Curse

drkn · Mar 09, 2012, 02:15 PM // 14:15

I'm quite surprised no one has provided psychological insight into the matter, so let me be the voice of somewhat reason: it's much easier to leave once you got rid of all your valuables, shinies or powerful items.
Face it: MMOs are quite addictive (well, not exactly, but let's use this term rather than 'generating compulsion' as i don't want to get into it right now). Collecting stuff is a valid reason to play for some, same as gathering money to buy some expensive, rare items. In more gear-based MMOs, stating and tiering your equipment and/or character, simply because of raising your overall power so you can pwn more people around, is also enough to play.
Now, eradicating your precious collectibles and other valuables is a valid step towards conscious leaving. It simply makes it easier, as you have nothing to look back at except for some currency. You might liquidate everything you ever collected or gathered, and then use that money to start another collection, but starting it from a scratch - especially after saying goodbye to the previous one(s) - is rather discouraging.
Thus, if you haven't simply given your stuff away to validate your leave but rather sold it, you end up with currency and, usually, only currency, save for some very basic equipment.
Then, if you ever want to get back into the game, you have some money for a kickstart. If your initial intention is to leave the game completely and never come back, you'd be better off giving stuff away, or organising an event with your valuable possessions as prizes in some trivia contest - whatever pleases you. But if you actually see the possibility of getting back after X period of time and you don't want to be tempted in the meanwhile, selling your stuff and keeping raw currency is actually a good idea.
It's also a time-saver. While you may highly value your collection of rare shields at the moment, if you quit for a year and come back, your sentiments towards the collection might have died and you'd want to sell them anyway. That's a common thing about the currency itself when it comes to money-hoarders - people who are not necessarily mean in MMOs, but they prefer to collect their money rather than spend it. When they come back after a longer break, they're not so inclined to keep their money and they actually often blow it on things they'd never buy before the break, because right now the currency holds little sentimental value to them.

Xiaquin · Mar 10, 2012, 08:32 AM // 08:32

At least some of my inventory serves me no purpose, but money is useless due to the whole "not really playing anymore" thing. I give all drops away to guildies, donate within what I can get rid of and it's simply too much work to sell without an auction house.

Like a lot of other players my years of work will probably collect dust, never to be seen or used by anyone else. I find it convenient and fitting that it's more a legacy thing than anything, frozen in time rather than broken up and sold off in pieces to the highest bidders.

N E D M · Mar 10, 2012, 12:01 PM // 12:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by spun ducky

I am sorry that you take a blind eye to one of the most obvious things in most mmorpgs. If it wasn't against the rules of guru I could easily show you how big the account/gold selling industry actually is and I have known a lot of people who "Cashed Out" long before GW2 was ever mentioned much less now with a sequel looming.

If you ever get curious do some google searches I think your mind would be blown at how many take this route especially after they have filled HoM.

I think very few would be foolish enough to fill HOM then sell account, thus losing ability to link to HOM accomplishments for GW2...

enter_the_zone · Mar 10, 2012, 10:29 PM // 22:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by N E D M

I think very few would be foolish enough to fill HOM then sell account, thus losing ability to link to HOM accomplishments for GW2...

To be fair, it's only foolish if you care about getting HoM rewards in GW, and some people don't. Still, I doubt getting an account to even 30/50 could be profitable, given the time it takes. Pulling a figure out of thin air, say £400, which, after a bit of googling, seems to be high, and say 200 hours of gameplay (which is very quick to 30/50 and involves virtually no enjoyment at all since everything is rushed), you come out at £2 per hour.... which sucks.

On the other hand, trading different MMO accounts seems more sensible (one wants to play GW and has WoW, other wants to play WoW and have GW) though it involves a level of trust that I simply don't have in other people. Plus, WTF is the point in playing a game if you're just going to skip the whole game to get access to end game content? Leaving aside the obvious advantage if it's a second or third account.

chaosincarnate87 · Mar 11, 2012, 12:30 AM // 00:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by drkn

I'm quite surprised no one has provided psychological insight into the matter, so let me be the voice of somewhat reason: it's much easier to leave once you got rid of all your valuables, shinies or powerful items.
Face it: MMOs are quite addictive (well, not exactly, but let's use this term rather than 'generating compulsion' as i don't want to get into it right now). Collecting stuff is a valid reason to play for some, same as gathering money to buy some expensive, rare items. In more gear-based MMOs, stating and tiering your equipment and/or character, simply because of raising your overall power so you can pwn more people around, is also enough to play.
Now, eradicating your precious collectibles and other valuables is a valid step towards conscious leaving. It simply makes it easier, as you have nothing to look back at except for some currency. You might liquidate everything you ever collected or gathered, and then use that money to start another collection, but starting it from a scratch - especially after saying goodbye to the previous one(s) - is rather discouraging.
Thus, if you haven't simply given your stuff away to validate your leave but rather sold it, you end up with currency and, usually, only currency, save for some very basic equipment.
Then, if you ever want to get back into the game, you have some money for a kickstart. If your initial intention is to leave the game completely and never come back, you'd be better off giving stuff away, or organising an event with your valuable possessions as prizes in some trivia contest - whatever pleases you. But if you actually see the possibility of getting back after X period of time and you don't want to be tempted in the meanwhile, selling your stuff and keeping raw currency is actually a good idea.
It's also a time-saver. While you may highly value your collection of rare shields at the moment, if you quit for a year and come back, your sentiments towards the collection might have died and you'd want to sell them anyway. That's a common thing about the currency itself when it comes to money-hoarders - people who are not necessarily mean in MMOs, but they prefer to collect their money rather than spend it. When they come back after a longer break, they're not so inclined to keep their money and they actually often blow it on things they'd never buy before the break, because right now the currency holds little sentimental value to them.

I've sold all my stuff and quit only to come back and restart with the money that I had left myself over a few times... pretty much exact to your first point, it's just much easier to drop the game for a while if you don't have anything but currency.

drkn · Mar 11, 2012, 04:41 PM // 16:41

Quote:

I doubt getting an account to even 30/50 could be profitable, given the time it takes. Pulling a figure out of thin air, say £400, which, after a bit of googling, seems to be high, and say 200 hours of gameplay (which is very quick to 30/50 and involves virtually no enjoyment at all since everything is rushed), you come out at £2 per hour.... which sucks.

If i understood you correctly, you're talking about getting a fresh account, getting it to 30/50 or even 50/50, and then selling it for profit to those with money who care about in-game rewards in GW2 but don't want to play GW1?
If that's it, i see it possible to get vast profits from it. I know we're getting into the black market stuff here, but i believe i won't say anything too inappropriate, if i state that all you need is powertrading. Sure, you will need lots upon lots of in-game money, but you will probably get much more real money after selling a 30/50 account than it's relative raw worth in ectos.
For in-game currency, you can buy (more or less in ascending order of cash involved): 19 hero armours [7 points]; minipets [easy 5 points, but you can get more cheaply if you're lucky]; 7 elite armour sets [5 points]; HoM weapons [5-8 points]; zkeys [5 points - PvP statue plus 'any' statue].
Adding 3 points available due to linking, you can really quickly get about 25 points on a completely fresh account, without playing more than getting one character to HoM (the hero armours might require unlocking heroes, unless the potential buyer knows a bit about HoM and GW and is interested in playing a little, thus getting heroes themselves; the same goes for elite armours, but then there are runners to unlock towns and complete campaigns for you...).
That's really without wasting that 200 hours you mentioned, as the mats, hero armours, weapons and zkeys are readily available to buy in Spamadan. The 'only' thing you'd need is really vast in-game wealth. But then, there are people with n-teen thousands of ectos, or even more, so...
The real issue in question here is the rates on RMTs. I have no idea how much is a stack of ecto 'worth' in terms of real money, nor i am interested in wasting more time to google that data now, or how valuable would a 30/50 account be. If more than its worth in ectos, and this is what i assume, then we've just found a way to maximize your profits - provided (1) you already have an in-game fortune or are great at powertrading, and (2) the worth of a 30/50 account is greater than of a fresh account + ectos needed to get 30/50.

Again, please do not consider this post as any kind of justification or encouraging of RMT in any form. It's just a mental experiment really, and i assumed it's okay to post it since we already got talking about the black market of ecto in this thread.

shady tradesman · Mar 13, 2012, 09:58 PM // 21:58

I am quitting, but instead of selling my account for real money (which is sort of disrespectful to Anet, I guess), I'm holding a big giveaway for newbies who want to get some more HOM points.

Cynthia321 · Mar 14, 2012, 08:03 AM // 08:03

I agree with Chaos

zwei2stein · Mar 14, 2012, 09:18 AM // 09:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by drkn

If i understood you correctly, you're talking about getting a fresh account, getting it to 30/50 or even 50/50, and then selling it for profit to those with money who care about in-game rewards in GW2 but don't want to play GW1?
If that's it, i see it possible to get vast profits from it. I know we're getting into the black market stuff here, but i believe i won't say anything too inappropriate, if i state that all you need is powertrading. Sure, you will need lots upon lots of in-game money, but you will probably get much more real money after selling a 30/50 account than it's relative raw worth in ectos.
For in-game currency, you can buy (more or less in ascending order of cash involved): 19 hero armours [7 points]; minipets [easy 5 points, but you can get more cheaply if you're lucky]; 7 elite armour sets [5 points]; HoM weapons [5-8 points]; zkeys [5 points - PvP statue plus 'any' statue].
Adding 3 points available due to linking, you can really quickly get about 25 points on a completely fresh account, without playing more than getting one character to HoM (the hero armours might require unlocking heroes, unless the potential buyer knows a bit about HoM and GW and is interested in playing a little, thus getting heroes themselves; the same goes for elite armours, but then there are runners to unlock towns and complete campaigns for you...).
That's really without wasting that 200 hours you mentioned, as the mats, hero armours, weapons and zkeys are readily available to buy in Spamadan. The 'only' thing you'd need is really vast in-game wealth. But then, there are people with n-teen thousands of ectos, or even more, so...
The real issue in question here is the rates on RMTs. I have no idea how much is a stack of ecto 'worth' in terms of real money, nor i am interested in wasting more time to google that data now, or how valuable would a 30/50 account be. If more than its worth in ectos, and this is what i assume, then we've just found a way to maximize your profits - provided (1) you already have an in-game fortune or are great at powertrading, and (2) the worth of a 30/50 account is greater than of a fresh account + ectos needed to get 30/50.

Again, please do not consider this post as any kind of justification or encouraging of RMT in any form. It's just a mental experiment really, and i assumed it's okay to post it since we already got talking about the black market of ecto in this thread.

You can also buy three consumable titles and survivor title. Buying max z-key title gives you enough sweet/alcohol drops and gold weapon drops to max some other titles too. I think that ought to border on 30 and if not, buying UW spider cap run gives you two points.

What is issue is that you have to spend quite a lot of time hunting down people who have sufficient amount of good for sale - i think it would take at least week of spamadan to buy everything outlined. Even if you overpay, supply on some things is fairly limited.

drkn · Mar 14, 2012, 09:46 AM // 09:46

It depends if you want to get it done quickly or don't mind doing it over time, but with much less time investment on your side. You can either actively spam Kamadan and other popular places in the game, or you can just hold and bump your Guru thread every day (and browse the sell forum from time to time), logging in only for a few minutes to finish the transaction. It'd take longer, but you wouldn't waste your own time resources for that.
If you overpay, buying via Guru, various auction sites and other GW trade centres will take much shorter.

LicensedLuny · Mar 16, 2012, 06:32 PM // 18:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chaos Theory Pvp

Ok recently there's been a lot of players claiming to be quiting Guildwars and selling up all their hard earned items before they do something else I guess.
Now what gets to me is this, they nearly always demand a full or over the top price for their goods, I guess that it must be unbearable to make a loss on an item from a purchase some years ago in most cases those items are going to go into inactiveness forever. But why?? your quiting are you not?

So guys/gals get serious and let someone else enjoy those amazing items you have rusting away.

TIA

Besides the earlier mentioned possible explanations, I can think of another.

If you've focused much on trading off and on for longer than 6-12 months, then you've probably noticed that rare items come in and out of favor. The closest we can come to "legitimate PC" has never been based on rarity alone; rather, it tracks the ratio of demand to supply for <insert spectacularly shiny and extremely rare widget of choice.> Perhaps some of these quitters are of the opinion that, demand or not, they have some seriously rare precious widgets. They're willing to sell some before going inactive only if a buyer is willing to pay their opinion of value, an amount higher than the current market is likely to offer. Perhaps these quitting sellers are motivated for reasons more like, "Here's one last chance for people who are going to stay around to get this widget which I know it would take ages to find elsewhere. If no one is willing to pay my price, I'd rather let it gather dust than sell it cheap." Maybe they're hanging onto currently unpopular widgets figuring the market might be better should they decide to come back to GW later on.

It's impossible for any of us to say what another's reasons are with 100% certainty, but I suspect some of these "full or over the top" prices you mention could have just as much to do with a collector's opinion/appreciation of a shiny widget as with any of the darker or more simple greed based explanations.

I suspect some sellers might also be motivated by who is buying their precious treasures. Someone oft seen complaining about overpricing might not strike a seller as a fellow collector who appreciates the rarity of the widget in question. Think of your own most treasured widget which, to your way of thinking, is worth at least Y. Now imagine you read posts of mine saying it's so silly for people to ask even X (X being less than Y) for similar widgets. Would you rank me very high on your list of good alternative homes if you were looking to sell your widget to someone who would appreciate it after you were gone? Just a thought.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mcsnake85

... Do you guys remember the price of armbraces about 2 years ago? they were around 50e. ...

That was when 1e ~ 5k, at most, though. In your example, the player who converted all his arms to ecto before leaving still comes back to even more fake-money value in storage. But I thought it worth noting that the effective plat value of arms has dropped more like 25% since that time as opposed to the 50% drop one might infer from your example.