Curse

N8mare · Apr 02, 2008, 09:13 AM // 09:13

You are all wrong - and you allow ppl from An to manipulate you. Why ?

In real life economy the more money flowing into the market means INFLATION - prices rise. Real money traders have been operating in GW almost since the beginning of the game, with apogeum of their business right before AN implemented new RMT policy.

What could we see during real-money traders intense activities? Have the prices risen? Of course not - they have FALLEN tremendously. Not only materials, runes, but also high end items.

GW is not WOW. More money flowing the market DOES NOT mean destroying the economy - they're used for "vanity sink". The only thing destroying the economy is Arena Net with their zaishens, with their ursan, with their armbrace dupping bug.

There's absolutely NO PROOF that RM traders, that MIGHT operate from Taiwan, MIGHT harm the economy.

Give me a proof of your theory, AN.

redrum38 · Apr 02, 2008, 09:17 AM // 09:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by guolisong

Uh I play on America server there's no reason why I can't travel to American server, European server had been connected to American server for 2yrs or even more, nobody's ever in Korean district why would I go there? And now I don't see anyone in international district period it has no use to me.

You can only whisper to the chars belong to Taiwan District? I don't think so, I mean how would you communicate with your American friends then?

I don't know about the merchant business I suppose they'll be setting up the system in Taiwan only, they are still fixing this it's only been 1 day.

My point is you paid for the actual GAME and the game box only said free online play which you will still be provided for(That's the service). You did NOT pay for the service to be able to play in international district neither did us. If they isolated American server from the rest that's something they can do. Like I said it's a privilege not right.

會打簡體字那看得懂繁體字吧
什麼叫"他自己没说清楚,以前的事情和现在的事情混在一起说,我说的是之前台湾的玩友自然是可以密其他区的人."
標題寫得很清楚~在這樣的標題下當然只會說4/1後被改的狀況
目前4/1後台版是被隔離的狀態~PVP也只能台版角色組滿去跟國際的角色打
如果你認為可以跨區可以到國際區可以跟其他區角色交談或交易這些是特權的話
那麼可以請你告訴我為什麼獨獨台版的沒有這些特權??
難不成台版玩家都是用假鈔買帳號的??
如果說是因為台版比較便宜的話
拜託~售價是官方定的又不是玩家定的
一樣是繳錢玩遊戲~Anet憑什麼剝奪特定區域的權利

After 4/1 , Taiwanese district char can't whisper and trade to other districts char , and Anet cut off the connection of the merchant NPC between Taiwanese and International .
If you think that can travel to other districts is a privilege not right .
Could you tell me why does only Taiwanese district have not the privilege ?
Were we paid fake money to buy it ?
If the reason is we paid few than other district , hey the price of product is set by official not players .
We also paid for playing the same with other district players , how could Anet aggrieve our right .

Gli · Apr 02, 2008, 09:24 AM // 09:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mork from Ork

If a company wishes to market to a global community they will always have to deal with lowest common denominator and figure a way to work with it.

Sure, but logically, when the lowest common denominator gets too low to be feasible, the territories pushing it that low should not be marketed to. In this case, since the marketing has already taken place, that's not an option anymore, short of pulling the plugs altogether. (Which they thankfully managed to avoid.)

In any case, they did little else other than to revert the game to how it was at the time of release, which can't be grounds for complaining.

Turbobusa · Apr 02, 2008, 09:28 AM // 09:28

Quote:

in response to recent changes to Taiwanese law.

That...? Whatever that is, they are following the law of your country. Can't blame them.

SPURLUXE · Apr 02, 2008, 09:40 AM // 09:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by 1 up and 2 down

Taiwan and Japan have a monthly fee?

Don't know about Taiwan, but Japan has a monthly fee.
￥980($9.80)/30days
can play all campaigns and expantion for 30 days.

Lycan Nibbler · Apr 02, 2008, 09:53 AM // 09:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vickie

... means the ability to send whispers to non-Taiwanese accounts has been disabled. So, no, we couldn't even say goodbye to the friends we made in the International districts.

Here I am, recommended so many people to play Guild Wars, and now *I* am the one who can no longer do PVE with them.

Apparently though, if you are still in an alliance, you can still chat on AC between accounts from "either side" Not ideal I know, but still a little work around for you to chat to your friends - at least as far as chat is concerned anyway.

Jodo · Apr 02, 2008, 10:25 AM // 10:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by SPURLUXE

Don't know about Taiwan, but Japan has a monthly fee.
￥980($9.80)/30days
can play all campaigns and expantion for 30 days.

Um I play using a Japanese version of GW and I pay no monthly fee....
There is no such fee.
I think you are referring to the trial discs.

I wouldnt be suprised if they close down the Japanese servers.
Its a ghost town, and trying to find ANY GW product in Japan is quite a mission.
Last saturday I walked around Osaka looking for EotN and Factions, 2 which I dont own.
I went from Osaka to Kobe to Kyoto, 35 minutes by train to each city.
Looked at every software store/mall I could find.
I found 2 copies of Nightfall in Osaka.
Nothing anywhere else.

Japanese are big time gamers, from thier PSP's on the train to thier desktops at home.
Everywhere you see people playing games.
The problem is the games market is MASSIVE here, sadly its mostly for games made in Japan.
There are tons of online RPG's available but only for the Japanese community, they sell big and its a constant battle between game developers here.

The 2 biggest games on the market here are GUNDAM (theyve even got a GUNDAM MMO of sorts) and Final Fantasy, doesnt matter if its FF online or just FF everyone is playing it.
After that its all the FF type wanna be games that people buy.
Metal Gear Solid was HUGE in western areas, here its like pong, the kind of game a person will buy just to play on a rainy day when theyre bored.

International games are hard to get here, online shopping is becoming more of a pain for ordering games from overseas.
Some games can be shipped internationally and some games cant.
Most games from overseas arent even advertised here, youll just see it on the shelf one day and say "oh a new game...".
LOTRO received a small amount of advertising basically because of the movies success here.
But honestly in the 8 years Ive been here I have never seen any other game from overseas be advertised.

kingleo · Apr 02, 2008, 10:53 AM // 10:53

hi all... i come from taiwan...

my english is not good, so i may use some wrong word.

here are the pics of new game agreement of taiwan account

http://tinyurl.com/2nvxu9
http://tinyurl.com/3cr669
http://tinyurl.com/3xt9ac
http://tinyurl.com/38rt7l
http://tinyurl.com/3alk45
http://tinyurl.com/2vnn88
http://tinyurl.com/2kt8w4
http://tinyurl.com/3xnbo2

sry i can't translate all of them by english
---------------------------

after one day working, ya... we finally find the "new law of taiwan"

actuality ... it's not a law, it's most like a bond indenture.

some stupid county agent made it to fix the controversy of internet game .

but they even don't understand what is online game.. lol

here is the link of bond indenture from government web : http://www.cpc.gov.tw/detail.asp?id=389
and the documet download link is 線上遊戲定型化契約應記載及不得記載事項.doc (you may save it as a new name)

(if someone can transtale it, you may try it)

after read this.. we found it's totally incomprehensible and nonsense.

but this kind of shit often happen in taiwan department.

so ... ya... if i am anet... i may do the same way to circumvent that rules.

but it's not the good method what anet done this time to asia player.
-------------------

finally i want to say one thing.... don't use China case to this issue.

China are totaly different Taiwan.. we are two different regime.

Taiwan are not belong to China.

yes, the United Nations do not accept Taiwan is a independent nations.

But we don't pay tax to China, all of Taiwan ppl definitely know we are a independent nations.

Martin Alvito · Apr 02, 2008, 11:04 AM // 11:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by N8mare

In real life economy the more money flowing into the market means INFLATION - prices rise.

Actually, the implication is that the money you already own becomes worth less over time. Given that the rarest items in the game have ROCKETED up in value over the last few years, I'd say that there's inflation present. Certainly the dupe had something to do with this, but even since then there's been significant upward motion in prices,

To those of you that will advance the argument that super-rare items have a fixed supply: If there is no inflation, fixed-supply items remain constant in price. Those items which can be REMOVED from the system via customization/dedication can conceivably become more valuable, true. However, if there is no inflation we should not have observed a general upward trend in mini prices before the dupe, nor should we have observed one after the market settled out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by N8mare

What could we see during real-money traders intense activities? Have the prices risen? Of course not - they have FALLEN tremendously. Not only materials, runes, but also high end items.

Are we playing the same game? Common mats became far more expensive when consumables hit. Certain rare materials became less expensive when ANet deliberately reduced the supply of gold. Ditto for runes. That has to do with an exogenous shock to the system (loot scaling), and has nothing to do with inflation. You observe inflation in shifts in the price of fixed-supply stuff.

High end items: prices have been dictated by supply. Why is a Runic Blade dirt cheap now? Because ANet increased the drop rate by a factor of thousands.

Generally speaking, if you want to equip your character with a bunch of junk, your money goes further than it did. If you want to equip your character with nice stuff...good luck with all that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by N8mare

There's absolutely NO PROOF that RM traders, that MIGHT operate from Taiwan, MIGHT harm the economy.

It's a simple proof. Suppose that you can farm X amount of money in a certain period of time. Assume that all players in the system have generated wealth of Y. Your farming efforts are worth X/Y per period.

Add RMT to the system. This incentivizes additional farming. Now the total wealth in the system is Y+Z, where Z is the amount of wealth generated by the online gold sellers. This wealth is particularly problematic because these farmers tend to generate things people use to get the things they want (gold/ecto) rather than the things people actually want.

If the online gold sellers generated an equivalent ratio of things people want and cash, you'd be right that there's little harm done to the economy. The supply of things you want and the supply of cash would grow at an equal rate, and your personal farming efforts would be just as efficient.

Doesn't work that way in reality, though. Actual players farm the things that people want, because only actual players are willing to accept the low mean/high variance nature of such farming. Gold sellers are best served by minimizing labor costs, which means farming commodities and dumping them ASAP at slightly below market value.

The upshot of all of this is that now your farming efforts are worth X/(Y+Z). Since Y+Z > Y, your farming efforts are less effective and you are made worse off.

Note that this holds true whether you farm or not. If you don't farm, the value of your X parameter is simply lower.

Now, it's perfectly legitimate to argue that the magnitude of the Z parameter remains unproven. However, if you know anything at all about commodities trading, you quickly figure out that the value of that parameter is large in this game. (Too many sellers at below market prices, all with no guild tags and Asian names.)

Online gold trading makes you worse off. QED.

Back on topic: One would think that there is some sort of legal workaround. My suspicion is that it's the IP permaban that's the problem. Policy changes; suddenly there are legal problems that weren't there before? Hmm.

This stinks for legitimate players in Taiwan. It's also a testament to the fact that if there's a way to make a buck, people don't care about the externalities they impose upon others. Finally, it demonstrates that ANet knows where they've got large numbers of copies sold and will sacrifice periphery businesses in order to protect the American/Euro market.

This all seems fairly pointless to me; won't the gold sellers simply get Korea/Japan accounts now? Granted, those can get IP permabanned, but that's not too costly to fix. If there's as much money in RMT as there appears to be, inconveniencing the businesses and increasing their costs somewhat may kill marginal operators, but it's not going to eliminate the overall problem.

ShoGunTheOne · Apr 02, 2008, 11:12 AM // 11:12

i know this is a big issue, but we shouldn't put Gaile in such a hard position, if it's the law, we can do nothing about it. if we try to break it, GW will get sued, and, both EU/US servers will be closed too, sure that's not what any of you wants, right?

and we should thank Gaile for all those things she has done for us already

P.S chinese/taiwanese ppl should stop the flaming at each other.... and it's not ANet's fault, it's the goverment. 还以为马英九会好好干的，没想到一上任就有这么多规章……

SPURLUXE · Apr 02, 2008, 11:30 AM // 11:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jodo

Um I play using a Japanese version of GW and I pay no monthly fee....
There is no such fee.
I think you are referring to the trial discs.

I wouldnt be suprised if they close down the Japanese servers.
Its a ghost town, and trying to find ANY GW product in Japan is quite a mission.

Japan has 2 payment methods:
1.buy a copy of GW, and no monthly fee. (just like other countries)
2.pay a monthly fee, and don't need to buy a copy of GW.

You can buy any campaign/expantion at Japanese official GW website

michfho · Apr 02, 2008, 11:32 AM // 11:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by kingleo

hi all... i come from taiwan...

...
after one day working, ya... we finally find the "new law of taiwan"

actuality ... it's not a law, it's most like a bond indenture.

some stupid county agent made it to fix the controversy of internet game .

but they even don't understand what is online game.. lol

here is the link of bond indenture from government web : http://www.cpc.gov.tw/index.asp?pagenumber=4333
and the documet download link is 線上遊戲定型化契約應記載及不得記載事項.doc (you may save it as a new name)

(if someone can transtale it, you may try it)
......

Say in brief the bond indenture limited the right of the game provider 2 things:

1. The customers have their right to request a total refund (and they don't even need to provide any reason) within 7 days start from the buying of the game.
2. No matter what reason, the game provider cannot ban a player's account more than 7 days (for one case).

Yes, we (I mean most of the Taiwan territory players) do admit that's much over the acceptable baseline of a commercial online-game provider that really cares in controlling RMT.

Anet use the "isolation" method to avoid the ruin of in-game economy due to the fact that they can't ban a Taiwan territory account permanently even it involved in RMT (at least in GG's explaination said).
(The interesting thing is, up to now, all the official notices regarding this problem from NCTaiwan never stated the real reason of isolation is because of the silly "new law".)

Up to now I think the only arguments are
1. Is this isolation method a good solution?
2. Are there any follow-ups from Anet that will release the isolation?

Maybe they can consider move the server and the whole Taiwan bussiness to Hong Kong (Hong Kong do not have such a silly bond indenture to over-protect the customer right.) :P

P.S. I'm a Hong Kong player with both a Taiwan territory account and a American territory account.

michfho · Apr 02, 2008, 11:47 AM // 11:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by SPURLUXE

Japan has 2 payment methods:
1.buy a copy of GW, and no monthly fee. (just like other countries)
2.pay a monthly fee, and don't need to buy a copy of GW.

You can buy any campaign/expantion at Japanese official GW website

Exactly same as Taiwan territory.

Jodo · Apr 02, 2008, 11:49 AM // 11:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by SPURLUXE

Japan has 2 payment methods:
1.buy a copy of GW, and no monthly fee. (just like other countries)
2.pay a monthly fee, and don't need to buy a copy of GW.

You can buy any campaign/expantion at Japanese official GW website

Ah I didnt notice the the 2nd option.

But yea from here:
http://guildwars.plaync.jp/

It would be handy if there was an English version

Took me forever to figure out how to register my GW on that site.
And not ONLY that site, also had to register it through Leivo or Lievo whatever its called.
If I could read kanji that well Id buy from that site but the problem is filling out your details in Kanji is just a tad hard...
Also notice how EotN is not available.

MithranArkanere · Apr 02, 2008, 01:49 PM // 13:49

Well, the fault IS due to bots.

Laws that support professional farming in a game it's something like... well... counter-productive.

Many games will leave Taiwan like GW if they keep that.

isamu kurosawa · Apr 02, 2008, 02:12 PM // 14:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by MithranArkanere

Well, the fault IS due to bots.

Laws that support professional farming in a game it's something like... well... counter-productive.

Many games will leave Taiwan like GW if they keep that.

Once rmt companies see that they can operate in taiwan without any drawbacks pretty much every mmo company will take action. Wouldn't be suprised if a few just suspend services there altogether.

Pinghan · Apr 02, 2008, 02:32 PM // 14:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by SPURLUXE

Don't know about Taiwan, but Japan has a monthly fee.
￥980($9.80)/30days
can play all campaigns and expantion for 30 days.

Taiwan's month fee same service as Japan
but the month fee is 12.6us per month

Prof Of Black · Apr 02, 2008, 02:39 PM // 14:39

Heard ppl saying this before april fools..

~Prof.

Darksun · Apr 02, 2008, 02:47 PM // 14:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by BlueSS

Dev Update] Changes to Taiwanese Accounts – 31 March 2008
New government regulations in Taiwan, which take effect April 1, restrict game companies in that region from effectively suspending or banning accounts for participating in professional farming or real-money trading. Guild Wars is highly impacted by local regulations such as this, because Guild Wars operates in a seamless, connected manner between all territories. We cannot sustain a seamless connection when we are unable to effectively police the game in one territory, because professional farmers in that territory could severely damage the game’s economy throughout the world. Therefore, we are forced to disconnect Taiwanese service from the rest of the game world as of April 1.

Users in Taiwan will still be able to participate in their international guilds and compete in international PvP, but as of April 1, they will no longer be able to enter international districts, trade with players outside Taiwan, or play in PvE environments with players outside Taiwan.

WoW.. the Taiwanese Government is freekin evil. They basically support people illegally making money off game companies. The fact that they do it at the expense of an American company makes a sick sort of sense.. Messed up!

zwei2stein · Apr 02, 2008, 03:06 PM // 15:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by michfho

1. The customers have their right to request a total refund (and they don't even need to provide any reason) within 7 days start from the buying of the game.
2. No matter what reason, the game provider cannot ban a player's account more than 7 days (for one case).

1. Resolution:

Legal resell: Make all copies sold to Taiwan are sold privately by local denizen (which you trust) who bought them all , waited for 7 days and then resold them.

Technically, refund is now void since buyers are not original customers, and 7 days passed already.

Play on fact that it is since purchase, not since game account activation.

2. Resolution:

Wanna permaban someone with this kind of stuff? Follow these instructions:

a) Ban account for 7 days
b) Once ban expired, wait one minute (seccond, miliseccond ...).
c) repeat from a)

Anet can make up bannable case of anything by being creative with eula ... like, i.e. not logging in for 7 days could be bannable offense. Cruel, aint it.

Play on fact that frequency of bans is not take into account for and you can still ban for anything by adding few lines to eula.

---

You CAN fight this battle, be creative about this. Taiwan is ipso facto lost territory for you and most other MMOs companies as of now, so you loose a little but can gain a LOT of positive coverage and hero stuff that people dig.

Honestly, i want to see you win this, not back away.