BlazingDynamo wrote: »

ZonasArch wrote: »

squinquargesimus wrote: »

Guys, it wasn't planned, it was really a situation of some dedicated troll (or group of) doing it to make some sort of statement about cartels and the GMs running to Rimmen asap to get a backup. It wouldn't have made sense to do that as some sort of publicity stunt, especially not when an xpac with tons of new stuff just dropped (and actually, early adopters do shop around this time and pay premium. idk why, but they do: source, me being able to sell new things for three times as much as they were worth two to three weeks earlier for both of the last chapters).

Looked like a very creative buthurt individual to me. Talk about dedication... Blood pressure thru the roof!

Still funny though, considering they also failed miserably after having succeed for such a brief period.

How did they fail? They got the whole fourms including you to talk about it. And we all know those guilds ain't going to make ad mucj gold as they would in their normal spots. On top of that the members pay their stupid high premium to secure a top tier spot and they failed. I hope they don't charge their members for this week.

I also hope this RIOT squad does this again. Good on them.

These greasy GMs sit back and charge out the butt and pocket the gold like crazy. You don't need to charge 500 members 10k a week to get a spot in town. As if theu spend 5,000,000 a week on that trader. They get it every week so you know most guilds don't bother bidding which allows them to drop the bid prove slowly resulting in more $$$ for the pocket.

Ri_Khan wrote: »

So let's say this didn't happen last night and these guilds won their bids for their usual Rawl spots for another week, would they have been able to move into the new spots in Rimmen this morning?

Anslay wrote: »

The reason there's a "monopoly" on success has nothing to do with a monopoly and everything to do with leadership. Like many other GMs, I deeply care about the people and the communities and work very hard to help others be successful. Yes, a huge effort is put forward to keep our favorite trading location with high bids weekly, but we also teach people how to build wealth to better their gaming experience, host wonderful contests with big prizes, offer community days where we make free gear for new and returning players, support charity events to help the server thrive, host art, housing, and writing contests for our members. When I'm out recruiting and someone says they're new, I send them a "Welcome to ESO" packet with usually some gold and xp pots, shockingly this is not because I'm a greedy gold monger that wants to feed off of people, but because I genuinely care that new players to this game feel welcomed! I've worked at this since just after game launch more than 5 years ago and it has never been easy to run a trading guild in this game. It has been a tremendous gold, cash, time, and energy sink, but I do it because I enjoy building a place and community that enhances all of our recreation time.

This image a fat cat is not at all the life of luxury I've lived in this game, maybe there's a different experience in other games, but not here. ZOS has put us through varying challenging game mechanics from a blind bid system that published your bid where your competitors could plant someone in your guild to either see it outright (I think it was this way for a couple of years) or calculate it out (revision that still didn't help) so every week you had to be concerned with spies in your guild, yet still need to carry on and run a guild that is strong enough to create some type of successful bidding strategy. Oh, we also had the great fun of the horrific maintenance windows overlapping trader flip where you not only had to bid at the last seconds before the servers went down at 4am, but had to sit there and wait for hours in case they came back up in between that and trader flip at 7 or 8am Monday morning to keep your guild from getting sniped. That was SUPER FUN... just imagine someone feeding me grapes in the lap of luxury while I lost sleep and had to go to work in the morning after. Most of us have been here a long time and our bids were transparent to our guilds for YEARS and the things you state are just simply things we never do, have never done, or will never do.

The guilds that are the most successful have built in transparency to other trusted players to ensure ethical choices are made.

In short, everyone has personal choices to make, but I am fairly sick of the bashing blanket statements without information and having my motives questioned when I know very clearly what I and many other amazing guild leaders in this game work tirelessly to provide.

sylviermoone wrote: »

It is not losing a bid that bothers me about this situation. The system is what it is, and anyone can lose a bid on any given week. For all the comments I’ve read in the past few days about how us “filthy, dirty, money-grubbing GM’s” are crying and upset about losing, I’ve seen no evidence of that. Sure, it doesn’t feel great to lose, and there is not a single person in my guild that takes a losing bid harder than I do. I have 500 members who donate and participate every week, and they trust ME to secure a high traffic location on their behalf. When we lose, and this is not the first time we’ve lost, it makes me feel sick. Not because of all the sweet sweet profits I’m going to miss out on personally; I don’t profit personally. It makes me feel sick because I have let my community down, even though we all know how the system works, and that losing on any given week is a real possibility.

Usually, when faced with a losing bid, I can at least tip my hat to my competitors for a well-placed bid, and find some solace in the fact that a different guild gets to have the benefit of a really awesome location for the week. Please tell me, though: who is benefitting this week? It isn’t as if there are 5 new guilds, loaded up with 450-500 member each with a full guild store of merch to sell sitting in Rawl’kha right now. For all the talk about how this person is “doing it for the little guy”, I see no actual “little guys” represented here. How many people have items listed in the RIOTS guild stores again?

People have all sorts of opinions about how the economy works, and that’s fine. Certainly, just as some PvP’ers or some PvE’ers are not nice, there are GMs that are pretty bad, as well. Bad enough to shutter 5 fully active guilds, kick 2500 members and steal all the gold for themselves. But just as those bad apples in the PvP and PvE communities are anomalies, so are the type of bad GM’s that are the target of so much fear mongering. There are a few GM’s that I don’t care for on a personal level but I still respect them as fellow GMs.

The fact that the community (as represented by the forum dwellers) has been foaming at the mouth to proclaim this guy a “hero” while rabidly cheering the misfortune of 2300+ players (500 per guild with an allowance for dual membership) is twisted and just plain mean spirited. The hate and vitriol pointed at guild leaders specifically, who spend a ton of time, effort and real money to create communities for other players to thrive in is beyond sick, and sadly emblematic of the world we live in.

I have personally done everything in my power over my years as GM of Angry Unicorn Traders to foster a positive and welcoming environment while maintaining the highest level of transparency to my members. I’m really proud of the fact that my guild has some of the LOWEST minimum requirements of any major trading guild in the game, making it super easy for new and casual players to have access to a high traffic place to sell their goods. All of that information (and then some) is publicly available at tinyurl.com/AUTGuild. You don’t even need to be a guild member to check it out.

Lastly; I’ve seen claims that the kiosks in Rawl were able to be purchased for around 7 million gold per location (35 million for the city) in order to prove that the “money-grubbing, dirty trade guild GMs” were fleecing their members and lying about our bid costs. I’ve seen some members of the community calling for proof from the RIOTS guild leaders of what was spent. I am 100% sure that there will be no proof coming to back up that claim because it’s simply not true. While I can’t speak for every Rawl guild that was dislocated, I can absolutely speak for my own. We laid down over 22 million for our location; if the other guild’s bid similarly….well, I’ll leave you all to do the math.

I don’t provide this information to provoke empathy; it’s clear to me from these threads that many in the forum community have none. I provide this information only to repudiate the claim that so little was spent to take over the city. If that claim is clearly a lie, does it not call into question stated motives as well?

My guild, when taken as a whole, is not “the little guy”, but we do have lots of “little guys” as members, as many large trade guilds do. I look out for them to the best of my ability each and every week. It’s a pity that more players can’t do the same.