306 replies to this topic

[Misuu]

Hmm. so it looks like I came to this discussion a bit late. Sorry. I happen to study Economics. Reducing the fungible nature of your currency (in this case, in-game gold) by reducing its purchasing power is what sparks riots in countries like Cuba and Egypt. Removing a commodity would be like when the US could no longer trade oil with OPEC. Remember when that happened during the 80's? How'd that turn out?

A level 30 cap on the auction house would not hurt the economy as much as you think; look at the % of items being traded that are exclusive to or more helpful to < level 30 players versus the number of trades of consumable cash shop items (adjusted for fraudulent trades, obviously) and you will see legitimate market activity for consumables outperforms level 1-29 gear and items (apples, waters, bananas, milk) at least 10 to 1. Probably closer to 100 to 1. For a new player before level 30 on a F2P MMO, what makes you or your business partners think consumers are going to contribute to what is ostensibly an untested product? Also, being forced to level up to a point where one can finally use the auction gives a sense of accomplishment, e.g. you are finally no longer a 'noob' in Dragon Saga.

Just by virtue of letting the community at large know the level of the person they are trading with would help immensely; most of the characters with gold (like Yurai) are shrewd, but veteran players like them also understand the importance of preserving this community. e.g., if I have to choose between orange juice made locally or orange juice from China, people buy local way more often. If I know "fakename312" is level 1 and is selling 15 stacks of scrolls will make me report that person. BUT THEN YOU NEED TO FOLLOW UP ON THAT TICKET IN LESS THAN 48 HOURS. Your ticket response times are abysmal; Hire a guy ... crap, hire some interns.

Speaking of developers and moderators doing their job without forcing a community to stagnate, a 72 hour hold on first purchases with a credit card is MORE than fair, and gives ample time to investigate the credit card. Sorry, you guys at Gravity are going to have to do something other than changing end-user conditions to fix this gold seller problem. Or, if you don't want to put those kinds of limits on your credit card purchases, a reduced volume of IM points purchasable in the first 2 weeks with a newly registered credit card is also more than feasible. You will irritate a whole lot fewer people. This plan only inconveniences each new player for about 2 weeks; remember that your current plan to remove consumables from trade upsets 1) veterans who play the game for fun, bring a sense of community to the game, and encourage others to play the game through viral marketing and person-to-person advertising who use in-game gold to continue playing; 2) early-mid level players who purchase IM points for items with real credit cards and sell those items in the game for in-game gold, and 3) new players, who try the game, but cannot get past the 'pay to win' mentality an account-bonded cash-shop system holds. My guess is with a modest 15% increase in cash shop prices, you could offset the additional cost of security for investigating new credit-card purchases and tickets pertaining to inappropriate selling practices. In my assessment, combining additional security protocols with an auction level cap and/or rallying community support to buy from higher level players, gold selling would be significantly reduced.

Plus, if you force a gold seller to play to level 30, they would realize how useless gold already is in the current market. Their strategy of ripping you guys off would seem futile, and they'd go back to gold-selling for World of Warcraft; Blizzard doesn't seem to mind.

[Riceball]

Hmm. so it looks like I came to this discussion a bit late. Sorry. I happen to study Economics. Reducing the fungible nature of your currency (in this case, in-game gold) by reducing its purchasing power is what sparks riots in countries like Cuba and Egypt. Removing a commodity would be like when the US could no longer trade oil with OPEC. Remember when that happened during the 80's? How'd that turn out?

A level 30 cap on the auction house would not hurt the economy as much as you think; look at the % of items being traded that are exclusive to or more helpful to < level 30 players versus the number of trades of consumable cash shop items (adjusted for fraudulent trades, obviously) and you will see legitimate market activity for consumables outperforms level 1-29 gear and items (apples, waters, bananas, milk) at least 10 to 1. Probably closer to 100 to 1. For a new player before level 30 on a F2P MMO, what makes you or your business partners think consumers are going to contribute to what is ostensibly an untested product? Also, being forced to level up to a point where one can finally use the auction gives a sense of accomplishment, e.g. you are finally no longer a 'noob' in Dragon Saga.

Just by virtue of letting the community at large know the level of the person they are trading with would help immensely; most of the characters with gold (like Yurai) are shrewd, but veteran players like them also understand the importance of preserving this community. e.g., if I have to choose between orange juice made locally or orange juice from China, people buy local way more often. If I know "fakename312" is level 1 and is selling 15 stacks of scrolls will make me report that person. BUT THEN YOU NEED TO FOLLOW UP ON THAT TICKET IN LESS THAN 48 HOURS. Your ticket response times are abysmal; Hire a guy ... crap, hire some interns.

Speaking of developers and moderators doing their job without forcing a community to stagnate, a 72 hour hold on first purchases with a credit card is MORE than fair, and gives ample time to investigate the credit card. Sorry, you guys at Gravity are going to have to do something other than changing end-user conditions to fix this gold seller problem. Or, if you don't want to put those kinds of limits on your credit card purchases, a reduced volume of IM points purchasable in the first 2 weeks with a newly registered credit card is also more than feasible. You will irritate a whole lot fewer people. This plan only inconveniences each new player for about 2 weeks; remember that your current plan to remove consumables from trade upsets 1) veterans who play the game for fun, bring a sense of community to the game, and encourage others to play the game through viral marketing and person-to-person advertising who use in-game gold to continue playing; 2) early-mid level players who purchase IM points for items with real credit cards and sell those items in the game for in-game gold, and 3) new players, who try the game, but cannot get past the 'pay to win' mentality an account-bonded cash-shop system holds. My guess is with a modest 15% increase in cash shop prices, you could offset the additional cost of security for investigating new credit-card purchases and tickets pertaining to inappropriate selling practices. In my assessment, combining additional security protocols with an auction level cap and/or rallying community support to buy from higher level players, gold selling would be significantly reduced.

Plus, if you force a gold seller to play to level 30, they would realize how useless gold already is in the current market. Their strategy of ripping you guys off would seem futile, and they'd go back to gold-selling for World of Warcraft; Blizzard doesn't seem to mind.

I realize he's been quoted by a couple of people already but...
Hire this guy! PLEASE!

Although, the underlined part is wrong. I've been sending tickets quite frequently and their response is actually pretty fast. Small problem, within 1 hour. Charging problem, within a day or half a day. Though if you tried to send an argument like this one in as a ticket, I don't think they'd ever give a reply.

And I'm not sure how they would realize gold is useless? If gold were useless, gold sellers wouldn't exist.

That aside, I doubt anyone in this game would be stupid enough to actually try to buy gold. There doesn't seem to be any benefit to them by selling IM consumables cheap in the market. They might actually just be targetting Warp Portal...

Yet another note... raising IM item prices would just increase their gold value equivalently. Nothing solved really.

Edited by Riceball, 17 February 2011 - 03:12 AM.

[ridicule]

Yet another note... raising IM item prices would just increase their gold value equivalently. Nothing solved really.

It doesn't have anything to do with changing the gold value. If IM prices are raised, IM items would hopefully still be able to be sold on market, because the added profit from legitimate buyers would offset that lost by gold sellers using fraudulent charges.

[Riceball]

It doesn't have anything to do with changing the gold value. If IM prices are raised, IM items would hopefully still be able to be sold on market, because the added profit from legitimate buyers would offset that lost by gold sellers using fraudulent charges.

Ohh I see. But if the prices in IM were doubled, less people would actually want to buy from IM than to just buy cheap from market.
Anyway, this topic is old now...

[ridicule]

Ohh I see. But if the prices in IM were doubled, less people would actually want to buy from IM than to just buy cheap from market.
Anyway, this topic is old now...

Fortunately, there are many prices in between "current price" and "doubled"!

[ATG4u]

And I'm not sure how they would realize gold is useless? If gold were useless, gold sellers wouldn't exist.

That aside, I doubt anyone in this game would be stupid enough to actually try to buy gold. There doesn't seem to be any benefit to them by selling IM consumables cheap in the market. They might actually just be targetting Warp Portal...

You see, the problem with gold selling is that it can exist without 'demand' for gold because there is no 'overhead cost'. When someone steals credit cards, sells what they bought with stolen money, then sell that new money at a gold store, that person can do so without any knowledge of the actual value of the in game gold. [This is how money laundering works through foreign economies, if you have ever wondered about that. These gold sellers could literally be terrorists, dictators, drug dealers, corrupt corporations, etc.] So, because there is no cost to the gold seller, gold selling CAN exist without demand for gold; a gold selling market is instead perpetuated by a ) ignorance about a foreign economy and B ) the need to launder money [In-game gold is the foreign economy].

With a requirement to actually play the game, you may get a change in behavior on the part of gold sellers. Gold selling is just one guy, maybe a few guys; playing the game is required to know that no one would be stupid enough to buy gold, hence, a level requirement for the auction house may end up implicitly discouraging gold selling behavior via this realization. The equivalent realization in money laundering comes when an individual goes to visit Iran, and realizes that laundering their stolen credit card money into "Riyadh" makes it less than worthless. So, those money launderers move on to the next foreign country hoping to find one that has a more desired currency.

Luckily, this isn't even the main reason for a level requirement at the auction house. Stealing a credit card -> Buying IM points through the internet -> Registering a new account -> tutorial for new character+setting up market would, conservatively, only take a gold seller somewhere around two hours to set up. Getting to level 30 for an experienced player takes 20-25 hours; for a novice, it's probably more like a week. Additionally, a 72 hold on purchases for new credit cards extends that time even further. A two week limit on the amount of purchases would limit the damage that could be done even further. This long period of time is in the hopes of giving Gravity enough time to catch the bastard(s).

And hey, how about this; confirming a credit card (2 week credit card verification rule or shorter if Gravity gets their acts together) enables a special, account-bound item to be available from the IM shop called "market-any-level scroll" sold for free for 0 IM points. This scroll would allows a lower level player to use the auction house. With the rules I described in place and the existence of this IG item, even fewer people are inconvenienced by the rules as time goes on AND more people would be willing to get AT LEAST one confirmed credit card registered through Gravity. This would simultaneously decrease anxiety over starting new characters for experienced players, decrease any resentment from new players who want to immediately buy cash shop items, increase activity to the cash shop by all players, and give the Feds a new lead when investigating your credit-card fraud problem. Remember how the item is account-bound? Well if you have one 'confirmed' credit card used to buy the scroll and 8 bad ones from the same account/IP address/subnet mask, that confirmed card is the guy; go get the Feds to arrest him.

Edited by ATG4u, 17 February 2011 - 06:15 AM.

[Mvffin]

Under the IAH and GPOT servers, there is a few days waiting period to buy cash, as well as requiring a confirmed paypal account. If we did both of those things here, it would be a major decrease in the gold selling, IMO. It seems to be working fine for those versions, since their servers aren't closed yet. I know IAH is much more populated, but GPOT seems to have about the same population as our server, and all cash consumables are still tradeable on there.

Edited by Mvffin, 17 February 2011 - 06:59 AM.

[rokagui54]

I dont know if someone already said this,cuz im not going to read all this,
but could be a good soluiton if Gravity start to sell Gold in their own website
like those illegal websites.Im sure that those people that buy gold from those
websites,would prefer to buy gold here.So doing this i think this will have a good
impact in those illegal Transactions.

And i agree with the proposal to let at least trade the cash itens individual,or send by mail too.

Edited by rokagui54, 17 February 2011 - 08:16 AM.

[to0n]

I dont know if someone already said this,cuz im not going to read all this,
but could be a good soluiton if Gravity start to sell Gold in their own website
like those illegal websites.Im sure that those people that buy gold from those
websites,would prefer to buy gold here.So doing this i think this will have a good
impact in those illegal Transactions.

And i agree with the proposal to let at least trade the cash itens individual,or send by mail too.

How about we sell everything in the game for IM. Remove the gold currency entirely.

Edited by to0n, 17 February 2011 - 10:34 AM.

[Nolanvoid]

Though it was very very well written, there are several flaws with the idea. The issue comes from how they go about their methods that causes an issue. I cannot go further into it because, for obvious reasons, we do not want anyone entertaining the idea of trying to be a gold seller(which would be a very bad idea especially, and not only, due to the legal issues behind it). The gold sellers, currently, have access to all the information involving the credit card that they use. When credit card holders do not safeguard their cards by going to potentially harmful websites or making transactions at unsecure locations, the sellers are able to obtain all of the holder's information. With this, they are able to bypass a restriction such as a verification rule, an investigation, or even a hold. In the end, the merchant must accept the fees.

The gold selling industry has become at this point, much more than "one person", at least from our encounter with one of the groups targetting one of our games. "Playing" the game does not become a hindrance for their type of operation. Therefore, placing a "ban" on the Item Mall up to level 30 would not produce results in slowing down the issue. There are definitely good intentions behind the idea, but it does not restrict or slow them down from achieving their goal. I apologize for having to be very vague, but releasing the knowledge we have behind it is highly detrimental to our business.

As long as there is a source of income, the gold sellers will continue to be persistent.

[Yurai]

Though it was very very well written, there are several flaws with the idea. The issue comes from how they go about their methods that causes an issue. I cannot go further into it because, for obvious reasons, we do not want anyone entertaining the idea of trying to be a gold seller(which would be a very bad idea especially, and not only, due to the legal issues behind it). The gold sellers, currently, have access to all the information involving the credit card that they use. When credit card holders do not safeguard their cards by going to potentially harmful websites or making transactions at unsecure locations, the sellers are able to obtain all of the holder's information. With this, they are able to bypass a restriction such as a verification rule, an investigation, or even a hold. In the end, the merchant must accept the fees.

The gold selling industry has become at this point, much more than "one person", at least from our encounter with one of the groups targetting one of our games. "Playing" the game does not become a hindrance for their type of operation. Therefore, placing a "ban" on the Item Mall up to level 30 would not produce results in slowing down the issue. There are definitely good intentions behind the idea, but it does not restrict or slow them down from achieving their goal. I apologize for having to be very vague, but releasing the knowledge we have behind it is highly detrimental to our business.

As long as there is a source of income, the gold sellers will continue to be persistent.

Why not make stricter restrictions on filtering websites? Every time you ban a gold spammer, just add whatever they say to the block list. In addition, make it so that the word censor does not block you from sending the message. Instead, make it show up normally on your own screen, but have the words censored on other people's screens. Eventually, they're bound to run out of ways to say their own website url. Instead of censoring useless things such as the [] character, which prevents us from linking new items, work the censor around something like the gold spammer url's, or any url for that matter.

Edited by Yurai, 17 February 2011 - 12:28 PM.

[Akihiro]

Why not make stricter restrictions on filtering websites? Every time you ban a gold spammer, just add whatever they say to the block list. In addition, make it so that the word censor does not block you from sending the message. Instead, make it show up normally on your own screen, but have the words censored on other people's screens. Eventually, they're bound to run out of ways to say their own website url. Instead of censoring useless things such as the [] character, which prevents us from linking new items, work the censor around something like the gold spammer url's, or any url for that matter.

The **** is how IAH has their filter, and I'd prefer if we had it that way too, especially since it's clearly possible and within reach.

[ATG4u]

Though it was very very well written, there are several flaws with the idea. The issue comes from how they go about their methods that causes an issue. I cannot go further into it because, for obvious reasons, we do not want anyone entertaining the idea of trying to be a gold seller(which would be a very bad idea especially, and not only, due to the legal issues behind it). The gold sellers, currently, have access to all the information involving the credit card that they use. When credit card holders do not safeguard their cards by going to potentially harmful websites or making transactions at unsecure locations, the sellers are able to obtain all of the holder's information. With this, they are able to bypass a restriction such as a verification rule, an investigation, or even a hold. In the end, the merchant must accept the fees.

The gold selling industry has become at this point, much more than "one person", at least from our encounter with one of the groups targetting one of our games. "Playing" the game does not become a hindrance for their type of operation. Therefore, placing a "ban" on the Item Mall up to level 30 would not produce results in slowing down the issue. There are definitely good intentions behind the idea, but it does not restrict or slow them down from achieving their goal. I apologize for having to be very vague, but releasing the knowledge we have behind it is highly detrimental to our business.

As long as there is a source of income, the gold sellers will continue to be persistent.

Obviously the specifics of the fraud are pertinent to your company's well-being, and I for one do not expect you to divulge any sensitive information. Cases in the past I am familiar appear to work like this though: Zeus Trojan Scheme
If there is a wide-ranging conspiracy of multiple individuals and organizations using your video game to launder fraudulent credit card information, have you at least called the FBI? (310) 477-6565 is your local office. This is what they do best. Mention that any website claiming to sell gold from your game is in violation of racketeering laws and the money laundering control act, both of which are federal crimes.

Your plan doesn't work at all. Banning all consumable cash shop item trade? From the sound of it, your gold sellers will move to buying and then USING w-coins, upgrading OP weapons, monster cards, etc. and then selling or trade+selling the corresponding items. You only serve to alienate your customers.

Why is my plan that much worse? Having all the information for a credit card won't matter to a gold seller if there is a 2 week hold on purchases (and/or time-delineated limits on purchases), during which time an original credit card owner might notify their bank. Gravity gets a heads up that the card is a fake and you actually begin an investigation. This red flag lets you link up to other accounts through trades, purchases, etc. You have an inordinate amount of data about what goes on in the game.

Any trade of >1k gold for nothing in return should lead to an account suspension for both parties (since buying gold is enabling gold sellers to continue all the same), a red flag for future cash shop purchases, logging an IP address and routing information, and a letter to the FBI about possible internet money laundering from illegal websites from X location at X IP address and X subnet mask on X date at X time. The goal here is to using the right algorithms and security protections (behind the scenes of the end-user) to protect your players from gold sellers.

[Nolanvoid]

The two weeks is too long. Especially when it involves events and the process it currently takes to have an event approved for Dragon Saga. Users would need to be notified ahead of time so that they can participate in the event. This does and doesn't work. The reason why it doesn't work is due to when changes can be made, when events can be approved, and when the event material can be created. The developer caters to more versions than just the North American version and timing isn't quite ideal as some have noticed.

We have already made note and contacted the authorities, but as you can tell, this type of issue runs rampant through many games, new and old.

If things such as timing were more ideal and the setting was right, then the changes provided would be awesome to implement. This was not one of those decisions where someone tossed it up, it sounded good, so we tossed it in. There was quite a bit of discussion and planning involved in this as this was not the only game that was affected. Ragnarok Online and ROSE Online had this issue appear several years back.

[canajew]

Prepaid cards instant, Credit card 2 week hold. Why not? Chances are if you have a credit card you can drive over and buy a ugc, and if for some reason you can't well then oh well you have to wait two weeks, sure it might be a pain if an event comes up but then you'll have the driving force behind your cash sales back.

[yartrebo]

"Any trade of >1k gold for nothing in return should lead to an account suspension for both parties"

You do know that some people like to be generous and give gifts. There's also people who move gold between their accounts. Even just flagging such transfers for a closer look is likely to create _so_ many false positives as to be useless.

[Riceball]

"Any trade of >1k gold for nothing in return should lead to an account suspension for both parties"

You do know that some people like to be generous and give gifts. There's also people who move gold between their accounts. Even just flagging such transfers for a closer look is likely to create _so_ many false positives as to be useless.

A friend of mine had a flag like this before, and he got his account back like 2 weeks later.
I sometimes sell items to friends on credit, and I'm expecting a 2k+ transaction soon unless she quits on me... I do hope I don't get flagged for this.

Edited by Riceball, 17 February 2011 - 03:32 PM.

[iHalpinBed]

This is just a suggestion. Maybe have a set price for consumables on the market that would make gold sellers loose interest in selling because of the dramatic loss in profit, and if someone is dumb enough to use there credit card on a unsecure site that is there fault for giving away personal information. Just my opinion...

[Maronu]

Everyone might hate me for this, but is WP aware that insurance scrolls can still be sold on the market?

Why not make stricter restrictions on filtering websites? Every time you ban a gold spammer, just add whatever they say to the block list. In addition, make it so that the word censor does not block you from sending the message. Instead, make it show up normally on your own screen, but have the words censored on other people's screens. Eventually, they're bound to run out of ways to say their own website url. Instead of censoring useless things such as the [] character, which prevents us from linking new items, work the censor around something like the gold spammer url's, or any url for that matter.

I agree with this and most of what ATG4u was saying. Heck, maybe the websites that they are advertising are used to steal more credit cards. Btw, is there a reason not to put a level restriction on megaphones, entering towns, warp scrolls, etc? They may have their methods of leveling, but I find it hard to believe that playing the game isn't at least somewhat of an inconvenience to the sellers. It's not like they can hack your servers and modify their levels. Anything that limits the sellers' advertising capabilities should be implemented. If you believe they are players with high level characters, why not make it so that consumable item mall items can only be sold by characters who are 60+ or even level 70+. Even if the sellers do have characters in that range, it would limit the possibilities down considerably, and if you ban a high level character and they have to bot to get back up to level 60 or 70+ there is a larger window of time for you to detect them and ban them again.

This is just a suggestion. Maybe have a set price for consumables on the market that would make gold sellers loose interest in selling because of the dramatic loss in profit, and if someone is dumb enough to use there credit card on a unsecure site that is there fault for giving away personal information. Just my opinion...

Controlling the market and setting a single price that consumable IM items can be sold at could also reduce gold selling by eliminating the sellers ability to undercut the rest of the legitimate market. Players are more likely to buy from people they know than gold sellers if the prices are the same. I would think this idea would work assuming that prices are reasonable (1g = 1IM). Albeit, it would not be a free market, but it is better than a complete restriction of trade, and most players sell IM at around this rate anyway. Legitimizing the sale of the items would simply make it convenient for players to obtain IM without risking getting scammed or banned, and the fixed price (that most players sell at anyway) would completely devastate the gold sellers, imo.

Overall, I feel that limited market trade is better than no market trade. I don't care how WP decides to make it happen, but I would like to be able to purchase consumables from the market and have the option to sell to other players without risk.

Edited by Maronu, 17 February 2011 - 07:21 PM.

[ATG4u]

The two weeks is too long. Especially when it involves events and the process it currently takes to have an event approved for Dragon Saga. Users would need to be notified ahead of time so that they can participate in the event. This does and doesn't work. The reason why it doesn't work is due to when changes can be made, when events can be approved, and when the event material can be created. The developer caters to more versions than just the North American version and timing isn't quite ideal as some have noticed.

We have already made note and contacted the authorities, but as you can tell, this type of issue runs rampant through many games, new and old.

If things such as timing were more ideal and the setting was right, then the changes provided would be awesome to implement. This was not one of those decisions where someone tossed it up, it sounded good, so we tossed it in. There was quite a bit of discussion and planning involved in this as this was not the only game that was affected. Ragnarok Online and ROSE Online had this issue appear several years back.

You still won't address the fact that your current plan to remove the capacity to auction/trade only some of the only consumable cash shop items does not stop gold sellers at all; it wouldn't even slow down gold sellers. Using consumable cash shop items to transform them into other types of sellable online goods is still a viable options for gold sellers, and I am sure that gold sellers are familiar with these methods.

To your point, cash shop events typically aren't to "draw new players to the game" as I understand it, rather they are to "draw older players" to start buying and using more CS items. Now, imagine if you had a persistent credit card confirmation 'event' for new and existing players whereby players receive a small amount of free IM points (~100-200 would be more than enough) after the proposed 2 week CC confirmation period. You would see massive traffic in registering confirmed CC for existing players, right? (I would do it) And that means your customers are one step closer to buying from you, right? These CC registrations would correct for any purported delay between announcements of the "cash shop events" you mentioned. A message like, "New players! Confirm a credit card for your account to receive your free 200 IM CASH!" on the download page would catch the eye of most new players. In addition, I can imagine you would not have a problem raising the price of cash shop items slightly by implementing a free gift; the implementation of a somewhat restrictive approval process + slight increase in cost to the consumer is an easier pill to swallow when paired with what seems like a "free gift". You see, then you guys make more money in the LONG run, as opposed to only serving to piss everyone off in the short run.

God if your business partners would only understand how internet business works in the real world; You aren't selling toasters for-_-'s sake. Games are like art or music or groceries, your customers will keep coming back and paying more and more if you treat them with respect and courtesy. People end up leaving because you pull account-binding crap like this. You may not remember, but THQICE switched to account-bound cash shop items towards the end. That's why it was "towards the end"; they went belly-up as newer players gravitated towards the IAH version which had a stronger economy and didn't account-bind cash shop items. That's called "precedent".

[otarolgam]

Okay, so... let me gather everything that's been said into one small, tidy package:

1) Restrict Market use to 20 or 30. (I prefer 20)

2) Restrict IM items from being sold, but still able to be traded.

3) Credit Cards registered directly to the site should have have a 2 week checking period to see if they're legit or not.

Now, if you want to get in on the action of the game right away and your CC is still being processed, go buy yourself a UGC. Simple as that.

I think all 3 of those things I mentioned should be implemented. It would be a multi-phase attack to Gold Sellers and decrease their plans, while conviencing legit players who wouldn't mind the wait of getting to 20.

[Rimmy]

You may not remember, but THQICE switched to account-bound cash shop items towards the end. That's why it was "towards the end"; they went belly-up as newer players gravitated towards the IAH version which had a stronger economy and didn't account-bind cash shop items. That's called "precedent".

Huh? Cash shop items were never tradeable in THQ*ICE except via gifting. That goes for all of them, too, not just consumables.

[Mvffin]

Huh? Cash shop items were never tradeable in THQ*ICE except via gifting. That goes for all of them, too, not just consumables.

They were in the very very beginning, but it couldn't have been more than a month or so. Also, we used to be able to sell items in market for cash.

[Eldarath]

Why is this like a pattern or something in this game?

Credit card fraud IM abuse > IM Stuff Acccount Bind > Company didn't try suggestions > Game Shut Down > New Company > Credit card fraud IM abuse > IM Stuff Account Bind > Company didn't/did try sugggestions? > ???

[Yurai]

Why is this like a pattern or something in this game?

Credit card fraud IM abuse > IM Stuff Acccount Bind > Company didn't try suggestions > Game Shut Down > New Company > Credit card fraud IM abuse > IM Stuff Account Bind > Company didn't/did try sugggestions? > ???

This didn't happen in THQ. Where do your assumptions come from?