the account was unbanned. thanks zos

jaws343 · June 10

SilverBride wrote: »

I'm afraid to ever buy crowns again from another player after reading this. There may be more to the story, and probably is, but things like this is why they need to come up with a better system.

Stories like this don't really sway me on it at all honestly. A brand new account receiving millions of gold is clearly an automatic red flag that my account isn't going to run afoul of given it isn't a 1 day old account. ZOS has been pretty clear imo that new accounts are not the accounts people should be using for major gold transfers or huge crown gifting sales. Especially with all of the limitations that have in place for even being able to gift things from the crown store. A 1 day old account receiving 16M gold is incredibly suspicious. And then that same account immediately trading that gold for a fairly large amount of $ DLC content. Yeah, not surprising it was banned.

SilverBride · June 10

I just saw that same advertisement in Vvardenfell zone chat, and wonder if it's suspicious enough to report.

RexyCat · June 10

jaws343 wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

I'm afraid to ever buy crowns again from another player after reading this. There may be more to the story, and probably is, but things like this is why they need to come up with a better system.

Stories like this don't really sway me on it at all honestly. A brand new account receiving millions of gold is clearly an automatic red flag that my account isn't going to run afoul of given it isn't a 1 day old account. ZOS has been pretty clear imo that new accounts are not the accounts people should be using for major gold transfers or huge crown gifting sales. Especially with all of the limitations that have in place for even being able to gift things from the crown store. A 1 day old account receiving 16M gold is incredibly suspicious. And then that same account immediately trading that gold for a fairly large amount of $ DLC content. Yeah, not surprising it was banned.

There are players like me that have bought a second account and want to move large amount Gold without necessary have any thought on abusing any system. If you have played for some time and want to start a new account then it is fully leggit to want to move Gold to a new account.

Same for Gifting as you can have saved up a large amount on your old account and want to buy items like Assistant etc for you new account without having to first purchase Crown in Store (as you already have enough Crown on your old account).

AlterBlika · June 10

jaws343 wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

I'm afraid to ever buy crowns again from another player after reading this. There may be more to the story, and probably is, but things like this is why they need to come up with a better system.

Stories like this don't really sway me on it at all honestly. A brand new account receiving millions of gold is clearly an automatic red flag that my account isn't going to run afoul of given it isn't a 1 day old account. ZOS has been pretty clear imo that new accounts are not the accounts people should be using for major gold transfers or huge crown gifting sales. Especially with all of the limitations that have in place for even being able to gift things from the crown store. A 1 day old account receiving 16M gold is incredibly suspicious. And then that same account immediately trading that gold for a fairly large amount of $ DLC content. Yeah, not surprising it was banned.

It's pretty surprising actually, if there isn't more to story. It's not my problem that I give a lot of gold to my friend that just started playing. No actions should be taken until proven guilty. After all, there should be logs and tools that allow to rollback player transactions if necessary, otherwise it would be pretty hard to combat rmt, or even some really bad bugs (dupes for example). At least that's how it's done by competent devs nowadays.

Even if it's a bad luck (crown seller was doing rmt), op should have gotten banned as well, since it was them who gave the gold in the first place. ZOS know better I think, we can only speculate.

Dagoth_Rac · June 10

jaws343 wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

I'm afraid to ever buy crowns again from another player after reading this. There may be more to the story, and probably is, but things like this is why they need to come up with a better system.

Stories like this don't really sway me on it at all honestly. A brand new account receiving millions of gold is clearly an automatic red flag that my account isn't going to run afoul of given it isn't a 1 day old account. ZOS has been pretty clear imo that new accounts are not the accounts people should be using for major gold transfers or huge crown gifting sales. Especially with all of the limitations that have in place for even being able to gift things from the crown store. A 1 day old account receiving 16M gold is incredibly suspicious. And then that same account immediately trading that gold for a fairly large amount of $ DLC content. Yeah, not surprising it was banned.

ZOS' stance seems to be that Crown Gifting is for gifting. Giving things to friends and players you have an in-game connection with. It is also clear ZOS does not micromanage the gifts. ZOS does not grab every crown gift and do a forensic accounting deep dive to determine if it was "really a gift". But a brand new account receiving a huge amount of gold? That gold immediately going to a rando in zone chat selling crowns at a "too good to be true" price? It was too many red flags for ZOS to ignore.

It is sort of like fixing your buddy's carburetor and he hands you $100 cash. Are you committing tax fraud if you don't report that as income on your 1040? Yes. Are IRS agents going to come dropping out of black helicopters and arrest you? No. It's between friends and family. The amounts are modest. You will never get a notarized letter from IRS officially saying they don't care, but ... they don't care.

Now, if you suddenly come into a seemingly unexplained 16 million dollars, and promptly spend it on car parts from a rando on the edge of town with "too good to be true" prices? Get ready to raise some red flags and be audited.

Mithgil · June 10

The OP states clearly he gave the banned player the 16M, and it seems the OP isn't banned, so the gold itself wasn't a big issue, although it can certainly raise flags for that amount as all have said. The major source of the issue is that the banned player then gave said gold to purchase illegally obtained Crowns (okay, for someone to gift him from the Crown Store).

A new account getting that much gold and then sending it to another account that then gifts him with Crown Store items with illegally obtained Crowns, that definitely is huge red flags.

The fact that someone is advertising in Zone chat a "good" deal on Crown gifting and then stating they will gift first is much less likely to be a problem, since the scams that occur would tend to be giving the gold, and then that player/account ghosts you and doesn't send the intended gift from the Crown Store.

I don't think any in-game advertising WTS Crowns is reportable. It's the very obvious RMT offers that I report. It's the players that create the "market" for what Crown "sales" should be (by server). The WTS Crowns adverts are not violating any ToS/EULA for the game.

Part of this problem could be resolved if ZOS made Crowns an in-game item you could trade or list to sell on a Guild Store, similar to what EVE Online does with their specialized in-game currency of PLEX.

Make it possible to purchase with real money a way to obtain in-game gold to disincentivize illegal purchases . That has the effect of diminishing what the illegal gold/Crown/item sales impacts are. Much less incentive to purchase illegal currency for the the game.

This wouldn't solve the OP's friend's problem, though. He clearly didn't have to the funds or the "want" to simply buy ESO Plus (or even his own Crowns).

SaffronCitrusflower · June 10

Mithgil wrote: »

The OP states clearly he gave the banned player the 16M, and it seems the OP isn't banned, so the gold itself wasn't a big issue, although it can certainly raise flags for that amount as all have said. The major source of the issue is that the banned player then gave said gold to purchase illegally obtained Crowns (okay, for someone to gift him from the Crown Store).

A new account getting that much gold and then sending it to another account that then gifts him with Crown Store items with illegally obtained Crowns, that definitely is huge red flags.

The fact that someone is advertising in Zone chat a "good" deal on Crown gifting and then stating they will gift first is much less likely to be a problem, since the scams that occur would tend to be giving the gold, and then that player/account ghosts you and doesn't send the intended gift from the Crown Store.

I don't think any in-game advertising WTS Crowns is reportable. It's the very obvious RMT offers that I report. It's the players that create the "market" for what Crown "sales" should be (by server). The WTS Crowns adverts are not violating any ToS/EULA for the game.

Part of this problem could be resolved if ZOS made Crowns an in-game item you could trade or list to sell on a Guild Store, similar to what EVE Online does with their specialized in-game currency of PLEX.

Make it possible to purchase with real money a way to obtain in-game gold to disincentivize illegal purchases . That has the effect of diminishing what the illegal gold/Crown/item sales impacts are. Much less incentive to purchase illegal currency for the the game.

This wouldn't solve the OP's friend's problem, though. He clearly didn't have to the funds or the "want" to simply buy ESO Plus (or even his own Crowns).

How would the crown buyer know if the crown seller obtained those crowns legally or otherwise?

As hard as it can be to get approval for players to gift crown store items now days it should be safe to assume that anyone selling crowns has passed ZOS' screening process to engage in crown gifting activities.

Mithgil · June 10

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

How would the crown buyer know if the crown seller obtained those crowns legally or otherwise?

As hard as it can be to get approval for players to gift crown store items now days it should be safe to assume that anyone selling crowns has passed ZOS' screening process to engage in crown gifting activities.

They can't know, but I was the large amount of gold given them that went onto "buy" illegal Crown-sourced gifts.

This is why I advocate for Crowns to become an in-game player tradeable/sellable commodity. Then the only issue in this case would be how did they get that amount of gold, which can be explained and verified (by the OP in this case).

Araneae6537 · June 11

SilverBride wrote: »

I just saw that same advertisement in Vvardenfell zone chat, and wonder if it's suspicious enough to report.

No, you shouldn’t report them. A player can set their own prices and may emphasize sending the Crown item first to allay fears of being defrauded.
Plus, ZOS investigated whatever the transactions the player in question was involved in — if the Crown seller was a fraudulent party then I’m sure that they would have been banned as well.

It seems strange to me, and perhaps to you as well, to advertise that way as it would seem to attract “buyers” who actually want to defraud, but the seller is doing nothing wrong by advertising favorable terms and pricing. It would be wrong to report someone like this with no cause.

Moonspawn · June 11

Mithgil wrote: »

They can't know, but I was the large amount of gold given them that went onto "buy" illegal Crown-sourced gifts.

This is why I advocate for Crowns to become an in-game player tradeable/sellable commodity. Then the only issue in this case would be how did they get that amount of gold, which can be explained and verified (by the OP in this case).

It took me around 8000 hours of pvp to gather the 16m gold.

SilverBride · June 11

Araneae6537 wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

I just saw that same advertisement in Vvardenfell zone chat, and wonder if it's suspicious enough to report.

No, you shouldn’t report them. A player can set their own prices and may emphasize sending the Crown item first to allay fears of being defrauded.
Plus, ZOS investigated whatever the transactions the player in question was involved in — if the Crown seller was a fraudulent party then I’m sure that they would have been banned as well.

It seems strange to me, and perhaps to you as well, to advertise that way as it would seem to attract “buyers” who actually want to defraud, but the seller is doing nothing wrong by advertising favorable terms and pricing. It would be wrong to report someone like this with no cause.

That's why I hesitated and didn't report them. While I do find it very suspicious I don't want to make a false report if it was really on the up and up.

Moonspawn · June 12

I suspect I understand the scheme they did to harm my friend, it seems that he handed over the gold to the "Crown Seller", but the account that sent the Gifts was another account, different from the account that received the gold (the gold sellers do this to to scam new rules of Gifting System). As a result, my friend was deceived and ended up participating in a fraudulent scheme without knowing it, he is a victim in the story, he was just trading gold for crowns with another player, as far as the community knows, this is permitted.

Elsonso · June 12

RexyCat wrote: »

Same for Gifting as you can have saved up a large amount on your old account and want to buy items like Assistant etc for you new account without having to first purchase Crown in Store (as you already have enough Crown on your old account).

It is more efficient to buy Crowns on one account and gift to a second account, too. I managed to get bi-directional Crown gifting on two accounts so that if I picked up ESO Plus on my second account, the Crowns could be gifted back to the first account or used on the second account. My choice. It was a bit of a challenge to get that second account authorized, though. After a couple rejections, I was starting to wonder if I had some secret life as a criminal that I wasn't aware of.

SilverBride wrote: »

I'm afraid to ever buy crowns again from another player after reading this. There may be more to the story, and probably is, but things like this is why they need to come up with a better system.

I would not give gold to a random from Zone chat in exchange for Crown gifts. I might consider through a guild service with someone who has a reputation, but in the end, I think it is just easier to buy the Crowns from the cash shop. This thinking is mainly centered around "am I going to get scammed", not anything related to ToS violations on my part.

SilverBride wrote: »

I just saw that same advertisement in Vvardenfell zone chat, and wonder if it's suspicious enough to report.

I would not report it unless it is making references to an external site or transaction. Per my understanding of the ToS, exchanging currencies (gold-Crowns) is not against the ToS, as long as it is entirely in the game and there is no external exchange or transaction. ZOS does not recognize the transaction, but I do not interpret that to mean they ignore it if things go sideways because someone is not behaving themselves.

If that understanding is wrong, I would be happy to hear where I went wrong.

RexyCat · June 12

Moonspawn wrote: »

I suspect I understand the scheme they did to harm my friend, it seems that he handed over the gold to the "Crown Seller", but the account that sent the Gifts was another account, different from the account that received the gold (the gold sellers do this to to scam new rules of Gifting System). As a result, my friend was deceived and ended up participating in a fraudulent scheme without knowing it, he is a victim in the story, he was just trading gold for crowns with another player, as far as the community knows, this is permitted.

I don't know exactly what happened to your friend here, but it is possible that this person had several accounts and had Crowns which he/she/it could use on Gifting while wanted to have that Gold on another account. Gold can be transferred with less restriction, but I don't know if ZoS have some limit for how much one can send through in game mail or other means like Guild Bank etc. In GW2 we had a daily limit and weekly for how much Gold that could be moved between account through in game mail.

Anyway as long you get what you wanted to have Gifted to your account and paid the Gold that was asked then it isn't automatically a scam, even if you get Gift sent from another account then you sent your Gold to.