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FranktheTank

Ban the sale of accounts

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This has been brought up before and I am bringing it up again. The allowance of account sales is toxic to both the game and community and causes extreme problems both in game and out of game creating a hostile environment of money grabbing and credit card warriors.

 

Almost no modern video game allows for the sale of accounts whether with in game or real money, it is time Wurm caught up.

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-1

Edited by Gawain

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You can ban the sales of account, but not stop them... Indeed, it's banned by plenty of games, but those sales still happens even on platforms supported and encouraged by CCAB.

 

Currently those sales are done in the open and we know when they happens... which is probably better than having them done in the dark with all those cases of hacking, stealing and crap plaguing said games.

 

The toxicity is there anyway with or without the account sales, anyone with money and ill will can destroy everything they want while staying within the rules... or others will plunder servers of their unique because of the value tied to them, the whole real money trade and inherent greed of the human being is what should be banned.

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+1

Account sales is just a perverse self-fulfilling prophecy.

 

In order to keep up with other players, you are supposed to buy (strong) account of people who quit.
Ironically, if account sales weren't allowed, you wouldn't need to keep up as the quitter's (strong) account would just go inactive.

You would proportionally become stronger.

 

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And wurm would die if RMT was stopped .

Only thing  that keeps Wurm going is the idea you can always cash out if you get bored.

 

This is a game that attracts players because of the option of buying and selling for real money.

Remove said option and this game would be dead in  6 months to a year .

There are to many games out there now that surpass Wurm , but they don't have RMT .

 

 

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An interesting idea but one question, banning ex tunc or ex nunc ?

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I'm 50/50 on this. I never have nor never will buy an account but if for some unforseen circumstance i had to sell, it's reassuring to do it legit... At least the way its done now its easy to track the account owners and it follows some semblance of order and rules. Granted it can make certain aspects lop sided i.e a pvp kingdoms owning top tier accounts, it also helps people, crafters wanting to do pvp or priest things without the grind, it enables people for the better more than any negative reason atm...

 

Well thats just my 2 bricks on the matter

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17 minutes ago, Mormo said:

An interesting idea but one question, banning ex tunc or ex nunc ?

probably ex nunc, what was done before is already done when the rules were as they were, only fair.

 

27 minutes ago, Damascus said:

And wurm would die if RMT was stopped .

Only thing  that keeps Wurm going is the idea you can always cash out if you get bored.

 

This is a game that attracts players because of the option of buying and selling for real money.

Remove said option and this game would be dead in  6 months to a year .

There are to many games out there now that surpass Wurm , but they don't have RMT .

 

 

But isn't that literally the problem I am stating? People are treating this video game as a form of investment with a cash out option. It is supposed to be a video game made for fun and not much else, it it time to remove the equation.

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+1 for reasons already mentioned. Wurm would be in a better state if account sales were banned from the beginning, most game developpers understand such basic principles.

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+1 I'm for removal of account sales, it creates all sorts of issues to the game.

 

You shouldn't be required to have to "have" a good account for pvp. The issue needs to be addressed at some point, either by making pvp less of a chore overall or removing sales. This game could learn a thing or two about diminishing returns, so what if you have 90 body strength, vs a 50 body strength the advantage is to large currently. 

 

There are ways to insure that people can't sell accounts in a shady matter also, paypal records, credit card receipts, even IP checks. If the account's IP changes it's location randomly over night for example, changes villages etc it could be investigated. I think some small effort would really help the game.

 

Also the economy of Wurm would actually improve if you remove sales, so don't say it would kill the market. It creates work for those that don't have 90 in a skill for example. 

Edited by Niki
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23 minutes ago, Cybrochara said:

-1

Any explanation as to why, oh 1 post settler?

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I agree with this post.  This should also be retroactive, so that all accounts that have ever been bought or sold are permanently banned as well.

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And how would you prove or disprove I did or did not sell my account when I may or may not have changed my email address and/or password on my characters?

 

Post a suggestion on how to actually stop it and you may or may not garner more support :)

Edited by Nomadikhan

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6 minutes ago, Nomadikhan said:

And how would you prove or disprove I did or did not sell my account when I may or may not have changed my email address and/or password on my characters?

 

Post a suggestion on how to actually stop it and you may or may not garner more support :)

 

1 hour ago, Niki said:

There are ways to insure that people can't sell accounts in a shady matter also, paypal records, credit card receipts, even IP checks. If the account's IP changes it's location randomly over night for example, changes villages etc it could be investigated. I think some small effort would really help the game.

 

^ This is a start, I am not entirely sure on a policing was aside from this. Granted it would be up to player reporting I would say as well to report when they think a sale was made. I am sure I can think more about enforcement, and I will come up with more later. But step one would be banning the players who buy and sell after a policy change.

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31 minutes ago, FranktheTank said:

Any explanation as to why, oh 1 post settler?

Cybroachara is an actual Panda player, if her legitimacy is in doubt. Thats her main. I am surprised she posted at all! 

 

Hi Cybro!

 

As for account sales, -1. It would be hypocritical of me to say no to something I do myself. I dont see a problem with someone wanting to have fun their way.

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3 minutes ago, FranktheTank said:

 

 

^ This is a start, I am not entirely sure on a policing was aside from this. Granted it would be up to player reporting I would say as well to report when they think a sale was made. I am sure I can think more about enforcement, and I will come up with more later. But step one would be banning the players who buy and sell after a policy change.

The only way you can really discover an account sale is by self admission, reporting, or by some outside evidence being provided to the company. On average it takes a couple of hours to cross thousands of miles in a plane. Here I am in Miami, and log into my laptop at the airport to play. I get a Miami IP address. Then I take my flight and log back in when I reach New York at the airport while I wait for my next flight during my layover. Did I just sell my account and deserve to get banned? IP checks are not reliable given the widespread use of proxys, as our forum mods can attest. You cant even keep banned players from playing.

 

Credit card sales and paypal records are out of the purview of CCAB. They cant and will never be able to monitor that. 

 

It would also be a full time job to try to figure out who sold what. And it would also require banning account sharing at all, which is the only way to have a chance at preventing you loosing your scale set to a system crash due to how unstable the game is during pvp. 

 

There is no reliable way to prevent account sales. And at this time we are way past the point of no return on that topic. The whole Wurm culture revolves around money, sad as it is.

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Personally I'm on the fence.  I'd never sell my account, never have in other games even when I quit.  But I understand motivations to do so.  I like the idea of it, bought a priest account myself for a battery.  Have some friends that have bought and sold accounts purely for fun and/or financial opportunities.

 

I'd push more towards some sort of official regulation to ensure protection of both buyers and sellers, but that in itself is a good amount of work, and unlikely to happen I'd think.

Edited by Nomadikhan

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4 minutes ago, Nomadikhan said:

Personally I'm on the fence.  I'd never sell my account, never have in other games even when I quit.  But I understand motivations to do so.  I like the idea of it, bought a priest account myself for a battery.  Have some friends that have bought and sold accounts purely for fun and/or financial opportunities.

 

I'd push more towards some sort of official regulation to ensure protection of both buyers and sellers, but that in itself is a good amount of work.

Other games do this by providing a means to buy/sell with in game money only. Best system I have seen is by making it mandatory to do it in a specific way through the forums, and refusing support/banning any discovered to not do it by policy. But that still doesnt address those that do not do it legit.

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As much as I would like to think that it would be possible to ban the sale of accounts, it simply isn't feasible.  If I remember correctly for a very long time EVE would not condone the sale of accounts.  But, they eventually gave in and now have a site to allow for the sale of accounts.  Having the sale of accounts out in the open is better than having it hidden.  At least now, sales are posted, people generally ask for people to remove any permissions that that account may have had extended to them.  And for the record, I've never sold or bought an account.

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13 minutes ago, Grumpysmith said:

As much as I would like to think that it would be possible to ban the sale of accounts, it simply isn't feasible.  If I remember correctly for a very long time EVE would not condone the sale of accounts.  But, they eventually gave in and now have a site to allow for the sale of accounts.  Having the sale of accounts out in the open is better than having it hidden.  At least now, sales are posted, people generally ask for people to remove any permissions that that account may have had extended to them.  And for the record, I've never sold or bought an account.

Eve allows the sale of characters not accounts and you pay a fee to transfer a character from one account to another. They also added skill extractors so you can remove skills and sell them to other players and as such the character market is a lot more quiet.

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1 hour ago, Noizhead said:

I agree with this post.  This should also be retroactive, so that all accounts that have ever been bought or sold are permanently banned as well.

Ok that’s just too much. Sure do it after the policy was in but anything before wouldn’t be a good move.

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I noticed one of the main concerns of people is the account trading would be preformed on the back channels outside of the forums and ingame, the concern seems to be among a few things, that scams may occur.

 

But that in essence is an automatic enforcement to the ban, without the player protection and guidelines you sell an account AT YOUR OWN RISK. This in itself will deter others from wanting to sell an account as it is no longer being backed by the development team and moderation staff. So if you are worried about scams, that is the whole point, the end to account sale safe havens as well as the end of account sales.

 

Runescape for example prohibits account sales entirely, yet you can still buy them. However if it is discovered through the game management team that you purchased the account, its a ban. And if you get the account hacked and taken back after a sale, you have no quarter. 

Edited by FranktheTank
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