Curse

Raxxman · Feb 15, 2006, 06:48 PM // 18:48

another problem with selling currency is that is effectively devalues the coin, and thus drives up prices, effectively making it much harder for people who aren't going to buy the currency to buy items.

However selling (Real money) precustomised items, such as say a max dammage +15%^50 wingblade largely effects the person buying only. He can't sell it on (its customised for his character) so for everyone else it's worthless. This has a negative effect on the price of items however, and would be bad for people trying to make vast sums of (game) money selling items.

Grimm · Feb 15, 2006, 06:57 PM // 18:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Keyote

People say it's pathetic to buy game money, but how is it any less pathetic farming gold for hours/days/weeks in a game?

They're both pathetic, IMO, but one is against the rules and one isn't.

The thing is you don't *need* much money in GW. People farm for money (or buy it) for armor that looks different in hopes of impressing people, I guess.

I've never farmed and I have 3 sets of 15k armor for my 3 RP characters, just because I get money from playing the game normally.

Pevil Lihatuh · Feb 15, 2006, 07:08 PM // 19:08

I'm sure this'll get closed eventually like all the other 'ebaying' threads, but oh well.

Personally I think if you don't have the time to play a game and yet you feel you still need to play it and have good items... well why the hell did you buy it in the first place? Not to mention this is a game for casual players. You can complete the game far enough to reach Droks in 4 weeks at the most (with very little play time) and so you have the 'best' armour there.

But er, yeah, if you don't have the time to play the game, why waste money on buying it and getting items for it? Don't buy it in the first place. Download a savegame for a singleplayer game where its completed already. It's free and much faster.

But whatever we think, its still illegal. You're making profit from someone elses intellectual property.

Edit: just reread a few posts which reminded me of a free mmo I found a while back (Project Entropia? *shrug*) which has a kinda cool concept. You can 'buy' in-game gold with your credit card from them... but you can also withdraw it. So you invest in your character with real-life money until they can make a decent amount of money in-game, then just transfer it to your real-life bank account. You can effectively earn money by playing the game! hehe.

neoteo · Feb 15, 2006, 07:11 PM // 19:11

well some people actualy like the idea of merging the worlds , make profit with the game , it is a virtual reality and there are lots of humans inside , with a market system. i dont want to do those things , but i know they exisist and doesnt shock me .. some mmorpg are free to get in , and there is a cradit card system to buy armors , weapons , even diferent kinds of professions , char slots .
and then of corse people sell items also ... the money goes for all not just for the company , i know the company deserve more , and should try to keep it balanced and fair . but thats how far they can go ... making 100s of thousons of people stop doing this would waste a lot of time they can use to make more content with expansion packs etc.

i dont agree with it , but in the word we live , and being the game a MMORPG nothing cant stop this ... imo

konohamaru heaven · Feb 15, 2006, 07:19 PM // 19:19

Yes its a bannable offense, but the way they word their disclaimer fits them into a Loophole in the Eula. They say you are paying for their work and time, but getting the gold for free. If AN would tweak their Eula they could fix this, but I doubt they would (even though I hope they will).

~konohamaru

AxeMe · Feb 16, 2006, 01:01 PM // 13:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by MSecorsky

It would be interesting if there was a gold merchant in town where you could purchase gold on a credit card for real cash, at a price well less than what eBay sells it for. For one thing... you really don't need it to do well, so as long as fools exist, why not let aNet reap the harvest as opposed to some farming companies exploiting the masses for their own profit? Say you could purchase 50P gold for $1.99 via a major credit card in game, but only if you've ascended and gone through Dragon's Lair to Droks...

Truth is that this is a million dollar idea for ANet.

And add this twist -- the gold merchant, just as is true with material merchants, would only be able to sell gold that it had purchased from other players. That would mean that no new gold was injected into the game. Instead, the gold merchant would simply recycle the gold that is already there and - again like materials - the price of gold would float based on supply and demand.

Instead of paying for the gold in cash, the gold merchant would offer electronic discount coupons for ANet games. So even the payment to the player who sold gold would tend to encourage sales for other ANet products. It would also eliminate a lot of bookkeeping. Paying in cash or credit card credits would be time consuming and fraught with problems. But simply giving e-credit for a future game would be fairly easy and the benefits would all be to ANet.

This would almost certaintly shut down eBay sellers and also would become a new feature of the game that would be enjoyed by some players. Farming would then become a sensible activity wtih a real world goal -- obtaining enough gold to sell it back to ANet for the game coupons. And since the sale of gold would be a new cash flow (using a credit card) for ANet that would help fund improvements in the game. Since there is no monthly fee, the only way to generate income from the game for ANet is to sell more copies right now. But with this new source of income without significant start-up costs, ANet could justify spending more money on maintenance and improvements of the game itself.

Players who bought gold would pay a fair market price based on demand, the in-game economy would be stable since no new gold was being created, and no one would lose.

Do I seriously think this will happen? Nope. But it truly is - to me - an interesting notion.

Raxxman · Feb 16, 2006, 02:02 PM // 14:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by AxeMe

Truth is that this is a million dollar idea for ANet.

And add this twist -- the gold merchant, just as is true with material merchants, would only be able to sell gold that it had purchased from other players. That would mean that no new gold was injected into the game. Instead, the gold merchant would simply recycle the gold that is already there and - again like materials - the price of gold would float based on supply and demand.

Instead of paying for the gold in cash, the gold merchant would offer electronic discount coupons for ANet games. So even the payment to the player who sold gold would tend to encourage sales for other ANet products. It would also eliminate a lot of bookkeeping. Paying in cash or credit card credits would be time consuming and fraught with problems. But simply giving e-credit for a future game would be fairly easy and the benefits would all be to ANet.

This would almost certaintly shut down eBay sellers and also would become a new feature of the game that would be enjoyed by some players. Farming would then become a sensible activity wtih a real world goal -- obtaining enough gold to sell it back to ANet for the game coupons. And since the sale of gold would be a new cash flow (using a credit card) for ANet that would help fund improvements in the game. Since there is no monthly fee, the only way to generate income from the game for ANet is to sell more copies right now. But with this new source of income without significant start-up costs, ANet could justify spending more money on maintenance and improvements of the game itself.

Players who bought gold would pay a fair market price based on demand, the in-game economy would be stable since no new gold was being created, and no one would lose.

Do I seriously think this will happen? Nope. But it truly is - to me - an interesting notion.

Interesting idea, I'm not sure it'll work due to flux in plat price. People will get pissed off if they pay real $$ for plat that next day is half the price.

I think anything that can be bought by real cash should be like collecters edition items. Instantly customised so it only effects the one person who pays $$ for it.

Honestly I don't see why Anet doesn't do this, it'd be like green item farming, only with money in place of time.

fiery · Feb 16, 2006, 02:45 PM // 14:45

People Ebay can't stop them. People sell gold on Ebay, people sell weapons. Sometimes is a overjoyed person wanting all the good items and weapons. Or someone who doens't have the time to farm, trade, and wants to just enjoy the game. I never Ebayed the game, gold is easy to get as weapons and items. But still people has there own ways.

AxeMe · Feb 16, 2006, 02:56 PM // 14:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Raxxman

Interesting idea, I'm not sure it'll work due to flux in plat price. People will get pissed off if they pay real $$ for plat that next day is half the price..Honestly I don't see why Anet doesn't do this, it'd be like green item farming, only with money in place of time.

As far as the dangers of a drop in price for plats, there's an equal opportunity for them to become more expensive. Also remember that the customers for this gold are largely the same people who are buying gold from eBay now.
These people face the same chance for the price equation to change from day-to-day when buying gold on eBay.

Like I said, I sure don't think ANet will do this. But (and this shows how little I have to think about in real life, grin) I started thinking about this on the drive home yesterday. And it seemed like an elegant solution to the eBay problem -- and also had real advantages for ANet.

I don't think the sale of gold for real money will stop -- no different from prohibition not stopping liquor sales decades ago -- so the only question is: Who will control the sales.

It makes sense for ANet to control the sales. And - without repeating what I said in the original note - there are some real advantages for the company and players here.

MSecorsky · Feb 16, 2006, 04:19 PM // 16:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by AxeMe

Truth is that this is a million dollar idea for ANet.

And add this twist -- the gold merchant, just as is true with material merchants, would only be able to sell gold that it had purchased from other players. That would mean that no new gold was injected into the game. Instead, the gold merchant would simply recycle the gold that is already there and - again like materials - the price of gold would float based on supply and demand.

Instead of paying for the gold in cash, the gold merchant would offer electronic discount coupons for ANet games. So even the payment to the player who sold gold would tend to encourage sales for other ANet products. It would also eliminate a lot of bookkeeping. Paying in cash or credit card credits would be time consuming and fraught with problems. But simply giving e-credit for a future game would be fairly easy and the benefits would all be to ANet.

This would almost certaintly shut down eBay sellers and also would become a new feature of the game that would be enjoyed by some players. Farming would then become a sensible activity wtih a real world goal -- obtaining enough gold to sell it back to ANet for the game coupons. And since the sale of gold would be a new cash flow (using a credit card) for ANet that would help fund improvements in the game. Since there is no monthly fee, the only way to generate income from the game for ANet is to sell more copies right now. But with this new source of income without significant start-up costs, ANet could justify spending more money on maintenance and improvements of the game itself.

Players who bought gold would pay a fair market price based on demand, the in-game economy would be stable since no new gold was being created, and no one would lose.

Do I seriously think this will happen? Nope. But it truly is - to me - an interesting notion.

Although I love the twist, I'd vote against that... I'm not looking to encourage further farming, just to curtail or eliminate the eBayers and the sweat shops running them. Adding more gold to the game wouldn't affect a thing... gold's added every time a critter drops it. Think about it... if someone buys gold directly from aNet, then it's not gold that was farmed and added via that method. Same gold, different means... might actually reduce gold in game to be what's in demand rather than what's farmed and hoarded.

It really shouldn't be a means for players to profit in any way from aNet. That only opens up a whole new can of headaches.

I'd also make payment by credit card the only means accepted... help keep some control of age groups buying. Should not be accessible to kids.

Mustache Mayhem · Feb 16, 2006, 05:04 PM // 17:04

anyones seen kalonline- it's a free mmo that makes all it's money like this (selling items on thier website).. course the skill level in that game is just sad but you can have the best stuff in the game by just buying items.. it's profitable if they can keep servers up (shows you right there how many people would rather buy thier wealth than work for it when all the content is free and you don't have to buy anything).. I know arenanet has ncsoft backing who make lineage 2 and city of heros (both pay to play).. so they are'nt hurting for money they just need to break a profit

if this was'nt the case you'd probably see something like kal adopted- sony is even developing a game based on the same.. they already know there's enough people out there willing to pay for content and items to make good money.. comes down to it- it's a business and were pretty lucky to see something like gw .. of course since it is free you have a runescape type of playerbase in pve- only downfall I see.. but there is still skilled content that keeps it interesting

I should put this in suggestions- but it'd be nice to have a pve area connected to a town where only the best have access too for a limited amount of time.. like the teams that win hoh- alot of people get bored because they've explored everything gw has to offer on the landscape and skip the pvp part

AxeMe · Feb 16, 2006, 05:50 PM // 17:50

Mark my words -- the day is coming when besides having game masters and developers, we'll have in-game ministers of economics.

Chase the Sky · Feb 16, 2006, 09:01 PM // 21:01

Time = money.

Those of you spending all day farming plat could be working 0.5 hours at McDonalds for the same Cost of Gold when bought on ebay- Then you could spend the 7.5 hours you saved by working at McDonalds and spend them in GW PvPing, running Quests, or doing something else more fun then farming.

Unless you love farming or are unemployed it makes more sense to buy your gold on-line then to farm it.

The only people who disagree with this haven't taken economics 101 yet.

Lord Iowerth · Feb 16, 2006, 09:34 PM // 21:34

I've taken Economics 101 and 102!

To AxeMe: good ideas, but one fatal flaw ... if the Merchants control the amount of gold going into the game, then older players who already have some $$ in the bank are at a significant advantage to the newer players ... and ANet would not want to alienate their future-fans! Plus you would get into what would be the equivalent of the money market in the real world: buying when low, selling high ... all that mess, and you'd have to either make it global across all regions, or segregate it into US/EU, Korea, JP, etc to prevent too much cross-continent abuse. Some very interesting ideas in your post though!

The only reason there is a market for this sort of thing on EBay or anywhere else, is the exact reason Chase The Sky posted in the post before mine: people place a value on their time and effort ... it's a tradeoff. If you look at it in a ratio, you can figure out how long it would take you to say, farm 100k in game, and how long you would have to work at your current job to afford the price of 100k on EBay or elsewhere. The people that do buy it are not (for the most part) too lazy to farm or bad players, at least from my experience.

I've been curious about this topic for quite some time, and i've been observing the different trends and such (as well as the discussions on this site). One thing that I noticed was the price of gold on EBay skyrocketed after the AoE nerf ... which would tell me the farming-shops were using the good 'ol PBAoE smiting farming, and have now had to rethink their strategies

Personally, i've never done the "naughty-deed" of buying EBay gold

and I don't particularily farm too much, unless i'm looking for collector-gear items ... I find I obtain good drops and such when i'm not looking for them. If I find myself short of some cash, I do a little creative merchanting with crafting materials and such.

AxeMe · Feb 17, 2006, 03:32 AM // 03:32

[QUOTE=Lord Iowerth]I've taken Economics 101 and 102!

To AxeMe: good ideas, but one fatal flaw ... if the Merchants control the amount of gold going into the game, then older players who already have some $$ in the bank are at a significant advantage to the newer players ... and ANet would not want to alienate their future-fans! Plus you would get into what would be the equivalent of the money market in the real world: buying when low, selling high ... all that mess, and you'd have to either make it global across all regions, or segregate it into US/EU, Korea, JP, etc to prevent too much cross-continent abuse. Some very interesting ideas in your post though!
QUOTE]

I'm just thinking outloud here and there may be a flaw in what I'm about to say (and I'm glad to hear about it if there is).

The gold merchants would not introduce new gold into the game - instead the merchants would be limited to the gold sold to them in game. So the system would simply recycle the gold that appears in the game naturally. I'm not sure how this recycling of gold changes the equation for new players vs. old players. Remember that the majority of players won't be either buying or selling gold (at least that's how I see it -- I doubt if the majority buy gold from eBay now and don't see why that would cahnge). But some of the people, maybe most, who would have purchased gold from eBay would now purchase from the in-game merchant.

Remember the purchase of gold is made with real money - so old and new players would be on the same footing there too. The imbalance would be between people who could afford to buy gold and those who either couldn't afford it or wouldn't want to. So that's basically the balance in the game now.

I'm puzzled around trying to see why new players would be at a disadvantage and I don't see it. (I have to admit - at home - my wife tells me that when I look for the mustard in the refrigerator I often don't see that either. So I'm famous for not seeing stuff and glad to try to understand what I'm missing here.

I don't think this system would create an equivalent to the money market either. The gold is purchased in-game with a credit card, with real money. The gold is sold for money off coupons for the game. So playing this market wouldn't be very smart. And yes, the pricing - like all material sellers in game now - would be universal across all servers.

Chicken Rice Seller · Feb 17, 2006, 04:34 AM // 04:34

it can't be helped ...people has been buying game stuff with real money when this on-line gaming thingy started way back... well its true that using real money to get "non real" stuff for a game is stupid but to some they think that its worth it,some people work in the real life and don't have much time farming/trading so another way to get the stuff they want they turn to ebay/ect
but really ...who cares ? its their money ? you can't stop people from spending on wat they want

Katari · Feb 17, 2006, 04:45 AM // 04:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by konohamaru heaven

Yes its a bannable offense, but the way they word their disclaimer fits them into a Loophole in the Eula. They say you are paying for their work and time, but getting the gold for free. If AN would tweak their Eula they could fix this, but I doubt they would (even though I hope they will).

Right, well, that sort of wording implies that the time is important, not the gold. As if you'd pay more gold that was lovingly gathered in presearing than for gold made from griffion farming. But you don't care. There are no price discounts for gold that was farmed faster. There are no mentions of how they obtained the gold, or how long it took them. But the gold is clearly indicated. It kinda makes one think that the time isn't important, and the gold is.

'But officer! I was selling the time it took me to smuggle these weapons! Not the weapons, No Sir! the customer gets these free .'

I'm sure that'll work.

lord_shar · Feb 17, 2006, 05:13 AM // 05:13

I beleive ANET put the "no real money for in-game items" clause into their EULA to prevent GW from becoming another online game sweatshop abuse engine. Many underhanded overseas sweat-shop owners started profitting from MMORPG's by setting up PC's running non-stop farming bot clients running 24/7. The virtual items farmed would then be sold on e-bay for ridiculous amounts of profit. Workers earning pennies a day still had to keep these boxes running and avoid detection, but most worked in truely attrocious sweat-shop conditions.

ANET didn't want GW to propagate the problem like other MMORPG's, so they inserted the no-e-bay clause into their EULA to at least take a stand.

apocalypse_xx · Feb 17, 2006, 01:47 PM // 13:47

Something that hasn't been talked about yet, and that I really don't understand. People say that GW makes it too difficult to earn gold so that buying gold on ebay is a viable solution?? Why is farming for those purely cosmetic items such a grind, I don't understand...you can compete with green/collector/crafter items right, we all know this, so the extremely expensive items are just for looks, we all know this as well...so, if it is important to YOU to own these things then just simply PLAY the game! I usually play for a couple of hours each day (instead of TV) and most people would call the style I play farming...but to me I enjoy "farming" because to me it is fun, but let me clarify, my farming is I go into high level areas (yes solo) but I pretty much clear them, one run can take me my full 2 hours, I enjoy this very much (so no boring grind) and it actually yields tons of gold (bring at least 2 sup salvage kits)...so in keeping on topic, the real problem is simply lazy/immature players who cannot wait to buy their fissure armor, they are probably the same in real life as well, one day they want a vacation...next day go borrow for it...no need to save

AxeMe · Feb 17, 2006, 02:26 PM // 14:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by apocalypse_xx

the real problem is simply lazy/immature players who cannot wait to buy their fissure armor, they are probably the same in real life as well, one day they want a vacation...next day go borrow for it...no need to save

When it comes to entertainment - playing a game - there is no particular virtue that I can see in postponing pleasure. While being a wise consumer is important in real life, I don't think there's the same need when playing a game. The idea with a game is to have fun, not become a role model.

While I also enjoy farming, as you do, that's just me. As is true with you, it's not a grind for me ... it is relaxing. I have my FOW armor and the items I want. So I'm not a potential customers.

But if another player enjoys playing the game another way - as long as they stay within the EULA - that's OK with me. Buying eBay gold seems to be outsidethe agreement - so I'm against it. But if there was an in-game merchant, that would be another story.