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.

another problem with selling currency is that is effectively devalues the coin, and thus drives up prices, effectively making it much harder for people who aren't going to buy the currency to buy items.

However selling (Real money) precustomised items, such as say a max dammage +15%^50 wingblade largely effects the person buying only. He can't sell it on (its customised for his character) so for everyone else it's worthless. This has a negative effect on the price of items however, and would be bad for people trying to make vast sums of (game) money selling items.

They're both pathetic, IMO, but one is against the rules and one isn't.

The thing is you don't *need* much money in GW. People farm for money (or buy it) for armor that looks different in hopes of impressing people, I guess.

I've never farmed and I have 3 sets of 15k armor for my 3 RP characters, just because I get money from playing the game normally.

I'm sure this'll get closed eventually like all the other 'ebaying' threads, but oh well.

Personally I think if you don't have the time to play a game and yet you feel you still need to play it and have good items... well why the hell did you buy it in the first place? Not to mention this is a game for casual players. You can complete the game far enough to reach Droks in 4 weeks at the most (with very little play time) and so you have the 'best' armour there.

But er, yeah, if you don't have the time to play the game, why waste money on buying it and getting items for it? Don't buy it in the first place. Download a savegame for a singleplayer game where its completed already. It's free and much faster.

But whatever we think, its still illegal. You're making profit from someone elses intellectual property.

Edit: just reread a few posts which reminded me of a free mmo I found a while back (Project Entropia? *shrug*) which has a kinda cool concept. You can 'buy' in-game gold with your credit card from them... but you can also withdraw it. So you invest in your character with real-life money until they can make a decent amount of money in-game, then just transfer it to your real-life bank account. You can effectively earn money by playing the game! hehe.

well some people actualy like the idea of merging the worlds , make profit with the game , it is a virtual reality and there are lots of humans inside , with a market system. i dont want to do those things , but i know they exisist and doesnt shock me .. some mmorpg are free to get in , and there is a cradit card system to buy armors , weapons , even diferent kinds of professions , char slots .
and then of corse people sell items also ... the money goes for all not just for the company , i know the company deserve more , and should try to keep it balanced and fair . but thats how far they can go ... making 100s of thousons of people stop doing this would waste a lot of time they can use to make more content with expansion packs etc.

i dont agree with it , but in the word we live , and being the game a MMORPG nothing cant stop this ... imo

Yes its a bannable offense, but the way they word their disclaimer fits them into a Loophole in the Eula. They say you are paying for their work and time, but getting the gold for free. If AN would tweak their Eula they could fix this, but I doubt they would (even though I hope they will).

~konohamaru

Truth is that this is a million dollar idea for ANet.

And add this twist -- the gold merchant, just as is true with material merchants, would only be able to sell gold that it had purchased from other players. That would mean that no new gold was injected into the game. Instead, the gold merchant would simply recycle the gold that is already there and - again like materials - the price of gold would float based on supply and demand.

Instead of paying for the gold in cash, the gold merchant would offer electronic discount coupons for ANet games. So even the payment to the player who sold gold would tend to encourage sales for other ANet products. It would also eliminate a lot of bookkeeping. Paying in cash or credit card credits would be time consuming and fraught with problems. But simply giving e-credit for a future game would be fairly easy and the benefits would all be to ANet.

This would almost certaintly shut down eBay sellers and also would become a new feature of the game that would be enjoyed by some players. Farming would then become a sensible activity wtih a real world goal -- obtaining enough gold to sell it back to ANet for the game coupons. And since the sale of gold would be a new cash flow (using a credit card) for ANet that would help fund improvements in the game. Since there is no monthly fee, the only way to generate income from the game for ANet is to sell more copies right now. But with this new source of income without significant start-up costs, ANet could justify spending more money on maintenance and improvements of the game itself.

Players who bought gold would pay a fair market price based on demand, the in-game economy would be stable since no new gold was being created, and no one would lose.

Do I seriously think this will happen? Nope. But it truly is - to me - an interesting notion.

Interesting idea, I'm not sure it'll work due to flux in plat price. People will get pissed off if they pay real $$ for plat that next day is half the price.

I think anything that can be bought by real cash should be like collecters edition items. Instantly customised so it only effects the one person who pays $$ for it.

Honestly I don't see why Anet doesn't do this, it'd be like green item farming, only with money in place of time.

People Ebay can't stop them. People sell gold on Ebay, people sell weapons. Sometimes is a overjoyed person wanting all the good items and weapons. Or someone who doens't have the time to farm, trade, and wants to just enjoy the game. I never Ebayed the game, gold is easy to get as weapons and items. But still people has there own ways.

As far as the dangers of a drop in price for plats, there's an equal opportunity for them to become more expensive. Also remember that the customers for this gold are largely the same people who are buying gold from eBay now.
These people face the same chance for the price equation to change from day-to-day when buying gold on eBay.

Like I said, I sure don't think ANet will do this. But (and this shows how little I have to think about in real life, grin) I started thinking about this on the drive home yesterday. And it seemed like an elegant solution to the eBay problem -- and also had real advantages for ANet.

I don't think the sale of gold for real money will stop -- no different from prohibition not stopping liquor sales decades ago -- so the only question is: Who will control the sales.

It makes sense for ANet to control the sales. And - without repeating what I said in the original note - there are some real advantages for the company and players here.

Although I love the twist, I'd vote against that... I'm not looking to encourage further farming, just to curtail or eliminate the eBayers and the sweat shops running them. Adding more gold to the game wouldn't affect a thing... gold's added every time a critter drops it. Think about it... if someone buys gold directly from aNet, then it's not gold that was farmed and added via that method. Same gold, different means... might actually reduce gold in game to be what's in demand rather than what's farmed and hoarded.

It really shouldn't be a means for players to profit in any way from aNet. That only opens up a whole new can of headaches.

I'd also make payment by credit card the only means accepted... help keep some control of age groups buying. Should not be accessible to kids.

anyones seen kalonline- it's a free mmo that makes all it's money like this (selling items on thier website).. course the skill level in that game is just sad but you can have the best stuff in the game by just buying items.. it's profitable if they can keep servers up (shows you right there how many people would rather buy thier wealth than work for it when all the content is free and you don't have to buy anything).. I know arenanet has ncsoft backing who make lineage 2 and city of heros (both pay to play).. so they are'nt hurting for money they just need to break a profit

if this was'nt the case you'd probably see something like kal adopted- sony is even developing a game based on the same.. they already know there's enough people out there willing to pay for content and items to make good money.. comes down to it- it's a business and were pretty lucky to see something like gw .. of course since it is free you have a runescape type of playerbase in pve- only downfall I see.. but there is still skilled content that keeps it interesting

I should put this in suggestions- but it'd be nice to have a pve area connected to a town where only the best have access too for a limited amount of time.. like the teams that win hoh- alot of people get bored because they've explored everything gw has to offer on the landscape and skip the pvp part

Mark my words -- the day is coming when besides having game masters and developers, we'll have in-game ministers of economics.

Time = money.

Those of you spending all day farming plat could be working 0.5 hours at McDonalds for the same Cost of Gold when bought on ebay- Then you could spend the 7.5 hours you saved by working at McDonalds and spend them in GW PvPing, running Quests, or doing something else more fun then farming.

Unless you love farming or are unemployed it makes more sense to buy your gold on-line then to farm it.

The only people who disagree with this haven't taken economics 101 yet.

I've taken Economics 101 and 102!

To AxeMe: good ideas, but one fatal flaw ... if the Merchants control the amount of gold going into the game, then older players who already have some $$ in the bank are at a significant advantage to the newer players ... and ANet would not want to alienate their future-fans! Plus you would get into what would be the equivalent of the money market in the real world: buying when low, selling high ... all that mess, and you'd have to either make it global across all regions, or segregate it into US/EU, Korea, JP, etc to prevent too much cross-continent abuse. Some very interesting ideas in your post though!

The only reason there is a market for this sort of thing on EBay or anywhere else, is the exact reason Chase The Sky posted in the post before mine: people place a value on their time and effort ... it's a tradeoff. If you look at it in a ratio, you can figure out how long it would take you to say, farm 100k in game, and how long you would have to work at your current job to afford the price of 100k on EBay or elsewhere. The people that do buy it are not (for the most part) too lazy to farm or bad players, at least from my experience.

I've been curious about this topic for quite some time, and i've been observing the different trends and such (as well as the discussions on this site). One thing that I noticed was the price of gold on EBay skyrocketed after the AoE nerf ... which would tell me the farming-shops were using the good 'ol PBAoE smiting farming, and have now had to rethink their strategies

Personally, i've never done the "naughty-deed" of buying EBay gold and I don't particularily farm too much, unless i'm looking for collector-gear items ... I find I obtain good drops and such when i'm not looking for them. If I find myself short of some cash, I do a little creative merchanting with crafting materials and such.

[QUOTE=Lord Iowerth]I've taken Economics 101 and 102!

To AxeMe: good ideas, but one fatal flaw ... if the Merchants control the amount of gold going into the game, then older players who already have some $$ in the bank are at a significant advantage to the newer players ... and ANet would not want to alienate their future-fans! Plus you would get into what would be the equivalent of the money market in the real world: buying when low, selling high ... all that mess, and you'd have to either make it global across all regions, or segregate it into US/EU, Korea, JP, etc to prevent too much cross-continent abuse. Some very interesting ideas in your post though!
QUOTE]

I'm just thinking outloud here and there may be a flaw in what I'm about to say (and I'm glad to hear about it if there is).

The gold merchants would not introduce new gold into the game - instead the merchants would be limited to the gold sold to them in game. So the system would simply recycle the gold that appears in the game naturally. I'm not sure how this recycling of gold changes the equation for new players vs. old players. Remember that the majority of players won't be either buying or selling gold (at least that's how I see it -- I doubt if the majority buy gold from eBay now and don't see why that would cahnge). But some of the people, maybe most, who would have purchased gold from eBay would now purchase from the in-game merchant.

Remember the purchase of gold is made with real money - so old and new players would be on the same footing there too. The imbalance would be between people who could afford to buy gold and those who either couldn't afford it or wouldn't want to. So that's basically the balance in the game now.

I'm puzzled around trying to see why new players would be at a disadvantage and I don't see it. (I have to admit - at home - my wife tells me that when I look for the mustard in the refrigerator I often don't see that either. So I'm famous for not seeing stuff and glad to try to understand what I'm missing here.

I don't think this system would create an equivalent to the money market either. The gold is purchased in-game with a credit card, with real money. The gold is sold for money off coupons for the game. So playing this market wouldn't be very smart. And yes, the pricing - like all material sellers in game now - would be universal across all servers.

it can't be helped ...people has been buying game stuff with real money when this on-line gaming thingy started way back... well its true that using real money to get "non real" stuff for a game is stupid but to some they think that its worth it,some people work in the real life and don't have much time farming/trading so another way to get the stuff they want they turn to ebay/ect
but really ...who cares ? its their money ? you can't stop people from spending on wat they want

Right, well, that sort of wording implies that the time is important, not the gold. As if you'd pay more gold that was lovingly gathered in presearing than for gold made from griffion farming. But you don't care. There are no price discounts for gold that was farmed faster. There are no mentions of how they obtained the gold, or how long it took them. But the gold is clearly indicated. It kinda makes one think that the time isn't important, and the gold is.

'But officer! I was selling the time it took me to smuggle these weapons! Not the weapons, No Sir! the customer gets these free .'

I'm sure that'll work.

I beleive ANET put the "no real money for in-game items" clause into their EULA to prevent GW from becoming another online game sweatshop abuse engine. Many underhanded overseas sweat-shop owners started profitting from MMORPG's by setting up PC's running non-stop farming bot clients running 24/7. The virtual items farmed would then be sold on e-bay for ridiculous amounts of profit. Workers earning pennies a day still had to keep these boxes running and avoid detection, but most worked in truely attrocious sweat-shop conditions.

ANET didn't want GW to propagate the problem like other MMORPG's, so they inserted the no-e-bay clause into their EULA to at least take a stand.

Something that hasn't been talked about yet, and that I really don't understand. People say that GW makes it too difficult to earn gold so that buying gold on ebay is a viable solution?? Why is farming for those purely cosmetic items such a grind, I don't understand...you can compete with green/collector/crafter items right, we all know this, so the extremely expensive items are just for looks, we all know this as well...so, if it is important to YOU to own these things then just simply PLAY the game! I usually play for a couple of hours each day (instead of TV) and most people would call the style I play farming...but to me I enjoy "farming" because to me it is fun, but let me clarify, my farming is I go into high level areas (yes solo) but I pretty much clear them, one run can take me my full 2 hours, I enjoy this very much (so no boring grind) and it actually yields tons of gold (bring at least 2 sup salvage kits)...so in keeping on topic, the real problem is simply lazy/immature players who cannot wait to buy their fissure armor, they are probably the same in real life as well, one day they want a vacation...next day go borrow for it...no need to save

When it comes to entertainment - playing a game - there is no particular virtue that I can see in postponing pleasure. While being a wise consumer is important in real life, I don't think there's the same need when playing a game. The idea with a game is to have fun, not become a role model.

While I also enjoy farming, as you do, that's just me. As is true with you, it's not a grind for me ... it is relaxing. I have my FOW armor and the items I want. So I'm not a potential customers.

But if another player enjoys playing the game another way - as long as they stay within the EULA - that's OK with me. Buying eBay gold seems to be outsidethe agreement - so I'm against it. But if there was an in-game merchant, that would be another story.