IMPORTANT: Regarding Buddy Keys and Secondary Market

[GM-Kardoras]

I just wanted to give everyone a heads up on this because I have seen a lot of talk about handing out buddy keys in posts recently. Be very careful who you give buddy keys out to. I would recommend not giving keys out to anyone that you do not know and trust personally- thus anyone who is not your "buddy".

We have banned many, many accounts tied to gold sales and advertisements. I am sure this is starting to get expensive for these RLT companies and they are looking to scam people out of accounts be it through buddy key requests or other means. Do not fall victim to one of these scams. Trust me, you do not want us to link any association with these guys to you.

So, by all means do give out buddy keys to your friends, family, guildmates, etc. But please be aware of who you are associating yourself and your account with.

And as always, never buy any items or coins (or powerleveling), or have any association with these individuals at all. We have already had to take action on quite a few player accounts who were foolish enough to associate with these groups. We decided a long time ago that we were going to aggressively fight RLT vendors and the detrimental impact they have on mmos, and we plan to continue to do so.

[Zhou]

1st :)

[sweetdigs]

*cheer*.

Let's hope they stand true in the face of adversity on this issue.

[Gein]

You guys have done a wonderful job combating the gold sellers so far. I love the public execution style of the ban messages. Bravo. :)

[Jeff]

They are trying desperately, eh? Probably getting their panties in a bunch when you global shout to the server who was the seller and that he has been banned. I bet they hate that.

[outlanderbz]

You guys have done a wonderful job combating the gold sellers so far. I love the public execution style of the ban messages. Bravo. :)

that is pretty cool :)

[MagicNumbers]

Great stuff. I personally can't stand playing with people who buy things with real money. That's just me of course, but I like to think of it as playing a game with fun competition.

[Bubbels]

You guys should add an option to the petition system for gold farmers. Something in the logic that grabs the last 20 lines of chat text. I would imagine that would help identify the farmers.

[sweetdigs]

You guys should add an option to the petition system for gold farmers. Something in the logic that grabs the last 20 lines of chat text. I would imagine that would help identify the farmers.


Can we get this stickied for all to see?

[Kruzayn]

Question for the GM:

Friend of mine got a mail message from a gold seller the other day. I had him petition it, but is there a way to "forward" the message to a GM or "report this mail" etc?

[Mirra]

I love the public execution style of the ban messages. Bravo.
I havent seen anything public. Where do they announce it? lol

[MagicNumbers]

I havent seen anything public. Where do they announce it? lol

They announce it with a global /tell

[Vauhs]

Great to hear. So nice to hear things like this, rather then about how your opening a server for people who want to cheat their way thrue the game.

[Apogee]

I just wanted to give everyone a heads up on this because I have seen a lot of talk about handing out buddy keys in posts recently. Be very careful who you give buddy keys out to. I would recommend not giving keys out to anyone that you do not know and trust personally- thus anyone who is not your "buddy".

We have banned many, many accounts tied to gold sales and advertisements. I am sure this is starting to get expensive for these RLT companies and they are looking to scam people out of accounts be it through buddy key requests or other means. Do not fall victim to one of these scams. Trust me, you do not want us to link any association with these guys to you.

So, by all means do give out buddy keys to your friends, family, guildmates, etc. But please be aware of who you are associating yourself and your account with.

And as always, never buy any items or coins (or powerleveling), or have any association with these individuals at all. We have already had to take action on quite a few player accounts who were foolish enough to associate with these groups. We decided a long time ago that we were going to aggressively fight RLT vendors and the detrimental impact they have on mmos, and we plan to continue to do so.

Excellent, keep up the good work. We can worry about the bugs another day.

:rolleyes:

[MagicNumbers]

Excellent, keep up the good work. We can worry about the bugs another day.

:rolleyes:

What? You can't chew gum and walk?

[Spritzen]

Excellent, keep up the good work. We can worry about the bugs another day.

:rolleyes:

Excellent, keep up the sarcasm and we can ignore all the good effort.

[Deicide]

Wait... What are buddy keys?

[Teeril]

What? You can't chew gum and walk?

Depends on the amount of gum under your shoes..


But anyhow, I think it's a good thing to keep actively banning gold sellers/buyers..

Wonder if anything can be done to the sites selling it, would probably make it a bit easier.

[Kappa]

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for taking a stern stance on real money trade.

I have been a subscriber to several games in the past few years and ALL of them have eventually had their economies ruined by the jacka$$es that try to sell currency in-game.

Keep up your hard-core policy and I promise you will retain more subs than if you let your policy go. Kudos for having the fortitude to stick to your guns.

[Jayce]

Wait... What are buddy keys?


You get an extra account key when you buy the game which you can use to try before you buy.

[Nizar]

I was just thinkin', a few days ago, how I haven't seen any spam in ages.. Was wondering how you guys did it- good job though. Let's just hope the sneaky bastards don't find another way in..

[Paull]

those that bought there's through a direct download source didn't get buddy keys, afaik

[sytto]

A company actually combating gold sellers. /faints

[Daenof]

mwaaha down with the gold sellers! good job Sigil!

[GM-Kardoras]

Question for the GM:

Friend of mine got a mail message from a gold seller the other day. I had him petition it, but is there a way to "forward" the message to a GM or "report this mail" etc?

If you get spam from these guys in the form of in game mail simply petition it listing 1. a short message saying you got gold farming spam 2. name of the player who sent you the mail 3. the site they are advertising

For example: /petition "Player xyzvdsrd sent me in game mail regarding gold sales and powerleveling for site X"

That's all we need.

If you get a tell or see global chat advertisements, please petition with similar information, but also use the /report command to capture the text.

And let me not forget to thank you guys for your help in catching these individuals. The player base has been absolutely instrumental in the progress we have made thus far. I know that a lot of you guys know exactly how much gold farmers and sellers ruin these games, and are as adamant about reducing their impact as we are.

[MagicNumbers]

If you get spam from these guys in the form of in game mail simply petition it listing 1. a short message saying you got gold farming spam 2. name of the player who sent you the mail 3. the site they are advertising

For example: /petition "Player xyzvdsrd sent me in game mail regarding gold sales and powerleveling for site X"

That's all we need.

If you get a tell or see global chat advertisements, please petition with similar information, but also use the /report command to capture the text.

And let me not forget to thank you guys for your help in catching these individuals. The player base has been absolutely instrumental in the progress we have made thus far. I know that a lot of you guys know exactly how much gold farmers and sellers ruin these games, and are as adamant about reducing their impact as we are.

Right on! I'll do my best to help out.

[Nargroth]

The public announcements as they get banned is great! I know that it might be hard to announce every gold seller who gets banned, but throwing them in now and then is good.

Everytime one is announced, there is a great cheer in both ooc and shouts. People know how much farmers, bots and gold buying and selling in general has ruined games in the past, and I'm incredibly happy that Sigil has a zero tolerance for them.

Keep up the good work! You have 100% support and understanding from me!

[Jeff]

I never understood how gold farmers get so much gold in the first place.

[Helenius]

Some GMs might pick up a few tips over at http://bannable-offenses.blogspot.com/

=)))

[Frieza]

I never understood how gold farmers get so much gold in the first place.

i have been thinkin maybe if i pretend to be a gold seller id get some gm attention on my isssue over in this thread http://www.silkyvenom.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14612

*/cast rank 9 illusion~ gold farmer disguise to ninja a gm*

[sytto]

OK i'm back up sorry about fainting there, it was just to unbelievable to be true.

But i see it is true. /faints

[Serosha]

that is pretty cool :)

You guys have done a wonderful job combating the gold sellers so far. I love the public execution style of the ban messages. Bravo. :)
yeah first time I saw that I was like .. cool! but for the most part the people being banned are just the advertisers, hitting the company banks is what hurts ;)

[CFrosty]

I never understood how gold farmers get so much gold in the first place.

Mindless farming of the best/easiest cash spots. While you're thinking about this and that adventuring crafting diplomacy whatever, they have one singular objective, cash. They don't buy gear they don't buy anything that is not necessary. Imagine how much money you might have if you did nothing buy worry about your gold.

Although, I do know people who realize they need mount money or something and then try to farm for a couple days and absolutely suck at it, can't even save enough for a mount. Some people just aren't good with money.

For example:
In WoW:
Person A: Farms arcane crystals for 3 days straight and auctions them and buys their epic mount, end result being exhaustion and back down to no money.

Person B: Realizes that you can auction unlimited amount of items on the WoW auction system, so they start watching prices with an auction program. Then they buy/sell things for even a small profit because it adds up fast especially on the mass quantity items like cloth. And then once you get enough money you can buy all the expensive items of one type up, and then re-post them at whatever price you want because you own the market. Person B never buys an epic mount because he doesn't really need one, and eventually gets it cheap from PvP reward.

I knew person B, he had like 17k gold before I left WoW a long time ago, and that was just in actual gold, he had like 3 characters full of items.
Sadly I was person A but I'm learning to conserve better now. Just don't get giddy thinking about what you can buy with all that gold you saved.

[Jeff]

Mindless farming of the best/easiest cash spots. While you're thinking about this and that adventuring crafting diplomacy whatever, they have one singular objective, cash. They don't buy gear they don't buy anything that is not necessary. Imagine how much money you might have if you did nothing buy worry about your gold.

Although, I do know people who realize they need mount money or something and then try to farm for a couple days and absolutely suck at it, can't even save enough for a mount. Some people just aren't good with money.

For example:
In WoW:
Person A: Farms arcane crystals for 3 days straight and auctions them and buys their epic mount, end result being exhaustion and back down to no money.

Person B: Realizes that you can auction unlimited amount of items on the WoW auction system, so they start watching prices with an auction program. Then they buy/sell things for even a small profit because it adds up fast especially on the mass quantity items like cloth. And then once you get enough money you can buy all the expensive items of one type up, and then re-post them at whatever price you want because you own the market. Person B never buys an epic mount because he doesn't really need one, and eventually gets it cheap from PvP reward.

I knew person B, he had like 17k gold before I left WoW a long time ago, and that was just in actual gold, he had like 3 characters full of items.
Sadly I was person A but I'm learning to conserve better now. Just don't get giddy thinking about what you can buy with all that gold you saved.

I had NO problem making gold in WoW. I disenchanted everything I got and made a huge profit on the mats. Also I'd buy up all the cheap leatherworking materials and I knew what I could craft that'd give the best disenchanted mats. I'd spend about 10g a day on stuff and make back about 60. I just assumed this game was a lot harder to do such a thing with, as the most I've ever had on me at once was 20s :p

[Jaguarjp]

Here's what I wanna know:

Now that I've cancelled my subscription because of the memory leak, how will I ever know if or when it gets fixed, so that I can resubscribe and resume playing?
At the moment, I have a trusted friend. His account can be logged on my computer (I'm not going to specify who is the one logging it), so that it can be determined whether or not there is still a leak. I'm glad I didn't just resubscribe after this last patch, because it's still not fixed for me.

The reason I mention this here and now is because I would hate for someone at Sigil to errantly determine that my friend's account is getting "powerleveled" because it is logged in from a different IP, and on a different system.

Is there some other, *official* way I alone could test something like this, without needing to pay first for at least a monthly subscription, only to find out that the memory leak is still alive and well? Because as it stands now, my RL friend will not be renewing his monthly subscription if I'm not back in the game playing by the time his month is up.

[Diaxis]

Is there some other, *official* way I alone could test something like this, without needing to pay first for at least a monthly subscription, only to find out that the memory leak is still alive and well?

Your best bet is to ask other people. Memory leaks aside, Vanguard still runs like a powerpoint presentation for me and that likely won't change. :D

[Jaguarjp]

Your best bet is to ask other people. Memory leaks aside, Vanguard still runs like a powerpoint presentation for me and that likely won't change. :D

Well, on my system, it runs fairly nicely at a customized setting closest to Highest Quality, and only gets powerpointish when it loads a bunch of new PC/NPC textures at once. Tonight's test involved setting everything as low as possible, in the hopes that the memory useage would remain stable. But alas, lurking around Khal resulted in the same steady climb to over 1GB memory useage, just for VGClient.exe.

But even though I'm not playing, I'm trying to keep abreast of developments that might hint at a fix.

[Ominous]

Excellent, keep up the good work. We can worry about the bugs another day.

:rolleyes:

Yeah, because everyone at Sigil is working on the exact same thing at once. What a ridiculous notion having a customer service department, a design department, a marketing department, etc. is. No company in their right mind would do that.

[VashtheStampede]

i love the idea of playing with people from all over the world, but unfortunately becuase of gold sellers, it seems to me that the only solution is to create specific servers for specific areas of the world, mainly asia, then filter ISP and do not allow people to create characters on servers outside of there area.
obviously this would suck for all the good people in asia who arent gold sellers, but at least the problem would be solved for all the american and european servers. and the gold sellers would be isolated to one or two servers.
i know this is a bit extreme, but it seems like the only way to completely get rid of gold sellers on 90 % of the servers

[Pixi]

I just wanted to give everyone a heads up on this because I have seen a lot of talk about handing out buddy keys in posts recently. Be very careful who you give buddy keys out to. I would recommend not giving keys out to anyone that you do not know and trust personally- thus anyone who is not your "buddy".

Solid advice right there.

[Honor Woods]

You guys should add an option to the petition system for gold farmers. Something in the logic that grabs the last 20 lines of chat text. I would imagine that would help identify the farmers.

/report grabs the last ten lines of chat. :) Not 20, but it is there.

[Shakshirak]

The reason I mention this here and now is because I would hate for someone at Sigil to errantly determine that my friend's account is getting "powerleveled" because it is logged in from a different IP, and on a different system.

Well as far as I know the account is not legally linked to a certain computer. It's absolutely legal to buy a new rig, install the game and play it with that new different IP. The game installed on your machine has every right to be there as you bought it. Your friend has every right to log in and play from everwhere he likes as he paid for the subsciption. As long as his toon does not advance especially fast during your "testing" sessions, I cannot imagine anyone errantly determining this as powerlevelling.

[Deicide]

You get an extra account key when you buy the game which you can use to try before you buy.

Does this apply to the download version as well? I never got any buddy key and I was about to buy a second copy for my wife just so she could try it. I'd very much like a buddy key for this!

[Kaffis]

You guys should add an option to the petition system for gold farmers. Something in the logic that grabs the last 20 lines of chat text. I would imagine that would help identify the farmers.

You can /report <name>

That will log the last several lines of text related to that player, serverside -- mention that you reported it in the petition, and the GM handling the petition can look it up and reference it.

[Herger]

I just wanted to add a "Cheer" of my own to Sigil for being so on-top of this situation.

RLT may never be 100% contained, but the more contained it is, the better! :)

Thank you Sigil!

[Sadistic-Savior]

They are trying desperately, eh? Probably getting their panties in a bunch when you global shout to the server who was the seller and that he has been banned. I bet they hate that.

I am new to the game (less than a week).

They really do that? Wow....very very cool. And from a SOE affiliated company no less.

That was the main drawback to the game when i bought it...the main reason I left EQ was because they legalized eBaying. So I am very happy to see they are combating the gold farmers so agressively. I wish all MMORPGs did that.

[pimpstick]

I have already petitiond it in game but I was wondering what the word is on one site i get tells from all the time. I would name the site here but am unsure if I should cuz I dont want to help them advertise.

The tells I get are always from ppl with names that are random letters and from the same site.

I wish there was some form of legal action that could be taken agenst such sites. It realy pissis me off to get RLT tells all the time and if I tell them off guess what........ they send me more tells faster wtf.

I am a convert from an MMO that was run by RMT(FFXI) and I am overly impressed with the stand sigil/SoE has taken agenst gold selling keep up the good work.

[mmricci]

I just wanted to give everyone a heads up on this because I have seen a lot of talk about handing out buddy keys in posts recently. Be very careful who you give buddy keys out to. I would recommend not giving keys out to anyone that you do not know and trust personally- thus anyone who is not your "buddy".

We have banned many, many accounts tied to gold sales and advertisements. I am sure this is starting to get expensive for these RLT companies and they are looking to scam people out of accounts be it through buddy key requests or other means. Do not fall victim to one of these scams. Trust me, you do not want us to link any association with these guys to you.

So, by all means do give out buddy keys to your friends, family, guildmates, etc. But please be aware of who you are associating yourself and your account with.

And as always, never buy any items or coins (or powerleveling), or have any association with these individuals at all. We have already had to take action on quite a few player accounts who were foolish enough to associate with these groups. We decided a long time ago that we were going to aggressively fight RLT vendors and the detrimental impact they have on mmos, and we plan to continue to do so.

I understand your concern totally. I made a post about buddy keys and just want to make sure everyone knows... I am not any of those things you listed. I just REALLY dont wanna spend $50 and then not be able to play the game. My name on the official forums for beta testing was Michelle1

[Purplenv]

I understand your concern totally. I made a post about buddy keys and just want to make sure everyone knows... I am not any of those things you listed. I just REALLY dont wanna spend $50 and then not be able to play the game. My name on the official forums for beta testing was Michelle1

GTFO dude, you so busted. Bye Bye.

[Honor Woods]

I am new to the game (less than a week).

They really do that? Wow....very very cool. And from a SOE affiliated company no less.

That was the main drawback to the game when i bought it...the main reason I left EQ was because they legalized eBaying. So I am very happy to see they are combating the gold farmers so agressively. I wish all MMORPGs did that.

When did they legalize eBaying in EQ? I know they did Station Exchange for EQ2, but that was a server specific thing. The reason I ask is because I remember a guild called Evil Raiders (or something close) that was like 20-30 accounts all eBayed and controlled by like 3 people on my server. SOE mass permabanned the whole guild for being eBayed (and being idiots, too.)

[Keshna]

i love the idea of playing with people from all over the world, but unfortunately becuase of gold sellers, it seems to me that the only solution is to create specific servers for specific areas of the world, mainly asia, then filter ISP and do not allow people to create characters on servers outside of there area.
obviously this would suck for all the good people in asia who arent gold sellers, but at least the problem would be solved for all the american and european servers. and the gold sellers would be isolated to one or two servers.
i know this is a bit extreme, but it seems like the only way to completely get rid of gold sellers on 90 % of the servers

this wont work, because of the simple fact that you can spoof your ip address.

i can be in asia but it looks to sigils servers(for example) that i'm logging in from an ip address in plano, texas, usa. its not hard to do, in fact, computer criminals around the world have been doing it for YEARS now :/

i wish it was this easy.

[Istaira]

Why don't the Dev's use thier brains and make any and all trial account, limted. No trading, no passing of coin, untill such time they upgrade to a full account. It's not excatly rocket science is it.

Make it a limit to pass gold to alts, I am more than sure most alts do not need anywhere near a gold coin to be passed to them. If they do the chances are the alt is more than capable of making that coin themselves.

[Vanboy4Life]

Don't hand out buddy keys=make 'em pay for an account. Thank you for helping us bump our sub numbers. Those buddy keys were for show anyway.

[Aneas]

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for taking a stern stance on real money trade.

I have been a subscriber to several games in the past few years and ALL of them have eventually had their economies ruined by the jacka$$es that try to sell currency in-game.

Keep up your hard-core policy and I promise you will retain more subs than if you let your policy go. Kudos for having the fortitude to stick to your guns.
My sentiments EXACTLY. I applaud Sigil for having the stones to actively pursue and eliminate the secondary marketers. That buys a whole lot of customer loyalty from me.

[Zerlargal]

My sentiments EXACTLY. I applaud Sigil for having the stones to actively pursue and eliminate the secondary marketers. That buys a whole lot of customer loyalty from me.

Yes, thank you Sigil, keep up the good work.

Regards

Zerlargal

[Chayce]

SOE have added a "Report" button to the EQ2 mail system now. Logged in recently for the first time in a while and found my mailbox contained 6 emails from various gold farmers and a nice little "report" button with which to send them on their way. This might be useful for VG in the future.

I think the issue with the buddy keys is that those accounts are able to send ingame tells and mail. That is how they advertise for free in the game to unsuspecting players. If those buddy and any future trial accounts were NOT able to send mail or tells or even /shout or /ooc there might be less incentive for gold farmers to use them. If they were forced to buy a new account every time they had one banned for ingame advertising, it might not turn out so economical for them. Why worry about a banned account that will expire in a few days anyway? They'll just get a new trial key and start all over again. Blizz have something similar in place for the WoW trial keys. I found it frustrating when I first bought a trial a couple of years ago, but since I was a genuine player I had no problems buying a legit account so I could trade, and receive mail and tells.

Still, much kudos to Sigil for taking a tough stand on this issue!

[Champ]

So, just for clarification, if your buddy keys are associated with gold farmers your account can be banned?

And, what does banned actually mean? Is it like probation where you can come back and play later? Or does it mean your account is no longer charged and you can no longer play VG with that CD key?

Just curious if anyone knows.

[Zenor]

Yes,as I know you can get banned for that.

[Meattosser]

You can only spoof your address for reconnaissance, you can't establish a functional session with a spoofed address because the packets will not route back to you correctly, assuming at least one of the upstreams has their router configured correctly (they do).

this wont work, because of the simple fact that you can spoof your ip address.

i can be in asia but it looks to sigils servers(for example) that i'm logging in from an ip address in plano, texas, usa. its not hard to do, in fact, computer criminals around the world have been doing it for YEARS now :/

i wish it was this easy.

[Dmitry the Wizzy]

Trust me, you do not want us to link any association with these guys to you.


Yah cause god knows you should ban one of your nine remaining customers who is trying to promote the game and innocently gives away a buddy key in a desparate attempt to get people to play.

Here is a clue: Take a course in dealing with customers before going into customer service.

[Isobel]

i love the idea of playing with people from all over the world, but unfortunately becuase of gold sellers, it seems to me that the only solution is to create specific servers for specific areas of the world, mainly asia, then filter ISP and do not allow people to create characters on servers outside of there area.
obviously this would suck for all the good people in asia who arent gold sellers, but at least the problem would be solved for all the american and european servers. and the gold sellers would be isolated to one or two servers.
i know this is a bit extreme, but it seems like the only way to completely get rid of gold sellers on 90 % of the servers

As was mentioned previously there are gold sellers in many place across the world, not just Asia. So, this idea wouldn't eliminate gold selling. It would just segragate players by region.

[End_User]

As was mentioned previously there are gold sellers in many place across the world, not just Asia. So, this idea wouldn't eliminate gold selling. It would just segragate players by region.

What you neglect to mention is that most (but indeed not all, as you stress) farmers do in fact come from the pacific rim/asia. To be fair, when you say it will not eliminate gold selling - this is true... but banning by region will certainly prevent the great bulk of them from signing in.

[Isobel]

What you neglect to mention is that most (but indeed not all, as you stress) farmers do in fact come from the pacific rim/asia. To be fair, when you say it will not eliminate gold selling - this is true... but banning by region will certainly prevent the great bulk of them from signing in.

Not really. IGE is an American company. How difficult would it be for them to move their opperations from Asia to somewhere else. There are people all over the place who are willing to work for what most of us would consider 'slave wages'. So, segragating people by region, in keeping with the stupid, prejudiced, idea that Asian players are the problem, wouldn't help. At best it would cause a short pause in RMTs. At worst, and far more likely, it would create a very nice little niche market for all of the RMT companies that can log in from an ISP that isn't Asian, making RMT easier for those companies by ending some of their competition and eliminating legit Asian players.

It's a silly idea. Stop it.

[End_User]

At best it would cause a short pause in RMTs.

That is essentially what I said, so I guess a thanks in order for agreeing with me and supporting my point that the majority of farmers do indeed come from asia.

Anything else is simply extraneous fluff.

[Isobel]

That is essentially what I said, so I guess a thanks in order for agreeing with me and supporting my point that the majority of farmers do indeed come from asia.

Anything else is simply extraneous fluff.

READ. Read before you post. At best meaning: if you clap your hands and believe you might get lucky and there would be a short pause in RMT. Most likely what would happen would be the non-asian companies would imedeately fill the gap and RMT would go on as before.

[End_User]

READ. Read before you post.

Wow, reduced to insulting people about their literary skills. Since we are critiquing each other, why don't we talk about how atrocious your spelling is, and how it makes people have trouble taking you even remotely seriously when you cant even make one paragraph without spelling errors. I think YOU need to read...a dictionary. Trying to come off as smart, knowledgeable and sophisticated on an online forum doesn't work well when you can't spell. See, I can go offtopic too and not say anything meaningful.

BTW you're still agreeing with me that most farmers come from asia - so yeah it would make sense to ban them all by IP range and see the effect immediately. All this conjecture about what would happen after they're banned is simply that - conjecture noone asked for or needed.

You'll have to pardon me though if I don't reply to your strawman posts as I have less painful things to do than talk to you, like set my hair on fire and extinguish it with a hammer.

Ta!

[Shadowsilk]

I hope, that if I am still here in 5 years (spent 9 on EQ), that this will continue to be the enforced policy.
Ban them, announce it to the world. Undercut them at every turn.

In turn, if the /petition charactername command is used often enough by players-there is a nice 10 line record sent to the GM's of the tells sent by sellers to players. That and bug and report on SV and other sites. All this works.

The 'better to light one candle than curse the darkness' approach is excellent and whether or not it shuts them down, it costs them money. Most counter-productive.
Cost the gold sellers enough of their own money, aggrivate and embarass those who buy from them, and the sellers will seek other markets eventually.

[Malkav]

Looking at how the price of gold dropped (i don't buy gold mind you, I just saw the evolution in the pricing), it's evident that there has been a VERY BIG problem going on...

Just as an example, you can now get 1plat for less than 4$, which is completely crazy....The rumor says that there is duping going on....

[Reven]

If you go to Vgplayers and Click Best of the Best, then look at the top 20 in wealth, you can spot a lot of the gold farmers.

[firefoxa]

It's good tha SIGIL have the focus on this, but looking at the market and the prices just now and what equipment actually sell for, it's obvious that there is still a hughe problem going on!

Not sure I even wan't to put my crafted item's on the market, if selling to players the has farmed gold or bought gold, in there hands by from me means that SIGIL will come and bite my ass l8r?

Not sure how SIGIL can controll this, but for me now this is starting to be a game breaker. Spent since start of the game crafting and selling my stuff and now for the first time afther 3-4 months I have my first platina. When I see 1 platina is selling for some few bucks, I get extremely frustrated and want to twist someones neck!

I hope SIGIL wil lbe able to get in controll og this situation and help us that works for there gold and adventuring XP.

[StabbyMcGee]

Not really. IGE is an American company. How difficult would it be for them to move their opperations from Asia to somewhere else. There are people all over the place who are willing to work for what most of us would consider 'slave wages'. So, segragating people by region, in keeping with the stupid, prejudiced, idea that Asian players are the problem, wouldn't help.

It's owned in America, but most Asian/Pacific countries are the ones that would make any kind of profit off the stuff. India would also, but hell that's central asia too. Blocking all IP's from that region would cut down gold selling significantly. Sure, it won't stop. I'm certain there are a few people that dupe in their dorm rooms here in the states to make a quick buck- but I'd say %95, hell even more would be stopped. Prices would shoot through the roof on the gold and it might just about eliminate the gold selling for VG from the market.

I like being PC too, but poor countries like those in Asia/Pacific are the ones causing the most problems with this crap.

[Cendharia]

I just wanted to give everyone a heads up on this because I have seen a lot of talk about handing out buddy keys in posts recently. Be very careful who you give buddy keys out to. I would recommend not giving keys out to anyone that you do not know and trust personally- thus anyone who is not your "buddy".

We have banned many, many accounts tied to gold sales and advertisements. I am sure this is starting to get expensive for these RLT companies and they are looking to scam people out of accounts be it through buddy key requests or other means. Do not fall victim to one of these scams. Trust me, you do not want us to link any association with these guys to you.

So, by all means do give out buddy keys to your friends, family, guildmates, etc. But please be aware of who you are associating yourself and your account with.

And as always, never buy any items or coins (or powerleveling), or have any association with these individuals at all. We have already had to take action on quite a few player accounts who were foolish enough to associate with these groups. We decided a long time ago that we were going to aggressively fight RLT vendors and the detrimental impact they have on mmos, and we plan to continue to do so.

Now that Soe has swallowed Sigil and Vanguard whole..will this still be the case? I note that Smedley tends to give some merit to the RMT factor and that I seem to remember him talking about this as the new way of things re: online games.

If you can't beat them ..join them?

I won't.

Here's a quote from Mr. Smedley re his enthusiam for RMT:

After having seen Station Exchange running for over a year now, I’ve come to see RMT in an entirely different light and I believe the real future of RMT is actually a really bright one if we can work on our game designs in such a way as to make it a cool part of the games. Imagine an MMO without a subscription fee that has Station Exchange built into it. However, the game is designed in such a way as to only allow the sale and transfer of non-game impacting items. What if an in-game tailor had the toolset to actually put cool designs on clothing and literally make them custom for different players, and then that person could open a virtual storefront on Station Exchange. That’s the kind of cool thing we see in the future and frankly it’s the direction we want to steer things. To create an ecosystem for players to make money from these games while they’re having fun.

Smed

--- END QUOTE

So I presume that he'll be doing this with Vanguard...........

Cendharia

[Cendharia]

Not really. IGE is an American company. How difficult would it be for them to move their opperations from Asia to somewhere else. There are people all over the place who are willing to work for what most of us would consider 'slave wages'. So, segragating people by region, in keeping with the stupid, prejudiced, idea that Asian players are the problem, wouldn't help. At best it would cause a short pause in RMTs. At worst, and far more likely, it would create a very nice little niche market for all of the RMT companies that can log in from an ISP that isn't Asian, making RMT easier for those companies by ending some of their competition and eliminating legit Asian players.

It's a silly idea. Stop it.

They are based over in Japan someplace aren't they...actually I do believe SOE's parent company is also in Japan...heh wonder if they are neighbours. :P

Far as disallowing asian ips from connecting.......well yes that would cut the numbers down, but we would still have our own gold farmers, from Europe, the U.S and Canada and other countries........................

Probably would make it easier to track them down..and probably the numbers would be less, but it would not stop them.

Cendharia

[Treewolf]

Ok