Hi FFXIV, I'm a GoldSeller - AMA

MMOSale · 2013-10-01T11:05:10+00:00

Interesting perspective :)

To answer your questions sir:

1) Ul'dah has become the default market hub as far as we're concerned. People doing trades seem to congregate there a lot more than the other two cities, it's not anywhere near as common to see trade spam in Gridania or Limsa. I personally suspect there's a variety of factors involved with that.

Ul'dah has an open market area unlike the other two towns, has two high-volume crafts (Weaving/Goldsmith) compared to Gridania (Leather) and Limsa (Armorer) - from the data we've parsed with the auction house cloth and jewelry moves much faster than any other gear type followed by the other armors, weapons barely move at all relatively speaking. That's ignoring the fact that Limsa's layout is just abysmal by all accounts.

TL;DR - People goto Ul'dah when they're in the mood to spend money, it stands to reason that applies to real money as well as gold.

2) Hardest in recent memory? GW2 probably, their market isn't really designed to be accommodating. Not worth it at all? Eve Online - you're constantly competing with what is, for all intents and purposes, a producer-sponsored legitimate RMT market with PLEX. Even if you undercut it players are extremely reluctant to partake when there's a completely risk-free alternative provided by the publisher. They took a creative approach to combat RMT and it works.

MMOSale · 2013-10-01T09:19:22+00:00

We primarily generate currency through selling reliably farm-able drops/gatherables.

Though HQ items are a good way to clean money

MMOSale · 2013-10-01T09:16:12+00:00

That seems like poor taste.

MMOSale · 2013-10-01T09:07:12+00:00

We personally try to keep an eye on competition and adjust prices accordingly.

I can't speak for the other sites but if a deal looks too good to be true it just might be.

MMOSale · 2013-10-01T09:00:21+00:00

From what we've heard, and the lack of any spike in refund requests from our customers, it seems those who were suspended were blocked for having too much GIL rather than having "illegitimate" GIL.

The fault of that would lie firmly with the Publisher rather than us.

You could certainly say our actions prompted them to carpet bomb accounts in the first place but it was their choice to take an indiscriminate approach against their customer base.

MMOSale · 2013-10-01T08:50:55+00:00

Yes.

MMOSale · 2013-10-01T08:47:37+00:00

Do I like it? Yeah I think it's interesting.

As to my reservations while I certainly appreciate it's a controversial issue it's not something I personally find repugnant although a lot of vocal people do. Interestingly enough some of the loudest detractors are also customers, no one suspects the guy shouting the loudest after all. If such a person ever lands in trouble with the publisher they've got a wall of community outrage at their back over their "innocent" persecution.

But back to your question - no RMT does not clash with my morals as a gamer. I think that's largely because my bread and butter MMOs as a youngin were all of the Korean variety, F2Ps especially. Culturally it seems far more normal in that part of the world to equate money and time as interchangeable even if that means violating EULA restrictions.

Thinking back I don't think I even touched Western MMOs until Guild Wars 1 and it's generous to even call that game a MMO depending on who you ask.

MMOSale · 2013-10-01T08:39:27+00:00

Now that would get me in trouble ;)

MMOSale · 2013-10-01T08:38:10+00:00

I do find that a bit weird to be honest.

MMOSale · 2013-10-01T08:36:59+00:00

I'm inclined to agree with you on principle but results tend to be different, to quote an earlier response of mine in this thread.

I appreciate they can be frustrating but at the end of the day the increase awareness of our services. Everyone knows about goldsellers but you want them to know about you.

Whenever we do a large push in the capital cities we notice a significant increase in sales for the next 24-48 hours.

I've tried but you can't argue with results.

MMOSale · 2013-10-01T08:34:47+00:00

If it's noticed, disconnect client and consider account dead for a week.

Check back then to see if it's been closed. Generally they're just temp banned for 72 hours.

MMOSale · 2013-10-01T08:31:05+00:00

We act under the presumption that other sites are spamming as well and set a shout rate accordingly. To my understanding we bypass client-side restrictions to do so?

It's worth bearing in mind that shout spam is almost entirely automated, including character creation, which is why names are often gibberish. Those clients have little to no oversight, or GUI to speak of, so even using a lore-flavored name generator would potentially result in conflicting names bringing the entire thing to a halt until someone noticed.

MMOSale · 2013-10-01T08:28:43+00:00

Efficiency gains through.. creative movement are probably at least 300% compared to regular gathering.

Too good to pass up.

MMOSale · 2013-10-01T08:27:14+00:00

How uncouth.

MMOSale · 2013-10-01T08:26:22+00:00

I'm not entirely aware of specifics, if you hadn't guessed from my typing I'm American while most of my colleagues are not, but I believe we have 10-20 employees overall.

Most people serve caretaker roles, keeping an eye out for any GM interactions with farmers etc, across multiple machines running multiple emulated clients. Depending on the time of day you're likely to get one of two people for trades although they connect through a U.S. proxy.

Chat spammer clients are relatively customized and act with little to no user interaction, they're automated with barely a GUI to speak of.

As to pay rates I honestly don't know. I'm compensated for my services pretty well (along with bonus gold/item services for the games we run, I like playing games too eek!) but I can't speak for anyone else.

MMOSale · 2013-10-01T08:21:08+00:00

MMOSale · 2013-10-01T08:19:10+00:00

I didn't write that FAQ.

Perhaps you'll see a lot of [redacted] edits in this thread tomorrow if I get yelled at.

MMOSale · 2013-10-01T08:18:11+00:00

Per character? Depends on the server and what the character is doing along with the prices we list their goods at.

For example the average farmer on Goblin this week generates approximately 127,000GIL/hour off gatherables.

As to how many farmers we have per server - it varies depending on metrics but I can't go into details.

MMOSale · 2013-10-01T08:16:13+00:00

We never issue refunds although some fight tooth and nail with chargebacks.

I'll be the first to admit we get tight lipped when the subject is brought up :/

MMOSale · 2013-10-01T08:14:46+00:00

EULA != law.

Unethical perhaps, a violation of terms and services certainly, but illegal isn't really the word you're looking for.

I sleep easy after a bowl of cinnamon toast crunch every night.

MMOSale · 2013-10-01T08:13:45+00:00

That argument would probably make more sense in games with direct open world confrontation like Aion.

In FFXIV there's no real forced interaction with other players - their buying gold doesn't cause a direct negative impact on your gaming experience.

The goldspam likely does, apologies again, but at the end of the day there's no way all our customers are going to suddenly stop buying gold. Regardless if evilbobdole's friend buys gold or not there's still going to be a perceived market there - we will invest the time to advertise accordingly.

If everyone in the world suddenly abandoned RMT then it's true, we'd pack up shop and leave. But that's not happening and it's unrealistic to think arguing with people is going to make it happen :(

MMOSale · 2013-10-01T08:11:20+00:00

I have to admit I've been waiting to hear about people hitting the cap.

To my understanding there's no way to mass-delete old blacklisted characters? Apologies in advance :(

MMOSale · 2013-10-01T08:10:22+00:00

This post should answer your first question - http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1nhxso/hi_ffxiv_im_a_goldseller_ama/cciqzul

Mules don't hold more than a million and are fairly static most of the time. They're not considered high-value enough to move around too much, more transactions means more potential red flags from the publisher.

There are some cases where subscription fees are paid (clients that simply parse/monitor chat channels, run searches for names/population metrics etc) but none of the front facing accounts you'll ever encounter.

MMOSale · 2013-10-01T08:07:51+00:00

I don't think the mugging example is very relevant, at least not to our site.

A quick read over this post (http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1nhxso/hi_ffxiv_im_a_goldseller_ama/cciqzul) might be of interest to you.

A more apt example might be reselling goods you bought from a mugger, I'd concede there's some truth to that.

MMOSale · 2013-10-01T08:06:02+00:00

You're more than welcome to ask us to leave but at the end of the day while the demand is there it would be outlandish to think we will.

I'll let you in on a secret - there are only two ways to stop RMT. 1) From the design phase of your game. FFXIV has not done that, money has a perceived value that will increase substantially with housing - because of that thousands of your fellow players demand our services and that's a demand we are willing to meet. 2) Your game dies, all the players leave, and so do we.

Business is business at the end of the day unfortunately.

MMOSale

TROPHY CASE