 2: 2 Accounts entered in XTH, ~42 zkeys received. Zkeys sold for ~US$10
3rd Account bought, total cash -US$5

Month 3: 3 Accounts entered in XTH, ~63 zkeys received. Zkeys sold for ~US$15
4th Account bought, total cash US$5

Month 4: 4 Accounts entered in XTH, ~84 zkeys received. Zkeys sold for ~US$20
5th Account bought, total cash US$10, OR 5th AND 6th Accounts bought

Month 5 (hypothetical): 6 Accounts entered in XTH, ~126 Zkeys received. Zkeys sold for ~US$30
7th, 8th and 9th Accounts bought, total cash US$0 (or $30 if no accounts bought)

Month 6: 9 Accounts entered in XTH, ~189 Zkeys received. Zkeys sold for ~US$45.

From this point onwards, the amount of money you can make is pretty clear. This is JUST from collecting zkeys, starting with 1 account. If you started with more, you would make more. If you decided to buy 10 accounts at the start, then power trade your keys, you would make FAR more money when selling the keys.

Scruples aside, this is ridiculous that money can be made so easily, and that ANet are allowing it.

Actually, I think that just goes to show that players are buying these very easy-to-get keys for way too much in-game currency. Their perceived value is way too high, in other words. They're essentially lottery tickets, with an extremely low chance of getting anything for 50k+, so they should probably sell for like 1.5-2k each if that.

Ah well, as the novelty wears off (and once the XTH gets going, again), they might just drop to around that eventually.

Here is my take on it. I own 9 accounts 3 from prophecies before character slots/storage and the other 6 are from friends who have moved onto other games. I can average a sizable amount of z keys however it is nothing compared to 1 week of farming for a few hours a day. If i do various dungeon speed clears with my alliance I can average on the low end 100 ectos a week. The best week I had was around 400-500 ectos from a lucky drop. I also constantly make farm builds as has been seen in the farming section which nets me profit. I do all of this without power trading I just dump my keys if they come and go do my regular farming which nets far more than the keys ever do.

the problem is not people having 2-3 accounts, the problem is people having 30 accounts making 1-2millions every month by doing nothing

2nd account = extra storage space. At least that is what i use my other accounts for. With all the crap I collect, not just for me, but for the guild as a whole, I need all the extra storage space I can get. I keep crafting items for the guild so they dont have to spend a bloody fortune on that stuff, I keep weapons and mods, Dyes. And the guild members know I keep this stuff for them, and they contribute to the cause. Having 3 full stacks of steel, 5 of cloth and hides etc.. is normal for me. The whole guild shares this stuff. They know that if they need 400 Tanned hides, they will be able to get it from me if they are just patent and wait a while until I get on. And lets not forget all the "fun" stuff we get from Nicholas every week now as well. Those kegs of ale can take up a lot of room if you cant unload them fast.

First problem:
You are assuming you don't get banned from selling the zkeys for real money.

Second problem:
As more and more people abuse the XTH, more keys enter the market, with more keys in the market, prices fall. (From MAX 5.5k to a low of 3.5k)
You won't be able to sell the keys for nearly as much a few months down the road.

This.

Ingame monies just give you ability to play GWress Up Barbie edition. And buy you some titles that would otherwise require farming (not exactly healthy gameplay here either).

PS: I have three accounts. 1 ancient from days where only 4 slots were available, and one from buddy who quit GW.

I know quite few people who got accounts the same way (people who quit game tend to be quite generous with stuff that no longer matters to them)

You can see XTH and Nicholas as a way to actually remove the focus from items (with one EL cottontail I got enough to buy the FoW armor which I was never, ever rushed to get) and expensive titles, and ultimately the economy. In the short term, there's much more cheap stuff in the economy, in the long term many people get their items and titles, which is what I think Anet is attempting to do, giving players more opportunity to get these things before GW2.

In theory, Zquest could have shifted the focus to more gameplay, see in particular the highest benefits (tomes), rather than farming your way to get items and titles. In practice I'm not sure, it seems that there's more activity (this is a subjective statement!) and Regina already mentioned increased activity (but impossible to know what type of activity, we don't need more farming). What would be fantastic, but difficult, is if Nicholas' tasks required teamplay and XTH required actual observing, rather than the current "click and cash the money".

I do find it mad that people manage 10 accounts for Nicholas (it's easy for XTH, which also gives you another title I guess). I'm personally using the opportunity to run my 2nd account wherever Nicholas is and enjoying the scenery (never made so many SS ), but that's some serious repetitive/boring stuff to do for 10 accounts! As zwei2stein said in a different thread, it's fun for a moment to have to come up with weekly farming build. This week was hilariously easy, almost unbelievable.

One point is sure: Anet can NOT do a u-turn on this. Look at the thread activity for Nicholas each Monday, then the multiple districts on the closest outpost; look at how many people were disappointed by XTH closure. Whatever we think these people should do, they're here for the (virtual) money and Anet won't take that from them. Or at least not quickly...

If everyone buys 1000 accounts I will still play it cause it's fun.

If everyone buys 1000 accounts they might put on a few more people on the development team.

A business is there to make money. That can't be hard to understand can it.

Most people buying accounts don't play on them, so it doesn't require one ounce of work on Anet, not even buying more servers (just more storage). Which is ultimately why this is completely ridiculous: we all bought our first GW chapters to play, now people just buy XTH/Nicholas tickets in a box!

You missed his point.

Everyone buys 1,000 accounts = increase in GW sale numbers significantly = GW1 becomes very profittable = more investment = more development time is put on the game to generate EVEN MORE profit.

After all, who cares if this thing has any side effects. That's the stance Anet took when they made XTH AND the traveller available and be account-based.

Are two or more accounts available to all? Yes it is. Right now there is no restriction on it and there shouldn't be. I have only one account and I could care less if someone has more than me. It is American and if that is how someone chosses to spend their money more power to them. A-net doesn't need to get in the business of restricting accounts. This is the on the same line as someone being jealous because they can't afford a new armour set etc. If it really bothers you either buy another account, another computer or stop bitching about it. It is a game folks.

you're assuming more money is actually going into gw2.. which isn't something i would assume. Frankly, if businesses feel like this shitty model is a great way to drum up sales, don't you think they'd repeat this failboat crap later on instead of avoiding it?

A better way to phrase it..

More in-game wealth = More accounts = More time spent in-game = No life

Each to their own

Look, I can do that too!

More accounts = More XTH = More in-game wealth without playing = More time for real life

Yay!

Yes, some people have multiple accounts simply for the purpose of reaping in rewards like free zkeys and in a sense, yes, this is abuse of the system. However, not everyone is greedy and some people have multiple accounts for legitimate reasons.

Example, I have 2 accounts. I started playing before the ability to purchase additional character slots; before the online store existed. I already owned prophecies and factions, and had the max number of character slots I could get. I wanted to create more characters, for various reasons, and didn't want to delete characters I was working on/had built. I also wanted the collector's editions for their neat additions, but since they wouldn't give me more character slots, I used them to create a new account, so I could have 1 of every profession at the time.

Yes, I use both accounts for zkeys, but I build my title that way. My 2nd account was also holding a guild for a friend, but since he's stopped playing I've sort of inherited it, so now I have 2 guilds. =/

I'm simply waiting for the day for Anet to figure out how to merge accounts while keeping characters in tact, at which point I'll merge my 2 accounts.

I have two accounts, I got the second one when we only had 4 slots and I wanted to create a character.

I don't use that account at all these days but I still use the toons on the account to redo things like the traveler or festival quests and such.

But I won't buy any more accounts just to get more game gold. I value my real dollar money more than GW gold.

Two accounts. One is a PvE account, the other is a PvP account.
My total wealth combined is less than 100K currently in storage. Personal wealth in Guild Wars is pointless.

I have two accounts myself.
I do raid the XTH and Nick when I can on both.
But I take my keys to the Zaishen chest, my title point items [Beers, bombs, and whatnot] are given to friends working on the titles.
Other than that, my second account is just weapon storage.
I outfit friends and guildies from it. :]

5 Accounts owned and 4 of these were when we only had 4 char slots and if we needed more chars we had no choice at the time.
4 accounts all chapters and bonus stuff.
5th account (profs only) bought for a nephew last year who turned out not to like the game anyway so gave it back to me.
If Anet had of allowed me to join all the accounts into a single one I'd be happy with that.
Either way I spent a lot of my money over the years so they can keep running and thats what it's all about since they don't charge a monthly fee.
Money or how much you have IN Guild Wars is irrelevant as it's just a game in the end and everything
is owned by Anet if when they shut down and move on to gw2.

This is a serious problem and a major failure of the game economy.

Originally, for the first couple years it was FAIR for everyone, the economy was free of nonsense like this. There were practically NO financial benefits to owning multiple accounts, other than a lot of storage space. But making money REQUIRED real effort -playing the game or at least powertrading.

But since then ANet added NUMEROUS updates which provided significant "free" wealth to owners of multiple accounts. (free because effort required is none or far smaller than it would normally take to acquire the equivalent by someone with just 1 account)

Some of them:

-it started with Birthday Minipets! They were always worth real significant amounts of plat. But I haven't considered them a problem because they seemed ~fair - they weren't a RMT in disguise - totally not an incentive to buy new accounts, although getting a bunch of accounts created in 2005 earns some solid hundreds of plat for doing nothing.

-Free Chests in Nightfall - Originally they were 30-50k per full run per character, profit generally exceeded effort, so having multiple characters or accounts runned through NF provided nice profits for the masses then, but for now they can be completely ignored (diminishing returns and HM overfarm completely ruining value of their drops (and of almost everything) makes them not worth visiting at all)

-Xunlai Tournament House - the GREATEST EVIL here - it's STRAIGHT BLATANT RMT, differing from selling currency right away for $$ in only that it's selling *ingame currency making machines* for real $$.

-And the 2nd Greatest Evil, the greatly underestimated NICHOLAS the Traveler and even the Pre-Searing Huntsman! If you don't see yet how EVIL he is just compare the costs of his ingredients if bought after people find out most efficient farming to the market value of his Gifts.
Got just 1 account? How sad, you get only 5 gifts. Got 15 accounts? HAHAHA 75 gifts for almost freeee (this week) and it repeats every week!
If you have appropriate campagins, simple buying and exchanging Nicholas ingredients every week allows to basically DOUBLE the FREE gains from XTH PER ACCOUNT!


I have only 4 accounts now (had only 1 for the first 4 years), I play very little these days and those 3 - bday minis from old accounts I got from friends who quit, XTH and pre/post Nicholas Gifts are actually a major source of my income... but I think it's TOTALLY WRONG and it would be much better for the game if this wasn't possible at all!

Yes, I get FREE and I complain - that's because FREE is often BAD for the game. I'd much much rather play a Fair game with a good economy and NOT get anything for free at all, than get freebies but have to play in a terribad economy.

SOLUTIONS aren't hard to come by:

The FREEBIES which people generally like to get should neverbe trade'able!

*A Birthday Present should be something unique to showoff on your character or account but never something to sell for profit.
*Xunlai House should reward some points that directly benefit the account that earned them - so your main account gets ZERO benefits from you having 20 other accounts.
The XTH reward points could be used for some free Balthazar Unlocks (more accessibility to PvP) or PvP reward item skins (may exclude exotic) and spending them could (or even should) even increase the account's Zaishen Title!
*It's much worse with Nicholas, I can't think of a reasonable way to make him fair for players with just 1 account... nontradable gifts or items from gifts would suck and removing the limit of 5 per week/day would lead to degenerate overfarm with no other means to stop them.

EDIT: small fix

This. Some of us don't enjoy farming or trading.

Also, it's not just about playing Barbie with that money. You can buy consumables, lockpicks, weapons for heroes, etc.

Oh, and you all seem to be talking about XTH as if it exists... we've gone 2 months now, closing in on a 3rd, with it out of commission ya know.

Actually, it hasn't even been a full month since the official shutdown.
>__o¿

Answer please: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10387843

Thank you!

Ok I can sort of understand some of your points.

- Minis: some are worth money, some aren't. They are a nice tradable commodity that mainly collectors want and everyone has availability to them because they automatically pop onto the character when they age. I don't see how these are an issue honestly.

- zkeys: These are more of an issue because you don't really do anything to earn them. You make predictions and then you sell however many you get. You get rewarded for having more accounts. Honestly, these should be tradable, but the masses need to drive the price down. There is plenty of supply to meet the demand, so they shouldn't cost as much as they do, which would help discourage some of the trading of keys. They wouldn't make people as much money. However, making them account specific isn't really fair to those that use them to build their title by trading to a main account. It's rare that the people that use them get anything worth a lot of money out of the zchest.

- Gifts: I feel the presents are fine as they are. It is personal preference to get them, and if you don't have multiple accounts, its still your option to buy them if you want more. They are only really useful for building sweet tooth, party animal, and drunkard titles. Its not like you get gold or great items out of them. Yes, the minis are rare, but that's about it.

If they were to make Nicholas gifts and zkeys untradable, they would have to do the same with gifts from holidays, lunar tokens, etc etc to try and make it fair. Some people rely on farming these things to be their main income source (in game). I see them as a means of moving gold around in the game, which is not detrimental.

As for real life trading for money, people caught buying or selling them for RL $$ should be banned. End of story. No matter what you do, someone will always come up with something to sell IRL from a game to try and make some cash. It just needs to be more harshly punished is all.

To be honest, I really hate rant like that. This is the type of jealousy rant I come across often in this forum. I dont even play XTH regularly and I also missed the time when ANet gave extra zkeys because of a bug. Did you see me post a thread to complain about it? I bet many of you made alot more zkeys than I did, because of that incident. Why didn't you all complain about that incident then?

It is only gold and gold in GW doesn't mean much, I have not been trading for the past year. Why? Because I hate trading, I rather just play the game. XTH and title was a means to get people more interested in pvp events. Without XTH I wont be bothered about who the famous teams are in pvp or even watch their fights. Otherwise there is nothing worth doing in this game anymore, since I already got my rainbow phoenixes. Title chasing all the way to GWAMM would be pointless and boring.

Go ahead and QQ about the gifts, the birthday presents, the XTH, etc. Yeah remove everything for all I care because of a few gold to buy same stats weapons anyway. And I really dont care about BDS or IDS or some ugly looking FoW armor that all don't even give you the slightest advantage over collector's items, in this game.

If I really want to find things to QQ about this game, like some of you, I can find lots of things to QQ about. Since I have to work for a living, I can say it is not fair that people play this game and farm during my working hours. This makes people who have absolutely no real life responsibilities richer in the game than I ever can be, because they have more time to farm and play. The game is lifestyle biased. Wealth should be based on skills, not how much time you have to grind. To balance this out, it is only right that they provide some advantage through real money.

With these two it isn't so much that they can be traded it's more because there are a handful of rarer items to be acquired with a limited number of opportunities.

Lockpicks do nothing but play Barbie as well, and the title acquired from lockpicks is like unlocking the hot tub for Barbie's play mansion (hall of monuments). Outfitting heroes becomes slightly expensive if you insist on decking them all out with Superior Vigor runes and perfectly modded weapons/armor, but even then if you stick with the same hero trio you're looking at well under 100k gold. That's assuming you never have any green/suitable runes/weapon/off-hand drops. Con sets are either used for speed running where you'll make that amount back easily or helping you out in a pinch. If a player is relying on consumables frequently to get them out of jams and is willing to pay the price as opposed to getting better than so be it.

Basically you don't need some kind of master plan to acquire the basic wealth necessary to play on a level playing field as others.

Which have the same boring stats as my collector's items, big deal. XTH was just an attempt from ANet to generate more interest in pvp events. Without it, many pvers like myself wont be interested in pvp at all.

I'm really not sure I see a problem with this...

if so many people are using multiple accounts to get "free" zkeys, won't the price fall?

Minipets have ALWAYS been a way to buy gold: Buy this issue of PCGamer, get 100k+ from this mini-Destroyer. (Or Buy Factions CE for mini-Kuunivang... even though Kuunivang was added after the fact!)

I can see the argument to make minipets not tradeable, but it's as Racthoh implies, the real problem is not with Birthday gifts, but the collectable minipets.

EDIT:

Also it's important to realize unless you bought all your accounts (and made characters) in 2005, you are not going to get a lot of money from those minipets.... ie, buying multiple accounts now is only useful for zkeys and Traveler gifts....

and frankly, if someone wants to buy an extra account for those features, that's fine by me. I can barely be bothered to do Traveler gifts on ONE account, I can't imagine doing it for 5 or more!

Not sure about this statement. Some people just can pour more time into one sitting than others. You figure it takes 150 hours to complete a campaign with every quest included, 1500 hours for a GWAMM and 800 hours for a tiger so if you do a /age many casual players have more than enough time in this game to easily achieve these milestones.


Wealth is not an objective of this game. Its kind of a side bar issue.

I wasn't QQing, simply stating my opinion in regards to the previous person's rant about selling virtual items for RL cash. Apparently you have an issue with this though.

My opinion is that virtual items (like gold, prezzies, zkeys) shouldn't be able to be sold for RL monies, people caught doing so should be banned. Of course, why you would waste your hard earned cash on a virtual prizes (that do absolutely nothing for you in RL) is sort of beyond me.

I will say this:

By making Titles a BIG part of GW carrying over to GW2, money became more important.

Yes, you can still play this game with little or no gold. But if you want 5 sets of prestige armor or some of the buyable titles, it's going to cost a lot of gold.

Not sure what Anet was thinking here, did they WANT people to buy gold?

Why do people buy Collector's Editions? Or video games at all?

A video game is virtual, not "real." You are paying for the experience, just like you pay to sit down in a movie theater.

Once the 3 hour movie is up, that $10 or so is gone with nothing to show for it.

At least by buying a virtual item, you can see it again and again.

I'm not sure there is an issue with this but following are true:

** I did feel pressure to buy a second account to achieve in game goals easier than normal play (like the points titles)

It's not fun to be the last in your class when everybody else around (in your guild) progresses faster than you in the same goal just because they have more accounts (bought or from friends).

However I didn't because in the end it felt ridiculous to buy a second copy of the same game knowing that I would probably not have the time or willingness to play it all from the start on the second account. Didn't make sense for me at all.

Nevertheless this is encouraged by the current state of the game/free rewards.

** It does take some fun out of the game if all you do to achieve goals you want to achieve is farm zkeys or other free benefits.

That was not the original intention and it was not how goals were to be achieved. The satisfaction after getting, say "life of a party" is somewhat diminished if it is due mostly or partially to trading free zkeys from multiple accounts.

Displaying the title would be a bit like saying out loud: "I've bought 10 accounts, went to the XTH site 10 times each month, came back in game and traded my zkeys for party items until I've gotten 10k of them and that is all I did for it. And then I did it all the same for sugary items."

That doesn't translate in (at least for me) "playing a game".

** There is nothing really left to do and farming is not really "playing a game" either.

So in the end all this doesn't really matter. There isn't anything interesting for us to do in-game to complete titles. The options are: mindless farming or mindless betting and receiving free XTH rewards.

At this stage of the game I actually think multiple accounts zkey farming is preferable to in-game farming. Imagine having to complete the snowmen dungeon 5k times instead. That would not qualify for "playing a game" either.

The issue is moot since there is nothing left to be played in GW 1. We've all played it inside out in all possible ways and we're passed any point of acceptable boredom, hope of GW2 being the only thing keeping us around.

I was referring to people buying gold online. Or buying huntsman presents or even zkeys for real life money. Things that you can set yourself a goal and work towards rather than waste hard earned real life cash that you need to pay bills and buy food with.

Buying a collector's edition, spending the extra for a couple bonus items to enrich your experience usually isn't worth the money, however some people like to have all the little extras that you can get with the game purchase.

The other things in the game are intended to be gotten through play, not RL purchase.

Hope that clarifies a little better what my point was.

I only have one account thats mine but friends that left the game have let me use accounts. There is so many benefits to having multiple account unfortunately;

-More xth predictions. (if it comes back)
- run duo 600/smite keep all the drops for myself.
- run dungeons and get more opportunity for rare item from end chests by having those accounts leech.
-travelers gifts.
- Events like winterday etc, presents drop you just pic them up.
- run yourself quicker and easier through some z quest bounties/missions more z cions to trade for stuff and sell.
- more mini pets

Those come to mind atm.

So, do you agree that buying multiple accounts is the same as buying zkeys for real cash?

Or not?

The game is lifestyle biased because it favors those who do not have a job, and is supported by someone else. Since I have a full time job to support myself and my family, I cant play this game the whole day, so of course those farmers without real life responsibilities would be able to have an advantage over me in terms of in-game wealth.

So I dont see why balancing that out with paying for extra accounts is such a bad idea. In fact, that small amount of advantage with the extra account is much less than the number of hours those of us with full time jobs lose out in terms of farming opportunities.

Wealth is precisely what people are QQing about on this thread.

Don't you know all these stuff started way back in Factions? Those who bought the collector's edition has Kuunavang as a green mini pet for free. Can you calculate how much gold those people earned by selling it because they use extra RL money to pay for the Collector's edition?

Why doesnt anyone QQ about that?

And if anet comes back and make z-keys non trade item what are all the multiple account foturne makers too do?

Considering the business structure of Guild Wars of no monthly fees..They need a source of income to keep the game going.

Offer incentive to buy additional accounts = People buy additional accounts = ANet gets additional revenue = ANet rent gets paid and ANet employees get paid = Keeps Guild Wars going for all of us.

There is something called a "free rider" effect. Those that benefit indirectly from others efforts or payment. In this case, different people have paid different amounts of money to ANet depending on the expansions, upgrades and addtional accounts. Those that have spent the minimum amount are realizing a "free ride" of sorts from purchases made by those that gave more money to ANet. And they are the same people that complain about benefits that people who paid additional money to ANet are getting. I really do not understand this at all, you should be thanking the people that pay the additional money (to get more shiney pixels)to keep the game going for you. Or would you rather be forced to just pay ANet $9.99 every month to play? If all your interested in is getting the Shiney Pixels faster then go out buy an additional account, sorry if you don't like it but thats how it is. Stop QQing about people who spend their money in the game that keeps the game going for you. So what if they have more shiney stuff, you get to play the game for less REAL money.

I sort of have mixed feelings on that one honestly.

If you are buying the account only to farm zkeys on it, then yes you're essentially just paying cash for the keys, at least the first several batches of them. Honestly I don't agree with this, and have mixed feelings on whether it should be allowed or not, but I'm not the one to make that judgment call.

If you purchase the account with the legitimate intent to use it as intended (ei create and play characters on it) then fine.

After all the point of purchasing an account is not supposed to be for farming an item. It's to play the game (in an ideal world).

Considering I'd never waste my money on something like that, to go out and specifically get an account just to farm 1 or 2 items like presents and zkeys, it's hard to understand people that would.

Collector's editions are sort of intended to give players something limited and slightly more advantageous because they spent the extra cash. It's a marketing tactic that basically every company has used at some point, that's why no one QQs about it. People that wanted a Kunni either bought the CE or saved up gold and bought it in game.

The topic of the thread is whether or not having more than one account makes you more wealthy in game. Honestly, for some people yes, for other people no. It depends on how you play and what you care about. If you only care about accumulating in game wealth because you have nothing better to do with your life, hooray for you. Honestly not everyone 'abuses' the system through the use of multiple accounts and I use the term loosely because I honestly don't care if someone has 10 accounts to farm zkeys or just 1.

Do I think its stupid to continuously buy accounts just to get virtual money that does nothing for you? Yeah, but hey, to each their own.