Curse

countesscorpula · Apr 23, 2007, 08:21 AM // 08:21

My solution to the GW gold sales/bot problem:

It’s pretty simple really.

Step 1: Higher an intern. Pay him/her slightly better than minimum wage. $7.93 is the min wage I could find for Washington State, so let’s say A-Net is generous and gives the kid $10/hour.

Step 2: Equip the intern with a few corporate credit cards. Any money spent can be claimed as business expenses as far as taxes go.

Step 3: Equip the intern with a series of account keys. A-net can generate these on a whim, and can also add them to their business expenses for tax purposes.

Step 4: The intern will locate various websites that offer to sell GW gold for cash. Set up a purchase for the smallest amount possible (typically between $5-$10).

Step 5: Meet with the seller in game, make the trade, and record the name of the account selling the gold.

Step 6: Ban the offending account.

Step 7: Repeat steps 1-6.

Assume that the intern can facilitate trades with 10 accounts in a four-hour day (part-time intern). Also assume that professional gold retailers expect to have accounts banned, and buy new accounts to continue to facilitate trades/continue farming.

So, for those of you who like problem solving:

Let C= the cost of running the 7 step program.
i = interns wages
g = the average amount to make a small GW gold purchase.

So in a 4 hour day our intern nabs 10 accounts. The average cost is say $10, and we already set the wage at $10.

C= 4i + 10g
C= 4(10) + 10(10)
C= 40+100
C= $140

Therefore the cost of running that program is $140/day. Now, I understand that A-Net doesn’t want to fork over $140 dollars a day to ban less than a dozen accounts that will just start farming and selling again. But that’s the thing… they WILL start selling again. And to do that they will have to buy new GW accounts. Can’t farm without an account. The online store sells copies of Guild Wars for as low as $30 US. So, if ten accounts get banned and replaced, that’s an income of $300 US. Now, games sold from the online store don’t require the cost of making discs, packaging, and shipping, so there is minimal cost and mostly profit from sales from the online store (which is the fastest and easiest way to buy GW if you have a credit card, and gold retailers likely have access to credit cards).

So let us run that cost analysis.

C = cost of 7 step program.
P = potential sales of GW software as result of 7 step
T = net profit or loss of running the 7 step program.

T = P-C
T = 300 – 140
T = 160

So, when actually put together the whole process would be giving A-Net a potential profit of $160 per day for running the program. That’s if you pay more than minimum wage, and if the intern is only able to nab the small number of 10 accounts in a 4 hour shift. A reasonably clever intern could more likely set up trades with 4 separate retailers in an hour (a simple web search turns up several dozen different websites). And that would look more like this:

C= 4(10) + 16(10)
C= 40+160
C=200

P= 16(30)
P= 480

T= P-C
T= 480 – 200
T = 280

So if A-Net is fortunate enough to select an industrious intern, they can actually gain a profit of $280 per day. The only time they would stop seeing this profit is if the retail farmers stop buying accounts to replace the banned ones. At which point A-Net will have eliminated the retail gold market from the game. Mission accomplished. And all this without altering the game experience for honest players. And if the program is found to be successful, they could actually higher more than one intern, and multiply the profits by the number of interns. Four interns would be bringing in close to $1000/day. Amazing!

Now, I supposed a cost of $10 per purchase of GW gold, some sites sell for less and some for more. I recall a few months back many places selling for as little as $5 (no, I didn’t buy any – just saw it listed when I did Guild Wars search in google). I would suppose that the increased difficulty to farming has resulted in higher prices for the farmers. If GW were to turn around and make it easier to farm for gold, it might actually lower the costs that people would pay/sell GW gold, and thus make the program even easier to run.

Now, this idea just hit me while I was in the shower, so there may be some bugs. If you know of any, feel free to post them. Try to be kind, as I have no intention of insulting anyone with this thread. =)

Clord · Apr 23, 2007, 08:26 AM // 08:26

Theory it is good but fails in practice (unless they get a lot people for free to do this).

countesscorpula · Apr 23, 2007, 09:04 AM // 09:04

Actually, I already do this for free in a way whenever I send in a screen shot of someone selling GW gold or advertising a website that sells GW gold. My solution just offers a more "pro-active" solution on A-Net's part.

Also, they already employ people to read through the screen shots I send in. If other people are sending in screen shots of the same player doing the same thing, that's one more employee looking at just one retailer for each player initiated report. This creates a lot of redundancy - several agents looking at one retailer, and then each spending the time to confirm the report. It may actually be more cost effective if an employee was meeting with the retailer via a website initiated contact. The employee could immediately confirm EULA violation on transaction and ban the account right away. One employee seeking out retailers is likely more efficient that 5 employees tracking down and confirming alleged rules violations of just one retailer.

The only part where the theory seems weak to me is the ability to track sales of GW accounts by gold retailers. But this is probably not that hard to do either. A-net could keep a record of access keys that get banned. They could later track these keys from sales in the online store (or possibly other game retailers). If the accounts are purchased through the online store with a credit card, they could see if a number of banned accounts are being charged to the same credit card. I'm not sure if that violates credit card information policies or privacy policies, but if it doesn't it wouldn't be to hard to do. Simply generate a list of banned accounts and compare that with the purchasing info for those banned accounts. You find a card with multiple banned accounts attached to it (accounts banned for selling gold) and you've proven that this is the card of your professional gold retailer and s/he is indeed buying replacement accounts. This would only have to be done if you wanted to audit the cost effectiveness of the 7 step program, and whether or not it was actually paying for itself.

Bankai · Apr 23, 2007, 09:23 AM // 09:23

Looks really nice in theory, but I doubt that it'll work in practice.

Not sure why, but I just doubt it.

Hockster · Apr 23, 2007, 09:35 AM // 09:35

Most of those accounts used to make trades have been stolen from retards that fall for the dupe hacks, item hacks, or other silly scams and end up installing a keylogger. Those accounts would be lost/banned/replaced anyway, so the gold sellers aren't actually out of anything.

Yes, there are many people that fall for those scams. I know of one person that reversed engineered one of the hacks that was being spammed in Ascalon or LA. It was nothing more than a keylogger with a small ftp client built in. A hex editor(or something, it's beyond my abilities) got the ftp info. There were over 100 acounts already there, user names and passwords. That's 100 suckers that may have lost everything they earned. FWIW, he forwarded all the info to Anet to deal with.

Corinthian · Apr 23, 2007, 09:37 AM // 09:37

I'd do that for free, if someone paid for the gold of course. Hell, I could stand in a popular farming outpost and ban monks as they enter.

Tarus From Taros · Apr 23, 2007, 09:49 AM // 09:49

I understand what your saying and I think it's a great idea. I assume Anet or NCSoft does this to some extent already. I've often wondered the same thing myself ever since the Diablo 2 days because it just seems so easy and feasible to do. But there's one issue I have with these sites offering gold or leveling services.

How do they stay out of trouble? Do they own these companys offshore with lenient laws or what? I don't understand how these sites can have friggen' Verisign and other things of that sort on their sites. Here's a quote I found interesting off of a FAQ section on one of them.

"I'm worried about the privacy of my details?

Client confidentiality is our top priority. Our company has imposed very strict rules with regards to disclosing or selling of any client information whatsoever. Offenders will be charged and prosecuted in court for breaching of trust."

That's almost laughable. How could they possibly take someone to court for that if what they do is illegal? It almost makes one assume that by Anet and NCSofts inaction to prosecute these people that they are somehow compensated by them. I know that sounds harsh but it's the only thing that makes sense. I played Diablo 2 for years and online gold selling was around for a large part of it. I never heard of Blizzard taking the site owners to court. In fact the only thing I ever heard of was when Blizzard threatened blizzhackers with legal action. Like Hockster mentioned they more then likely use stolen or ebayed accounts to transfer the ingame funds so while it does indeed help it doesn't solve the problem.

So I guess a good question to ask is why don't gaming companies go after these webmasters aggressively? As i've already stated, I have my suspisions as to if these companies are being compensated in some form or another. For all we know the gaming companies are the ones running the sites! What better way to make a couple extra bucks then to secretly sell your consumers virtual items that you can create at a whim? Now I love Anet. They make quality products and bend over backwards for their consumers. But it does leave one to wonder....

Blackhawk · Apr 23, 2007, 09:56 AM // 09:56

What people fail to see is that NC Soft/Anet's a business and all they're interested in is making money regardless of where it comes from, be it legit players or botters buying new accounts where the previous one got banned.

Here's a formula of my own, BannedBotter=RepeatBusiness = ££$$$ for Anet

@Tarus, Not being funny but they're hardly going to prosecute them when they're buying product, which technically means Anet is being compensated by them.

Tarus From Taros · Apr 23, 2007, 10:16 AM // 10:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blackhawk

What people fail to see is that NC Soft/Anet's a business and all they're interested in is making money regardless of where it comes from, be it legit players or botters buying new accounts where the previous one got banned.

Here's a formula of my own, BannedBotter=RepeatBusiness = ££$$$ for Anet

@Tarus, Not being funny but they're hardly going to prosecute them when they're buying product, which technically means Anet is being compensated by them.

I understand that but think of it like this. If Anet had no affiliation with these sites why not sue? Now obviously a small online store doesn't have much money but some of these sites have been around for quite a bit it appears so I believe they could possibly have a large cashflow. Is it not worthwhile to sue and get MORE MONEY from them then to just let them go? It isn't like they have to sue all of them. Once one or two get hit and the rest know about it a simple cease and desist letter may be enough to diminish the problem. So if that were the case Anet could make more cash and look more reputable to consumers. Now I don't know much about how these places operate or even know much law for that matter so these are only assumptions.

I guess you could ask... What's more worthwhile to Arenanet? They can continue to ban accounts and get repeat business in the face of new cd key purchases or to go after these sites and get money out of a lawsuit. Both results will yield respect from their consumers but I personally would prefer the later. I just wish Anet felt the same.

Blackhawk · Apr 23, 2007, 10:20 AM // 10:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tarus From Taros

I understand that but think of it like this. If Anet had no affiliation with these sites why not sue? Now obviously a small online store doesn't have much money but some of these sites have been around for quite a bit it appears so I believe they could possibly have a large cashflow. Is it not worthwhile to sue and get MORE MONEY from them then to just let them go? It isn't like they have to sue all of them. Once one or two get hit and the rest know about it a simple cease and desist letter may be enough to diminish the problem. So if that were the case Anet could make more cash and look more reputable to consumers. Now I don't know much about how these places operate or even know much law for that matter so these are only assumptions.

The "get out of jail free card" most commonly used is that your paying for someones time as the Gold is virtual and not actually a real or physical product.

By the time a cease and desist letter is not only sent out, but by the time someone actually takes a blind bit of notice of it, they've got the next business ready and waiting to go, so it's a never ending circle on Anets part if they decided to pursue that course of action, as the traders up and trading again within seconds of agreeing to shut down the first one.

Roshi_ikkyu · Apr 23, 2007, 10:39 AM // 10:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Corinthian

I'd do that for free, if someone paid for the gold of course. Hell, I could stand in a popular farming outpost and ban monks as they enter.

And you would likely ban 100 innoccent people. Monks are one of the greatest farming classes, if you weren't so ignorant you would know not every monk is a bot.

bilateralrope · Apr 23, 2007, 10:51 AM // 10:51

Gold selling is only legal if the EULA is an enforceable contract in whichever county the seller is in. This varies from some areas where shrink-wrap (by opening the box you agree to the terms and conditions contained within, despite being unable to view them until you open the box) licenses are enforceable, to regions where its not enforceable unless you actually sign it.

Also in most countries if you sign a contract while your not in a position to freely decide (eg. while drunk) its not enforceable, as you weren't able to make an informed decision.

And then there is the problem of forcing the ISP's/proxy servers to give ANET the information needed to track down the sellers. This will likely require a court order in most countries.

And even if those problems are dealt with, ANET still has the cost of suing those people in their countries legal system. If ANET wins I don't see them getting much other than the court/attorney fees and a court order banning those people from playing Guild Wars, which that countries legal system might be unwilling/unable to enforce. But ANET loses not only are they hugely out of pocket, they might be facing some countersuits. Banning seems much easier and cheaper.

Also remember that even though two gold sellers might seem separate, they might be sharing their data to spot suspicious things like one account/credit card buying much more gold than most people, or one account that traded with many banned accounts shortly before they got banned. Besides it might be easier to find a few people known for gold buying and watch them while banning everyone they buy gold from but leaving them alone. Just remember ANET has logs of everything we do in game, and regular transfers of large amounts of gold probably set off an automatic warning to ANET to take a closer look at the accounts involved.

bilateralrope · Apr 23, 2007, 10:58 AM // 10:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blackhawk

The "get out of jail free card" most commonly used is that your paying for someones time as the Gold is virtual and not actually a real or physical product.

"I'm not selling cannabis, I'm selling the my time spent in growing it"

Do you see that argument working to defend someone selling cannabis in a country where its illegal ?

If not, what makes the time argument any different for gold sellers ?

Kelv · Apr 23, 2007, 10:58 AM // 10:58

another big problem is that the accounts that are being used are stolen, with a crap name like Whdfue Asdf.

Theres a big problem of this going on right now in Granite Citadale, I've already sent screen shots everytime i go in there, but if anyone else wants to help me get those guys banned. Granite Citadale AD1

Kas · Apr 23, 2007, 11:08 AM // 11:08

A-Net can't just randomly ban people that you as a player think is a bot. Sending in Mass Screenshots of Monks leaving a district proves nothing at all, except that there is something to farm. Banning innocent players along with Botters is just not the way to go. Yes I know, THEY are sacrifices YOU are willed to make but the sacrifice most likely doesn't agree with this.

Dark-NighT · Apr 23, 2007, 11:37 AM // 11:37

Ok so then we have the report a player feature, quite good i might add, I reckon that if they received enough evidence of scamming, flaming and advertising that they will look into it and possibly ban the user, for that they need a name first and that makes sense.

So what about Gaile goes to The granite citadel. pick up some names, investigate and then just ban the accounts, or disable them?? i mean i've read from users that some have been banned for being a dick in the game, or having offesive names, so i reckon why woudnt you just go out there and do what you have to.

countesscorpula · Apr 23, 2007, 11:38 AM // 11:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kelv

another big problem is that the accounts that are being used are stolen, with a crap name like Whdfue Asdf.

Theres a big problem of this going on right now in Granite Citadale, I've already sent screen shots everytime i go in there, but if anyone else wants to help me get those guys banned. Granite Citadale AD1

Though it's possible, and even likely that these guys are bots (I've seen the perculiar movement patterns too), your suggestion targets farming. People farm too. Looking at farming trends doesn't always mean that gold selling is invovled. My suggestion looks specifically at actual transactions. THe point of sale when someone hands over GW gold after receiving a cash payment. That's confirmable without question, and makes for easy banning. Smart sellers aren't advertising the sales in game. Instead they lead you to a website, and then quietly make the trade in game (if they aren't just ripping you off at the website). And even if the accounts they are using are stolen, once those accounts get banned they must either steal new accounts from foolish doops who ignore multiple warings or buy new accounts. If they aren't actively sought out, a $30 account isn't much of a cost. But if they are getting hit by more bans than their farming/selling can keep up with, they will focus their attention on other games that aren't as zealous in their efforts to stop this problem.

Corinthian · Apr 23, 2007, 11:42 AM // 11:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roshi_ikkyu

And you would likely ban 100 innoccent people. Monks are one of the greatest farming classes, if you weren't so ignorant you would know not every monk is a bot.

I did consider that first but then I realized that they are still farmers so it's no problem.

Necrotic · Apr 23, 2007, 01:24 PM // 13:24

I just love how people think that the gold sellers MUST be using stolen accounts to complete the transactions cuz y'know....they don't want their own accounts that they use to play the game with to get banned for transfering money. :rollseyes:

Bilateralrope: Well....the problem with your assumption is that you seem to be assuming that the plant is legal to farm and cultivate in any amount. Most countries have a limit to what they ignore or consider not worth the effort. It's also making the comparison to a physical object....no matter what you claim it to be...if it can be proven as cannabis, guess what....your still in violation. So why don't you download your gold coins and play with them a bit...outside the game. Because you can't...there is no physical, tangible property being exchanged.

Why is it that soo many people want to eliminate the farmers and gold re-sellers from the game? Do you think they adversly effect game play somehow? Or perhaps have a detrimental influence on the economy? Or are you just upset that someone is making money playing a game?

Whatever happened to people just playing the game how they want to....regardless of how someone else thinks you should or plays it themselves?

Blackhawk · Apr 23, 2007, 01:43 PM // 13:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by bilateralrope

"I'm not selling cannabis, I'm selling the my time spent in growing it"

Do you see that argument working to defend someone selling cannabis in a country where its illegal ?

If not, what makes the time argument any different for gold sellers ?

Because as Necrotic has already stated, Cannabis is "real", unfortunately Gold in GW isnt