Is it safe for my wife to mail me a legendary as a birthday gift?

[Arukayos.1798]

A bit of context regarding this question: I've heard a lot of horror stories, and map chat in Lion's Arch spooked me out that people have been falsely banned for receiving legendaries in the mail from trusted people that they personally know. After doing some research, I did find many reddit threads alluding to this being the case.

My birthday was on the 20th of May. I've been eyeing meteorlogicus for a while since I think it's beautiful and very very eye-catching. Since my wife had an extra gift of exploration, she decided to put together all the materials and has the legendary in her inventory as we speak, ready to mail it. However, we're both kind of worried that it may trigger a false-positive and lead to a ban.

My wife and I have been playing together since 2014, and we typically log in from the same location so we should have a similar IP address. I believe I have plenty of evidence to contact Anet in such a rare case (I've even made paypal payments on her account from the email associated with my Gw2 account) but I'd ideally prefer to avoid the ordeal altogether. So, I'm just trying to scope out what the situation looks like - whether false bans are a common thing, whether it's likely to happen, etc etc.

If anyone has received a legendary from a friend/SO/guildy, I'd appreciate if you could elucidate your experience or perhaps shed some reassurance/relief.

[Vilin.8056]

Yes, gifting Legendary between spouses and couples has been common in the community. You should be safe of doing so.

[Khisanth.2948]

I have friends who have done that, sending legendaries to each other.I've help a friend craft one by providing the GoB and GoE.I've sent a couple between my accounts as well. None of that has resulted in any issue I am aware of.

[BadHealer.3608]

Do be sure you could write in the mail an information to Anet. (e.g. "Sending this to my husband as a gift, look at the IPs we should have roughly the same."

[Friday.7864]

You can send whatever you want between accounts.There's literally people who send a few legendaries to another person for fun. You can see it often in streams.You can only get in trouble if it's a stolen item or something like that.

[ILoveMonotony.1479]

It would be much safer if she mailed it to me. ;)

[Tzarakiel.7490]

If you have traded other valuable items before with each other over a long time you are probably fine. It's those out of the blue transactions where people have never exchanged anything before that gets in trouble because that's often a sign of rmt. It also couldn't hurt to include why you sent it in the mail itself I guess.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

It's perfectly fine, and unlikely to raise a blip on the radar.It's not like ArenaNet can't tell you live in the same household.

[Henry.5713]

My girlfriend has sent me half a dozen gen 1 legendaries she has crafted for me at this point. You will be fine.

[Danikat.8537]

Yes it's fine, but it's a good idea for her to put something in the mail to make it clear it's a birthday gift.

False positives do happen, but it takes a lot more than one transaction. The only ones I'm aware of is when guilds or community groups (like the various in-game fundraisers for charities) have a new person handing out the prizes for their contests. Someone suddenly receives thousands of gold and many valuable items from a variety of accounts then mails them out to other accounts all in a short space of time? That will look exactly like a gold seller's 'burner account' in action. But in every case I'm aware of they've been able to sort it out by contacting Anet and providing evidence (either time, date and chat channel for in-game chat or a website) of the contest and that they were the designated person handing the prizes out.

I've also been involved in a similar situation to you, except that was a group of us making a legendary for a friend. One person volunteered to provide the account bound components and the rest of us mailed her gold or items (making sure to put something in the mail like "Here's my contribution to [name]'s legendary!" then we all got together to present it. It was fun and no one got in any kind of trouble. :)

It's also worth bearing in mind that there's also "false" positives which turn out to be completely valid. The most similar one I heard about was someone in exactly the same situation as you - thier friend decided to give them a legendary for their birthday and a few days later the friend was banned, the legendary was removed and the recipient had a warning not to engage in gold selling, even indirectly or they'd be banned too. How could Anet do something so unfair? Because it turns out the idiot friend couldn't actually afford to make a legendary so they bought one from a nice guy on ebay to gift to their friend. :o

Mistakes do happen, but I've worked too many customer service jobs to believe that every totally innocent person on Reddit with a sob story about how they were unfairly banned is telling the truth.

[Fosio.8217]

Should be safe as long as she's wearing a mask and gloves while handling the Legendary.Your part will be disinfecting all the parts of said Legendary with Alcohol 98% or Chlorine based disinfectants (5-10% concentration).Stay safe!

[Super Hayes.6890]

@Fosio.8217 said:Should be safe as long as she's wearing a mask and gloves while handling the Legendary.Your part will be disinfecting all the parts of said Legendary with Alcohol 98% or Chlorine based disinfectants (5-10% concentration).Stay safe!

I typically am against posts about the pandemic but this made my day ?

[Kyra Tribeca.4912]

Happy belated Birthday :)

My husband and I often trade via mail and have never had any issues. As others have stated, make sure that there is something wrote in both the title line and body of the mail (EX. Happy Birthday {title}, I hope you like the gift {body} ) as that would show 'thought' behind the send.

[Red Haired Savage.5430]

@Fosio.8217 said:Should be safe as long as she's wearing a mask and gloves while handling the Legendary.Your part will be disinfecting all the parts of said Legendary with Alcohol 98% or Chlorine based disinfectants (5-10% concentration).Stay safe!

Also remember you'll need to let it sit for 7-14 days.

[Faenar.8036]

@"Danikat.8537" said:.....It's also worth bearing in mind that there's also "false" positives which turn out to be completely valid. The most similar one I heard about was someone in exactly the same situation as you - thier friend decided to give them a legendary for their birthday and a few days later the friend was banned, the legendary was removed and the recipient had a warning not to engage in gold selling, even indirectly or they'd be banned too. How could Anet do something so unfair? Because it turns out the idiot friend couldn't actually afford to make a legendary so they bought one from a nice guy on ebay to gift to their friend. :o.....

The key word "indirectly" in that threat is, at the very least, suspicious, and is somewhat "triggering" me.

Because if that will be true, ArenaNet will probably bankrupt from the amount of substitute lawsuits demandind refunds, financial compensation for dishonor etc etc. (EULA and ToS are in some cases only wall of text with empty words, state laws are above all these and thats what matters, at least here in EU, not sure about US or other countries). If that "indirectly" threat would be true, then it would be possible to creating a fresh account, buying any Legendary from eBay for that account, and then sending that Legendary to some PvP/WvW enemies to get them perma-ban from ArenaNet, because they wouldnt even know what happened, nor have any proof that they were not participating in any RMT (And in a world with functional legal laws, this is not possible because you know - "In dubio pro reo" - presumption of innocence - there does not exist any possible way to prove that you do NOT participate in RMT, because already thousands years ago ancient greek philosophers already knew very well that it is logically impossible to prove that you do NOT know about something).

If that "indirectly" would be true, then sending eBay Legendaries would instantly became ultimate PvP/WvW "meta" of "wining" against enemies and entire eBay wouldnt have enough Legendaries to fulfill the demand in that "market".

---

*To the topic:

On a side note: I play GW2 since betatest and I was frequently sending relatively high amounts of WvW blueprints/tactics/valuable crafting materials without even a single word in these mail (to be honest, mails cannot be sent without any description, so everytime I just wrote the letter "a" into both "title" and "body" of that mail ) to bank of WvW guild i am member of, sometimes just right to my guildmates or even other commanders on our server. And it seems that even if this is watched just by a scripted robot, every positive is then probably being re-examined by an actual human, because I never ever had any problem of any accusation from ArenaNet. So probably this system is working as intended, and perma-banning only those ppl where there is a 100%-sure proof that they were really and, now the most important keyword - intentionally - doing some illegal activity like for example RMT.

According to all these things, my answer is too "It should be safe to sent a Legendary as a gift". Its highly unlikely that ANet will mark it as RMT, and even if they do, just contact them its a gift to husband from his wife. The chance that they will not understand it and you would need a lawsuit to solve this theoretical issue is extremely close to zero.

If you are still extremely affraid that against all odds you will became banned, then there is also a BBB (= Better Bussiness Bureau) organization which was (beside many other cases) AFAIK at least once used against xxxxxx game publisher company in USA (I dont want to write its name), so this company already have experience how to contact game publisher. (In short: that publisher was accused of using false advertising when they changed game mechanics already in the middle of selling pre-order game packages. Many ppl want refund, company REFUSED to refund. Then BBB was contacted by customers, and suddenly, like a miracle change, game publisher instantly give refundations to all customers who wanted it). Basically said, BBB is defending customers against "bad evil" bussiness companies (I know, weird description =) , but you get the point )

// edit: oh god ... formating in GW2 forum is sometimes a punishment on its own, not even mention automatic word "corrections"ermhm, nevermind , post edited, text formating changed ...

[Fozzie.5370]

@Henry.5713 said:My girlfriend has sent me half a dozen gen 1 legendaries she has crafted for me at this point. You will be fine.

^^ @Henry.5713 she sounds a keeper to me ! Geez if you can find me a girlfriend like this, i'd owe you several beers and that still wouldn't be enough :smile:

[Danikat.8537]

@Faenar.8036 said:

@"Danikat.8537" said:.....It's also worth bearing in mind that there's also "false" positives which turn out to be completely valid. The most similar one I heard about was someone in exactly the same situation as you - thier friend decided to give them a legendary for their birthday and a few days later the friend was banned, the legendary was removed and the recipient had a warning not to engage in gold selling, even indirectly or they'd be banned too. How could Anet do something so unfair? Because it turns out the idiot friend couldn't actually afford to make a legendary so they bought one from a nice guy on ebay to gift to their friend. :o.....

The key word "indirectly" in that threat is, at the very least, suspicious, and is somewhat "triggering" me.

Because if that will be true, ArenaNet will probably bankrupt from the amount of substitute lawsuits demandind refunds, financial compensation for dishonor etc etc. (EULA and ToS are in some cases only wall of text with empty words, state laws are above all these and thats what matters, at least here in EU, not sure about US or other countries). If that "indirectly" threat would be true, then it would be possible to creating a fresh account, buying any Legendary from eBay for that account, and then sending that Legendary to some PvP/WvW enemies to get them perma-ban from ArenaNet, because they wouldnt even know what happened, nor have any proof that they were not participating in any RMT (And in a world with functional legal laws, this is not possible because you know - "In dubio pro reo" - presumption of innocence - there does not exist any possible way to prove that you do NOT participate in RMT, because already thousands years ago ancient greek philosophers already knew very well that it is logically impossible to prove that you do NOT know about something).

If that "indirectly" would be true, then sending eBay Legendaries would instantly became ultimate PvP/WvW "meta" of "wining" against enemies and entire eBay wouldnt have enough Legendaries to fulfill the demand in that "market".

I don't know the exact wording. This didn't happen to me and I never saw the actual message, I was just paraphrasing from what I was told.

[lezbefriends.7516]

That's very nice of her!

[Doleron.3719]

Go ahead with it and do multiple screenshots of this forum thread in case it "accidentally" disappears after they action you.

[Cobrakon.3108]

You can get flagged and temporarily locked out of your account, but I believe this to be rare and if the truth is on your side, there is little to worry about.

[Khisanth.2948]

@Faenar.8036 said:

@"Danikat.8537" said:.....It's also worth bearing in mind that there's also "false" positives which turn out to be completely valid. The most similar one I heard about was someone in exactly the same situation as you - thier friend decided to give them a legendary for their birthday and a few days later the friend was banned, the legendary was removed and the recipient had a warning not to engage in gold selling, even indirectly or they'd be banned too. How could Anet do something so unfair? Because it turns out the idiot friend couldn't actually afford to make a legendary so they bought one from a nice guy on ebay to gift to their friend. :o.....

The key word "indirectly" in that threat is, at the very least, suspicious, and is somewhat "triggering" me.

Because if that will be true, ArenaNet will probably bankrupt from the amount of substitute lawsuits demandind refunds, financial compensation for dishonor etc etc. (EULA and ToS are in some cases only wall of text with empty words, state laws are above all these and thats what matters, at least here in EU, not sure about US or other countries). If that "indirectly" threat would be true, then it would be possible to creating a fresh account, buying any Legendary from eBay for that account, and then sending that Legendary to some PvP/WvW enemies to get them perma-ban from ArenaNet, because they wouldnt even know what happened, nor have any proof that they were not participating in any RMT (And in a world with functional legal laws, this is not possible because you know - "In dubio pro reo" - presumption of innocence - there does not exist any possible way to prove that you do NOT participate in RMT, because already thousands years ago ancient greek philosophers already knew very well that it is logically impossible to prove that you do NOT know about something).

Already been done, you can search reddit for that. No need to bother with all the extra steps either.If indirect doesn't count then gold laundering becomes trivial.

As for the laws, I think when I last checked when you pay for GW2 you are not actually paying for a product. You are paying for access to a service. That would probably make a difference for legal purposes.

[Faenar.8036]

@"Khisanth.2948" said:

Already been done, you can search reddit for that. No need to bother with all the extra steps either.If indirect doesn't count then gold laundering becomes trivial.

As for the laws, I think when I last checked when you pay for GW2 you are not actually paying for a product. You are paying for access to a service. That would probably make a difference for legal purposes.

Thanks for pointing me out to reddit, didnt read about these cases till now. Searched and read some reddit threads about these things and from arguments I saw there, it seems for me that GM Dornsinger is the right person at the right place. Really liked reading his way of argumentations there. Okay, my "triggered" condition calmed down, suspicious case now closed for me. Seems like fair-play ppl have nothing to worry about in Guild Wars 2.

Thanks you again for your post, gave +1 thumb up . (not that it matter anywhere, but still deserved anyway : ) )

[Arukayos.1798]

Thanks, all of you, for all the advice and reassurance!

Seeing as how this thread kind of blew up, I figured I'd post an update here for anyone wondering how it went. She sent me the legendary a few days ago and there haven't been any problems so far. :) It seems as though the horror stories are just that - stories, or that false positives are a statistical outlier given everyone's experiences and my own. Also, thank you all for the belated wishes!

@"Danikat.8537" said:It's also worth bearing in mind that there's also "false" positives which turn out to be completely valid. The most similar one I heard about was someone in exactly the same situation as you - thier friend decided to give them a legendary for their birthday and a few days later the friend was banned, the legendary was removed and the recipient had a warning not to engage in gold selling, even indirectly or they'd be banned too. How could Anet do something so unfair? Because it turns out the idiot friend couldn't actually afford to make a legendary so they bought one from a nice guy on ebay to gift to their friend. :o

This is a big yikes. I'm glad to see that they make an active effort in implementing a zero-tolerance policy with regards to RMT, though, since those items are often stolen from legitimate accounts. I don't even understand why someone would do this though? All tradeable legendaries can be bought straight-up by converting gems to gold and that's 100% legit, which is what I've done in the past to gift my friends certain Black Lion Skins. The game literally gives you a way to buy legendaries with real money, so why gamble with some external website just to save a few bucks and deny supporting a company which has made such a great game? In the past, whenever I've been low on gold, I've always chosen to buy gems to gift my friends something, it's two birds with one stone that way since I also get to support Anet in the process.