Best Of
Re: ESO´s Population is lowered to 2017 level
As a casual player all I really wanted to continue playing was for gifting to not be so heavy handed (all or nothing with mystery criteria to qualify) - this is apparently not possible even tho other platforms seem to have it sorted. I am in the process of removing myself from the forums and once I sort out the weird guild-to-other-player dynamic of gifting I am getting rid of the rest of my stuff in the game then I am going to delete my game account and just be done. So if anyone is counting - this is one less player you will see in 2026 and beyond.
Re: Selling crown is OK? or officially illegal?
Selling crowns for gold is allowed. (Trading crowns for other in-game items is also allowed.)
Selling crowns for real money, or other benefits outside the game is illegal.
The person selling the crowns has to have gifting enabled, because you can't actually transfer crowns to another account, so what they do is gift the recipient the item/s they want. Both sellers and buyers advertise based on amount of crowns and price because that's the important info at that step, then when they agree to trade the buyer will specify which item they want to be gifted.
The person buying crowns doesn't need gifting enabled, because all they do is mail the gold to the seller. Sometimes there's a 3rd party involved to prevent scams, a guild officer or someone else both sides trusts - the buyer will send the gold to them first, they'll confirm to the seller they've got it, the seller will gift the item to the buyer and then the mediator will send them the gold. It's more complicated but it means no one can run away without completing their side of the trade.
The fact that you can't gift items to your friends is related. A while ago ZOS restricted who could send crown store gifts because apparently the system was being abused for real money trading. You have to contact Customer Support and ask them to enable gifting for you. They won't say what the criteria is, they say you have to show you're an active member of the community or something like that, but I think basically you have to have an account they don't think you'd be willing to risk getting banned though some mix of age, how much of the game you've played and money spent on it.
Selling crowns for real money, or other benefits outside the game is illegal.
I am trying to understand how this legal in game trading is taking place - do both parties at least have to have gifting ?
I am struggling to understand why I cannot gift items out of the crown store to my friends in game - is this related in anyway ?
The person selling the crowns has to have gifting enabled, because you can't actually transfer crowns to another account, so what they do is gift the recipient the item/s they want. Both sellers and buyers advertise based on amount of crowns and price because that's the important info at that step, then when they agree to trade the buyer will specify which item they want to be gifted.
The person buying crowns doesn't need gifting enabled, because all they do is mail the gold to the seller. Sometimes there's a 3rd party involved to prevent scams, a guild officer or someone else both sides trusts - the buyer will send the gold to them first, they'll confirm to the seller they've got it, the seller will gift the item to the buyer and then the mediator will send them the gold. It's more complicated but it means no one can run away without completing their side of the trade.
The fact that you can't gift items to your friends is related. A while ago ZOS restricted who could send crown store gifts because apparently the system was being abused for real money trading. You have to contact Customer Support and ask them to enable gifting for you. They won't say what the criteria is, they say you have to show you're an active member of the community or something like that, but I think basically you have to have an account they don't think you'd be willing to risk getting banned though some mix of age, how much of the game you've played and money spent on it.
Danikat
1
Re: Gifting Policy Awareness
Here are five of the “known” criteria:
-No terms-of-service violations.
-Must have had your account for 180 days.
-Must have had ESO+ at some point.
-Must have a record of purchases.
-Must have consistent log-in data.
If you’re failing at any of the above, chances are, that is what your problem is.
-No terms-of-service violations.
-Must have had your account for 180 days.
-Must have had ESO+ at some point.
-Must have a record of purchases.
-Must have consistent log-in data.
If you’re failing at any of the above, chances are, that is what your problem is.
Re: Gifting Policy Awareness
I am not saying there was not a bad actor problem - but how is that my problem to solve? An infinite crowns fraud/abuse would not be worth anything if you can't send crowns to others right ?
All I want to do is buy stuff from the store and send it to friends - that is not much to ask - I do not need to send them gold or crowns. Yes all games are exploitable but the bottom line here is that they do not want to spend the time or effort to improve the gaming experience in this area - if that is the decision then just remove gifting for everyone from the game - at least make it fair - I would be ok with that - mystery criteria or not investing in a fix that works for everyone tells me that in this area they really could care less about the players - and you know I have been going through some of these threads trying to cool off some on this issue because it has me red hot mad atm and what am I seeing ? I am not seeing how great the game is and how people just can't wait to play - I can tell you that - what I am seeing is a plethora of posts about how people like the game and hate to leave but <fll-in-the-blank> issue has persisted and they are ready to walk away from it. I will eventually get there myself - is it worth getting upset over something that the management could care less about ? Probably not - it is my love of the game that has me here trying to bring attention to something.
I'm sorry but (see my post above), but "buy(ing) stuff from the (crown) store to send it to friends" is exactly how the fraud is occurring.
Also, they *have* put significant time and effort into this issue. We can feel perhaps it wasn't enough, or they didn't come up with the best solution, but they definitely put in effort to get this turned on for as many people as they felt possible. They have every motivation (read: $$) to do that.
If someone knows of a "fix that work with everyone", I'm sure everyone, including ZOS, would love the details. It's clear they've struggled with this.
hiyde
1
Re: Gifting Policy Awareness
Let's at least all get on the same page in regards to how we got here (at least my understanding of it):
Fraudsters use stolen credit card numbers to buy a virtual gaming currency (Crowns).
They sell the crowns/crown store gifts via illegal websites for real life cash (a TOS violation from both parties).
The real life currency has now been laundered/converted to cash in a way that's pretty much impossible to trace.
This became so rampant that it was putting the ZOS' merchant accounts in danger. Credit Card companies are only going to write off so much fraud before they revoke a merchant's account if they don't feel the merchant is properly trying to address the issue.
ZOS cut off *all* crown gifting while they worked on a solution to make it far more difficult for this laundering to occur.
The end result is this secretive set of checkboxes your account must meet in order to be approved to gift crowns.
I certainly understand the frustration from those who've been long time players / invested a lot of money into the game /etc. It all sounds good on paper until you're the one being denied the privelege while feeling the basic message of "We can't rule out you're a criminal'. (and I say this as someone who has had this privilege since the start).
I'm not an expert in this field and I don't know what the "better" ways to do this would be that would allow for more people to qualify without taking the levels of fraudulent transactions to a point of jeopardizing their merchant account(s).
There's also been passionate cases plead here on the forums and I remember one case where ZOS relented, only to publicly post a day or so later that, because they had concerns the story might be fake, they monitored the account and the person turned out to be commiting fraud. tbh, that all felt a bit performative to me that they would openly "Name & Shame" someone so that they could say "see, this is why we can't have benefit of the doubt and must follow our secret rules to the letter".
I kinda walked away from that thinking "If you can detect that fast...". But I digress.
It's definitely a challening issue and perhaps the fairest answer, if they can't find some middle ground to at least cautiously let folks like the OP gift while being monitored closely, is to disable crown gifting for all. But that comes at the expense of losing revenue and all of the players who do love using the gifting system.
So I dunno. I feel that ZOS has been pretty transparent on all of this and *they* feel they're doing what they can to walk this tightrope.
P.S. For those somehow think that ZOS is getting their jollies by gleefully denying people access to Crown Gifting, every single one they don't approve = lost revenue. What would be the motivation to do that to themselves for no good reason?
Fraudsters use stolen credit card numbers to buy a virtual gaming currency (Crowns).
They sell the crowns/crown store gifts via illegal websites for real life cash (a TOS violation from both parties).
The real life currency has now been laundered/converted to cash in a way that's pretty much impossible to trace.
This became so rampant that it was putting the ZOS' merchant accounts in danger. Credit Card companies are only going to write off so much fraud before they revoke a merchant's account if they don't feel the merchant is properly trying to address the issue.
ZOS cut off *all* crown gifting while they worked on a solution to make it far more difficult for this laundering to occur.
The end result is this secretive set of checkboxes your account must meet in order to be approved to gift crowns.
I certainly understand the frustration from those who've been long time players / invested a lot of money into the game /etc. It all sounds good on paper until you're the one being denied the privelege while feeling the basic message of "We can't rule out you're a criminal'. (and I say this as someone who has had this privilege since the start).
I'm not an expert in this field and I don't know what the "better" ways to do this would be that would allow for more people to qualify without taking the levels of fraudulent transactions to a point of jeopardizing their merchant account(s).
There's also been passionate cases plead here on the forums and I remember one case where ZOS relented, only to publicly post a day or so later that, because they had concerns the story might be fake, they monitored the account and the person turned out to be commiting fraud. tbh, that all felt a bit performative to me that they would openly "Name & Shame" someone so that they could say "see, this is why we can't have benefit of the doubt and must follow our secret rules to the letter".
I kinda walked away from that thinking "If you can detect that fast...". But I digress.
It's definitely a challening issue and perhaps the fairest answer, if they can't find some middle ground to at least cautiously let folks like the OP gift while being monitored closely, is to disable crown gifting for all. But that comes at the expense of losing revenue and all of the players who do love using the gifting system.
So I dunno. I feel that ZOS has been pretty transparent on all of this and *they* feel they're doing what they can to walk this tightrope.
P.S. For those somehow think that ZOS is getting their jollies by gleefully denying people access to Crown Gifting, every single one they don't approve = lost revenue. What would be the motivation to do that to themselves for no good reason?
hiyde
5
Re: Gifting Policy Awareness
They have a broken gifting mechanic that they are unwilling to fix and it keeps legit players like myself and others from enjoying this part of the game.
It's lame and unacceptable that a gaming studio cannot solve abuses of a mechanic in their own game other than to just turn the mechanic off.
Just remove gifting completely from everyone - make it fair at least.
All systems are exploitable if someone is dedicated enough. I'm not happy that my bank occassionally flags a possible fraudulent payment, but I'm also grateful that such a check exists to prevent bad actors from exploiting the system - because that check IS the fix to the abuse.
You are complaining about a lack of transparency that if given would help the bad actors. You also appear to be taking it as a personal afront that you can't access, what is an unitended consequence (the exchange of gold for crown store items) of the system that makes up 0.0000000000001% of the game as if it is the only reason you play.
Now, ZOS could implement an official gifting system, much like they have for mail items, that has a C.O.D option when sending the gift, but that doesn't solve the initial problem of people getting crowns that they should not have. I have no idea how they are managing to do so, but it's an online system and therefore is hackable.
So, while ZOS could do more to protect the buyers of "gifts" (oxymoronic), they cannot stop the root cause which is the aberrant crowns. If you know a way to make an online system 100% secure then send ZOS an email, along with one to the NSA - because heck, even they have been hacked - or you can simply accept that for whatever reason ZOS just won't allow you to spend your crowns in this manner.
To be honest - I do not believe the bad actors reason given - it is that they do not want to invest money in tightening up the gifting mechanic.
In the other thread I mentioned I do not want to send gold or crowns - I want to spend them on things like mounts and skins and items and send those as gifts - surely they can solve for this.
There 100% was a bad actor problem. I remember seeing accounts (now gone, shocker) in one of the crown selling discords that were the most blatantly obvious RMT accounts ever. They always seemed to have infinite crowns on multiple platforms and advertised often. I do place blame on the discord in question for not banning the accounts.
Soarora
1
Re: Selling crown is OK? or officially illegal?
I am trying to understand how this legal in game trading is taking place - do both parties at least have to have gifting ?
I am struggling to understand why I cannot gift items out of the crown store to my friends in game - is this related in anyway ?
No, both players do not need gifting perms — only the one gifting the crown store items needs crown store gifting perms. Any player can send the gold and receive the crown store item in exchange.
Yes, this is related to your inability to gift crown store items. Due to a long history of systemic abuse of this system by bad actors, ZOS disabled crown store gifting as a default and enabled it only for accounts they felt were safe enough based on their internal metrics. You may request that they grant you perms to gift crown store items, but be prepared for a no if they don’t feel your account currently meets their metrics. (You would then be able to apply again later.)
But if you are interested in spending the gold for someone else to gift you the crown store items, you do not need gifting perms. You are free to give that player gold. They are the one who will need gifting perms.
Re: January Daily Rewards
Look at the bright side, these days if you happen to go on holiday for a few week you do not have to fear missing out on anything 
The whole worth of the entire month daily rewards combined is just some pocket change gold.
The whole worth of the entire month daily rewards combined is just some pocket change gold.vgabor
4
Re: January Daily Rewards
It's actually good that the rewards in december and january aren't top notch, or rewards we can't miss out on. This is the time players do other things than ESO, go on vacations, visit family, etc. There would be a major backlash if many players were to miss out on special rewards.
Happy new year everyone!
Happy new year everyone!
Sarannah
6