A wild and crazy solution to the bot problem

Just thinking the other day(dangerous I know)

A few facts

1. It is impossible to stop bots/sweat shop gamers
2. The demand for GW ebay money fuels 1
3. Guild wars relies on people buying the game to pay for its running.
4. People will buy gold no matter the effects on the economy

Therefore why does'nt AN sell GW Gold on their own website?

This would
1. Put the botters out of buisness as AN just has to run a create gold script and not bot/farm, so less overheads
2. Put more real money in AN's pot to fund the game
3. AN could control the economy better, by adjusting the price/availability of gold

The demand is there so if people are going to spend real money on pretend, I would rather see it go to AN and the running of the game.

Just a wild idea.....

I agree. Don't ask why but I do.

Sony's doing this already for a time, why not Anet? I'd totally support it. Money drain the botters

Never really thought about it but actually yeah, this would work really well for this game considering how it's set up and what ANET promised...

this could work. and speaking of sony, i think they should implement a /pizza feature.

You mean the "Legalize it" Principle?
Why not?
It worked for liquor in the US during prohibition.
Maybe it will work for GW Gold, pot and heroin, too.

This is the most horrible idea ever. No one would be on equal footing. Some people bought this game because they can't afford the monthly of some games, and this is like making them pay a monthly because once people start buying money we'll have a fine line between people who buy money and people who don't. It's just not equal.

while this is true... people already buy money on ebay. of course, if A.net offered it, more people would buy.

not sure how i feel about the idea. i think it's crappy people buy game money (and items too) for real money.

Equal footing for what? Equal footing for PvE? Who cares all the players are on your side. If you're talking about PvP then gold is worthless so you're still on equal footing.

Besides anyone who wants to buy gold can buy gold and will never be caught unless they are IDIOTS.

truth

It sounds like a solid idea at first... but... a few problems I'm seeing:

1) Couldn't the gold get sold on ebay for less than AN's prices? This change would hinder bots, but I doubt it would discourage too many from simply lowering their prices. Also, if AN kept lowering the price to match, eventually the inflation would get insane.

2) Speaking of inflation... you aren't simply "legalizing" the purchase of GW money, but this would actually ENCOURAGE it. There is that difference. When the 21st Amendment was passed (repealing the 18th, which was the Prohibition law), the government didn't turn around and start selling its own liquor. They simply said it was okay for people to buy it. This would give a widely accessible, easily found, and encouraged hole for people to bring in more money into the game world. Yes, AN could change their own price to stop rampant inflation, but nonetheless there would be inflation. Which is bad for the people who, as mentioned before, don't want to spend money on the game beyond getting the game.

Again, I'm not saying this idea is a bad one, it's just it would mess up the economy and not really solve the problem of bots. Only make them less profitable. There needs to be a bit of a tweak somehow... that's all. Details.

I know, as I said in the title it's a wild and crazy idea. Having a wild week this week..

I have an equally good idea. Find people (ArenaNet employees, trusted volunteers, et cetera) to "buy" the money on eBay. And then when they find the player doing the selling, ban their account. This would mean that unless they could make $55+ per account selling gold (price of game plus gas :P), they couldn't make money selling gold. And it also means that, since they are buying more copies of the game, ArenaNet still profits!

Hey! I'd go for that.
I'll even donate if there's a fund.

fsho~

kill botters, they're annoying

Well if they add this, prices of items will rise astronomically because people will have more money. This will force you to buy money if you want to get anything good in the game. People won't mind paying 10k for black dye or 100k for a rune of absorption because they can afford it with their real life money which might come out to be around 10-20 bucks. Working for the money in game... that's hard. Ebay does happen, although it's not supposed to, the majority of gamers don't buy their cash off ebay.

haha, that's a GREAT idea. hopefully Arena Net might actually see this.....

How do you propose Anet would give the money to them in game out of intrest..? just pop it in there invent and storage..

Seems like a good idea overall.. wether it would stop it im not sure but the whole funding the game and everything, i like the idea they would get more money to make the game even better.

No they would give it to me and I would handle the distribution

And I would handle the gun to your head to make you deposit it into the _proper_ account...(s)...