Serious thought...read and respond. EBAY

I think Anet does that thing where they go around asking people questions to see if they are bots or not. A few times I was in LA selling stuff and someone whispered me asking to go questing. I was trying to sell stuff so I said no and the person each time said, "ok, enjoy the game." o_O Maybe they were just really nice people that wanted to quest or they were Anet looking for botters.

I guess I would not know but good point

LOL. Crazy conspiracy theorist. Why in the world would A.net do that? If it WAS true, the bad publicity once this sort of thing comes to the public's attention would kill the company. Plus, they could get into legal trouble, since it would technically be fraud to misrepresent who you are when you are selling an item on e-bay.

The amount of money ANet would gain by doing this is too small to be worth the risk. Why would a large corporation place themselves at such risk for such small profits. Without any real evidence all you have is a theory.

The reason their are multiple auctions is because of buy outs. Every single gold auction has a buy out price.

Besides you can make a few 100k in about 3-4 hours not really trying. If I make 100k+ per hour (yes it is still possible people) I can make a little over minimum wage in US currency. Now think of someone in a country that usually makes 0.50-$1 per hour. That $6 per hour looks really nice.

Take your hourly pay and multiply it by 6. Would you do a job that paid you that much while you are playing your fav game?

dont forget to factor in overhead costs like electricity, internet, the costs of the game accounts, food/water, etc, and it trickles down to the sweatshop worker with very little left.

Think about it. Why sell gold on Ebay instead of the website?

1. They dont want anyone else selling gold, they make it against the EULA to sell stuff via Ebay. This gives them a monopoly.

2. If they sold on their site, they'd be constituting that it's ok to sell your stuff online. This would make everyone sell crap as soon as they got it, just like the game "Diablo 2: LOD". That game is worthless now.

That's how this game is going to end up.

Well seeing as how much flaming is going on, even though I said if you want to flame me, PM me instead of doing it on this, I expect the thread will be closed shortly.

I guess it's useless for me to come on this forum hoping for an actual dignified discussion about something. I'll let you kids yell at eachother some more.

Every MMO game where time needs to be invested in order to gain items, read all games, has it's currency being sold on EBay/other sites...this includes D&DOnlie, FF11, EQ...the companies cannot stop this unless EBay/othersite does somthing on their end which they will not as it makes them money. I highly doubt GW will go under because of this...D2 went under because of hacks, plain and simple, and thankfully so far A.net has been able to keep those sorts of things out for the most part. As for botting it exists, but your not gonna just find it on the net...and yea it's making people money. How do I know? There are people smart enough to write the code, if you don't believe it can be done well enough to appear human do a search on google. So add it the chance to make money and the ability to write the software and common sense says that at least some botting exists.

Well seeing as the majority of gold delivery players are chinese/Korean (Just hang around ascalon international for a bit) Then they must be mass producing that gold by the millions, most likely in a from of work similar to sweat shops methinks..

I would never buy gold from ebay, all it does is line the pockets of fat business men in china who have probably never even heard of GW.

Anet is totally against ebay, probably u didn't chek a thread i posted a few days ago but anet gives permanent bans even for 'indirect ebaying' aka farming for an ebayer. i personally asked about 2 banned account of my friend and Anet clearly stated it was closed for some form of ebaying involvment. so it's clear that ebaying is not some conspiracy made by the devs.

as for bots, i don't doubt their existence but the vast majority of items come from real ppl who farm, many of them being chinese. it's really sad coz these ppl manually farm these items for many hours and they never actually enjoy the game. it's like a job to them that they do for a living. if u think it's easy and lame what they do, it means u never actually talked to one of those farmers. it's not fun at all and it's sad that some ppl have to farm virtual things to make a living. there was also an article about these 'gaming swet shops' but i don't have the link anymore.

i would buy items from ebay if it were from an independant farmer. i think that all the hours put into the game deserve to get paid. but most stuff on ebay is not from independant ppl and it's just the 'store owner' that makes most of the proffit while the actual farmer gets paid very little.

My main problem with this theory would be the fact that this sort of thing has happened to every online game with gold or property since the inception of eBay. So either every game developer has been in on this cash cow, making money through auctions they say are against the EULA, since the start, or these well documented cases of overseas gaming sweatshops are to blame. Shadowy conspiracy involving many vs. greed and corruption. I know what gets my vote.
Occam's razor ftw

You make a thread blatantly calling the developers of the game the forum you're in is about "unethical gold salesmen", and you don't expect to get flames? Naivete at its finest. Or maybe just optimism.

In any case, what does it matter whether there is any such "ebay gold conspiracy" or not? I'm not at all sure at how it directly affects you, or really anyone else--and don't give me that line about how it "devalues" gold. Prices on nearly everything are lower than they've ever been.

Why do you care? Does it bother you? Does it make you lose sleep at night that Arenanet could potentially be selling gold?

How do you live your life being so paranoid?

Agreed with Manic Smile.

Thing is, its up to them if it can be sold or not. Now, there are MMO's out there who do sell their gold. They sell it cheaply. So cheaply that it would be pointless for anyone to waste time farming and try to compete with them in the prices. Plus of course they have infinate amounts because they can just create it as and when it's needed. Whereas others need to go out, get the lucky drops, get the perfect route going etc. There would be no reason for a game not to state in the EULA that selling of the stuff on Ebay is wrong, because technically its selling their intellectual property, and then the same developers selling it for money on their website. Because, as I just stated, it is THEIR intellectual property to sell.

If it was only something that happens in Anet games, maybe. But no, its in Lineage (Ncsoft, NOT anet, so if anyone was doing it in GW, NCSoft would be more likely), UO, EQ2... and you'll find that in pretty much every mmo it's against the EULA.

Not to mention that the devs themselves have constantly been stressing throughout development and release that weapons, armour and gold are not important. Now, if you wanted to make a bit of cash on the side, don't you think you'd drop a few hints into interviews trying to convince people they need to be rich, rather than convincing people gold is worthless? Or rather than attempting to fix the economy (e.g. when they introduced dye traders) they would allow it to get out of hand so everyone needed more and more money?

for some strange reason they are not using this monopoly you claim they have.

rather odd to have a monopoly and not make a penny on it by not using it is it not?

You may be right, but something I'm wondering;

Go to Augory, Int 1, you see all these automated bots, ArenaNet don't NEED to farm or make bots for there own game, I'm 99.9% sure they can modify there own game, insert a random sum of money and bam, they have it on them, no bots needed or automaters.

But you still see them in Augory Rock, Int 1.

I agree, you do have some good strong points on it but I'm 99.9% sure again they can put the money in they want whenever they want.

I would not think that Anet does this.
Think about it if they actually sold gold and items on ebay then they would have to think about the consequences if someone finds out.
And lets face it nothing stays a secret in this day and age.

Even if Anet would do it I do not think that Ncsoft would approve. Its a huge company and that would ruind its reputation and blah blah blah.....

People are still stupid enough to think that items and armor make a difference in this game. If you're PvP, you already have the best that you need. If you're PvE, you don't need the best to succeed quite well. There's nothing that you need that you can't get easily with minimal work. People get this through their heads, the gold market goes away, all is well.

Education FTW!

I find it funny how quick people are to beleive in corperations. The same beings that gave you Enron and Worldcom, and Livedoor for our japanese friends. If there is one thing that being an American has taught me it is that deciet is inherent to everyone. The only thing less trustworthy than a corperation is a person. I think the OPs post presents a workable theory of a possible 'conspiracy', not saying its true, not saying it isn't.

I do think that arena net profits from the ebay trade indirectly even if not directly. Because as has been discussed gold farmers and ebay make the prices for everything go up ala inflation. This inflationary pressure makes everyone need more money in order to get items. So that means it takes people more time to buy the things that they want, which means that they will either play the game longer themselves or pay someone else to play the game longer for them. which makes for more people playing, more accounts

Personally I haven't ever bought anything on ebay and only very seldom do I ever buy anything from a player and the biggest rarity of all is me selling something, so I am a player who has been playing for a while but still has regular drok's armore and just cassually quests for the enjoyment of the game, honestly I rarely ever even notice if someone else has a cool bow or hat, so it doesn't affect me much.

Dwarven Ale.

But to answer your question on a more serious note...to your typical selfish, self absorbed gold farmer, no good at all. But to someone like me that enjoys helping guild members and friends, extra gold can go a long way in helping them, such as finding a decent sword/shield setup for a newer player. This isn't saying I'm all for newer players having everything handed to them, but I get a lot of joy out of helping others progress in the game. My point is that people should look beyond just themselves.