Buying and Selling "Runs"

Please update the LFG function to allow us who do not care for this practice at all to be able to filter LFG entires containing certain keywords (such as "Sell") out.

@Gaile Gray.6029 said:

• Second, after digging into the origins of the funds involved in large transfers, we learned that almost all of them were directly involved in some form of Fraud and/or RMT. Obviously, Fraud is disallowed, and Real Money Trading (RMT) is absolutely against the rules.

It sounds like this goes beyond buying/selling raids and the like, and ANY large transfer is suspect.

Question: If I buy or sell something expensive through the auction house, and it's discovered that the person on the other end of the deal used fraud or RMT to get their part of the exchange, am I protected by having used the auction house? Or will my item and/or money be taken away as well?

Thanks for the heads up. Some part I am missing is about the grieving involved in getting to a point to sell a run. There are reports of people in party being kicked shortly before the end , just to see the run being sold on the LFG. What is the stance on this? I would perosnally say that if a partymember was kicked it would become unethical to sell the run.

@mercury ranique.2170 said:Thanks for the heads up. Some part I am missing is about the grieving involved in getting to a point to sell a run. There are reports of people in party being kicked shortly before the end , just to see the run being sold on the LFG. What is the stance on this? I would perosnally say that if a partymember was kicked it would become unethical to sell the run.

this should get punished HARD

Finally its going too happend something

It's always been like that. You want to sell runs? Ok. You do not get paid or get paid with shady coin? You are on your own.

High rewards often have high risks.

I have to say, that sounds like someone could merely implicate random people by sending them large amounts of money. Regardless of selling of completions.

At a basis that any large sum is likely to come from a fraudulent source, and that your account may be held accountable merely because you're selling raids, providing other services and people send you this money.

I think putting this out here like this sounds like "don't accept large amounts of money, or don't accept any money from unknown sources or even known sources because it may be gold or items from RMT. How are we as players supposed to know where the money comes from?

That such funds or items get removed, is ofcourse fine, but account termination or banning for such thigns sounds iffy to me.

@"FrizzFreston.5290" said:I have to say, that sounds like someone could merely implicate random people by sending them large amounts of money. Regardless of selling of completions.

At a basis that any large sum is likely to come from a fraudulent source, and that your account may be held accountable merely because you're selling raids, providing other services and people send you this money.

I think putting this out here like this sounds like "don't accept large amounts of money, or don't accept any money from unknown sources or even known sources because it may be gold or items from RMT. How are we as players supposed to know where the money comes from?

That such funds or items get removed, is ofcourse fine, but account termination or banning for such thigns sounds iffy to me.

In general, MMOs are designed to have decent enough logging to stop someone from getting banned just for that.

If I send you a crapton of gold tonight, with the mail tag of "Thanks for buying my gold! Please shop again!", I would imagine that could trigger an investigation. But realistically, if you were the ONLY person that I sent money to like that, and my IP address that I logged in with came from the same geolocation as the majority of the rest of the time that I log in, that's gonna cast some pretty serious doubt that I'm a gold farmer and you're my buyer, regardless of what the mail says.

On top of that, I'd be throwing away whatever account the gold originated from. You can't really "launder" money easily in MMOs... logs make things easy enough to trace. The best I could do is make a new account, level a new character to 80, and then farm a ton of money to send to you with that mail header just to get you banned. Sure, someone COULD do it, buy friend... if you've made someone THAT angry with you, time away from the game to reevaluate your life and how you treat people is probably for the best anyhow.

Any other method of trying to pull this scheme off would get the sender's main account banned, and not many people would be willing to go with mutually assured destruction like that.

The point is... it's unlikely. All sorts of things could trigger investigations, but the people doing the investigating are generally bright enough to figure out what's what.

This sounds like an incentive to avoid overcharging people for runs. Charge what most players can afford and they won't need to resort to illegally buying gold to pay it.

(Although I imagine there's a lot of cross-over between people who are willing to buy runs and people who are willing to buy gold even if they can earn it themselves because they see it as the 'more efficient' option.)

@"FrizzFreston.5290" said:I have to say, that sounds like someone could merely implicate random people by sending them large amounts of money. Regardless of selling of completions.

At a basis that any large sum is likely to come from a fraudulent source, and that your account may be held accountable merely because you're selling raids, providing other services and people send you this money.

I think putting this out here like this sounds like "don't accept large amounts of money, or don't accept any money from unknown sources or even known sources because it may be gold or items from RMT. How are we as players supposed to know where the money comes from?

That such funds or items get removed, is ofcourse fine, but account termination or banning for such thigns sounds iffy to me.

That is a non-problem. Just don't accept unexpected gold from strangers ...

"impacted by that involvement" sounds like it is referring to the fact that the gold will get removed.

That means the runners gone too far with prices and Arenanet gone too far with the content. If there is content in the game with loot/reward that makes people buy it with money/rmt, not being able to fund it from ingame activity because prices are too high, than there is something wrong with the content. If content promotes unethical behavior, there is something wrong with the content.

I sincerely hope, Arenanet addresses this problem not only by banning the unethical behavior but also by changing the content, so that this unethical behavior will not occur in the first place. Simply banning is no solution. A possible solution would be to add a PvE armor to the game, in addition to the existing raid armor. The raid armor is an armor for PvE mode, but it isn't available to the PvE players. It's available only to the raid players. Every persevering WvW player gets the WvW legendary armor sooner or later by simply grinding WvW hours, no matter if he excels in WvW or is mediocre. But the current raid PvE armor isn't available to any of us ordinary PvE players whose capabilities end at T4 fractal difficulty level and time investment, regardless of the thousands of hours we sink in that game mode. 6500 hours of pure PvE play? Irrelevant. Dungeoneer? Irrelevant. 50 ascended chests from T4 fractals? Irrelevant. I feel as I've been had.

@Silmar Alech.4305 said:That means the runners gone too far with prices and Arenanet gone too far with the content. If there is content in the game with loot/reward that makes people buy it with money/rmt, not being able to fund it from ingame activity because prices are too high, than there is something wrong with the content. If content promotes unethical behavior, there is something wrong with the content.

I sincerely hope, Arenanet addresses this problem not only by banning the unethical behavior but also by changing the content, so that this unethical behavior will not occur in the first place. Simply banning is no solution. A possible solution would be to add a PvE armor to the game, in addition to the existing raid armor. The raid armor is an armor for PvE mode, but it isn't available to the PvE players. It's available only to the raid players. Every persevering WvW player gets the WvW legendary armor sooner or later by simply grinding WvW hours, no matter if he excels in WvW or is mediocre. But the raid armor isn't available to any of us ordinary PvE players whose capabilities end at T4 fractal difficulty level and time investment, regardless of the thousands of hours we sink in that game mode. 6500 hours of pure PvE play? Irrelevant. Dungeoneer? Irrelevant. 50 ascended chests from T4 fractals? Irrelevant. I feel as I've been had.

Make raids easier with no mechs is solution then no more raid sellers no more risks

@"Oglaf.1074" said:Please update the LFG function to allow us who do not care for this practice at all to be able to filter LFG entires containing certain keywords (such as "Sell") out.

If you block the run-seller, they will not show up in lfg

@Palador.2170 said:Question: If I buy or sell something expensive through the auction house, and it's discovered that the person on the other end of the deal used fraud or RMT to get their part of the exchange, am I protected by having used the auction house? Or will my item and/or money be taken away as well?

When buying from the Trading Post, you have no ability to know who sold to or bought from you, and you would not be liable for the outcome.

@Malafaia.8903 said:

@mercury ranique.2170 said:Thanks for the heads up. Some part I am missing is about the grieving involved in getting to a point to sell a run. There are reports of people in party being kicked shortly before the end , just to see the run being sold on the LFG. What is the stance on this? I would perosnally say that if a partymember was kicked it would become unethical to sell the run.

You cannot kick people mid fight ,only leave.

@"Gaile Gray.6029" said:Over the last few months, we have seen a surge in the number of in-game sales related to the completion of challenging encounters and achievements. We've been gathering feedback both internally and externally and we wanted to provide some clarification to players about our policies on this subject.

Reaching back to the roots of Guild Wars, selling "runs" has been a core role for certain members of our community. We recognize that some players are not able to complete all content. Other players have provided a service of convenience or carry through the years, and our official stance is that the selling or buying of runs is completely acceptable.

However, there is a point where things get a little more tricky, such as when account sharing is involved, or when the transfer of enormous wealth for raid runs takes place. At this point, we believe we need to clarify a few things:

• First, account sharing is incredibly risky, as it often leads to the compromise of the account, after which the account may be locked for an indefinite period of time, or permanently terminated. We very seldom are able to retrieve and return a previously shared account to its owner, which is why we strongly recommend that you never share your account with anyone.

• Second, after digging into the origins of the funds involved in large transfers, we learned that almost all of them were directly involved in some form of Fraud and/or RMT. Obviously, Fraud is disallowed, and Real Money Trading (RMT) is absolutely against the rules.

Purchasing a high-cost run directly, or purchasing gold or items to exchange for a run, is likely to result in account action against the purchaser and in some cases the runner(s), as well. While the runner(s) may be unaware that the funds originated from Fraud/RMT, in fact they can be found to be in possession of stolen goods and their account may be impacted by that involvement.

In summary, the buying and selling of runs is acceptable, but ArenaNet does not officially support buyers or sellers. Buying or selling of runs is done at your own risk. If we investigate a transfer and establish that funds originated from fraud or RMT, we will take action against all parties involved. That action, depending on the situation, could include removal of funds, account suspension, and/or account termination.

I thinks its mindboggling that you still give these guys a platform to advertise runs for sale in the LFG tool. A tool implemented to foster and encourage playing together as a community has become nothing more than a way to pay to win.

But I kinda appreciate the irony that you, Anet, dont even get paid for the win but instead, these runners get the rewards, while you have to deal with the extra customer support issues that result from it and the financial loss from RMT it encourages and entails.

This practice of selling raid runs only profits a fair few, while damaging the majority because it doesnt encourage teaching your fellow players.

For a game studio that took pride in exploring new ways of developing this game in many facets, I question your policy in this regard just because it has been a core role for certain members of your community.

After raids were announced for HoT, plenty of players asked for unique account bound rewards for arguably the most challenging content to distinguish themselves from players who didnt conquer this content.

But once they got all those rewards unlocked and dont feel rewarded for their weekly runs anymore, they turn around and sell run completion to the very players they wanted to distinguish themselves from.

If some players arent able to complete raid content, its your job as the developing game studio to make that content more accessible to those players. even if its for less rewards. Or find a way to give extra rewards to experienced players, who take the time and effort to teach or carry other players.

Creating a grey market that obviously feeds from RMT is probably the worst solution here for you as a company and the majority of the player base.

Here is how I see the Selling of Runs:

Add a Section in LFG to purchase a run..

• Develop a payment system for the new run System LFG Function.
• Allow the runner to accept a gold payment or item as payment
• Allow the player getting a run to have the option to refuse payment if the runner does not fulfil his obligation.

When I played Guild Wars Original there was always a group that would leave in the middle of a Lornar Pass Run.. Same thing with Mission runs. Which was unethical put it happens..

In GW2 what I have seen is a Runner request payment at the start then leave, I have also seen them wait till the very end and leave after payment is give resulting in an incomplete run..

This is just a suggestion on a way to mitigate this issue..

@Wanze.8410 said:

@"Gaile Gray.6029" said:Over the last few months, we have seen a surge in the number of in-game sales related to the completion of challenging encounters and achievements. We've been gathering feedback both internally and externally and we wanted to provide some clarification to players about our policies on this subject.

Reaching back to the roots of Guild Wars, selling "runs" has been a core role for certain members of our community. We recognize that some players are not able to complete all content. Other players have provided a service of convenience or carry through the years, and our official stance is that the selling or buying of runs is completely acceptable.

However, there is a point where things get a little more tricky, such as when account sharing is involved, or when the transfer of enormous wealth for raid runs takes place. At this point, we believe we need to clarify a few things:

• First, account sharing is incredibly risky, as it often leads to the compromise of the account, after which the account may be locked for an indefinite period of time, or permanently terminated. We very seldom are able to retrieve and return a previously shared account to its owner, which is why we strongly recommend that you never share your account with anyone.

• Second, after digging into the origins of the funds involved in large transfers, we learned that almost all of them were directly involved in some form of Fraud and/or RMT. Obviously, Fraud is disallowed, and Real Money Trading (RMT) is absolutely against the rules.

Purchasing a high-cost run directly, or purchasing gold or items to exchange for a run, is likely to result in account action against the purchaser and in some cases the runner(s), as well. While the runner(s) may be unaware that the funds originated from Fraud/RMT, in fact they can be found to be in possession of stolen goods and their account may be impacted by that involvement.

In summary, the buying and selling of runs is acceptable, but ArenaNet does not officially support buyers or sellers.

Buying or selling of runs is done at your own risk.

If we investigate a transfer and establish that funds originated from fraud or RMT, we will take action against all parties involved. That action, depending on the situation, could include removal of funds, account suspension, and/or account termination.

Thus the solution : make raids harder so that it ll be impossible to sell.

@Brian Kuts.3701 said:Here is how I see the Selling of Runs:

Add a Section in LFG to purchase a run..

• Develop a payment system for the new run System LFG Function.
• Allow the runner to accept a gold payment or item as payment
• Allow the player getting a run to have the option to refuse payment if the runner does not fulfil his obligation.

When I played Guild Wars Original there was always a group that would leave in the middle of a Lornar Pass Run.. Same thing with Mission runs. Which was unethical put it happens..

In GW2 what I have seen is a Runner request payment at the start then leave, I have also seen them wait till the very end and leave after payment is give resulting in an incomplete run..

This is just a suggestion on a way to mitigate this issue..

Use services of established selling guilds instead of being cheap and buying it from random untested players.

Paying for a "RUN" doesn't even relate to what actually happens 99% of the time.All your allowing players to do is pay for the final smidge of a boss fight or the final chest in order to get the item/achievement, which is nothing more than advertising the sale of an item, which funnily enough you don't allow.

Such double standards make a mockery of the game content. Might as well just give everyone the item/achievs or let them buy .. at least then the gold gets taken out the game or Real currency goes to ANET not the shady ones.

LFG sales should mean just that.. sales... if a player wants to sell a spot they form a group before hand and run it through the whole way not just a chest.Selling an itme or such on the LFG actually still constitutes forming a group if you want to be pedantic so again this is just double standards.

It makes a mockery of creating challenging content if everyone can just piggy back a spot at the end.. some things are just not meant to be for some players.. what is wrong with that.. how does selling spots make a player learn or try to improve.. it doesn't its simply a P2W that you openly support..

@"Oglaf.1074" said:Please update the LFG function to allow us who do not care for this practice at all to be able to filter LFG entires containing certain keywords (such as "Sell") out.

Why? If the filter will go live people will stop selling and start s3lling or $€lling.

I don't really see how officially stating AND also pursuing people who sell "runs" would do anything but put it less on the foreground.

Also unrelated is that most of the complaints are more about it being possible to be carried to the end of things rather than the actual selling.

Portaling to the end of jumping puzzles is often "making a mockery of the jumping puzzle" But the consensus there is that it's mostly okay.

@DirtyDan.4759 said:

@"Oglaf.1074" said:Please update the LFG function to allow us who do not care for this practice at all to be able to filter LFG entires containing certain keywords (such as "Sell") out.

No they won't.

They want to sell their services, not annoy people.

@DirtyDan.4759 said:

@"Oglaf.1074" said:Please update the LFG function to allow us who do not care for this practice at all to be able to filter LFG entires containing certain keywords (such as "Sell") out.

Of course not. I'm a raid seller. I would be happy for people who don't want to see the advertisement to be able to filter for example -sell in the LFG tab. How would circumventing their filter with for example s3ll help me in any way? If they bother to filter the ad out, they aren't interested in buying anyway (or they wouldn't filter it out).

If I think about it further and how extraordinarily rare the skins and titles and are that are acquired by paid runs, and how narrow the raid community is, I come to the conclusion that after 1-2 years of constant selling there might be more players who bought runs to get these skins and titles than there are players who legitimately got them by mastering the contents.

As as consequence, if I ever see such skin or title ingame, I will simply laugh and turn away, because I can safely assume this thing was bought and not earned. This view on these items is probably not what was intended by Arenanet, but the items are completely devaluated by the selling practice, even if still only 3% of the players have such a skin or title in the first place. 1% earned, 2% bought makes all 3% worthless. In consequence, the development time of that stuff was wasted, if the goal was to create a highly valuated rare ingame item that is shown with pride by the player who earned it.

@Wanze.8410 said:If some players arent able to complete raid content, its your job as the developing game studio to make that content more accessible to those players. even if its for less rewards. Or find a way to give extra rewards to experienced players, who take the time and effort to teach or carry other players.

No it's not their job to ensure, that every entitled brat, that can't even make a bit of commitment (gear up a class, learn a fight) can clear the content, that was meant to be for the most "hard core" part of the community. The problem is you, players that think, that they should get rewards for being able to breathe. Yes you bought the game, and you got access to the content, if you are unable to handle the content it's not the developer's fault. Gw2 is the most casual MMO with some of the easiest Raids there is.

@Wanze.8410 said:Creating a grey market that obviously feeds from RMT is probably the worst solution here for you as a company and the majority of the player base.

It's the noobs that created the market, not the company. If there are no customers, the selling business will stop.