Curse

lyra_song · Apr 23, 2007, 02:09 PM // 14:09

Countess:

Are you volunteering to be the intern?

lol

I've thought about such an idea before.
However, wont the credit cards be quickly blacklisted?

Its really interesting kind of "sting operation" but seems a bit too large of a thing for Anet to do with just 1-2 interns.
---------
On a seperate note, ive mentioned before that Anet needs to sue these sites based on copyright infringement.

The GW game client, game, artwork, all its content, etc. is copyright by Anet / NC Soft.

If my artwork was being used without my permission in any sort of business application, thats a violation of my copyright.

The gold in the game IS work that belongs to ArenaNet.
The client being used by botters belongs to ArenaNet.
The server being used by botters belongs to ArenaNet.

They have no permission to using someone else's copyrighted property to make money.

Thats the same as taking my paintings and selling them without my permission.

Shadowfox1125 · Apr 23, 2007, 03:14 PM // 15:14

Aren't the majority of accounts that these sellers use hacked? They'll never use their real account to sell. They're not that stupid. Go to their website and they'll get your info and they'll use your account to sell their dirty money.

zwei2stein · Apr 23, 2007, 03:27 PM // 15:27

Just banning account that delivers money is nothing ... you need to ban related accounts (money dump from where delivery accoutn got his money, bot accounts that put money into dump ...)

Why do you think "recent party members / recent trade partners" feature was created? Yeah.

Selket · Apr 23, 2007, 03:39 PM // 15:39

U R Ingenus No1 Thot Of Dis 1 B4!

MSecorsky · Apr 23, 2007, 03:46 PM // 15:46

Good way to add on to this... buy from an eBay account, and right before you actually perform the transaction have the account banned.

Then give them a bad review in eBay for not delivering.

Darksun · Apr 23, 2007, 04:44 PM // 16:44

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?

Sue someone in China/Korea/even Europe? Good luck. With the differences in copywrite laws & policies not to mention international relations, trying to stop someone from doing this through a legal channel must be a total nightmare.

The way people look at dealing with this is pretty unrealistic. Stopping these people (outside of seeing the eula breech first hand & banning) is very hard.

Draxanoth · Apr 23, 2007, 06:33 PM // 18:33

When this wee intern isn't busy slapping the sites themselves, It's not hard to spot 40 monks using the exact same walk path, every single run, inside a zone. Just go stand in granite citadel for 10 minutes and you'd see them. They take the EXACT same path every time, like clockwork. Easily nab a load of people a day.

countesscorpula · Apr 24, 2007, 12:08 AM // 00:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by lyra_song

Countess:

Are you volunteering to be the intern?

lol

I've thought about such an idea before.
However, wont the credit cards be quickly blacklisted?

Its really interesting kind of "sting operation" but seems a bit too large of a thing for Anet to do with just 1-2 interns.
---------

If i don't have to move to washington, sure, I'll be one of the interns.

Blacklisted:
Credit cards: Well, the seller doesn't necessarily know which buyer reported him for banning so blacklisting would take a while. If the card gets blacklisted from a site, use a new card for that site and take the blacklisted oen to another competeing site. Repeat as needed.
Accounts: Again, sellers don't know exactly which buyer lead to the ban. Even if the got suspicious, A-Net can generate a whole pile of access keys to make new Sting accounts with. Doesn't cost them anything much to generate a new key, especially when they know what it's being used for.

On the question "Why do people want to get rid of professional retail gold farmers?"

Well, A-Net has stated many times that changes made to AI and drop rates are put implace to combat professional retailers. They have there reasons for wanting to put a stop to them. The measures they've been taking are from a "progamming" point of view - which is understandable because most of the people who work at A-Net are programmers. I was simply offering something that could be done that would not require alterations to the game's mechanics.

On the matter of "stolen" ad "hacked" accounts.

This measure would also serve to round up and remove these stolen accounts. People who have had accounts stolen are less likely to be duped again. The rest of us are smart enough to not get burned the first time. That means that the retailers would have to actually BUY new accounts if they wanted to continue to sell gold. At first they might consider this the cost of running their business. Later, when they see they are getting hit too frequently, they should realize that it isn't cost effective to sell GW gold, and just focus more attention into selling gold from other on-line games that are more profitable.

Is 1 or 2 interns enough? Probably not. But 100 might be too many. There is going to be a number of interns that would achieve maximum efficiency without running into redundancy. Without all the facts I can't say what that number is. But 1-3 interns isn't a bad place to start. If the problem is as big as some people think it is, maybe start with 10 interns. 10 interns, working with a little bit of co-ordination (so as to to overlap the targets) could potentially knock out 150 illagally used accounts in one four hour shift. If those accounts have to be replaced right away in order to keep up with sales requests, that's $4500 in sales from the GW store. The cost of running that "sting" would be about $1900. So sales minus cost is $2600 in new income.
Better still, as someone pointed out they have the "recent trade partners" feature. For everyone one "selling-gold dump" account they find, they can track it to numerous "farm-bot" accounts that do the harvesting. If we assume 3 farmers for every 1 trader, that's four accounts banned for a cost of $12.50 ($10 for setting up the sale and $10/4 for the wage time of the intern). Four replacement accounts being purchased are $120. Well if that actually works, the profits from running the program are almost 8x the cost. Making use of the recent trades feature can reduce the cost impact of running the program dramatically - even if half the accounts used to replace banned ones are stolen there is still a profit to A-Net from account sales.

This idea just keeps getting better. Hey A-Net, if you use this could you maybe thank me by naming an NPC in the next game after me? Just a thought.

viper11025 · Apr 24, 2007, 12:26 AM // 00:26

This screams faliure and holy mess you took some time to think this up.

countesscorpula · Apr 24, 2007, 12:28 AM // 00:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Darksun

The way people look at dealing with this is pretty unrealistic. Stopping these people (outside of seeing the eula breech first hand & banning) is very hard.

And that's pretty much what my suggestion entails. Direct observation of illegal account use. It's not like the gold seller can cry "entrapment." For one thing, they are the ones initiating the illegal actions by advertising the sale, and for another, the A-Net rep/intern is not an agent of the police. They are simply a company preserving the function of its service. Kind of like security guards in a health club. They hear about a "customer" smuggling in fatty foods, and after meeting with him to make a buy, they give him the boot for clubhouse violations. They already have the right to kick anyone from the game for pretty much any reason, just now they would be assertively excersing that right. And in exactly the way it was intended to be excersied. All sounds good to me.

I especially like that "recent traders" addition. Makes the whole thing even better.

Lord Natural · Apr 24, 2007, 01:23 AM // 01:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by countesscorpula

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.

I don't and won't buy gold, but I have no problem with it existing. If people are well enough off that they can waste money just to make their GW characters look pretty without burning hundreds of hours to accomplish this, then so be it. Honestly, its existence doesn't effect me in the least, other than the annoyance of seeing advert bots in certain areas of the game (which can be easily solved by having an anet employee hop through districts once every couple hours).

I have fow armor for one pve character and 15k for the rest (through legitimate farming), but if I; had nothing, loved guild wars but hated farming, and was well off (poor student

), I'd probably plonk down a few dollars for a storage full of gold too.

SuperDave · Apr 24, 2007, 01:34 AM // 01:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Necrotic

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?

The problem/reason I think is because alot of the prestige and sense of achievement is lost when you've been working your little fingers to the bone to obtain a set of obsidian armor, and it would have taken you ages.. and then little Johnny grabs his dads' credit card, buys is gwgold, map travels to the nearest Rare Material Trader, goes to ToA, and buys his prestige.

Samurai-JM · Apr 24, 2007, 02:15 AM // 02:15

I remember back when I played Runescape they did that. Friend got banned for buying Ebay gold and he got an email from the companty pretty much stating that they screwed him. xD If Anet does it, it will seriously cut down the amount of gold bought online. Great idea.

Aeon221 · Apr 24, 2007, 02:45 AM // 02:45

The more obvious solution is for Anet to sell gold cheaper, thereby driving the gold farmers out of business.

fog_of_redoubt · Apr 24, 2007, 03:16 AM // 03:16

To the OP... I agree and posted this same suggetion more than once.

So this is my question. WHY do they feel a need to concern themselves with the gold farmers?

I dont want to hear about the economy. THe economy has been like it is since the beginning. And quite frankly it is more screwed up for the average joe today than ever before because of the latest attempt to eliminate bots.

So why eliminate bots? They dont hurt us, they are not responsible for the economy. Is this a social thing? Are we trying to feel better about ourselves by helping some 10 year old chinese kid out that slaves over a GW terminal 12 hours a day? Thats it, crush that GW sweat shop... that 10 year old belongs out in a rice patty 12 hours a day. The GW gold farmer in the sweat shop may be the envy of his neighborhood, all of his friends in the rice patties wish they had his job.

Remember "be careful what you ask for". Your attempt to eliminate sweat shopping in China may do more harm than good.

No offense meant to any Chinese, or anyone that eats rice.

Darksun · Apr 24, 2007, 06:01 AM // 06:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by countesscorpula

And that's pretty much what my suggestion entails. Direct observation of illegal account use. It's not like the gold seller can cry "entrapment." For one thing, they are the ones initiating the illegal actions by advertising the sale, and for another, the A-Net rep/intern is not an agent of the police. They are simply a company preserving the function of its service. Kind of like security guards in a health club. They hear about a "customer" smuggling in fatty foods, and after meeting with him to make a buy, they give him the boot for clubhouse violations. They already have the right to kick anyone from the game for pretty much any reason, just now they would be assertively excersing that right. And in exactly the way it was intended to be excersied. All sounds good to me.

I especially like that "recent traders" addition. Makes the whole thing even better.

well, most MMOs have people doing this. I remember WoW making a huge ban around the same time GW made the 2nd big one. It takes time to observe & catalog all the names & actions then go through with the banning.

**cosyfiep** · Apr 24, 2007, 06:42 AM // 06:42

hire me (not higher).....I wouldnt mind getting $10/hour (damnn, that is what I make, and I dont have fun at my job!).

Oso Minar · Apr 24, 2007, 06:55 AM // 06:55

I'd take sub-minimum wage if I could keep the in-game gold, hahaha!

Burma_GW · Apr 24, 2007, 07:16 AM // 07:16

Check the current price-to-purchase GW GOLD online, 4/24/2007. Notice the dramatic increase? Those businesses are booming, and the game itself keeps increasing their reason-to-live, not to mention the booster-shots given to the demand that drives them.

The rate at which new in-game items are added has been increasing steadily (e.g. Rare Weapons, Armor, mini-pets, Green's). Every new item increases the demand for GW Gold. Lol...the expansion mentions, just as an example, 40 new armors.

Banning accounts as a way to shut down GW Gold seller's? I don't think so. 100 accounts cost less then $5,000. Chicken feed to a GW Gold supplier. And what is the rate of account shutdown that ANet can maintain? Your guess is as good as mine, but 500 a month isn't my estimate and 1,000 a month wouldn't, in my opinion, cause them to do anything except reduce the wages they are paying the human farmer's, move farther into the countryside for cheaper rent, or replace Grade-A rice with something inferior.

Sue them? For what? And, how? The ANet census would have to grow by an order of magnitude (read: legal personal and supporting services) to handle enough cases to make a difference. You generally pay up front for that (promise to pay is not a differentiator). If that happens, hello to a monthly gaming fee for GW, good-bye to that glow-in-the-dark P&L. Ever try to sue a fly-by-night LLP (it they are even that) in a foreign country, much less China? By the time the case is decided, we will all be playing GW25, assuming they don't get thrown out of court. And what are the consequences (think finances) if ANet loses? Lot to think about for someone who assumes that because they bought a big table for their board room that they are now somehow level 100 Wammos in the world of Corporate Warfare.

That GW Gold is available for purchase online is not all bad for the average gamer. The more GW stuff those people who get money online buy, the lower the cost of re-purchase, or even initial purchase, is to the honest, day in and day out grinder like you.

Forget the bots and forget the gold miners. Petetion ANet to open it's own GW Gold store with really cheap prices. That will put the hurt on that League of Evil Doers like nobody's business, it will provide Anet with a steady income in line with their GW Evolution vision, and it will ensure that all of us can continue to while away the hours playing GW for free instead of wasting time doing meaningless stuff.

Take care...namaste...film at 11:00

Shmanka · Apr 24, 2007, 09:28 AM // 09:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by bilateralrope

Gold selling is only legal if the EULA is an enforceable contract in whichever county the seller is in.

Bingo Canada ftw.