Real World Selling and Guild Wars - ArenaNET's measures?

People buy ebay Gold, buy all these shiny high-end weapons from forums with it and sell it again for real world cash. Nothing new for some here or even shocking or mentally disturbing, but unfair and somehow sad.

It's not my idea to force people the way they should play, how much time they should invest to it. I don't care if they play with their bare feet or use telepathy.

What strikes me is that there are lowlifes who cannot compete with the "rules" or constants give in the game (yes, add luck) and buy their virtual existence to get the attention they seem to miss in the real world. I understand that there's a reason to dive into a game and that some people are likely to fall very deep into it (as in every MMORPG) actually but the naivity of feeling unique is often founded on the items or the armour one's wearing - quite absurd regarding the fact that there are over a million players by now and the "eliteness" of high-end armour shrinking day by day.

I am not here to create pseudo-freudian attempts on generalizing psyche but what is ANET's current stance on that subject?

It's bannable as per their EULA. Of course finding out who bought stuff isn't gonna be easy but they should be able to do it. I'm fairly sure people have complained on here before because they got banned for it.

Isn't it a waste of money to buy stuff for a game?

the sad thing is that there are people that think that it is worth it. if not the problem would not exsist.

Wouldnt it be funny if Sods Law was in force here, someone buys 1000P on ebay, only to do a few farms and get a few Sup Absorps lol Would make their ebay purchase seem not a good idea.


Ahhh well I can dream :P

With the major bottoming out of rune prices - a "few" sup abs. is no where near 1000P level >_>

I don't see anything wrong with it (apart from the EULA).
some people can't play this game a lot, but still want nice armor and weapons. By working half an hour, you earned enough money to buy 100p off ebay, which takes some hours to farm. It's a time friendly alternative to money for the people who don't have too much time.

I know that, but it would be annoying for people who decide to quickly get the ingame gold with real cash say £60+ then get some great drops that could have helped them anyways.

Sods Law :P


For example, buy a lottery ticket, times up to buy more, person behind you in queue offers 50x time price, you get greedy sell it, then they win jackpot. Sods Law in full effect :P

Yeah, I've said before, I feel ANet should tackle problem head on, by running it. After all this would make ANet happy, they get more money from people who don't wanna farm/Can't unlock a certain skill etc etc. It'll make the people who want the stuff happy. And it'll make the people who grinded the stuff happy they weren't sucker enough to pay real money for something that only costs time.

Now I think certain limits should be imposed, but if its all above the table then it will be more easy to control. Meanwhile the ebay sellers will face compertition and be forced to lower their prices, possibly putting them out of business.

But thats just me.

brood you bring up a good point, is it really cheating if they can only play a couple hours a sitting instead of the ungodly amount im not even going to try to guess of hours a junky plays? there is a fine line, aside from eula i agree, then again im not promoting it either. if someones account is showing a constant increase in gold with no trade, that should send up red flags. *shrug*

It is quite sad that it is a viable option to purchase ingame gold, but for some it may be easier and/or cheaper for them to do relative to their job.

When I used to farm alot, I made about 30k per hour.
At a minimum wage (American) job you make $5.50 per hour.
100 platinum pieces off of E-Bay costs ~$11.
While in the 2 hours I spent making the real money to buy 100 platinum, I only would have attained 60 plat from farming.

There needs to be something done to fix this ratio, and hopefully its pumping up the in-game drops (inflating the economy) so that people don't see it as a possibly better option to E-Bay their gold.

SOE has done this for a majority of their online games I believe. They didn't like the under the table aspect of it all and decided to sell it themselves for the same prices as the farmers. Needless to say there are quite a few less EQ2 gold auctions on E-Bay

How many times have we seen this conversation? lol ... I just wanted to say one thing, that this:
Is way off from the viewpoint of the concept and creation of the entire game. It's a no-monthly-fee game designed to promote teamwork and cooperative play, etc.

Putting ANet in charge of selling virtual goods for it's own game would be shooting itself in the foot, IMHO. Don't you think it would perhaps give the message that "hey, to be better in the game you need to spend more money!" ?

Now you and I both know (I hope) that you don't need money in the game to compete on the same level with the person that is filty rich ... but to the average player, things like 15k armor and nice green weapons and such are things to achieve ... goals, if you will, for them to reach. It's bad enough people Ebay for gold and get there faster, how do you think that would make them feel if the very company that created the game encouraged this laziness by selling its own currency and items?

The reason it's against the EULA to buy in-game items for real world cash is not legal, it's principal. It's perfectly legal to sell virtual goods, and if ANet wanted it done they would certainly do it themselves.

Just something to think about.

Simplest possible solution would be to just buy some gold from the companies like IGE. They have to use a contact person in the game world to get it to you right? So tell the contact to meet you ASAP, then put off the meeting. Just tell them you're caught in a mission or whatver and you'll have to catch them at another time. Next day, somebody new tries to contact you, and you run the same story.

Then you wait, and string them along as long as you can, and see how many different people contact you. Once you have the name list, then you tag them to have their inventories logged. (not sure if A net can do this or not, if they can't you could still round up some of the contacts) Find out who they give the gold to, and who they get it from, and start tagging those people further up the chain who hand out the gold.

Eventually you find the guys who hold the purses, and then you ban the whole list of accounts. It wouldn't even really cost you much, maybe a hundred bucks or so every month, to buy a few different gold packages and track down the sellers each time they got established.

Not a long term solution, but it would certainly provide some measure of retribution against those companies. Plus you might be able to track down some of their reps and go after them legally, if at all possible.

From the other side of things Anet could run the gold selling themselves too. I played gunbound for a while, which had a system where one could earn gold in game to buy stuff, or you could buy them for real money. It was an interesting system, and somewhat balanced by the fact that the highest level stuff couldn't be bought for just real world cash, you still had to have some in game cash to buy them. They also had suits and such that could only be bought by real world cash, but that provided drawbacks as well as benefits.

Anet could probably runa similar system. You could buy access to small amounts of gold and simple runes or items with real world cahs, or play for them through the game, but the highest level stuff would recquire some amount of in game cash, and you could either paly to make up all the cost with in game cash, or pay some real world cash for a discount on it.

This is always a hot topic, with good viewpoints on both sides. I'll let the discussion continue for now, but if it does deteriorate this thread will be closed. The selling of gold or characters is against the EULA for Guild Wars. But is it illegal? No. There you have it, ANet's job is to develop and sell a game. While they do their best to police the game, they do have other important matters to attend to (like getting us Chapter 2.)

Now I totally utterly fundamentally agree with you on this, however reality is:

This happens, people want to have stuff, can't be arsed to grind it (which isn't supposed to be part of the game according to Anet anyho) they will look for other ways to get it.

Essentaily this creates a black market that will not go away no matter how hard you try and stomp on it (I mean look at real life examples). If there's a demand, which there is, then there will be a supply.

Opening up game cash by real cash however will lead to an increase in money circulating the game, which will lead to people raising their in game prices outpricing most 'good honest folk'. Thus I figure the best way would be to allow the purchase of customised items.

This isn't too far a strech from the collector editions, which essentally give you some stuff for more money.

Absolutely, for the "nicer" things, yes. ANet has done quite a good job of keeping balance and an (at least) semi-stable control on the economy. This, I believe, is one of the key reasons that green items were introduced: not difficult to obtain, perfect mods, etc ... lowering the price of those oh-so-previously-coveted perfect gold items that were getting to be way out of the average joe's price range.

Sadly, yes. All too true. Having come from a game before Guild Wars (that shall remain nameless) where the economy was WAY out of whack for many of the same reasons ... and yes, it is a frowned-upon but accepted fact that there will always be a black market for virtual goods and services: but that doesn't mean that ANet should join in Could you explain what effect the selling of customized items would have? I'm not quite understanding that bit ...

Well, as an owner of a collector's edition copy, the nominal extra cost was well worth it, IMHO ... you get a very nice artwork book and a chat headset and a few other goodies: just buying the headset + normal copy would already meet the CE cost. Aw, go ahead ... call me a fanboy

Exactly. I haven't bought any myself but I dont like farming and they've made it so difficult to make money in GW that it's a much more appealing option to pay for it.

People say it's pathetic to buy game money, but how is it any less pathetic farming gold for hours/days/weeks in a game?

It would be interesting if there was a gold merchant in town where you could purchase gold on a credit card for real cash, at a price well less than what eBay sells it for. For one thing... you really don't need it to do well, so as long as fools exist, why not let aNet reap the harvest as opposed to some farming companies exploiting the masses for their own profit? Say you could purchase 50P gold for $1.99 via a major credit card in game, but only if you've ascended and gone through Dragon's Lair to Droks.

Personally, there's no way in the Underworld that I'd ever buy fake gold or items with real money. Logically... I don't want to go there this thread. But... it appeals to the foolish and satisfies their cravings while crushing the online gold selling industry.

So... cons?

Well, there's the illusion created that it's either necessary or desireable to purchase gold. However, this exists to a lesser degree... but it would likely become more prevalent.

Hmm... option two... start characters with a bankroll? Then there will be folks that abuse this by creating, transferring, deleting, creating... repeat...

Or delete gold altogether and have drop rates increased to minimize any item becoming greatly more valuable than others. Of course, the farmers will whine to no end here... even though it's not a game of economy, bad habits are hard to break.

sigh...

most mmorpg clearly state that their in game currency is not worth anything in the real world. Selling virtual currency for real money would clearly contradict that. This policy of non value in game currency is merely for legal purposes. If there was a server crash and you lost some virtual currency, you would not be able to sue them monetary damages.

If people buy virtual currency online, it is their own choice. Everyone plays the game differently, so just focus on your own enjoyment of the game. An analogy of this violation of EULA is underage drinking in America. It's against the rules, but so many people do it and the officals just don't care. Quit whining and go play the game!

No matter what degree of is the EULA really legal, etc. If they catch you, they kill your account and you have no action against Anet to get it back.