Gold sellers vs. BLTC

#8 - Oct. 29, 2012, 5:29 p.m.

Ceronose.6019:

Hello. I read somewhere on this forum about the gold selling to the BLTC gold tranfers. The person who wrote said that gold sellers offered more for less. I went to a site and saw the prices they are charging and I would rather buy gold from them then Anet themselves. Anet says that gold sellers are bad people who steal your account. They say that gold sellers are just sucking you into buying their gold and getting money. John Smith from Anet says…
“Supporting gold sellers doesn’t just damage the game, it supports an industry that lives off of stealing from gamers and ruining communities.”
Well then I have to ask, isn’t Anet doing the same thing but worse? I support Anet in everyway for making such an amazing game for no fee, however, I believe that Anet is sucking my money right out of the drain. Let’s be honest here, you need gold to make gold. But the problem is, people in-game on the BLTC sell stuff for 50 silver at least. Then Anet tells us buying gems and turning it into gold is a positive experience. The problem here Anet is that the amount of gold you get for buying gems at the current economy as of today is outragious. 2800 gems gets you 10 gold. …Thank you for your responses.

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Most of this post points at a serious misunderstanding of how the game and the gaming/RMT industry works. It’s upsetting that you think that going to the goldsellers is 1. your only alternative or 2. acceptable because you encapsulate the risk yourself. I’m not an educator by trade, but perhaps if I can make the issues a little more clear it will help others understand why none of this is true.

Ceronose.6019:

Anet says that gold sellers are bad people who steal your account.

This is a major misunderstanding. Goldsellers are not bad people who steal your account, they are bad people who steal accounts. One of the primary tactics of goldsellers is getting into legitamate players accounts and using them as throwaway accounts. How often have you seen an advertiser in map and thought to yourself, that guy has a lifetime of about 2 minutes and that’s probably some poor guy who just didn’t pick a great password, or reused an old password from a different game. We’re always working on ways to make accounts more secure which helps, but it isn’t perfect.

Ceronose.6019:

Well then I have to ask, isn’t Anet doing the same thing but worse?… Anet I just wanna bring up the point that if you guys had a set amount of gold you get from gems (and make it reasonable) then people might not be turning towards the gold sellers as I am.

No we aren’t doing the same thing. We created an exchange fueled by player demand, not a port of sales of other people’s property. We don’t hack accounts, we provide the service to help return people’s hacked accounts and increase their future security. We don’t bot our game or engage in other illegal or destructive activities, because we love the game and the community, so we don’t create profit at the expensive of the players.
Secondly, there are several good economic reasons why we shouldn’t set a flat rate and sell gold. The forefront of which is that gold’s value is very relative to the scarcity of gold. With a flat rate and sales of gold we would risk hyper-inflating the economy. This would in turn alienate new players, and make the game much less fun overall.

Ceronose.6019:

So if I want to buy gold from gold sellers, why shouldn’t I do it other than the fact that gold sellers have better buisness than you(ANET) does and you are trapping us (your customers) into buying gems from you only. I think it’s unfair and I don’t like being forced into buying from a certain company when I should have the freedom to choose.

This argument is equivalent to saying the mob has a much better deal on cigarettes because they stole a whole truck and can sell them for $1 a pack now. Why should you have to buy cigarettes from the store when the mob sells them so cheap?
People invested huge quantities of money and huge parts of their lives to make this game. Arguing that the creators of a product are practicing monopolistic behavior relative to black market copies is upsetting. So I will say this, you have the freedom to choose, you may choose to play the games that the goldsellers spent their lives creating…but I don’t think you want to play those games.