GW2 and EBay: A speculative analysis thread.

[zwei2stein]

Originally Posted by HalPlantagenet

Given Arenanet's experience with Guild Wars 1, I expect they will do a much better job the second time around. Some of the issues I hope they address directly:

1. How to make trading more of a community building activity?

how was ever trading supposed to be community building?

Originally Posted by HalPlantagenet

2. What is the right cost spectrum for a family of technically (but not aesthectically) similar items?

umm ... right what we have now? the wider spectrum the better ... if you have say Sska sword for 1k and is crystaline clone for 10milion it matters little ... what matters is lowest cost of equivalent item.

Originally Posted by HalPlantagenet

3. What is proper place of armor and weapon customization? Is there a role for what might be called "de-customization?"

Proper place is to prevent mudflation. It fullfills that place perfectly. and no, de-customization will only fuel mudflation.

Originally Posted by HalPlantagenet

4. Is there a role for player customizers? (I know WOW has something like this although I've never played it and don't know how successful it is.)

Umm .. it was there from begining, it worked quite well and inscrptions/insignia rounded player customization of stuff quite nicely

Originally Posted by HalPlantagenet

5. How should demand spikes, (i.e. the demand for Paragon and Dervish runes immediately after the release of Nightfall), be managed?

in like ... no way? Having new stuff overpriced is in no way bad ... it fuells inital exploration of content and new strategies. prices always stabilize later and become accessible.

Somehow is see theese all as nonisues.

1) You see how "peope-fieldly" traders are just by visiting any big trading town and having all chat open.
2) Costs if similar items being dramatically different ... somehow having problem with that is a bit ... whiney. in game where you can have everything for very little effort, items that are completelly out of reach of most of players are just ... right. It actually test of character: will you a) fail and ebay it b) fail and whine about it or c) live on and accept you are casual player or that you are not item hunter.
3) there is little to say about it ... bound or cutomized items are best way to stop mudflation. decustomization make customization pointless. with mudflation, lots of items get out of purchaseable range for casuals: a) low priuced items with great stats that mudflate too low to be worth attaining/trading will be inaccessible to em by purchase as none of nore asctive players will bother getting em b) new hot stuff will always have million pricetags bnecause there owuld be too mcuh gold in hands of few who surf on mudflation wave.
4) no?
5) Demand spike is part of introducion new stuff anyshwere. see 2) and test of player character, with excpetion that c) reads: move on, wait a week or two, in month someone witll give it to you for next to mothing possibly.

[zwei2stein]

Originally Posted by Mordakai

Well, we're not taking away their "leet" stuff. In fact, if you have "leet" stuff in a system with no trading, we KNOW you earned it. There's no accusations of scamming or ebaying... you own it, so you must have earned it.

Ok, assume that "l33t stuff" will be reward based ... coillceting tokens, finishing had quests, etc.

guess what? iut will work just like ebay. exactly like that.

by buying egold you dont buy gold, you buy gameplay time someone invested to it.

you can buy someone elses gameplay time ... say, what if i pay someone to do all of farming to obtain me FoW armour?

yep, that will happen. You go to egold site, pay X $$$ and give desired character name and list of what that character should have. few days later you receive email with usename, password, cdkey and username/password to associated email. Sweatshop farmers will simply complete all necesary gameplay tasts as fast as possible, propably having decitated tean of couple of players to power though hard stuff.

if you trust eGolders more (you could trust em more as there would be nothing to gain by clealing you account white, an they couldnt resell you account because you still have cd key, etc.) give em username, password and desired item - in morning log in to see that someone played overnight and you now have l33t sword. and miss few $$.

---

Also, reward based system depends on all stuff being fun. Trading system allows you to have fun where you want and recieve reward you want.

i.e. I have more fun doing Urgoz than DoA, but i desire Razah. solution? miracle of trading allows me to sell Urgoz longbow for sum of gold that i can use to buy gems from someone who enjoys DoA...

now, if game forced me to go trough DoA and give reward i hate for Urgoz, what is point of me beign interested in either of those areas?

Thats miracle of currency - you can do one thing and chose from tons of rewards in the end. nothing beats it.

[Keeper of Birds]

This is a very interesting thread- thanks to the OP for creating.

My take is this- if you have the opportunity for exchange of anything between players- one way or two- some sort of medium of exchange will evolve, and you have an economy. Whether it is gold, ectos, or Charr Carvings, as long as players can pass something back and forth, people will find a way of trading objects of unequal value.

In Guild Wars, an item's value has almost no relationship to its actual game utility. FOW armor protects you no better than droks. My max collector's sword does the same damage as the gold fellblade that cost someone else 100 ecto. So most players don't need to participate very actively in the economy to enjoy the game. Superior vigor runes are really the only items that cost significant amounts of gold that actually make a difference in performance.

What gold sellers allow players to do is to buy the elite items without putting the effort into the game that acquiring those items would usually require. If players can transfer items to others, this will happen. Anet can try to make it difficult, but they can't stop it completely.

I seriously doubt that Anet will choose to have no economy at all, or even a strictly game controlled one (only transactions between you and a merchant, at set prices, allowed). That would prevent people from helping their friends get started, and make game play extremely frustrating for many- like the example above with Urgoz and Razah. And I would be surprised if Anet wants that.

[Alias_X]

I don't really care... at all.

In fact, I'm sure these "Chinese slaves" would rather be farming gold than working in a brutal sweatshop. GW gives them dreams, lets hope it continues to do so.

[Malice Black]

IMO you're all making a mountain out of a mole hill.

[Haggard]

Originally Posted by Corinthian

Hire a sizeable staff to browse websites for gold-sellers and ban them as they appear. Also give them access to delete eBay auctions and ban their addresses.

This is possibly the killer idea of the thread. I say this because anything in-game is the intellectual property of Anet, so theoretically selling it on Ebay is like selling books you borrow from a library. Following this logic, Anet have a fairly strong legal ground for requesting all in-game items to be removed from Ebay, and to have gold-selling websites shut down (and Ebay would be more likely to accept if Anet provided the team to sweep for the items).

[Malice Black]

Originally Posted by Haggard

This is possibly the killer idea of the thread. I say this because anything in-game is the intellectual property of Anet, so theoretically selling it on Ebay is like selling books you borrow from a library. Following this logic, Anet have a fairly strong legal ground for requesting all in-game items to be removed from Ebay, and to have gold-selling websites shut down (and Ebay would be more likely to accept if Anet provided the team to sweep for the items).

There is a "grey" area in legal terms which stops this from happening. There is always a loophole and there will always be people to exploit them.

Gold buyers make up a very small minority of the overall GW population, some of these ideas are very "extreme" to say the least.

You need to be neutral whilst making such decisions and all I see is biased opinions.

For some of you trading isn't part of your game so making everything customised to you as soon as it drops does not effect you, but have you considered the other side, the people that play for drops?

There is no one solution for this problem, have fun speculating though.

[lyra_song]

Heres how to prevent ebay.

Make the EULA a binding legal contract.

this would mean that Anet would physically mail you the EULA and you would sign it and send it back to them and they would send you a end user license.

Breaking the EULA would mean violating the contract and allow them to bring you to court without any trouble whatsoever.

Voila. I dare you to break the EULA now ;p

[Shanaeri Rynale]

That may be more difficult than it seems, firstly the laws in every country vary depening on whats in the EULA. Therefore the EULA you need will need to be worded differently. Thats a lot of Lawyer money. Secondly, do you really want to wait a few days before you can play the game?

[lyra_song]

Originally Posted by Shanaeri Rynale

That may be more difficult than it seems, firstly the laws in every country vary depening on whats in the EULA. Therefore the EULA you need will need to be worded differently. Thats a lot of Lawyer money. Secondly, do you really want to wait a few days before you can play the game?

Firstly: Yes. Not to mention the fees of customer service reps.

Secondly: Yes, if it means morons will be held accountable for their actions.

[Malice Black]

Originally Posted by lyra_song

Heres how to prevent ebay.

Make the EULA a binding legal contract.

this would mean that Anet would physically mail you the EULA and you would sign it and send it back to them and they would send you a end user license.

Breaking the EULA would mean violating the contract and allow them to bring you to court without any trouble whatsoever.

Voila. I dare you to break the EULA now ;p

Won't happen. I'd never sign a contract to play some game, and I wouldn't be alone in that.

[lyra_song]

Originally Posted by Malice Black

Won't happen. I'd never sign a contract to play some game, and I wouldn't be alone in that.

Guess youve never done a closed alpha test....the kind with a NDA


What price would you pay for some peace and quiet.

[redd66]

I am going to throw out my opinion just because it differs from most here and might add to the debate. I did not find the ebay sellers detrimental to the game at all. In fact, I thought it enhanced the game. When the ebay people were selling items, I could actually give my items a real life value which was an interesting aspect of the game.

Once anet complained to Ebay and had them pull the items, they ceased to have a real value anymore. Hence, at least from my perspective, gold had significantly less value to me. Before, I would try and get the best possible deal in town because I knew that the gold/items had real value (sure it was 50 cents or a couple of dollars, but it was fun!) Once those items did not have real world value, I didn't care how much I paid for the item anymore. If my reaction was somewhat typical, then banning Ebay sales will actually INCREASE the cost of items, instead of decreasing them because the items have ceased to be easily converted into real life value.

For the life of me I do not understand why people have this hatred of Chinese farmers on Ebay. I personally think the hatred of Ebayers had more to do with jealousy or some other emotional knee jerk reaction than anything else because I saw nothing detrimental in their existence. They do not harm my personal playing experience. To me they made the game unique by letting us see a real world value to the items which was an interesting aspect of the game. And in my opinion, when people could translate items into a real monetary value, this kept buyers from spending the gold foolishly.

Oh, and as an aside, I travel to China several times a year for my business and see the working conditions in a lot of factories. The girls getting paid $1.50 a day to play video games have it really good compared to the girls getting paid $1.50 a day to work in the production factories. If I bought an item on Ebay and helped to keep a girl in China out of a production factory and helped her family in her village (the factory girls send money back to their families in the countryside) then that is not a bad thing. I could have fun in the game, and someone in real life benefitted. That sounds like a win-win to me. Now, with Ebay gone, those girls will get to go work in a different factory and it just might now be as nice as playing video games.

I would be interested if someone could tell me how their personal gameplay has been harmed by Chinese farmers? I bet no one can. It never harmed me and I would think my gaming experience is fairly typical. I see gold having less value going forward and prices in town will rise. And in real life, some people's lives in 3rd world countries are going to get worse.

This would be the ultimate example of unintended consequences.

Food for thought...

[Avarre]

Just make gold give no physical advantage to the game, and people can sell and trade it all they want - it won't affect actual gameplay. From there on, Anet can ban as they find the situations, but a huge push against the problem isn't as necessary as games where items give hard advantages.

Then again, if they make GW2 in opposite of the GW1 idea of rarer items not giving special bonuses, there will have to be more action.

[Bryant Again]

Originally Posted by Obey The Cat

mobs in gw2 won't drop gold when killed, that's stated in the article.

= no farmers

= no gold-ebay'ing


kkthxbye

Whoa! Where's it state that??

[The Herbalizer]

Nice items never actually hurt anyone as they are no better than collectors or greens.

Ebayers are a small proportion of Guild Wars.

Why ruin such a large part of the game i.e. farming, trading etc due to the minority?

Im all for preventing people buying gw gold but I do not support the idea of removing trading and farming.

[Saelfaer]

Originally Posted by Maxiemonster

My thought: Make all items "bound" to you, like some items are bound in World of Warcraft. Most incredbily rare items in World of Warcraft cannot be traded with other players, this makes buying gold alot less interesting. I'd say if you make most items that are rare bound to yourself, noone would be interesting in buying gold, just make gold something you can waste on things like titles, minipets and hats.

I'm more scared of buying "powerlevels" on Ebay though. Paying someone to level your character to a certain level. If this'd happen on large scale (which is very possible, alot of Guild Wars "farmer slaves" will likely move to Guild Wars 2) it'd be quite sad.

so what would happen then...
since this uber leet weapon is bound to myself, and i get it from crafting, i will buy gold to buy all the crafting materials...

if i cant buy the weapon then i just buy the materials to craft it!

[Evilsod]

Lol, so much crap flying around in this thread its funny...

It's not exactly that big of a problem. Who gives a damn if they're are 100s of places to buy gold... not that many people actually buy it. Tbh i couldn't give a damn about them, i've seen so many warriors this last week using Sundering *insert rare skinned Sword* of Fortitude, they only ruin whatever they buy with crap mods anyway, its not like they become superior players either.

Take pride in that fact. Anet don't need to change anything... making rare items account specific and untradable would give more reasons to not buy GW2, so far with all the shit about level cap and races making this game sound like a WoW rip off i'm already unsure if i want it.

[Ares Moonlight]

Well getting rid of all the gold is no option.There is no RPG game without gold.

Having to complete the whole campaign before you get a trading option would be nice though.

[Operations]

In all technicality, the EULA is already a binding legal contract. Enforcement is just a pain as they have to catch you, prove you broke it, and then get the local legal system to actually care in light of higher priority crime.

To get actual enforcement of anti-piracy laws required a lot of political palm greasing to get congress to think that stealing music and movies was worthy of being put on the same list with the Ganja, and trust me, ANet does not have the same spare cash as the music and film industries.

The fact is, to rely on legal channels for enforcement of their in-game economy is a futile effort, and I guess by now that ANet knows that. In the end, ANet can't really do anything about gold farmers. That's our job.

For gold farming to end, first gold buying must end. That requires the community to take a collective stand. If you see gold farmers, shout them down. If you find out who a gold buyer is, your guild should blacklist them, and word should be passed until no one at all will party with or trade with that person.

And here is the real hard part. If you suspect that that person offering 70K for your Rago's Wand didn't earn it (because he's still wearing scrub armor and is only level 11 in Droks for example), you do not sell him the item.

That's what makes it a real problem. The people willing to sell items to scrubs with e-bay gold just to move their rare crap faster.

Originally Posted by redd66

Oh, and as an aside, I travel to China several times a year for my business and see the working conditions in a lot of factories. The girls getting paid $1.50 a day to play video games have it really good compared to the girls getting paid $1.50 a day to work in the production factories. If I bought an item on Ebay and helped to keep a girl in China out of a production factory and helped her family in her village (the factory girls send money back to their families in the countryside) then that is not a bad thing. I could have fun in the game, and someone in real life benefitted. That sounds like a win-win to me. Now, with Ebay gone, those girls will get to go work in a different factory and it just might now be as nice as playing video games.

Thank you for winning the hypocrite of the year award. Really.

I love the people that complain about 'poor 3rd world workers rights' on the internet, from their fancy apartment/house, in a nation where our biggest disease is being fat, and then try and claim that our corporate imperialism is being kind and generous.

If you really want to help these people, start paying the world average for gas first. Oh, we can't because our stupid short sighted nation is subsidizing the gas prices. Stop using so much resources to feed your petty, empty lives. We waste resources on new buildings that no on will use because there is not enough to use the old ones, while other nations might be willing to kill for those resources just to finish the roof on their homes.

Don't try and use, "But exploiting these people is good for them" as an excuse for you being an jerk. It's people like you that ruin the free market system.