Curse

Diomedes · Aug 01, 2005, 09:01 PM // 21:01

Quote:

I think Sagius' interpretation of what's happening here is actually correct, or at least closer to reality. Why? Because all the eBay auctions still exist and are not closed. If what they were doing was illegal, eBay would be compelled and required to close those auctions down. They don't. Therefore you have to conclude that the so called "loophole" that the auction posters use is sufficient.

Years ago, a bunch of Playstation 1 emulators came out for PCs. Sony immediately started suing the heck out of the different companies. The courts ruled in favor of the emulator companies, but the emulators went away anyhow. Why? They went bankrupt fighting the legal fees. Sony continued to threaten any other emulator makers and, surprise surprise, the emulator market vanished.

I think what needs to be taken into account is that when AreaNet came up with a business model, it didn't include XXX funds to be spent each year in legal fees suing a farmer just so that another one could pop up 2 days later.

-Diomedes

Aracos79 · Aug 01, 2005, 09:06 PM // 21:06

Ok, so using your analogy eBay'ers = emulators and ANet = Sony. And the emulators won. So... any way you slice it, the legal "fuzziness" used by the eBay'ers is sufficient to continue with their business. ANet simply doesn't have the resources to force them to court and potentially make their "cost of doing business" too high to continue.

Sagius Truthbarron · Aug 01, 2005, 09:18 PM // 21:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diomedes

Years ago, a bunch of Playstation 1 emulators came out for PCs. Sony immediately started suing the heck out of the different companies. The courts ruled in favor of the emulator companies, but the emulators went away anyhow. Why? They went bankrupt fighting the legal fees. Sony continued to threaten any other emulator makers and, surprise surprise, the emulator market vanished.

I think what needs to be taken into account is that when AreaNet came up with a business model, it didn't include XXX funds to be spent each year in legal fees suing a farmer just so that another one could pop up 2 days later.

-Diomedes

Then they don't sue the famers. Do any funds leave them becuase of this? Farm from it! The more people who are addicted to the game and spend more money on it will be even more likely to come back again.

Besides, you are saying that no one should be able to take a cut of the profits that they rightly earned just becuase they "SEEM" to be leaching off the larger company?

You are also saying that extortion and destruction of small businesses is a good thing becuase their line of work appears to be undignified, then?

Aug 01, 2005, 09:26 PM // 21:26

I see where the original poster is coming from, but consider this:
1. There will always be people who come across this post and think "wow, I never knew Guild Wars gold was sold on eBay. I might check it out!"
Therefore, you are putting the idea into their mind, and as a direct cause, some will buy the gold. This will eventually lead to:
1. Rising prices. More people can afford gold on eBay, prices go up because people are willing to pay more. Those who earned theirs legitly are left behind in the dust.
2. Gold has less influence. (over exaggerating) "A clean max fellblade? For only 50k? Ah what the heck, gold is worth nothing anyways".

I have no clue why you even posted this...maybe to let out your frustration or anger, but you are only making it worse (for yourself) and others, by basically advertising for these gold providers. No good can come out of a post like this. Again, why did you post this?

berko · Aug 01, 2005, 10:13 PM // 22:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sagius Truthbarron

This is completely legal. They want money for the time spent collecting it; not selling actual property, but time.

What time are we talking about here, if they're using bots to do their work as they continue on with their normal lives. I don't see any time being used by them since they aren't doing anything except for starting the game up and leaving their computer on.

Sagius Truthbarron · Aug 01, 2005, 10:20 PM // 22:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by berko

What time are we talking about here, if they're using bots to do their work as they continue on with their normal lives. I don't see any time being used by them since they aren't doing anything except for starting the game up and leaving their computer on.

Maybe they aren't using bots. In any case, I'm not here to argue their reasons for selling the gold or their moral conduct in which, but that it is legal to sell gold.

Orochim4ru · Aug 01, 2005, 10:31 PM // 22:31

They aren't selling time, they're selling money that belongs to someone else. Their legal "defence" is bullshit.

Aracos79 · Aug 01, 2005, 10:35 PM // 22:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Orochim4ru

They aren't selling time, they're selling money that belongs to someone else. Their legal "defence" is bullshit.

BS it may be... but as I said, without any evidence to the contrary (ie. eBay pulling the auctions) it is apparently sufficient to keep them in business. If this truly outrages us, as it appears to, the best thing we can do as a community is NOT buy the stuff.

dargon · Aug 01, 2005, 10:41 PM // 22:41

Is it legal according to the EULA? Depends on how you interpret the EULA and what the sellers state. The sellers say they aren't selling gold, they are selling time and thus they take advantage of a loophole in the EULA. That said, if I give $$$ to someone who's selling time, then I want to see my watch run backwards and my dirty dishes suddenly become clean again. To bad they just give gold, so what they say they're selling and what you actually get are tow different things, and IMO constitutes fraud. However since everyone knows they are lying about what they are selling and infact wants what they actually give and not what they say they are giving, nobody seeks any legal repercussions against them.

SOT · Aug 01, 2005, 10:44 PM // 22:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chev of Hardass

Wow, no one picked up on how ignorant this post is?

The reason gold is worthless, is because everyone has it and can get it for cheap.

Were gold worthless, you would be unable to use it to purchase things in the game.

Reality or the game, pick one and embrace it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xellos

Because if you farm for like a week, or if you win HoH for a week, you can have more gold then you'll ever need? I mean, I've bought about ten or so 15k ascenscion armours, and I still got 600k gold just from 2 weeks of sigil hunting. What would I need gold for? Arrows?

Signet of bullshit has no adrenaline cost.

Asplode · Aug 01, 2005, 10:51 PM // 22:51

Well this is obviously a simple case of letter and spirit of the law, or rather in this case, the EULA. It's this "time and effort" BS that undermines and defies what ANet's desires are.

ANet doesn't WANT you to farm gold and sell it on ebay, but not all the legalese in the world can prevent someone from doing what they want, they just twist the words and conditions.

Think of it from a simplistic viewpoint: Whether you're selling your time, or selling intellectual property, the fact of the matter is that you're paying someone real money, and as a consequence recieving gold in-game.

Aracos79 · Aug 01, 2005, 10:52 PM // 22:52

The law is kinda funny that way, especially in this country (USA). In many situations, if the law does not EXPLICITLY forbid you from doing a thing, then you can do it. It might be silly, it might be blatently against the SPIRIT of the law, but without a concrete exclusion, you have to allow it. Can you go back and change the law? Of course. Can the courts INTERPRET the law in such a way as to make your activity illegal? You better believe it. But until either of those two things happens, you are usually in the clear.

Lorelei · Aug 01, 2005, 11:03 PM // 23:03

The argument of selling time doesn't hold water.
There are objects of transactions here: real money issued by government (US government in this case) in exchange for in game money. No time was exchanged.
It may be different if the person was hired to play the game. In which case, the purchaser would have to provide the means for the hired person to "produce". Which means the purchaser would have to provide the seller his account to play with, and after a certain amount of time, get back the character, plus (or minus) whatever is collected (or deducted) from it during the said "hired" time.

I would call on:
- the IRS for them to evade reporting wage revenue (since they claim they sell time, not items);
- the INS for not checking I-9 form and eligibility of employment.

These are serious crime people. You could be jailed if infringe those laws, much more so than civil suits by ANet.

Mimi Miyagi · Aug 01, 2005, 11:03 PM // 23:03

A guy I know spent real cash to buy 300-400K in GW gold. Funny part is, he still has it. He's given away some of it to folks that needed a quick 20-30K, but otherwise, he hasn't spent a dime of it.

Why? Because he doesn't need to. Why did he buy it? Because it saved him from having to farm, he is too busy (and lazy) to do it himself. He also has a lot of disposable cash, so spending the money didn't bother him.

But the funny thing is, he hasn't ever had to farm regardless.

There isn't a single thing in GW that you absolutely must have to become some sort of uber player. Nothing. The ridiculous amounts of gold being traded for items is silly, and just reinforces the fact that regardless of how "broken" the economy is, or seems to be, items are over valued, and gold is virtually worthless if people are stupid enough to toss around 500K on a sword that is no better than an item you can pick up off the ground doing a mission. If people can spend that amount of money, then money appears to be no object. One sigil, one nice item, can give a player enough gold to not have to worry about gold - and opens the door for spending freely.

I'm a perfect example of a casual player. I lucked out and had both a superior vigor and a superior absorption rune drop - and those two runes allowed me to have more gold than I ever had before. But once you have that big pile of gold, you'll realize there isn't anything in the game that will make you better. I always scoffed at the fools that wasted 100K on the 15K armor - until I had so much gold that I realized that there wasn't anything else to do with it. Need to spend 20K on a weapon mod? Big deal. Want a guild hall? No problem. Dye your armor all black? So what? What else are you going to do with all that gold?

The only really bad thing about the economy (and MMORPG games in general) is the real industry of sweat shop labor that pays peanuts to little asian kiddies to farm items - and the resultant lag the servers will experience due to excessive botting and exploits. No one recalls the massive lag Diablo 2 had during those massive duping periods a few years ago? Just wait until the first major duping exploit comes along and crashes the servers. It's not a question of if, but a question of when.

Anarkii · Aug 01, 2005, 11:05 PM // 23:05

There was already a long thread about ebaying here recently. You should have seen that before starting another one.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Orochim4ru

They aren't selling time, they're selling money that belongs to someone else. Their legal "defence" is bullshit.

Its not. ANet will lose if they sue. Sony realised that and started Station Xchange, to profit from this secondary market.

Red Sonya · Aug 01, 2005, 11:16 PM // 23:16

I've often said in every mmorpg the best way to stop ebayers is to make everything no drop or personal only. No 'player' economy, no trading goods between players, you can buy and sell items with npc merchants only but not sell them or trade anything between players. That eleminates it all. What you get is what you get and you get nothing else but what you 'earn'. Without being able to transfer gold or items, there will be no ebay for gold or items. The only thing would be accounts and most people won't buy characters as easily as they would buy gold or items off ebay.

This would also allow the developers to actually set an economy, decide how much things should sell for and cost. There would never be any problems with the economy then. They could still have a fluctuating economy that players could play with competitively causing prices to go up or down by how much was sold to the merchants. But, there sure would never be any ebayers selling anything but characters and that's a lot easier to trace than the transactions of items and coins. So they can catch them and then ban the accounts.

But, no one has tried it yet, everyone of them open the doors to ebayers and then make a silly EULA they don't even enforce and ebayers for everyone of them pop up every single game and ruin every single games economy.

Stev0 · Aug 01, 2005, 11:39 PM // 23:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thanato

its kind of hard to go after the people themselves, since they're selling the "time they put into aquiring the gold" and not the gold itself. the best they can do is have ebay shut down those auctions

Thats the most 'Rubber Stamp' excuse I could ever imagine.

Aracos79 · Aug 01, 2005, 11:41 PM // 23:41

eBay is not going to police this issue itself. Why should they? They make a profit on every auction. They aren't going to close them unless legally compelled to do so. No company can knowingly be involved in illegal activity. Put 2 and 2 together. eBay won't close the auctions unless it has to. It hasn't. The auctions are therefore legal enough to keep going.

Divinitys Creature · Aug 02, 2005, 12:06 AM // 00:06

You know these cases have been tried in court and the sellers have been vindicated that they may sell their time - it is theirs to sell. So it's not just people here saying it is not illegal, it has been ruled in court. All ANET can do is ban your account for not conforming to the EULA and nothing more.

For the record I don't advocate these services at all.

Stev0 · Aug 02, 2005, 01:43 AM // 01:43

This is what really is going on when you buy from ebay and the like.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=40543