Lottery

I was thinking we could buy a lottery ticket for 10g each and all the accumulated money goes to the winner every friday. They could make an announcement in the loggin screen with the name of the winner. It shouldn't be a problem because they are not creating new money.

Besides the fact that lotteries are, you know, illegal in several states...

Ahem...

He said 'gil', that is Final Fantasy money.
He should say 'gold', that is, ingame money.

Such a thing could be somehow an unnecesaryload for the servers.

But as long as it actually destroys money (the winners would get only small %s of the income, and around 10..25% of the total collection would just banish) so it were actually a gold sink.

Instead of a lottery make it a 50-50 raffle drawing, that way money gets taken out of the game like ANET wants, and someone would still win something. That should get past the illegality of lotteries if what Zinger says is true.

/signed

a few things like this wouldnt hurt i dont think ^^.

Don't worry.

Only REAL lotteries are illegal. One ingame with igname money would not be a problem.

Lotteries that don't involve actual dollars aren't illegal, or Kingdom of Loathing's casino would be SOL right about now. :P

I like the raffle idea better than the lottery one, though. They can put up a decent item, a certain amount of booze/candy or a rune/mod and have everyone buy some tickets. One person wins. Awesome goldsink.

Maybe it can count towards Lucky/Unlucky, too.

But however it's best implemented, raffle or lottery, I don't think the winner's name should be displayed. They'd get all sorts of harrassment ingame from beggers or scammers hoping to pry something nice off of an ignorant, lucky noob.

Reminds me of a Green Day song:

"Losers winning big on the lottery"...

Hm... weekly raffles...

They could raffle each week 1..100 items only available in special events or with special packages... the item would be random, and the tickets would cost... let's say... 1000 gold.

The more you purchase, the more chances you have to win.
Tickets won't be items, they would just be data in a server, so checking the tickets anyone has would not be necessary.

Then, each monday, you talk to the Xunlai Lottery/Raffle Agent, and you get your price (if any)

They could add something like this for the events and things have a raffle stand set-up in Kamadan, Lions Arch and Kaineng so that people without X game can still play some festival games (like how a lot of people cant access the boardwalk when it opens)

Wow, I would really like to win this lottery...

Something like 100g per ticket. Every 3 hours, anet randomly picks three winners. First place gets 40% of all gold, second gets 25%, third gets 15%. The leftover 20% are used as a gold sink.

/signed this is a great gold sink and it would make someones day.... or month LOL

And that has to do with what? I assume that meeting people in secluded areas, 8v8, trying to kill one another is illegal too. This is GW, not real life. Completely irrelevant, unnecessary. Why do you even care? Go play WoW, where there aren't any lotteries.

/signed. Good idea. This is a lot of return for a little investment, and it would make someone's day.

Nothing of priority for me, but it's nice to have.

They'd have to work out some way that you could get the cash if your chest and characters had too much gold on them to collect your winnings. Max gold also kind of limits the max prizes of a lottery too unless you do it with items. Perhaps they could put an npc in temple of balthazar and you give him your ticket to get the gold... gives you a chance to spend your current gold and make room to collect your winnings

That being said, /signed. More gold sinks that are optional and/or fun = good.

or even better yet a storage tab thing, when you win you take your ticket to the xunlai agent and she stores all the gold so you can withdraw at your leisure, cause you have to realize the winnings could be close or over a mil if people bought enough tickets and if the % was high enough..... cause there are a ton of players.

That's why I thought it might be better as an item raffle than a lottery with gold. :P If the pot gets close to a million, a lot of players will be out QUITE a bit of cash!

Still, if they turned the money into some sort of redeemable certificate (double-click to receive your winnings) that can't be used until you have the available space, it could work. People could just buy up some ectos or something to make room, if nothing else.

/signed for masamune's idea.

Uh. No.

Online gambling is flat-out against the law of the United States in certain states.

For reference, the states are:

Arizona
Arkansas
Connecuit
Delaware
Florida
Iowa
Lousiana
Maryland
Nevada
Tennesse
Texas
Vermont
Washington

The last state is the killer. There would be too much legal trouble and loopholing to make a lottery worthwhile.