ZOS! 1 billion+ GOLD LAUNDERING !! - (it was, now 1.25 billion+) please prioritize it.

erliesc

This is done by the FED in the stock and other markets....call the FED and they'll tell you how????

VaranisArano

erliesc wrote: »

This is done by the FED in the stock and other markets....call the FED and they'll tell you how????

Have you considered that ZOS generally doesn't intervene to set price controls? The only reason they intervened in this case wasn't the high prices in off themselves - it was the shady activity going on behind the scenes that led to those high prices.

You are dragging up a thread about a completely different (and solved) matter in order to complain that you think crafting mat prices are too high during an event that requires some crafting. Its not the same thing at all. Go complain on your own thread and let this one lie.

Ackwalan

erliesc wrote: »

This is done by the FED in the stock and other markets....call the FED and they'll tell you how????

Have you noticed the national dept lately? How about interest rates compared to loan and savings? I'd suggest you just stay out of economics in both game and real world.

daemonios

erliesc wrote: »

This is done by the FED in the stock and other markets....call the FED and they'll tell you how????

I'm not an American, but I don't think the Fed messes with sstock markets. That would be the SEC (Securities and Exchange Committee), and they don't set prices, they watch transactions and might suspend trading of a stock if they believe the price is being manipulated illegally, but not for being too high or too low.

The Fed can certainly act on foreign exchange markets by taking actions to strengthen or devalue the dollar, but that's in the context of monetary policy and foreign trade. It has nothing to do with the trading of commodities inside a single economic landscape such as the virtual economy in a game.

Commancho

I would not be surprised if this gold comes from legit sources like running a trade guild in popular location. Looking at current requirements like 10k gold weekly donation per member + tax cut + rank donation + shady lotteries multiplied by 500 members.. Then comes speculation, playing with prices, mass buying bis items... Selling gold on online auctions.. Economy system in this game is trash.. Free market? Rather monopoly practices...

VaranisArano

Commancho wrote: »

I would not be surprised if this gold comes from legit sources like running a trade guild in popular location. Looking at current requirements like 10k gold weekly donation per member + tax cut + rank donation + shady lotteries multiplied by 500 members.. Then comes speculation, playing with prices, mass buying bis items... Selling gold on online auctions.. Economy system in this game is trash.. Free market? Rather monopoly practices...

Spoiler alert: it didn't.

Gina already said:

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Thanks to everyone for bringing this to our attention. We wanted to let you know we’re taking care of the offending accounts, and have already rolled out a fix to prevent this from continuing to happen.

So rest easy on the griping about trading guilds for once, okay? They actually were instrumental in reporting the problem.

Commancho

This is just a peak of ice mountain sticking over the water. Everyone who is much into trading knows what I'm talking about. Multiple accounts, multiple trading guilds, overbiding with gold purchased with real money, selling gold for real money.. You can say whatever you want, but this system is unhealthy.

JKorr

Commancho wrote: »

This is just a peak of ice mountain sticking over the water. Everyone who is much into trading knows what I'm talking about. Multiple accounts, multiple trading guilds, overbiding with gold purchased with real money, selling gold for real money.. You can say whatever you want, but this system is unhealthy.

So, report all of the hinky stuff you know is going on. If the evidence ZOS finds holds up, they'll take action on it. Otherwise you sound a lot like the "we need an auction house because all the trading guilds demand 165k gold dues a week, restrict sales to jack up prices, and have all the guildmasters rolling in gold because they scam the guildmembers" posters who were trying to drum up outrage and drama.

spartaxoxo

SammiSakura wrote: »

daemonios wrote: »

I have no idea what I'm seeing here, the first two pictures aren't even showing the same data as the third one. I mean, those values seem really high, but the top seller in the first pic has an average item price of around 4k gold, while the second averages around 100k and the third even higher at 125k. You can't get any average from the second picture because there's no total items, and the third picture seems to show transactions at far above market prices but that tells me very little.

Honest question, can someone explain what's up?

the people in question are essentially laundering gold. so theyre listing mundane, cheap items, for millions/thousands of gold, and then another account is buying them. Trying to filter ill-gotten gold through the system basically

What's the point in that?

Edit: NVM I get it now. I feel dumb. Zos should ban these people....

erliesc

Ackwalan wrote: »

erliesc wrote: »

This is done by the FED in the stock and other markets....call the FED and they'll tell you how????

Have you noticed the national dept lately? How about interest rates compared to loan and savings? I'd suggest you just stay out of economics in both game and real world.

Hey I know Alan Greenspan....so there!

Asardes

Commancho wrote: »

I would not be surprised if this gold comes from legit sources like running a trade guild in popular location. Looking at current requirements like 10k gold weekly donation per member + tax cut + rank donation + shady lotteries multiplied by 500 members.. Then comes speculation, playing with prices, mass buying bis items... Selling gold on online auctions.. Economy system in this game is trash.. Free market? Rather monopoly practices...

Most trade guilds in those locations have such high fees or sales requirements precisely because the guild trader fee is quite high, 10M+ gold. If a guild has 200M sales in a given week (that's what top guilds on EU-PC make, in a good week), only 3.5% will be actually collected in taxes, which is 7M. So it's actually a deficit, which needs to be covered from other sources, like donations. Now let's say that the guild is full and it also has a donation requirement of 10K, which is paid by 400 out of the 500 players (assuming 100 are not active/about to be kicked). That's another 4M. So 11M in total, barely enough to break even.

victory.immortalb16_ESO

Asardes wrote: »

Commancho wrote: »

I would not be surprised if this gold comes from legit sources like running a trade guild in popular location. Looking at current requirements like 10k gold weekly donation per member + tax cut + rank donation + shady lotteries multiplied by 500 members.. Then comes speculation, playing with prices, mass buying bis items... Selling gold on online auctions.. Economy system in this game is trash.. Free market? Rather monopoly practices...

Most trade guilds in those locations have such high fees or sales requirements precisely because the guild trader fee is quite high, 10M+ gold. If a guild has 200M sales in a given week (that's what top guilds on EU-PC make, in a good week), only 3.5% will be actually collected in taxes, which is 7M. So it's actually a deficit, which needs to be covered from other sources, like donations. Now let's say that the guild is full and it also has a donation requirement of 10K, which is paid by 400 out of the 500 players (assuming 100 are not active/about to be kicked). That's another 4M. So 11M in total, barely enough to break even.

Top guild donation tends to be higher than 10k. Let's say it's 20k. Your figures then become tax 7M, 8M donations, 15m total, profit for the guild owner of 5m a week. Pretty sure I saw a requirement for the top guilds of sales of 500k or 50k donation a week not so long ago...which would net a very tidy profit of 17m..

The bigger issue I have is that as the player base shrinks and trade guilds become inactive, more power will be concentrated in fewer and fewer massive guild groups (like the one that currently controls EU-PC main spots).

New entrants have zero chance of getting the prime spots hence perpetuating the biased system.

I'd much rather we had a central trading area (think massive bazaar) which is it's own area where all guild traders exist and pitch costs are set by the game (can create more than one instance if required, for overflows). And then have an auction house located there too. Would make finding the items you want much easier and making trading in general much better, plus guilds would no longer need to charge donations (or as much).

Fiktius

This can't be said too many times regarding laundering topic:

Yes, there are some guild trader groups/alliances, which got access to massive gold pool, BUT THAT DOES NOT MATTER IN THIS CASE due gold earned by legit way has 0 need to get laundered.

I get that many of you are not happy how the current trader system works, but there is no reason to turn this discussion once again as "we want auction house" thread. If you want thread like that, you are free to go and create another thread about it.

Commancho

Oh yeah trading guilds are non profit mhmmm.. 😋

What a nice calculation you have got here... First of all nobody bids for that much as they have exit plans thanks to multiple guild owning and multiple bids in different most popular areas. Only new wannabe guilds with gms purchasing gold on eBay and overbiding certain locations make this mistake until they ran out of gold.

Average top trading guild brings between 2-5 million weekly profit. Many GMs own multiple trading guilds by take overs with gold or real currency. They call it unions. You can see same 5 owners in each of these guilds. Then they take over entire zone. Even if they lose one trader they still have other 4 in their zone and 1 back up trader in the other zone. They even rotate bids on backup trader if they get continuously overbid by some desperate GM on the same spot, so they can keep high sales on same level without losing good traders in guild which gets overbid. Then they just wait for desperate to shoot out of virtual and real money and get their spot back while doing safely 10 to 20 million weekly. Uuuu big secret of trade in eso has been spoiled 😂

MajBludd

@JKorr its too bad they dont post the numbers of ppl banned. They dont have to use names, etc. Just say we banned X amount of people for X reason.
I think the only time they ever did that was after the CE issues, where they posted the number banned, temp or perma.

Asardes

victory.immortalb16_ESO wrote: »

Asardes wrote: »

Commancho wrote: »

I would not be surprised if this gold comes from legit sources like running a trade guild in popular location. Looking at current requirements like 10k gold weekly donation per member + tax cut + rank donation + shady lotteries multiplied by 500 members.. Then comes speculation, playing with prices, mass buying bis items... Selling gold on online auctions.. Economy system in this game is trash.. Free market? Rather monopoly practices...

Most trade guilds in those locations have such high fees or sales requirements precisely because the guild trader fee is quite high, 10M+ gold. If a guild has 200M sales in a given week (that's what top guilds on EU-PC make, in a good week), only 3.5% will be actually collected in taxes, which is 7M. So it's actually a deficit, which needs to be covered from other sources, like donations. Now let's say that the guild is full and it also has a donation requirement of 10K, which is paid by 400 out of the 500 players (assuming 100 are not active/about to be kicked). That's another 4M. So 11M in total, barely enough to break even.

Top guild donation tends to be higher than 10k. Let's say it's 20k. Your figures then become tax 7M, 8M donations, 15m total, profit for the guild owner of 5m a week. Pretty sure I saw a requirement for the top guilds of sales of 500k or 50k donation a week not so long ago...which would net a very tidy profit of 17m..

The bigger issue I have is that as the player base shrinks and trade guilds become inactive, more power will be concentrated in fewer and fewer massive guild groups (like the one that currently controls EU-PC main spots).

New entrants have zero chance of getting the prime spots hence perpetuating the biased system.

I'd much rather we had a central trading area (think massive bazaar) which is it's own area where all guild traders exist and pitch costs are set by the game (can create more than one instance if required, for overflows). And then have an auction house located there too. Would make finding the items you want much easier and making trading in general much better, plus guilds would no longer need to charge donations (or as much).

Not really. The highest sales requirement I've seen in a guild is 100K/week, most are lower, like 30-50K. And I'm some pretty well placed guilds on EU-PC, 3 of my guilds have stable traders in Belkarth, Vivec and Rawlka, the 4th cycles trough Mournhold, Wayrest, Elden Root, Vivec. Usually it's either minimum sales, or donation, not both. 500K minimum per week is totally unreasonable, since it will result in a guild sales output upwards of 300-400M/week, assuming you have 500 players in them. I don't think any guild can do that sales on a weekly basis consistently. Maybe some of the big ones will hit 300M in the launch week for a new DLC that introduces many good sets, since players will frenzy a bit when buying the set items or upgrades.

The fragmented trader system is actually quite well designed. If they had only one big trading house it would be relatively easy for a few players, or even a single one to instantly corner the market on some items, then pump and dump as he pleases. Having multiple guild stores makes that much more difficult. So the developers thought exactly at this possibility when they designed it.

Commancho

While adding an auction house is far beyond over programming capabilities of developing team, adding way more traders into current zones would prevent monopolies or at least delay them in time beyond end of life cycle of this game and it would seriously damage gold gray market and lower ridiculous prices and speculations.

Synaki

Why do people always cry about the few high volume trade guilds? I am a member of 4 guilds with guild traders, two of them are free and two of them have very modest requirements of 1000-25 000 gold in sales, replaceable by small donations (2k being the most expensive) if you don't manage to sell that much.

Env_t

@Asardes on eu 400k/week is normal requirements for top guilds

considering zos didnt fight bots and price is near 10 usd per 1 million of gold or less now

Jurand80

1mil gold costs 10euros. Peanuts

Kelces

It's very interesting reading about this. Just recently I stumbled upon a thread about rising material prices and the resulting effect on crafting. It certainly makes you think...

VaranisArano

Kelces wrote: »

It's very interesting reading about this. Just recently I stumbled upon a thread about rising material prices and the resulting effect on crafting. It certainly makes you think...

Assuming that's the thread about the festival event, that's complaining about a completely predictable spike in demand during an event where loads of people suddenly want furnishing mats for event writs, with a correspondingly predictable rise in mat prices.

Which has nothing to do with people selling surilie grapes for 9 million gold.

Especially since the problem in this thread was solved and action taken before the event started.

So if its going to make you think, maybe consider the timeline of events, the fact that its two different issues with two different causes, and realize that the current resurgence of this thread is primarily because people are using it to complain about their personal gripes with the trading system.

Commancho

Problem has not been solved. Shady gold auctions exist since couple of years. Oh there is no connection with trading system? And who do you think buys tens or hundreds millions of gold? Average Joe? And these unknown guilds popping up out of nowhere and taking over best traders for several weeks while barely selling anything and having no sales requirements are taking gold from nowhere? And their GMs are running a charity and they like to burn real money and virtual gold on having pun? Or maybe they are aware that you have to invest some real money so you can get your own piece of cake to get profits in the future and become a shady gold seller by yourself once you establish your own business? Yeah, you are right. It's so fair and healthy economy system that every time anyone raises this issue there are same people trying to hysterically derail these threads.

JKorr

Commancho wrote: »

Oh yeah trading guilds are non profit mhmmm.. 😋

What a nice calculation you have got here... First of all nobody bids for that much as they have exit plans thanks to multiple guild owning and multiple bids in different most popular areas. Only new wannabe guilds with gms purchasing gold on eBay and overbiding certain locations make this mistake until they ran out of gold.

Average top trading guild brings between 2-5 million weekly profit. Many GMs own multiple trading guilds by take overs with gold or real currency. They call it unions. You can see same 5 owners in each of these guilds. Then they take over entire zone. Even if they lose one trader they still have other 4 in their zone and 1 back up trader in the other zone. They even rotate bids on backup trader if they get continuously overbid by some desperate GM on the same spot, so they can keep high sales on same level without losing good traders in guild which gets overbid. Then they just wait for desperate to shoot out of virtual and real money and get their spot back while doing safely 10 to 20 million weekly. Uuuu big secret of trade in eso has been spoiled 😂

Yeah. Of course you're right, and you have evidence [even the "not really evidence" according to goregrinder screenshots] to back up what you're saying, right? You've reported this black market/mafia/conspiracy activity to ZOS? You aren't just trying to drum up drama and outrage or anything, right?

Did you see the bid that was posted in the "stick it to the man" takeover of all the trader spots in rawlkha? One of the gms who lost their bid got tired of all the crap people were posting about how little bids for traders in hubs were going for, and how the gms were just rolling in gold or whatever, and she posted her actual bid. The bid that she LOST. [22,568,941] 22 million, 568 thousand, 941 gold bid, that did not win.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/6072752/#Comment_6072752

Commancho

Jkorr I think you have understood nothing from that thread. Actually that GM got rolled by troll buying gold on the internet. It just shows how shity and unfair is current system. If this troll would be a little smarter he would build up his own empire and took over Rawka forever. Something he would never do if there would be 20 traders in Rawka instead of 5.

Asardes

Env_t wrote: »

@Asardes on eu 400k/week is normal requirements for top guilds

considering zos didnt fight bots and price is near 10 usd per 1 million of gold or less now

Can you give me an example of such a guild? I've been playing for a long time but haven't seen one to ask that much. Most advertise on zone chats and even here on the forum.

Commancho

I can't because it would break TOS. What I can however is a simple solution to this problem. Every trader could provide a weekly service to top 5 bidding guilds at once. It would solve multiple problems at once.

MJallday

All this is completely irrelevant, there is nothing in the game you can’t get for more than 1m except a carry which is 12m for vcr3

Having more than 12m is therefore irrelevant

ZOS_Volpe

Hello!

Since Gina has already responded and the conversation is starting to get off topic, we've decided to close this thread. Thank you for your understanding.