Character Auctions on Kronos

[goris]

How does the character auction actually affect anyone? Apart from the ideological beliefs..

 

[Guessilldps]

Get out of here dude.

There's also being sold ED accounts on various sites and this will happen with Nostalrius as well, if the server succeed.

 

[Sven]

This guys just search stupid reasons and try to disrepute kronos to win some players on their own server. All arguments are ridiculous.

There is no pay to win. You can buy twinstars for non profite items like mounts and tabards. If someone decides to stop playing on kronos, it's absolutely no problem for me, if he try to sell his character. BTW this was also a part of WoW vanilla.

The person that sells his character cant get any profite. You can buy twinstars for euros, but you cant sell them. And thats a huge difference, because the seller can only buy other characters with that currency.

 

[Amrod]

Face the thruth: at some point after release, people will have access to characters they did not level themselves anyway. People stop playing and give their accounts to friends, that's happening on every private server. Do you consider that "win for free, don't even have to pay" then?
Character auctions are fine by me, I don't believe we are going to see many of them anyway. In fact, I think they are a way to counter the usual account donations and to prevent people, who got bored of their character and don't have the time and will to level an alt, from quitting.
Is there a possibility to limit character auctions so that only players who have already leveled a character to 60 are eligible to place a bid?

 

[Lharts]

Somehow this discussions sounds familiar.

Jesus will cry if you inject 1 marijuana. My sister died of an overdose from sniffing it. Do not legalize it.

 

[Tormenting]

Many kids will smoke when they are 10 to 16, there is not much we parents can do about it. So instead of wasting teachers and parents time we have legalized it and made it easier for them to get cigarettes.
/2: Trading 60 warrior for paladin!

No but really the characters don't spawn out of thin air they must be leveled and hand crafted by players but it still feels awkward that its being promoted trading characters in World of Warcraft, it was a black market thing and you took a risk by breaking the rules unless it was a close friend.

But i can see it from both sides how it can be nice for players who like to trade characters not having the chance of their account being stolen and wasting game masters time.



Here come the facepalms:rolleyes2:

 

[krutopatkin]

Advertising your characters in ingame chat is forbidden btw

But well I'd probably be happier without that action (even though I'll definitely will be using it), but all in all I just don't think it's a big deal.

 

[Hagson]

Murder is different, you can never take it back. You can take back a purchase.

Murder was only an example. "There will always be thieves, therefore we should legalise stealing" would also work as an example and is revertable.

Well if you don't work for the money, good for you. But most people do, they use their time to make money or use their time to level up (disregarding other activities). Either way works and you are given a choice - which do you prefer is up to your own, but your choice does not give you an advantage.

The real world isn't fair, you can be born into a rich family or can be born into a poor one and there's nothing you can do about it. Wether your life will suck or be awesome is to a big extent not decided by you.
The same could be argued about wow (some people have more time than others) but to a much lesser extend, people are equals here in a bigger way. Being able to buy an advantage in the game using means from out of the game disrupts this balance and equality, and brings some of the unfairness from the real world into a place where it's not needed. And this is why people generally frown on pay to win.

The characters will never give you an advantage. You cannot be a lvl 60 faster than anyone else, because there are no level 60s to buy. After 6 months there might be some, great, but after 6 months, there will be lots of level 60 players. It will only allow you to catch up, but it won't allow you to be better or faster. In my book, not pay to win.

Of course they will give me an advantage. I could buy 10 level 60s, teach them herbalism and then camp every black lotus spot in the Eastern Kingdoms earning huge amounts of gold for very little effort. I could teach them tailoring and control the mooncloth market. And that's just the gold part of the advantage you get.

Having more options is an advantage, buying more options is a form of pay to win.

In Twinstar's case, you cannot see any of the items, spells or quests the character did or used. Basically you are buying a level and class, and everything else can be random.


"Buying" usually means that you gain something in return for money. When you sell your own, you are giving away your whole character for another, that would be an exchange. But again, it only shows level and class of the character, such exchange is not possible, because you don't see items on the character. You could end up buying a naked character with 0 game money and no proffs.

All right, so we are unable to buy gear. Great.

Would not be able to, for example, recognise the name of a raider or big pvper and be able to buy his BiS PvE or r14 geared character? Or are names wiped as well?

Even if names are not shown you still get another level 60 which is an advantage in itself.

Wrong, you are not buying more powerful character. There will always be someone more powerful than you, who gained this power through simply playing the game.

You are buying a more powerful character than the one you had before (potentially no character or a low leveled one).



And this is why buying the character will get you an unfair advantage.

May i ask you people, especially Hagson, what do you think "pay to win" means?

It means paying to be !BETTER! than any other non-paying player.
Auction merely provides characters worse or same as anybody else can obtain through hard work.
So please, stop crying or debating, it really wont be that of a problem, im sure.

Pay to win means spending out-of-game currency to obtain an advantage over people not spending out-of-game currency. This advantage could be a better sword, an xp-boost, or more options.

Here is handy chart:




Hint: replace 'guns' with 'classes' or 'professions'

 

[krutopatkin]

Would not be able to, for example, recognise the name of a raider or big pvper and be able to buy his BiS PvE or r14 geared character? Or are names wiped as well?

yes they are

 

[Hagson]

yes they are

neat.

That makes you unable to buy gear (other than by lucking out), awesome.

 

[Occult]

I'm confused by people whining about it "not being Blizzlike"... in original WoW and all expansions the endgame was to get a really geared character, smash people with it for a few days, get bored, and sell your character "illegally" through some service and get a pitiful amount of cash. I mean even guys who sold double glaive rogues in TBC didn't get that much compared to the time put in. If you divided the number of hours they spent playing the game (leveling, gearing, raiding) into the amount of money they got they probably earned less than a $1 per hour, pitiful. I believe some people even did this, friends of mine, back in TBC/WOTLK and proved that they had screwed themselves by selling their accounts.

I for one never sold my accounts and still have them, but I know that it is unavoidable that people do. At least they are providing a way to do it legally and without stress here so that the GM's won't be wasting their time dealing with this meaningless stuff instead of managing the servers.

 

[milkutin]

So it's here again. Some guys seeking every detail which can harm Kronos in some way, and creating unnecessary hoaxes.

You see problems where they aren't. :smile:
Character auctions has never been problem before and I don't see any reason, why it should be now different.

 

[goris]

Would not be able to, for example, recognise the name of a raider or big pvper and be able to buy his BiS PvE or r14 geared character? Or are names wiped as well?

yes they are

wtf?
The names are not wiped, you can see the name of the character normally. After a successfull auction, you get a free rename though.

And the only reason you don't actually see the character's equipment is that Kronos doesn't have an armory web yet.

But I repeat my question to the naysayers, how does the auction affect my gameplay, or my enjoyment of the game? I will log in everyday, farm a bit, maybe raid with my guild or do some battlegrounds and then I will log off. Where exactly does character 34165's owner change spoil my fun/day?

 

[krutopatkin]

wtf?
The names are not wiped, you can see the name of the character normally. After a successfull auction, you get a free rename though.

And the only reason you don't actually see the character's equipment is that Kronos doesn't have an armory web yet.

But I repeat my question to the naysayers, how does the auction affect my gameplay, or my enjoyment of the game? I will log in everyday, farm a bit, maybe raid with my guild or do some battlegrounds and then I will log off. Where exactly does character 34165's owner change spoil my fun/day?

Just checked it and you are right, did they change that? Because I recall buying a shaman on Ares and being disappointed with his resto/ele gear(his enh gear was decent though)

 

[Aieris]

Pay to win means spending out-of-game currency to obtain an advantage over people not spending out-of-game currency. This advantage could be a better sword, an xp-boost, or more options.

Well, this definition depends on, if that means YOU as a person, or YOU as a character, because if you buy a better geared char, then you (as person) gain something, but your character does not gain anything.

I can give you example:
On one wotlk pvp server, you can buy for 12 dollars Shadowmourne axe. When you play warrior and meet these guis who bought it, you feel like you have to pay to stay competitive.

With Char AH, that Cool war with Sulfuras invested a lot of time to obtain it and when he sells his character then.. well, he will still rape you, just his owner will switch

And that's the difference. Here you does not feel like you have to pay to stay competitive which is the main problem of pay-to-win systems.

About your proffesions example, well, you can do the same with 35lvl alts. Leveling to 35 will take about 2 days, that's not big deal.

And for the black lotus farming - GG for finding them when Black Lotus can randomly spawn instead of every dreamfoil, plaguebloom and ice cap (and mby some other flowers)

 

[ironervousides]

wtf?
The names are not wiped, you can see the name of the character normally. After a successfull auction, you get a free rename though.

And the only reason you don't actually see the character's equipment is that Kronos doesn't have an armory web yet.

But I repeat my question to the naysayers, how does the auction affect my gameplay, or my enjoyment of the game? I will log in everyday, farm a bit, maybe raid with my guild or do some battlegrounds and then I will log off. Where exactly does character 34165's owner change spoil my fun/day?

In theory, there will always be powergaming nerds that will monopolize black lotus spawns with these auctioned characters and gouge the prices significantly (see ED black lotus prices).

In practice, these powergaming nerds will obtain 8 other level 60s with herbalism anyways, either through guildies giving them access to the accounts, or from levelling them up on their own. The account auction will not affect it either way.

I would be for account auctioning, provided you are unable to rename the characters, and the auction sale was made public knowledge. I believe that those two measures would actually decrease the amount of account trading, as a lot of account sellers sell their accounts with the backdoor "Hey I got hacked a year ago and tried logging on, can you reset the account PW?" method sitting in the back of their mind.

Account buyers will find themselves unable to join a guild in most cases, as their purchase would be common knowledge.

To people crying about PvPers raping you who bought their characters:

Have you ever played on Al'akir? You can destroy 90% of the retards running around in T2.5 with your starter gear because they click rend from their spellbooks.

 

[Hagson]

With Char AH, that Cool war with Sulfuras invested a lot of time to obtain it and when he sells his character then.. well, he will still rape you, just his owner will switch

And the new owner of that will have an inherent advantage over anyone not buying characters. Sulfuras is the name of the advantage in this case.

 

[CJB]

Would really like to know the ins and outs of such a function -- any specifics on when we can see the details?

 

[Chero]

Edit: Added original post of CJB:

And this feature is not pay to win? Lets see here:

Pay to win = buying armor for your character (like it's soon to be on the Feenix - Emarald Dream Server, for example).

Character auction = buying a character/his mounts/his armor/his weapons/his reputation/his keys/his bags and I assume you probably get his pvp rank as well?

I don't know about you all, but Character auction seems even worse than the conventional pay to win, in many, many, ways. I agree though, it also has slight advantages over conventional pay to win systems...but not many.

Also, to touch up on the whole, "Well it doesn't come out of thin air?!?111!" logic-based people....IT DOES COME OUT OF THIN AIR FOR THE INDIVIDUAL BUYING THE CHARACTER AND ALL THE CHARACTERS SHIT, RIGHT?!

Lastly, I just want to say, especially to *Chero*, that I and the others who oppose this character auction(as well as other functions we speak out against) do so to help not only you, Chero, but the community. Please do not take our passionate suggestions and opinions, as a form of disrespect. We aim only to make what the K1 and K2 projects were not.

Seems like you do not understand the whole concept.

If you would gain any power by buying an character from another player, the other one will lose it, won't he?

How is that unfair if a different player plays the same character? If you would get a free character from your friend that just stopped playing, is that pay to win? Should it be banned?

In order to sell your character you need to have access to your email address linked with the game account.
By the character auction nothing will change ingame. Only the controlling players change.

Character auction seems even worse than the conventional pay to win, in many, many, ways.

What?

... All "possible" abuses of the character auction mentioned here can be done without using the character auction ever. Can anyone name any "abuse" that cannot be done without using the auction house? I doubt.

 

[Occult]

Edit: Added original post of CJB:



Seems like you do not understand the whole concept.

If you would gain any power by buying an character from another player, the other one will lose it, won't he?

How is that unfair if a different player plays the same character? If you would get a free character from your friend that just stopped playing, is that pay to win? Should it be banned?

In order to sell your character you need to have access to your email address linked with the game account.
By the character auction nothing will change ingame. Only the controlling players change.



What?

... All "possible" abuses of the character auction mentioned here can be done without using the character auction ever. Can anyone name any "abuse" that cannot be done without using the auction house? I doubt.

I think people from other realms are just trolling, or have severely black/white or all-or-nothing type thinking. Probably no need to worry about it but I think the users here appreciate you guys activity around here. I for one like the system because I'm a HUGE alt-o-holic and workaholic, so I can either level alts and sell them to get mounts (which I would find to be fun) or get an alt to mess around with for some Twinstar credits.

 

[Tormenting]

If selling characters in trade chat gets you BANNED i can personally ignore it just fine. Also if there could be notification or something on forums when a character switches an owner that would be great.

 

[Hagson]

All "possible" abuses of the character auction mentioned here can be done without using the character auction ever. Can anyone name any "abuse" that cannot be done without using the auction house? I doubt.

Accounts changing owners is a bad thing. Selling accounts and transering ownership of an account should be disallowed. This will always happen but should be battled, for example by banning sellers and buyers of accounts, thereby making it a lot harder and more riskfilled.

What you are doing is openly encouraging it.
And that is an enormous difference. It's the difference between saying "this is a problem lets deal with it" and "we wont be able to solve this problem to 100%, so let's make some money off it instead".

 

[skuzzy]

If a char has grinded / farmed / ect to a certain point. Whats it matter who's behind the keyboard. If the buyer is a shit player, he's gonna get weeded out eventually.

 

[Psojed]

No trolling please (page 4). :mad2: Keep it serious.

This auction of characters will encourage botting to make level 60s as fast as possible.

Can you give us a reasonable example of how will trading level 60 characters encourage botting?

Advertising your characters in ingame chat is forbidden btwAdvertising your characters in ingame chat is forbidden btw

Correct.

wtf?
The names are not wiped, you can see the name of the character normally. After a successfull auction, you get a free rename though.

And the only reason you don't actually see the character's equipment is that Kronos doesn't have an armory web yet.

Correct.

Just checked it and you are right, did they change that?

You could always see character names as far as I remember. And you could never see items until armory was made.

Murder was only an example. "There will always be thieves, therefore we should legalise stealing" would also work as an example and is revertable.

Better stop the examples, they keep going the wrong way...
Theft = taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it.
Trade = transfer of the ownership of goods or services from one person or entity to another in exchange for other goods or services or for money. The important part is that both parties agree to it.

The real world isn't fair, you can be born into a rich family or can be born into a poor one and there's nothing you can do about it. Wether your life will suck or be awesome is to a big extent not decided by you.
The same could be argued about wow (some people have more time than others) but to a much lesser extend, people are equals here in a bigger way. Being able to buy an advantage in the game using means from out of the game disrupts this balance and equality, and brings some of the unfairness from the real world into a place where it's not needed. And this is why people generally frown on pay to win.

I agree. I also don't like pay 2 win games where you can gain advantages just by purchasing stuff, or where you are even required to do it to progress further in the game.

Of course they will give me an advantage. I could buy 10 level 60s,

Oh please do that. Sadly, the characters in the auction do not appear out of thin air, so I'm quite curious when will the first level 60 ever to be sold appear in the CAH.
I'd bet it will take much longer than if you would actually level up those 10x60 chars on your own.

teach them herbalism and then camp every black lotus spot in the Eastern Kingdoms earning huge amounts of gold for very little effort

You cannot camp herb spawn points, because they are pooled and keep changing locations...

I could teach them tailoring and control the mooncloth market. And that's just the gold part of the advantage you get.

I'm sure that if you are the only "one man tailor guild" on the server, you will control the market. But you won't be the only tailor.

Having more options is an advantage, buying more options is a form of pay to win.

But yet again, you are not buying more options.

All right, so we are unable to buy gear. Great.

Would not be able to, for example, recognise the name of a raider or big pvper and be able to buy his BiS PvE or r14 geared character? Or are names wiped as well?

Another thing is the auction itself. Yes, it works like a regular ingame auction house. Remember those overpriced epics on Failnix?
If someone ever decided to stop playing his beloved r14 pew pew imba character with Sulfuras (which I highly doubt), do you think he would give it to a stranger for nothing?

Even if names are not shown you still get another level 60 which is an advantage in itself.

Umm, yes that's kinda the thing of buying something, isn't it?
Since you like examples, I will give you one. Joe and Jill walk into the bakery and Jill buys some bread, Joe decides not to buy anything. Now Jill has spent her money and gained advantage over Joe, she can eat bread right now. But that doesn't limit Joe's chances to bake his own bread, does it? Nor does it make Jill superior to Joe, bread doesn't make you any superior to others. She spent less time, but she lost some money in return, and the baker can feed his children. That's also how the world works.

Twinstar's character auction works the same way. An extra level 60 character does not make you superior to others, so I don't see your problem.

You are buying a more powerful character than the one you had before (potentially no character or a low leveled one).

Correct. In my eyes, that is not an advantage. This is your choice to get to the level cap - one person uses money, another person uses time. Buyer or non-buyer are still the same, both are limited by level 60 cap, by the items they can get, proffs they can use, and so on.

And this is why buying the character will NOT get you an unfair advantage.

Pay to win means spending out-of-game currency to obtain an advantage over people not spending out-of-game currency. This advantage could be a better sword, an xp-boost, or more options.

Here is handy chart:


View attachment 6253

Hint: replace 'guns' with 'classes' or 'professions'

Okay, let's try it.

- Is there an unlock system in your game? By buying a level 60 I unlock the ability to go to raids, so I guess
YES.
- Can you buy unlocks with cash? You can buy level 60 when someone sells it, so
YES.
- Do the unlocks change how you play the game? example: give you more choices of classes or professions
NO

Altering the last part a bit to be more specific...
- Do the unlocks change how you play the game? example: give you more choices of how to beat a raidboss or how to win in a PvP duel?
NO

I guess that with your handy chart, we passed.

Your main issue seems to be with there being a huge advantage in buying a character. Such advantage that you will not be able to keep up without using the advantage itself, correct?

PS:

Accounts changing owners is a bad thing. Selling accounts and transering ownership of an account should be disallowed. This will always happen but should be battled, for example by banning sellers and buyers of accounts, thereby making it a lot harder and more riskfilled.

What you are doing is openly encouraging it.
And that is an enormous difference. It's the difference between saying "this is a problem lets deal with it" and "we wont be able to solve this problem to 100%, so let's make some money off it instead".

I see you swapped from "characters" to "accounts" suddenly. Sadly, Twinstar does not allow trading accounts, so get back on track :wink:

 

[Titan]

Originally Posted by krutopatkin
Advertising your characters in ingame chat is forbidden btw

Correct.

9. I want to sell my character. Can I advertise in-game or on the forum?

It is forbidden on the forum, but permitted via an in-game channel called /aukcepostav. Advertising anywhere else is considered a violation of the server rules and punished(1 week ban) without any previous warning.

Who's right? the auction manual ? Psojed ?
https://www.twinstar.cz/manager/Auction/Manual.aspx#up

Another point, according to the last price list from the server, buying a 60 character will cost me ~12 euros?
http://imgur.com/iWOl9VR