AlliN wrote: »

That would be as reasonable as arresting slave sellers, but leaving alone slave keepers. Becasue, they, like, don't create the problem.

Gold TRAFFIC is bad, from both sides. Buyer creates market. If there would be no ***, there would not be people who profit on them exploiting children.

Do you get my point now? I know it's a harsh metaphore, but I see I'm not comming through.

You're comparing apple and oranges(see what I did there?)

Seriously you're comparing slavery to virtual currency?

Endolith wrote: »

They have to address the buyer in some way significant enough to stop the problem. Sellers generate new accounts all the time and don't care about the bans. Buyers presumably want to play and do care. Taking the gold is a decent idea. Personally, I'd update the TOS and start banning buyer accounts. Put a message up when the launcher starts to warn people. That would put a dent in the problem.

This.

I don't care what anyone says..if you ban the buyers many players quit, and/or get banned unnecessarily than quit(see my Runescape arguments above)

thegamekittenub17_ESO wrote: »

Depends on the TOS. If the said gold buyers are disrupting the game for others (like causing tons of bots, spams, and etc) then a punishment should be held for those people. To some these gold sellers are griefing non buying players with spam mail, spam invite to gold selling guilds, taking over nods and bosses.

To what degree is always the question. If it was my game (and it is not) I would ban the buyers also. I would be just as hard on the buyer as the gold seller. I've seen gold sellers kill a good game/MMo in my gaming years.

But you have to look at this from the prospect of money also when it comes to budding MMOs, can they afford to ban the buyer? In the long run the gold sellers will crush a game if nothing is done and honest players will just move on to another game. But a fresh game can be hurt by banning paying customers.

It is a battle either way. But with this game having so many other issues, and now the constant battle for nods, bosses, and not being hammered by gold sellers in every form of the game..there are even more people saying screw it and moving on.

If a player buys gold and gets banned it is on them. If they want to slander the game for that then they should have played fairly. I think CS should be investigating and banning sellers first then maybe a warning placed on the account of the buyer and remove the gold they paid for with no compensation. 2 strikes you are out!

I was thinking about this the other day too, how come these large companies never push legal action against the gold buyers? It wouldn't be hard to catch a specific company...IE: watch for spam, contact the site, bait and buy some gold, then send the lawyers after them...Just my thoughts. I hope something happens though because MMO's more than ever need the fairness card all around. Gold buyers just inflate the economy and make it harder for fair subscription paying players.

KerinKor wrote: »

There are many reasons why you should care about gold buyers, or maybe you simply want to be able to do it yourself without any possible sanction.

As for my 'childish response', I was serious, if you want to play a game where the fatness of your wallet determines what you can do in the game there are plenty around, just leave ESO out of it.

Thankfully, Zenimax will treat your idea with the same contempt as you treated mine, so at least a gold shop won't happen.

1&2...... I doubt it.

Either there will be a gold shop, or gold buyers aren't banned, and are only warned.

In this case..I can haz bound gear from raid dungeons that cannot be bought or sold...plox?

KerinKor wrote: »

I have no doubt buyers won't be banned, so you'll be able to carry on buying gold without problem, good for you.

You must have overlooked my OP where I mentioned a "Civil Discussion"...also no one ever said they were a gold buyer in here, and most explicitly stated they were not(myself included)..whom was this directed to?

Banning buyers will kill the market for sellers.

Win, win, imo.

robert wrote: »

Banning buyers will kill the market for sellers.

Win, win, imo.

Banning buyers would kill the game, imo....see my Runescape argument above.
The only game I know of the properly do this is EVE online, and you can buy from private sellers and not get banned anyway. Which is what would happen.....gold buying would go underground, and alot of players would quit...probably why the auto-ban bots do not ban the suspected buyers, but ban the suspected sellers.

Etchesketch wrote: »

I don't know what some folks are smoking but it's basic economics. These other games you mention that go F2P are doing it for a reason, it's because they can make more money by selling ingame stuff the the smaller community of players than trying to maintain the larger community of subscription based players.

You start banning subscribers for buying gold and you will quickly learn what F2P games are like, cause this game will do the same. It's business to them, not a game at all. The online gaming world is littered with subscription wannabe games, where are they now? Most never last a year on subscriptions.

If they cant stop the spam, they can't ban buyers. Period.

Lastly, I don't buy gold. As I stated.

This.

My opinion in a nutshell, and me neither I don't see the point...gold is easy to make in the guild stores.

Also if this game goes F2P I'm out. That would suck because I am enjoying it as is and would like to continue exploring the content.

Endolith wrote: »

The idea that they'd have to go f2p if they ban buyers is nonsense. It wouldn't take long for people who want to play the game and are considering buying gold to learn about people being banned and thinking twice. Also, the long-term benefits of having a game not littered with gold spammers and bots would likely gain them more in players over the coming months than they lose through banning gold buyers.

I agree with this.

Endolith wrote: »

The idea that they'd have to go f2p if they ban buyers is nonsense. It wouldn't take long for people who want to play the game and are considering buying gold to learn about people being banned and thinking twice. Also, the long-term benefits of having a game not littered with gold spammers and bots would likely gain them more in players over the coming months than they lose through banning gold buyers.

LOL Zeni is making money off the gold sellers...so why would they ban them...right?

thegamekittenub17_ESO wrote: »

Then if Zenimax is okay with making money off gold buyers and gold sellers. That is okay I suppose.

As I said WoW is coming out with a new expansion this fall. I can take my money elsewhere.

With that said, it isn't because I don't like this game. I love it. But it appears more and more people make excuses for things that are wrong with a game and people who cheat in the game these days.

I could care less how many would quit. I was sad my friend was perm banned from Guild Wars 1, but I didn't quit playing (yes she was also in our guild). She did what she did and that is that. She was warned by many guild members not to do it, but yet she did.

I still think buyers should be punished for buying gold if not perm banned from the game. Their need for I want everything NOW is making the game unenjoyable for others.

1. WoW doesn't ban gold buyers.....or punish them at all.

2. How?

Turelus wrote: »

They should do what CCP does with EVE Online and just remove all the ill-gained money and push your wallet into the negative so you have to grind you butt off to buy anything again. People don't seem to buy again after they went through that.

THIS. Don't ban my buddies...just make their account have minus a ton of gold so I can watch them grind their butt off and lol all day. This would be awesome and pretty funny imo.

The negative idea is great... until your buddies simply buy more gold to get out of the debt. If they bought gold once, they probably will again. Or they'll just have somebody else who bought gold give it to them, since these birds of a feather tend to flock together.

TBH I think a three strike system with removal of all gold works best.

Strike 1: Remove all the gold on your account/character and warn you not to buy from them and next time you face a ban.

Strike 2: One or two week ban, removal of all gold and a warning next time your account will be closed.

Strike 3: Perma-ban if they want to play again they have to buy a new account.

It's a harsh system to perma-ban a player but if they continue to break EULA then they deserve exactly that and two warnings is more than enough.

I do however thing we the players need better gold seller reporting tools, I have posted a few times about EVE Online's way of managing it (link to a thread here) but at the very least I would like to see "Report Gold Seller" option added on right click of players in chat, the cross for rejecting a guild invite and in the mail screen when viewing a mail received. This option needs to send an automated message to GM/CS and ignore the player for you, this way we're one click (two if you add a warning for your action) then back to playing and less time in the report window.

*edit to turn my "bad" into "ban"... I should drink more coffee.

Turelus wrote: »

TBH I think a three strike system with removal of all gold works best.

Strike 1: Remove all the gold on your account/character and warn you not to buy from them and next time you face a bad.

Strike 2: One or two week bad, removal of all gold and a warning next time your account will be closed.

Strike 3: Perma-ban if they want to play again they have to buy a new account.

It's a harsh system to perma-ban a player but if they continue to break EULA then they deserve exactly that and two warnings is more than enough.

I do however thing we the players need better gold seller reporting tools, I have posted a few times about EVE Online's way of managing it (link to a thread here) but at the very least I would like to see "Report Gold Seller" option added on right click of players in chat, the cross for rejecting a guild invite and in the mail screen when viewing a mail received. This option needs to send an automated message to GM/CS and ignore the player for you, this way we're one click (two if you add a warning for your action) then back to playing and less time in the report window.

This is the best way by far.

Endolith wrote: »

The comments about WoW aren't entirely accurate. They may not do it anymore (I don't know) but they used to ban buyers. I know at least two people who had their accounts banned for it back in the vanilla days. You can search online to find information relating to the fact that they used to ban them, so it isn't accurate to say they never did. Not a bad thing for ZOS to consider until they figure out how to deal with them.

Not anymore....they'll lose too much money.