Whats up with Virgoods?

do you realize how much of a waste of time this is? You're reporting a bot and hoping to solve the issue...The person/entity that owns the bot is simply going to crack another CD-Key and start a new account. You've done nothing but add an additional 5 minutes to his setup time.

That is an interesting spin to put on it, but I don't think I really follow the logic in it. My gaming takes place in my free time for enjoyment. That's time that I wouldn't be working, reguardless of whether I were gaming, listening to music, reading, doing things outdoors, etc.. My intention in life is not to work 24/7. My intention is to work the hours neccessary to live comfortably and enjoy the time that I have away from work.

To take your example of a McJob; the average employee there works around 20 hours per week, so there's 15 weeks to reach the 300 hour mark. In the time you've made your $2500 profit and purchased a $500 account, I've enjoyed nearly 4 months of playing a game, instead of spending my nights getting McGreasy. Also consider the fact that a McJob will pay about $6/hr, so 300 hours get you $1800 gross. Factor in taxes and such, and you net about $1260, so its actually around $760 profit, and 1 game, for 4 months worth of lost free time.

In the long run, would it make more sense to do those things you suggest could be done rather than playing a game? Perhaps. Keep in mind though, if we all did those things, rather than recreating in our free time, there'ld be no reason for any entertainment buisnesses to exsist, since we'ld all be working, studying, or taking classes during all our waking hours.

To followup what FireBat was saying; I agree that not everyone has the free time to play 16 hours a day. I myself work full time, have a family, have a social life away from work and home, so my play time is also quite limited. Even with those factors, the concept of Virgoods, and such services, being successfull is out of my grasp. Perhaps its because of the gaming generation I come from, where the number of hours required to finish a game, or get the most from it are a big selling point. To me, a game that requires hundreds of hours of play to reach an endgame scenario, is a huge plus. With this particular game, if you pvp, there is no end game, which is a bigger bonus.
I come from the days of first edition pen and paper D&D, where nothing was completed quickly. That may be why I don't understand the "I'll pay what it takes to get it all right now" mindset. I don't belittle, or comdemn those that feel that way, afterall its thier time, and thier money, but I still will never understand it.

Some people seems to take games too seriously. If you think playing GW with rules is waste of time, then it is not right game for you. If you don't have enough time to play, well play something else or think your time schedule again. Heh, not everyone can do what they want in their lifetime. I have also tons of things I want to do but don't have enough time. For me, sleeping alone "waste" like 7-8 hours per day. My brains and body need to rest so I don't complain how unfair the world is because I have to sleep.

I must admit that farming is probably the most boring way to find items but suggest alternative ways to do it. Whatever it would be, it still doesn't change the fact that finding good items will consume time. Otherwise it would get boring because there is nothing to do anymore if you find everything in a week or less.

Also unlocks consume lots of time but learning what every skill will do and how to combine them with others, learn good strategies and how to play in team, will consume time. There is no shortcuts for things like that. Those change quite often when other teams switch their strategies and/or skills are modified in latest update. Adapting all this takes time. You can't buy them from eBay, sorry. If you could buy everything, brains would be useless. The whole life would be useless.

that's the Beauty of the GuildWars system. you don't have to commit Weeks upon weeks of grinding to get a decent build. and the most important thing... you can leave the game for a few weeks, maybe even a few months without the account getting deleted. so you can afford to play when YOU want to, not just too secure your account every month for continued existence.

As Madonna once said, "time is money. and money is mine".

Of course, for students that have more time than income, it's out of question to buy their ingame gold - they have plenty of time to make it ingame.

But if you was a professional working for 50$/hour, and only had 1 hr/evening to play, economically it would be more advantageous for you to invest this 1 hour's salary to buy game money that would have taken you 20 hours to gather, and spend whatever time you have for gaming to do PvP or PvE instead of farming or running people to get money (and theoretically would make a 950$ real money difference for your budget).

Of course, people game in their FREE time. But, unfortunately, to get the stuff you want in games, you have to do countless hours of grind, which is NOT FUN for many people. And GRIND is exactly the reason why companies like virgood exist.

Personally I like PvE ... I'm going through the quests with 4th character and still like most of it. But I know people who only want to PvP, and for them it's a huge chore to take one, not much 2 or 3 characters through PvE - what they need to do to for fast skill unlocks. Like people mentioned earlier, UAS takes many many hours. I had everything unlocked on my account after playing at least 600-700 hours ... not all people have this kind of time.

/I simply know quite a bit about this topic because I'm writing a thesis about copyright issues in online games, which relates also to companies selling virtual gold./

I tend to see a lot of those spammers in Ascalon Dist1 Pre-sear. There are the occasional people there that spam with their "GW Hack sites" so I just end up taking a few screens then the report.

time it takes to send a proper report - 15-20 minutes
time it takes them to crack/steal/buy a new account - 5-10 minutes

i don't see us winning a war, because for every one that we report, two take its place, unless Anet does something to universaly stop them, we will soon have no longer playable content in some portions of the game

Yeah I think they should hire a few moderators for in game.




And I agree with that too. Reporting in this game is something EVEN I hesitate because its not so easy. Though for some of these people, I'd take the time to write an essay to get them banned.

i noticed that Anet really did set a program to edit out Virgoods. now, instead of virgoods, it's --------. these bots just say VIRG00DS instead....

Its hard to imagine that they are buying that many accounts and having them banned and getting almost no where trying to curtail these persistant individuals.

Yeah.. like anyoe knows what virg00ds is.

I will just "pay" for it and charge that credit card charge back.

These guys deserve to eat it

Anyone want to explain to me how they can spam so quickly?

I swear if I spam, I get a message telling me to shut up for like 30 seconds.

I didnt consider that back end fraud protection via credit card, but you would think that the card companies would begin to notice a trend if that was the case as the fraud really exists on the holder's part in this instance.

First, sorry about the MCjob calculations. That is partially explainable by the "global" nature of internet....

Now to the real points: while a stupid and inhuman job might not be a good case to explain the success of online gold sales (people who would consider such jobs usually have lots of bills to pay after their regular job, so virtual gold is not really an option), i tried to use the easiest jobs possible, that you can get without doubt. In the time you dont have to farm unlocks, you also could do other activities like having a good time. You dont place value on your free time, but its still there.

Buying Gold in GW is of course a joke. The only interesting thing gold could buy you would be runs / unlocks. Rest is just visual fluff. But GW has to be the worst game in history if you consider Grind / gameplay relation. Look at the old threads from retail onwards. The grind system had NOTHING to do with the Gameplay (PvE only players will never use unlocking, pvp only players dont get anything out of PvE, esp if its simplistic cheap GW style). The Unlocking was such an artificial and poor way to increase playing time, that many people left in rage, or at least turned the forums into a battlefield till the situation was "fixed" (aka the grind was shifted in such a way that the good and fun game become barely more attractive then the grind needed to get to the fun parts was painful.) somewhat. With the addition of faction, its now at least related, but still - ganking newbs =! pvp.
So for some people, staying at the office for 1 extra hour would seem like a good idea compared to GW grind. Of course, thats not an excuse, but an explanation.

Maybe it's just me, but I haven't seen many of the gold selling spammers in ToPK recently.

I think what people are pissed about is the spamming in tombs, I know thats whats getting me!

I mean the spamming is bad enough just with LFG ads, without adding gold sellers and them traders in there too.

I have to turn off global chat just to read the guild and team chat lol

the thing is Guild Wars is not about a uber weapon or whatever other type of silly offhand is the flavor of the month. I guess its that some people can not understand a concept of this model. its not about getting goodies... its about playing. Some people play only to get goodies. ok... well if that's true, then all their are doing is cheating themselves. I guess I just don't understand the incentive... If you play to farm and that what you enjoy. then why by gold to get what your get by farming... If you play to play, then grind is not necessary. you will get drop to upgrade on the way, or there is always the collector weapons to use... and on occasion you will find a uber weapon to play with along the way. great congratulations...

So where exactly does the need for buying gold gone in in guild wars? they already give you the option to play with the best armor, and the best weapon and offhand at will. right out of the box... I suppose gold would be handy to unlock all the skills, but you still have to play to get faction, so even still its not worth the purchased gold. anyways. this is case in point. there will always be those that think they are better then the ave player. if I'm one of them I guess I'm at fault. but I feel I'm representing the masses that do not cheat and buy in game gold. as I'm sure I am not the minority here. If I am. I'm sorry for the inflammatory remark. but if I'm not. I feel the actions are just by arena net. they want this to stop. and are taking as many steps to do this as possible. short of legal action so far...

yea but how to prove that? hummm lol interesting but still... no no no

Those bots are very annoing, theay are in tombs in all international districts all the time now, enter now and they are there, always change their names, I have no space to ignore them all in my frien list. I don't care if someone buy gold for real money but yes care those annoing bots, i can't disable local chat in tombs because I need it to announge i'm LFG or making a party.

You know ATI is offering free trial accounts, maybe they are using those accounts, maybe they are cracking others, i don't know, only know i will keep sending reports to A-Net and a lot of sceenshots. In last 48 hours i've discovered 15 different bots!!! with different names, in tombs, all referring to same site...I'm bored. Please A-Net do something!!!

I guess the only thing we can do is to report such players so that support guyz can also keep a track of such reports and take appropriate actions.
In this way we can also contribute our efforts to maintain the honest enviornment of the game.

I feel sad for the sorry player that gets sucked in to purchasing GW gold with real money, thereby obtaining game wealth with relatively little effort, and then playing the game with the best armour and weapons that money can by with an empty feeling of "this game is not challenging, where is the fun?".

Dont know if this has been mentioned already but...

ect ect, we all get this point. But i personaly think its wrong, these are not the main people buying in game gold.


Now when i was 16-22 i was living at home and working. After bills and board, a whooping £80 to my parents a month, pay as you go phone ect, i had about £6-800 left to spend on what i want (im lucky to have £50 now im renting), normally i spent it on utter crap.

Now how many 16-22ish year olds are in the same postion, all my freinds at that age were the same as me.

I personally think these are the people buying in game gold, after all whats 5-10 pounds out of £800?

I never did this myself (i wasnt playing online games then anyway). But seriosly whats so stupid about spending 5-10 pounds out of 800ish, on virtual goods. I mean all teenagers buy is cds, games, cloths i-pods gameboys, and of couse NONE of thats a waste of money (well thats what i wasted my money on anyway).


Now me personally, i would not buy ingame gold as it just dosnt fit my playing style. But so far not one single argument has convinced me its "stupid".

Just to expand on my last point..

This is what i mean by buying gold dosnt fit in with my playing style, i like the challenge.

However not everone is the same, I mention this as the above is one of the most common arguments for anti gold buying. Not everyone plays for the same reason.

ANET should monitor it's members ignore list and ban accounts that show up on a specified amout. or at least track down that account and see if it's spaming a gold selling site and ban the IP not just the account.

and these sites are not buying accounts to stay ahead of ANET there's at least 3 keyloggers on vigoods so there stealing the accounts and gold back from the people they sold it too.

Well, they could also just ban any name with the phrase "bot" or any other bot used phrase/name. This way it would make it more challenging. Not that it would do much, to me, A-net needs to just make more mods *points to EQs masters and whatnot* where people can: Ask for help, ask for a ban of a bot. It may get out of hand to the point where people will report others due to immaturity. Then again, this is coming from a guy with a picture of a guy clubbing a baby seal as his avatar.... yeah. Look whos calling the kettle black on my part.

There obviously using the free ati trial accounts, they only last 10 hours and are worthless anyway

Yup me too. of course we would need a free 20/20 max dmg bot killer - and a nice 15k uniform

I don't know if it's quite the thing to do (comments welcome naturally), but I had some fun recently by repeatedly trading with a bot - and watching it crash. Either that or it got red engine'd off with me.

Bots crash if you trade with them?
*thinks*

I take it that none of you have been in Augury Rock - international districts...

Are you thinking of farming bots in augury rock?

We mean bots as in....like...

BUY GOLD @VIRGOODS.COM! ONLY $5000 per 100k!!!!!

We've been dealing with the spam-vertisers a lot lately, and I have noticed an appreciable improvement in the various areas in which they were lurking. Nothing's perfect, but we'll keep an eye out and permanently ban those who are engaging in the advertisements. They are totally disregarding the User Agreement and the Rules of Conduct, so we won't hesitate to take action!

Anet ftw.

Um....no. Not Anet ftw.

How the hell do you ban people using the ten hour trials?

I think some these are real bots - as in programs designed specifically to spam. I guess the coding wasn't meant for trading sessions. Of course it could have been coincidence, but it's worked more than once.

Try it - you may like it

You need to buy an ATI card to use those.

Oh, really? I guess in china it's REALLY hard to get an Ati card serial number.

I would actually like an answer from Anet on this one. And one better than "we are currently working on the problem"

What do you have that is so revolutionary, to remove bots? After all the failures of previous MMO's, how is Anet planning to stop this?

I mean, besides the fact that your ATI ten hour trials give chinese farmers an infinite supply of accounts, and for the chinese the profit is actually a lot in comparison to decent wages there, how can you discourage them?

Botting on 10 hour accounts, even with powerleveling, thats a lot of wasted time to get to level 20.

OH GREAT ANOTHER SPAM BOT!
not virgoods, but something called guildwars.cc!

guild wars is completely server side. other MMO have never done this. not hard to find if people would acually report the bots to the correct place instead of coming to guru and making a post about it.

ya i just saw guildwars.cc in the comp arena. this was going to happen sooner or later (surprise it took this long). the problem will get worse before it gets better.

anet has their plate full right now: working on expansion to meet dead line, fix skills bugs, battle botters, world tournement. for being a free game they sure work hard to keep it pure.