LFG

I saw the above in another post, and feel that this is such an important idea, I wanted to make a new post about it.

I've often said that just one SoE employee dedicated to acting as an undercover investigator, using a corporate credit card and making individual $20 plat purchases on Player Auctions and from IGE affiliate sites, could ban and permanently cripple >90% of all accounts used to sell plat in game.

The MMO gold mafia in EQ2 continues to thrive because SoE CSR doesn't have a "street" level sting operation like this. They do larger scale operations, and try to combat this problem by running reports, and based on individual player feedback.

The MMO gold mafia has two arms: (1) production and (2) marketing/sales.

Just as Illuminator has become intimately familiar with the in game activities of the production arm, my hobby and personal interest has recently been the marketing/sales arm.

I am now CONVINCED that in one week, by spending $2000, I could get the most hardcore, notorious, and biggest members of the EQ2 gold mafia to sell me plat, in face to face handover transactions, on 100 different accounts, all for purchases of $20 or less.

The accounts that would be banned in this sting operation, and the larger amount of coin that would be taken out of circulation on those accounts and others easily proven to be affiliated with them, would temporarily put the gold mafia out of business in EQ2. The effect of this sweep would make it extremely difficult to impossible for anyone to buy plat in EQ2 for several months.

Sound farfetched? I'm convinced it isn't, and that I could do it under my own name. By me, one person, acting alone.

And I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is.

I hereby offer to take a week's vacation off work, and will joyfully do this on a volunteer basis at no charge. All SoE would need to do is assign me a CS contact to work with, someone with a keen grasp of the obvious who can also quickly do the bannings based on the irrefutable proof I provide. SoE would also need to agree to reimburse up to $2000 I actually spend with the plat sellers for this purpose, as shown by my credit card receipts and the matching plat that I purchase and turn in or destroy.

What say you, SoE?

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Gori

Even with you doing all the work....they wont have the balls to do it, or the stomach to deal with the aftermath. Why you may ask? Because once they irrefutably know the sell bots they will have no excuse not to go after the purchasers. They have no desire at all to go where that will take them.

Calthine

I suspect they won't do it because someone is bound to view it as encouraging vigilantism. You know someone would... no one ever misinterprets anything on the internet....

I pray that Sigil's stated intention to try and do something legally with the MMO industry bears fruit.

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Calthine

EQ2 Allakhazam Senior Community Manager

Rinion

Giant Green Head of SoE Tells You, "Huh what was that? Sorry I was busy counting subscription fees."

Honestly how would committing man power and the salary associated with that man power be justified just to cancel subscriptions and lower the Earning of an already sparsely populated game?

How does this possibly Benefit SoE? Will it increase the desirability of the game enough to bring in a larger player base then SoE would lose due to the banning?

Sorry just playing devil's advocate.

like it or not they pay subscriptions to and there are some lazy mother fucks out there that would probably lose interest in game if they could not just buy there plat.

I like the idea about a dedicated strike team. problem is it's something that should of been their from launch to nip it in the ass before it got out of hand.

again just playing devils advocate, as these are most likely the questions SoE asks itself. Becasue IMO it's about the bottom $$.

My personal view on it is this. Sony is No Better then IGE Because they accept Bribes from IGE in the form of subscription Fees for Sony to look the other way when shady dealings are going on.

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"Before one can identify anything as "gray", one has to know what is black and what is white. In the field of morality, this means that one must first identify what is good and what is evil. And when a man has ascertained that one alternative is good and the other evil, he has no justification for choosing a mixture. " Ayn Rand

LFG

It will make players cheer!

It will provide long term benefits in exchange for a reasonable, short term cost.

It will give players proof that SoE actually considers (which it really does, but they get challenged by players on this all the time) EQ2 to be an ongoing, long term investment, rather than an end of life product being held together by bubble gum and a soldering iron.

For the first time, an event like this, publicized with results after the fact, would send a clear, unmistakeable message to the MMO gold mafia: "Y'all go away now, because you are no longer open for business in SoE titles."

The benefits FAR outweigh the nominal costs.

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Rinion

Sweet, now let them know all the benefits! =)

I agree with you, I really do. As I said, I was just playing devils advocate.

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"Before one can identify anything as "gray", one has to know what is black and what is white. In the field of morality, this means that one must first identify what is good and what is evil. And when a man has ascertained that one alternative is good and the other evil, he has no justification for choosing a mixture. " Ayn Rand

Rinion

another good point, when they know account X is a plat distributor and they see that single account has sent gold to 30 other accounts. What do they do?

IMO if it was up to me I'd ban/suspend those 30 accounts, But from Sony's standpoint, are they ready to lose all those customers?

Whose to say they don't already know who the Account X's are and simply haven't taken action because it would result in a rather large loss to them.

As I said this is something that should of been implemented on launch and not 2 and a half years into the game.

It's up to Sony now. Do they do the noble thing and take a potentially huge profit loss, or do they protect their pocket books.

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"Before one can identify anything as "gray", one has to know what is black and what is white. In the field of morality, this means that one must first identify what is good and what is evil. And when a man has ascertained that one alternative is good and the other evil, he has no justification for choosing a mixture. " Ayn Rand

Gori

If I am wrong, then riddle me this. Name one regular player who has been banned for buying plat? I cannot honestly recall any in my reading of the boards.

They will get the seller bots by friendly fire sure, but they will assidously avoid
using accounting tactics to go after the sellers and their buyers.

Let's just for the sake of argument say they ARE using some kind of tracking to take down the "sellers" independently of the bot teams on the same account. Wouldn't the basis for this be tied to transactions, even if it was only amongst the bot accounts themselves? If they have the ability to do this why aren't we hearing of at least some people being banned for buying plat?

Let's just say the argument is this:
The seller toon/ bot team transactions are large in number, and therefore the tracking evidence is "irrefutable."
A one time bot seller/player transaction is not irrefutable evidence

However, once the former has been established, wouldn't multiple transactions with the same bot seller be tipping the scales? There has to be players like this; anyone that justifies to themselves the purchase of plat on a non-exchange server is very likely to return to the same well when the times get tough. Yet we hear nothing, nothing official and nothing through the grapevine.

My contention is that SOE never has, and never will, go after buyers. Therefore, such a scheme as LFG posits, one where there is irrefutable public evidence a seller was banned for the act of selling, would never occur for it would force SOE to turn a blind eye or investigate/ban a portion of it subscription base of normal players.

I could be very off base, but those are my thoughts.

Illuminator

Maybe you're right. Plat sellers direct-purchasing 200pp common harvests from other players on the broker is perfectly commonplace and normal isn't it?

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Bow down before the one you serve. You're going to get what you deserve.

Gori

No. I think it would be very odd and possibly worthy of investigation. When I wrote "Let's just say the argument is this:", I was conceding that others may make that their starting point. It was just a platform, so to speak, on which to base my further arguments/conclusions. Hope that was a little clearer.