Sending Gold for Crowns is now a ToS Violation (According to customer support)

spartaxoxo · July 2023

I have had customer support refund me coins after getting scammed by a guild mate over crown crates sales. I presume the person who did it got banned as well as he never logged in again. So, this would most certainly be a disappointing reversal of policy.

Paulytnz · July 2023

Casul wrote: »

Maybe it’s time to let players trade crowns and gold in a window system similar to item trading. You know so there can actually be a perfectly safe way to make the exchange and then the receiving player can buy whatever they want with the crowns.

This exactly, it's about time this game got with the times......

RedRoomGaming · July 2023

Will they be coming after everyone who’s sold crowns in game?

belial5221_ESO · July 2023

Trading windows you can still be scammed.cause one makes offer first,and other can quickly change it and hit done.So still not safe.Mailing COD or special tokens in traders are alot safer,but still not perfect.

"Will they be coming after everyone who’s sold crowns in game?"
No,they allowed it.I'm guessing whoever got that email has had shady looking activity or been flagged for stuff in the past.Also,could be trying to send someone crates which are not allowed to have then in their country,knowing they pay lots for them.

Carlos93 · July 2023

ZOS should definitely put a system of exchanging gold for Crowns in the game.
Bankers could be used for this purpose.

1,000,000 gold for 100 Crowns for example.

Lumenn · July 2023

Carlos93 wrote: »

ZOS should definitely put a system of exchanging gold for Crowns in the game.
Bankers could be used for this purpose.

1,000,000 gold for 500 Crowns for example.

Not a bad idea but that ratio is horrible. (I mostly play Xbox na and the rate you usually find is 100-1)

Just don't have a set conversion rate and it'll work with every platform depending on their current economy and agreed on price.

Unless you're actually referring to like a gold sink type of deal where we trade ZOS gold for crowns? With bots and whatever other gold making exploits that'd be a huge loss for them.

But back to the original yeah, let the bankers do it in a trade window between two players, and once one person hits submit no changes can be made, only submit or cancel 👍

Elrender · July 2023

@ZOS_Kevin we need your clarification please

DragonRacer · July 2023

Sadly, it is now Saturday so I highly doubt we will hear anything from Kevin until Monday at the earliest, IF we even do.

That this has been left to fester over the weekend in this sort of frustration and uncertainty and confusion is… not great.

Carlos93 · July 2023

Setting a limit to the number of antiques that can be made per day solves the problem.

100 antiques per day.

omnidoh · July 2023

Zalathorm wrote: »

So if we learn that
1. This was just terrible communication from customer support, who basically said the wrong thing
2. Gold for crowns is not in fact a violation of ToS
3. The CS ticket system will not be used to process any crate gifting when the expectation of gold is involved

Then how do they determine who is worthy to receive a gift? Is it:
1. Immediate chat history involving gold exchange
2. Past history of receiving gifted crowns and mailing large sums of gold with the seller?
3. Some other pattern?

How many human resource hours are they putting into "vetting" these crate gifting requests? How many other customer support issues are being overwhelmed by their attempt to not let players send gold in return?

What if I had intended on sending gold, but now want to just receive gifted crowns without gold. Am I ineligible because I was following the rules in the past? How long am I ineligible for?

Or, maybe they mean what they say and this is another step toward a new normal

Brilliant.
I wonder if ZoS has employees on Payroll who can actually answer those very valid and potentially legally-contentious points? 🤔
One might speculate that they do, however the fact that these and other similar subject-matter actually exist is simultaneously humorous and embarrassing. #FirstWorldVirtualProblems

MidniteOwl1913 · July 2023

I didn't even know you could gift crown crates or crown store items. I would have loved to give my daughter something from the crown store for her birthday.

DinoZavr · July 2023

@ZOS_Kevin
@ZOS_GinaBruno

could we get the clarification, please?

wilykcat · July 2023

This is my guess. The reason why they don't want players to exchange in-game items for real world money is likely due to cyber security reasons, so players don't get scammed, and the law.

Carlos93 wrote: »

ZOS should definitely put a system of exchanging gold for Crowns in the game.
Bankers could be used for this purpose.

1,000,000 gold for 100 Crowns for example.

Yes. I like guild wars 2 currency exchange system. Players can exchange gold for gems or gems for gold. Select certain amounts or type in a custom amount. It automatically displays how much gold it will cost to get a certain amount of gems. It shows the calculations and values of both currencies.

Panthermic · July 2023

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

i still think the funniest part of this whole thing is that this massive convoluted process to gift crates is ONLY for crown crates, other items can still be normally gifted in game without any hassle lol

i think i mentioned in the other thread as soon as i saw the steps you had to go through that this kind of thing was going to happen
minimum expected turnaround time was 48 hours

going through customer service is pretty much never fun, no matter what it the problem is

Except for that Crown Crates touch laws--as it involves gambling--and are banned in some countries--like in Belgium for example--, while every other item in CS is a direct purchase, and that is not banned in any country.

WolfStar07 · July 2023

That's what Seals of Endeavors were created for, to directly buy items from crown crates through earnable currency.

Rageypoo · July 2023

WolfStar07 wrote: »

That's what Seals of Endeavors were created for, to directly buy items from crown crates through earnable currency.

currency that takes a year to earn enough to buy 1 big item. Who knows, someone could save up for 10 years to get 1 whole crate!

Parrot1986 · July 2023

WolfStar07 wrote: »

That's what Seals of Endeavors were created for, to directly buy items from crown crates through earnable currency.

I’ve bought 2 things from endeavours since they were released and at 13 right now so still a few months away from being able to get a top tier item.

That system is woeful, WoW has a much better system for this and crown selling that would be much easier to do.

Endeavours in wow are easy, you get 500 coins for logging in once a month and then a whole list of activities you can do that month from questing, crafting, dungeons, pvp whatever you want. Then you buy whatever you want from the trader and roughly can get 5 or 6 items a month from mounts to transmog.

Any coins you don’t spend carry over and any item you can’t afford you can carry over to the next month if you really want it.

That’s a proper system which encourages people to play and earn and rewards them monthly rather than every 7 months.

And crowns is simple. Make them sellable in the traders. Zos sets the crown price based you list crowns on the store, someone buys them you get the gold they get the crowns added to their balance.

Zos makes this overly complex and slow.

zaria · July 2023

Panthermic wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

i still think the funniest part of this whole thing is that this massive convoluted process to gift crates is ONLY for crown crates, other items can still be normally gifted in game without any hassle lol

i think i mentioned in the other thread as soon as i saw the steps you had to go through that this kind of thing was going to happen
minimum expected turnaround time was 48 hours

going through customer service is pretty much never fun, no matter what it the problem is

Except for that Crown Crates touch laws--as it involves gambling--and are banned in some countries--like in Belgium for example--, while every other item in CS is a direct purchase, and that is not banned in any country.

However if you buy crown crates from someone else for in game gold its no longer gambling with real money but with an in game only currency and if you are in Belgium I assume you can not buy them for crowns.

Yes this might be exploited another way, an Belgian buys me an mount for money and I buy crown crates for him and we trade.

But again I'm very sure the real issue here is that support is bored of handling all the crown scamming.
Had it been legal issues it would not be written like this.
But they could had been more clear, simply if you get scammed trading crown items for gold don't expect help from support.
Report the other player but don't expect you gold back.

petanko · July 2023

The solution for all this madness is quite simple:

wilykcat · July 2023

petanko wrote: »

The solution for all this madness is quite simple:

Exactly. I want this in eso. Now that's what I'm taking about.

Paulytnz · July 2023

petanko wrote: »

The solution for all this madness is quite simple:

Oh this brings back good memories of that game. Sadly, not enough to make me want to play it again.

No stealing,
No housing,
No antiquities,
No chests around when exploring,
No houses or any other such buildings to go in and explore/loot,

the list goes on and on and on....

Lags · July 2023

wilykcat wrote: »

petanko wrote: »

The solution for all this madness is quite simple:

Exactly. I want this in eso. Now that's what I'm taking about.

^ one of the reasons ive been playing gw2 since around laucnh, and been playing that over eso for most of this year. Zenimax is out of their minds for not having a similar system. Maybe one day we will, but it will come 10 years down the road like everything else. tbh zos should take a look at gw2 and take many things they do and bring them to eso. Gw2 does almosso much better than eso, and they are pretty similar in some ways.

The only reason i still play eso, or try to, is because when it comes to pvp nothing is like the combat in eso. But the balancing of cyrodil/wvw, bgs, and pve, separately, is another thing pulling me to gw2. Also the lack of ridiculous healing. Its not a terrible idea to take inspiration where something is done better. Both games have things they do well, but gw2 has many things eso could look at and make improvements to the systems here. But they wont.

Irhak · July 2023

Zalathorm wrote: »

I'm posting this here because many players may not be aware of what is going on in the new gifting crown crate system.

(...)

Fast forward to the new system of gifting crates. Players have been going through the official process to gift crates by opening customer support tickets as described here. https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/638375/crown-crate-gifting-temporary-solution-process/p1

Players are receiving some form of response like the following...

(...)

Was talking with my guildmates about it... There was and intrested opinion raised up... basically their system recognize gifting crown store items as proper in-game items tradable for gold but crown crates would be counted as out-of-game items... more or less with less colorfull statements

Lags · July 2023

Paulytnz wrote: »

petanko wrote: »

The solution for all this madness is quite simple:

Oh this brings back good memories of that game. Sadly, not enough to make me want to play it again.

No stealing,
No housing,
No antiquities,
No chests around when exploring,
No houses or any other such buildings to go in and explore/loot,

the list goes on and on and on....

almost that entire list is wrong. idk when you played but god the pve in gw2 is so much better and rewarding than eso. Not even close. And there is almost everything on that list in one way or another. Some things eso does better for sure, like housing but eso probably does housing better than any mmo, but it exists in gw2.

zaria · July 2023

petanko wrote: »

The solution for all this madness is quite simple:

How does this work? As how is the prices calculated?
See that gold is around 100 gold for 500 gems. But 500 gems cost around 146 gold. Its also players offer gold or gems for sale and its player driven.
I say it would be simpler to make an coffer with crowns you could by at crown store and sell or gift.

Katheriah · July 2023

What this topic needs is a reply from ZOS.

Paulytnz · July 2023

Lags wrote: »

Paulytnz wrote: »

petanko wrote: »

The solution for all this madness is quite simple:

Oh this brings back good memories of that game. Sadly, not enough to make me want to play it again.

No stealing,
No housing,
No antiquities,
No chests around when exploring,
No houses or any other such buildings to go in and explore/loot,

the list goes on and on and on....

almost that entire list is wrong. idk when you played but god the pve in gw2 is so much better and rewarding than eso. Not even close. And there is almost everything on that list in one way or another. Some things eso does better for sure, like housing but eso probably does housing better than any mmo, but it exists in gw2.

Say what now? There was no housing when I left GW2, all there was, was the guild house system, and that was very basic and just not worth it.

Are you telling me that there are buildings that you can actually go into now and explore? Because there wasn't when I was playing (from launch up to 6 years after). There was that one bar in DR that came from a DLC quest or something and maybe dungeons but that was about it. No houses you could enter in any maps. Maybe 1 or 2 caves but that was about it. The camera in the game seemed too janky for it, which is why I assumed they left it alone.

There were also NO containers you could loot. As for stealing/antiquities, yeah no, just didn't exist. Unless you are counting the Thief's Class skills, they do not count lmao. I saw recently GW2 finally got fishing, but I was sure that would have been about it lol?

Don't get me wrong, GW2 does some things better than ESO, such as World bosses, the radiant zone events or whatever they were called. But when it comes to loot, I think ESO does it better. Don't even get me started on the leather gathering in GW2. Rare drops from mobs and you had to go to certain zones to get the different tiers of it.....that was a real pain. Then on top of that you got that diminished drops thing kicking in after 15 mins where you start to get no drops at all. Did they finally remove that? I doubt it...

barney2525 · July 2023

Still don't understand why crates got singled out. Someone wants to gift a Motif book, and that is fine ? Or a costume? or most any specific thing in the store ? All these things could be transactions as Gift for Gold.

What's so special about crates that makes the process any different?

Lumenn · July 2023

barney2525 wrote: »

Still don't understand why crates got singled out. Someone wants to gift a Motif book, and that is fine ? Or a costume? or most any specific thing in the store ? All these things could be transactions as Gift for Gold.

What's so special about crates that makes the process any different?

Because crates are skirting(and in some countries crossing) the gambling line. They have to be very careful as while it's lucrative, it's also controversial in many places.

purple-magicb16_ESO · July 2023

Neither gold nor crowns are real world money. But even that doesn't matter, because you don't trade directly for crowns anyway, you trade for the items that the crowns buy. So someone trades in game gold to someone else who buys the crown store item for them. So Gina's statement is true.

This is what really bugs me about in chat requests for this. Don't ask for 5k crowns, ask for the banker or the merchant that you want. This would be more accurate.