Prevent underground transactions, example from WOW Galleywix

Kaielogy

I hope Steven will account for gold/item sellers, as it is going to be a free market. Underground transactions will be hard to catch unless there are whistleblowers. I want to start this discussion because of the recent controversy from Galleywix from WoW.

If Gold selling is inevitable will Steven consider doing their own WoW tokens instead?

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybOMK-8EGb4

Syltharis

No tokens please. It is what actually created more of those gold traders, which actually gives them additional way to play the game without spending actual money. That being said AoC will be way different than WoW in many areas. Leveling is a lot slower, we will need 4 to 5 months to get to lvl 50 (which will be max lvl at launch), and in order to generate gold ingame you need to spend crapload of time while gathering, processin and crafting to be able to accumulate substantial amount of gold. And you cannot do this alone as you will need more people because you can only Master one proffesion. Time and effort put into making extra gold is not worth the IRL money.

Beeper

No tokens please.

They inflate the ingame economy, and result in casual pay to win behavior. And over time, as more gold is created than destroyed, it gets to the point where the average player can't afford anything. This legal gold buying, along with several design decisions, is ultimately what lead to the downfall of Gallywix. Let me explain a little bit, for those that don't come from WoW.

For those that don't know, Gallywix was a 'marketplace' that helped match up buyers and sellers of content carries, in exchange for a cut. These carries were typically the highest level content available which gets players gear, achievements, mounts, and more. Where this gold comes from, and who legally buys it, shouldn't surprise anyone.

What exactly happened in this instance was: Method, one of the games most successful guilds, which consistently clears the hardest content before anyone else, had previously bought gold from this group. Over 100 million gold, at least. Why were they buying gold, and why is this significant?

In each raid tier, trash in the raids have a chance to drop extremely powerful Bind on Equip gear. This gear's power level can be multiplied to ridiculous levels, which make these pieces ridiculously valuable early on. Method, and several of the other guilds that compete for world firsts, use an obscene amount of gold to buy up Bind on Equip Gear on different servers and move it to their server for their players to use. Instead of buying the Wow Token, they bought the gold from the Gallywix for a cheaper price. That's their sin, buying gold from the wrong place.

This is just an elaborate example of how design decisions like server transfer, powerful bind on equip gear, and legal gold buying can impact the community in negative ways and lead to these underground transactions. Let's talk about that. And also, if you fast forward to ~48m on the video below Steven talks about moderation and gold buyers.

https://youtu.be/zWguiuv9iyY

iSinner

Steven said no P2W.

Tokens are P2W. As soon as there is ANY smell of P2W, this game is dead for me, and i would guess, many others.

Judeth

iSinner wrote: »

Steven said no P2W.

Tokens are P2W. As soon as there is ANY smell of P2W, this game is dead for me, and i would guess, many others.

Agreed. Even if this becomes my favorite game, if any p2w shows up i'm out simply because of how many times they stressed there won't be any.