Real World Trading

That's good points by everyone so far. I think I've heard enough about RWT Items. I would like to introduce the question about beta key giveaways.

Zeto you made a post claiming that people could not sell Timer keys.... but what about non timer keys?

Manoka made a giveaway and apparently succuessfully gave someone a key. So how then does one acquire **EXTRA** keys to have enough for yourself and to give them away?

Or in the case of Flux being handed a huge pile of them. He then hands a bunch off to his friends' forum? Really what about the people who already have a beta membership or would rather just sell a non timer key to cash in?

And again, what about the ~1,000 (guestimate) cd with keys given out at pax. They could already have timer keys or giveaway keys. Theres lots of keys going around it seems that are not timer keys so if someone could clear that up.

And last but definetly not least... it has appeared to be an overwhelming ammount of inactive accounts given beta keys. And I've heard the argument that they might be active without logging in.... ** The scary thing is that if these inactive accounts are just someones 10th or 20th account, Multis or Toons or Alts, whatever you want to call them. My guess would be someone is doing that and may have an abundance of beta keys themselves and possibly selling those physical accounts rather then the keys themselves.

Hopefully Zeto or someone else can clear some of this stuff up for us?

Just trying to keep the "Honest Game" just that. And to prove it I will again note that I'm a little bit wary of GGG's ability to maintain this game and it's security on a strictly Aesthetic and Ethical Store. I give them my kudos for utilizing such an idea and I'm trying to trust the idea but I don't want this game to fail either.

Sorry If this post has bad grammer, I have to go to work now so no time to edit :/

Giving keys to certain community or beta members, streams, community sites, at events... is a common strategy to bring the game more attention. Its the beta timer that is a rather dumb idea.

Just think about it like this:
If someone comes to this site and signs up he is already on the hook. They have the e-mail and can get the person at any time before the release.

If you give a key to a community site that makes a contest you get the attention from people that dont know about PoE yet. They can tell friends about the game when they get a key, or even if they dont get a key they migth sign up here. (and are on the hook) It works the same with streams, live events,...

Every person that is active in this forums is more or less worthless as a betatester when it comes to creating attention for the game. If you would for example give 20 keys to a youtube poster that makes a short vid with a giveaway contest it could lead to 10k new signups on this page, how could that be worse then giving the keys to 20 random people in the timer ?

The timer is just a bait to bring people to sign up. This way you will be informed on release and even better they could skip open beta and give you a key just before release.
So dont complain about key giveaways, if you want to complain you should give your attention to the general idea of a betatimer. (I have no doubt it is good for GGG for the reasons i mentioned above)

"

Droggeltasse wrote:

Giving keys to certain community or beta members, streams, community sites, at events... is a common strategy to bring the game more attention. Its the beta timer that is a rather dumb idea.

Just think about it like this:
If someone comes to this site and signs up he is already on the hook. They have the e-mail and can get the person at any time before the release.

If you give a key to a community site that makes a contest you get the attention from people that dont know about PoE yet. They can tell friends about the game when they get a key, or even if they dont get a key they migth sign up here. (and are on the hook) It works the same with streams, live events,...

Every person that is active in this forums is more or less worthless as a betatester when it comes to creating attention for the game. If you would for example give 20 keys to a youtube poster that makes a short vid with a giveaway contest it could lead to 10k new signups on this page, how could that be worse then giving the keys to 20 random people in the timer ?

The timer is just a bait to bring people to sign up. This way you will be informed on release and even better they could skip open beta and give you a key just before release.
So dont complain about key giveaways, if you want to complain you should give your attention to the general idea of a betatimer. (I have no doubt it is good for GGG for the reasons i mentioned above)

Personally I think the beta timer is a great idea. It gives people incentive to come to their site, sign up, and browse the forums for new/more information. There's a lot of things a new person could learn from a beta tester that isn't NDA.

Ya, they release keys to community sites and whatnot but that's targeting other communites to come over and try out the game. With all the hype for D3, they gave Inc gamers keys and it brought a ton of people over to the site that didn't recieve a key from the "drawing".

All in all the timer brings people in for a chance to win a key they may not get otherwise.


OP:

IMHO RWT will always be there, it's the steps GGG takes to combat it (if they even worry about it) that I think, matter the most. The forum trading (linking items over the forums) was an excellent idea on their part. They can come on here, post what they wanna sell and build a reputation with the community for being a honest trader. It gives other people a chance to see the item and what they can look forward to weither it be in the upper levels or the beginning.

Take it as you will, just my two cents.

"

The_Cretin wrote:

That's good points by everyone so far. I think I've heard enough about RWT Items. I would like to introduce the question about beta key giveaways.

Zeto you made a post claiming that people could not sell Timer keys.... but what about non timer keys?

In theory you can do whatever you want with non-timer keys. In fact you can do whatever you want with timer keys as well by giving away the whole account. My post is to warn players that there is no safe way to do so, and due to the liability GGG cannot support such threads here on their website.

"

Manoka made a giveaway and apparently succuessfully gave someone a key. So how then does one acquire **EXTRA** keys to have enough for yourself and to give them away?

Manoka placed in a beta contest that gave away digital keys. Digital keys are intended to be given away.

"

Or in the case of Flux being handed a huge pile of them. He then hands a bunch off to his friends' forum? Really what about the people who already have a beta membership or would rather just sell a non timer key to cash in?

PR and advertising is an important strategy for any company. GGG decided to give other communities keys, but like this community they probably have thousands of members and only a handful of keys. Hopefully those that get keys will bring in extra players who will come and wait for the timer. Selling keys is frowned upon in general, but like most things in life, power is in the hands of the individual.

"

And again, what about the ~1,000 (guestimate) cd with keys given out at pax. They could already have timer keys or giveaway keys. Theres lots of keys going around it seems that are not timer keys so if someone could clear that up.

Yes there are really three types of keys... automatic access, which is not a physical key; a digital serial which can activate any account; and a real world key that can also activate any account. These keys once in the hands of people, are up to them how to use them, however due to liability, GGG does not permit key selling on their website.

"

And last but definetly not least... it has appeared to be an overwhelming ammount of inactive accounts given beta keys. And I've heard the argument that they might be active without logging in.... ** The scary thing is that if these inactive accounts are just someones 10th or 20th account, Multis or Toons or Alts, whatever you want to call them. My guess would be someone is doing that and may have an abundance of beta keys themselves and possibly selling those physical accounts rather then the keys themselves.

GGG implemented measures to not include multiple accounts in their selection method, but, as is the case with most things on the net, it's not perfect.

However really it's the best thing for GGG at this point... it lets in a combination of active, inactive but active later (lurkers), and inactive players... this combination nets them a steady stream of testers, which they modulate to what they can physically support on their servers and with their manpower. Over time this will ramp up.

The vast majority of players are individuals, and not duplicates, but I'm sure duplicates have been chosen. In those cases, the community itself must choose to not support that person by not buying a key if they see one for sale.

It's just unfortunately not possible at this time to only let in active people... if they did, they would be overwhelmed with players, and the lurkers would not even have a chance at all... of which the lurkers outweigh the active players by a HUGE margin.

I'm sure when we get closer to open beta, that GGG will both be sending out more invites per day, and will probably start to heavily target active users.

I wish everyone luck in getting a key, and just remember that we cannot always enforce optimal ethics on others, but we can always control our own.

Further discussion of keys should be done in the beta invite discussion forum. I understand that this roughly relates back to real world selling as well, so I'm leaving this particular conversation here.

As zeto said, conversation about beta keys should be held in the proper forum.

Back on topic, I think one of the primary reasons for the success of other third party cash shops in other games was that lack of official trading support. It was a whole lot easier in D2 to find a specific item you wanted on a cash site than it was to find someone willing to trade in game or on some forum. It was like going to Walmart where you could browse the inventory and take your pick. If GGG can create a robust system where buyers and sellers can easily and effectively find each other then the convenience of cash sites will be significantly diminished.

Furthermore this is actually a fundamental issue in society itself.

Do you give addicts fresh needles to lessen the spread of disease, despite the fact you are supporting their addiction?

Do you legalize drugs and setup taxable shops because the underground market for them is so vast? Or do you keep fighting a war on drugs that nets essentially nothing while standing up for an absolute?

Do you create new digital offerings for movies and music and give incentives to go to live showings and just accept that decentralized peer to peer networks are going to exist now? Or do you keep trying to prosecute individuals?

Do you setup a real money auction house so players have a safe place to trade because they were doing so before? OR do you continue to stand against it on your personal ideals and deny people this safety net?

Where is the line between enabling negative behavior, causing negative behavior, and supporting safer behavior in the midst of uncontrollable negative behavior? Can these ultimately be framed as a positive behavior through collective effort to change the incentives involved?

wow^

Alright, I'm very pleased with the feedback, in fact it's amazing. I really appreciate you guys helping me figure this stuff out.

To start I'll say I remember reading one of the mods at Jagex talking a couple years ago about RWT and he mentioned that in just one year runescape had to ban farming accounts worth a combined 500 billion In-Game Gold, worth a value of over 50 million dollars of real cash on the black market and it made my brain hurt.

I'll also mention that recently the first person ever has been arrested for video game theft. Woot! However he was only given a caution... link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8386003.stm

If something isn't done about RWT it will be happening. Which means behind the scenes, for select individuals, a pay to win for them. Then winning at PVP and highscores, and also making you equipped for gold farming.

So either we do something about it or else we will be seeing people get stinking rich of this game and gold farmers and a bad economy I think.

Especially in leagues like hardcore, I think people in PoE will have a desire to buy items. It's also because of the loot system. A person might get that EPIC rare item some other guy might be willing to pay good money for that because they are one of a kind. It's the one of a kind rare's and the fact that anyone really could find it that makes the trading in these games so important. The random loot tables are a big part of why I play, never know what you're gonna get.

I hope tpapp is right and a strong trading community makes no need for outside sources!

Solutions - I've thought of two ways perhaps GGG could combat the RWT of items:

***not my favourite way -> similar to runescape's old method where every item had a value and could not be given away for free. And, if thrown on the ground nobody else could take it or even see it. I find this method to be a lot of hassle but it also seemed to have a big impact on RWT in runescape so I'll mention it.

***The other way is if you enforce a policy where: only trades made with a thread on the forum are moderated. That way anything done behind the scenes is at the buyers risk because usually those sort of deals require an upfront payment before recieving your item. This might be "enabling" or promoting people to scam others however if there is no enforcement at all. So perhaps making RWT a bannable offence and anyone caught doing it is bye bye.

but we would need very easy access to the forum to make quick work of creating threads and getting our potential buyer to show his interest with a reply in the thread. An in-game time stamp would be essential for screenshot evidence of trades for moderators. It's tough love but I don't mind this idea if it's viable to the community.

Cheers, everybody!
Please feel free to add anything you think is important about RWT. I'll be doing my best to provide great items at affordable prices on our official trade forum, hope to see you all their. And together we will show the other Dev's how it's done GGG style!

P.S Zeto - I answered yes to your questions but they were not easy. Over time I would hope the issues are actually fixed rather then using a plaster band-aid. Artists need to make their money, and drug addicts need their help, and money itself could be ditched like in Path of Exile!

That one guy is being prosecuted though cuz he used a phishing tactic, which has many illegal components to it.

I don't personally see a problem with farming if the farming requires a person to do it and cannot be botted.

Botting causes problems of course, and is the major reason why runescape more than likely has a problem.