Toons for Sale?

[Dunes]

Hey guys,

Anyone who has noticed any trend to my posts whatsoever knows that Im a pretty upbeat, non complaining guy [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

But I ask you all to take a look a the the EC Tunnel thread and tell me what you see there. When I glanced today, 8 of the 20 non sticky auctions were for toons. This trend has grown significantly just in the last 3 months, and before long thats going to be a problem. Now, Im no economist, but something about this trend makes me uneasy.

Atleast on ther surface, this seems to be a very "unclassic" trend, but times have changed and we play our games differently these days. Personally, Im a little undecided as to whether this is a good thing (why?) or a bad thing (why?).

Without ranting or flaming, what are your thoughts on this?

[guineapig]

It kind of bugs me too how many characters and accounts have been for sale lately. It's getting to a point where something like Vent will be a necessity to be sure you know who it is you're speaking to.

I think it would be fair to force character names to be posted for any sales that happen on these forums.

The person selling the character shouldn't care anyway and the person buying should have a right to know if the character he's purchasing has a bad rep.

I wonder how many people already own characters in all the top end raid guilds... I'm sure somebody has done it already.

[Omnimorph]

Well i can understand there's a market for it, but at the same time i can see why it's a detriment to the server. The server is currently at a bottleneck till kunark comes out, and in that time people are trying to accrue decent amounts of plat for new items when the expansion comes out.

Some people farm seafuries, some camp frenzied or freeti for hours and hours... what seems to be a popular method at the moment is levelling up a toon and selling it.

If you think about the price you're paying for a level 50 toon as opposed to how long it would take to get that level paying the standard 1-2k per hour PL... it's practically a bargain.

People will continue to do it until it's either banned, or possibly having it's own section on the forums.

[feste]

I dont think anyone cares about how the buyers are getting away without leveling (at least very few) because to have the cash for one of these characters they already have put in tons of time. its a player rep thing. So it could be fixed by the list of names like guineapig said. or maybe a last name that sticks to the player not the character.

[xshayla701]

Originally Posted by guineapig [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I think it would be fair to force character names to be posted for any sales that happen on these forums.

The person selling the character shouldn't care anyway and the person buying should have a right to know if the character he's purchasing has a bad rep.

This

[Kassel]

I dont think anyone cares about how the buyers are getting away without leveling (at least very few) because to have the cash for one of these characters they already have put in tons of time

Not always... there is a website which i wont name that sells plat for real money. It is possible this website can get the server shut down completly by sony. There is some discussion about it in various threads in RnF and i think one in the ECtunnel.

Personally i am not a fan of toon sales, however if GMs banned this in game and on this forum it would simply go underground to a 3rd party website. I cant imagine our GM's are in a position to spend thousands on lawyers to petition cease and desist requests

[guineapig]

Hence why I am requesting that character names be made mandatory on the sales, instead of requesting that sales be ended.

As long as I know that #_random_player_01 is not the same guy he was a week ago, I'm fine with it. At least it's some form of checks and balances.

[Kassel]

Hence why I am requesting that character names be made mandatory on the sales, instead of requesting that sales be ended.

Not a bad idea, but how would gm's enforce such a thing when trades can ben done via multiple media that they do not have the resources to control.

[Winobot]

Gms wouldn't. It would have to be enforced/controlled by the playerbase. For example, someone could setup a thread and get it stickied, to the affect of "Traded/Bought/Sold characters". This would allow guilds to peruse the list and see if they are about to recruit a known bought/traded/sold character. There would of course be underground transactions; people like Bob obviously want to stay in business and being discreet means people are more willing to buy.

Just a thought, there could be a ton of holes, but I agree, would be nice to have some deets about these 'village bike' toons! Obviously there would have to be some kind of evidence/follow-up, and some anonymity from the community, I think people would be more willing to rat out friends/guildmates if they knew they wouldn’t get caught as the whistle blower.

[Akame]

I dislike character sales because the person driving may have no knowledge of the class. A level 50 is supposed to have 50 levels of experience playing that class, and you just don't know now if they bought it yesterday or can actually play.