Not long now to see who wins this battle.

My gold is riding on the Farmers for a win, but my hopes are with Zenimax.

Would really be interested to hear any official word on what is planned or to be done regarding this issue.

These guys are like the cockroaches of MMO's - they will not die.

Account bans won't work - new account cost is a small hurdle if any, & subs & new account revenues only provide a business incentive to curb these guys behavior, not to eliminate them. Any leveling grind is meaningless when it's a bot at the helm. and yet to see if there's a report function or if reporting is meaningful.

Gold can buy anything in this game, mounts, weapons, armor, siege equipment & crafting mats - even end game legendary gear, and with a mega server there's no gold seller need to farm on multiple servers.

If I was a gold farmer, I'd be more excited about this release than the average punter, there's a huge potential windfall headed their way.

There's a part of me that hopes Zenimax's silence is due to them having big plans to combat farmers, but I expect the only party with grand plans will be the farmers.

My tip; Expect a farmer whitewash early on, with a small but noticeable rally from the devs, & once the dust settles all parties will then be business as usual, getting on with making money - from us.

I don't know the solution to the problem, but if your listening Zenimax, I'd pay extra for any MMO that can offer solutions that work.

one of my biggest concern with this game at the moment... all game mechanics (megaservers, and everything buyable for gold) are very encouraging for goldsellers... i see a big problem here too...

I just hope zenimax doesnt introduce a system that penalizes players just to counter gold farmers. GW2 introduced a silly diminishing returns system on loot and karma temporarily after launch to counter bots and it was the players that suffered as a result.

They're always present, and part of me wonders if some of these companies enjoy having them around. As all they need to do is ban a bunch of them, then have them purchase another copy of the game; which adds to their profits. The sellers don't mind constantly purchasing new accounts, because it's little detriment to their overall profits.

That being said, I don't see them being as big of a problem here in Tamriel. I could be wildly wrong here, but I don't think Septims in ESO are as valuable as currency is in most other games. Most other games have Auction Houses, which encourage people to window shop; they see a shiny dagger or mount they want on said AH and then run back to the gold sellers to obtain the money for said item. Here.. I honestly don't know what I'll be spending my money on? I can't see myself buying materials, weapons or armour here; as I'll be making everything myself. If I need something from someone else, I'll check in my guild.

I think they've taken a great approach here. The best way to stop gold sellers? Supply and Demand. Take away the demand for Septims and you're half way there.

Goldfamers will exist as long as there is demand to buy gold.

I hope Zenimax will battle the most excessive and extreme farmers and their annoying chat spam. We'll see in a couple of month if this theoretical problem becomes a reality.

There is already a big demand for gold. There are already sites advertising gold and there will be 3rd party sites acting like auction houses.

Some of us will use our guilds, some will trade between each other, others will farm for themselves, but there will always be those who would rather pay than put in the effort.

You can & will buy anything with gold, and you won't need or use an auction house when you do.

When you friendly gold seller offers an instance means to get decked out in a complete set of legendary gear, weapons, or mount or those crafting mats or whatever it is you value most in eso. Or siege equip or any combination of those items to give you that edge in cyrodil... the lack of an auction house isn't going to be a factor in that transaction.

And if players can manage without an auction house, you can be sure farmers will too.

In fact if it makes it tougher for them, then their commodity, gold, will only become more valuable to sell.

Supply & demand - I see it differently to you, I see it as eso's weak point. Any demand can be instantly satisfied with the right supply of gold. And a supply of gold can be met & farmed by any farmer.

But, I hope your right & I am wrong.

What is the demand for though, I'm actually curious? In a game like WoW I would imagine the biggest contributor would be crafting materials, as you need a tonne of them in order to level up. In ESO you level up by placing skill points into said profession though, right? I guess what I'm asking is; are crafting materials as valuable in ESO as they are in other games?

You and me both. I don't know the system well enough to really comment, though from what I've played so far; gold didn't really seem all that valuable to me; everything I had I either found or crafted myself. In previous games I've had to buy things like skills, crafting materials, recipes, weapons or new armour in order to advance.

1.Have someone looking over each of the zone chats each day to identify the gold sellers.

2. Perma-ban the gold seller at the IP

3. Deny access to anyone wanting to buy a new account from that IP address.

4 (optional). Introduce an autheticator thingy linked to a mobile phone account. (A banned gold seller now needs a new mobile account AND a new ESO account from a new IP address....)

5. Keep dreaming cuz that's way too much effort and probably won't ever happen lol

Well the only gold sink the games at the moment is the mounts and storage according to the developers, so I don't know where gold farmers are going to get their business from the fact that the only money sink in the game at the moment is literally achievable even to the most casual player is really going to deter gold farmers I think.

I also noticed that its hard to report someone... You have to go near them and load a rotation tab and pick report.... We dont have mouse cursor... lol

you cant click on their name, their portrait, etc... Its not an easy going mechanic.

Btw I love and I am a hardcoe farmer... but I am not a pro, selling gold... lol I world of warcraft I had a guild that I was helping new players lvl up and I was covering all their gold costs for their mounts, repairs, etc.. I liked that kind of gaming... I reported more than 500 bots and gold sellers in wow.. but this never stopped and in some instances, you could find the same bots all over, even if you reported them!! So I believe, in a point, blizzard may encouraged them... or they even have their own "underground gold selling system"...

they turn to be so greedy. They gave me that feeling, because I after I reported dozen of them, sadenly and after 5-6 years of gaming, they hacked my account with a #$@DSFS#$@#$@E dsad kind of password and I was one of the people that never used addons or visiting strange websites!!!! So I believed that blizz was behind it... strange feeling.

You can never crunch them. As long as there are demands for it. People will sell it.

press '.' to get the mouse cursor, then you can hover over the chat windows. Can't remember if you can right click on the name etc tho.

This is what I'm thinking and generally hoping is true.

You can buy gear from another player.

There are many things that are valuable. Mounts, legendary crafting mats, respecs, rare dropped armor sets, even some of the rare potions and food will be sold.

oh yea, Crafting material especially legendary tempers will be needed in high amount.

So? Implying gear is actually valuable at the end of leveling you're able to full level all skill trees and crafting skill trees so anyone is going to be able to make good gear and I really think that's going to undervalue a lot of gear in the game but that's something else entirely, I'd hope developers look into this because there is literally nothing that sets someone who crafts gear and someone who does it casually, people who strive to be better at something should be rewarded.

Actually tempers are easy to achieve you just need to break down legendary items to get a chance to get back a temper this is how I got all my tempers in game I've got 30 or so dwarven oils and around 60 honing stones just from farming a level 10 epic mob boss

There is no legendary item to extract from. Extracting from legendary is the silliest thing i have every heard for ESO atm.

Like reporting ever works. GMs will spend weeks investigating the farmer (because it's a really complex investigation), during which the farmer will continue to bot around at the same spot unhindered. Then you'll forget about the bot. Problem was solved.

God forbid you actually jump over a wall in a battleground, though, the ban hammer will come down faster than you can say Ouch!

The only way to truly put a dent in gold farmers is to block all direct trades, block gold from being mailed, and have all guild store sold items pre-set prices by the game, and yet its never going to happen.

This has often bugged me in past games. Not that people exploiting shouldn't be banned, it's just the lack of consistency; someone who triggers an exploit is taken care of almost immediately. While the gold sellers who are actively breaking the TOS on purpose and destroying the community are treated with the utmost care.

Gold already can't be mailed. Gold is pretty much stuck to the character it's on.