I figured something like this had happened last week. I found it very fishy how freely I was able to camp Poisonhanded here on Alexander, and how dead it was in Zi Tah where gilsellers farmed Cuttings 24/7 usually. I havent checked the high priced items in the AH yet to check for dropping prices, but they were sliding slowly starting right after the holidays anyways. This is an excellent step in eliminating RMT. Hopefully SE paid attention though to the new account creation around the time they nixed all those accounts. It's too bad recording the credit card numbers is illegal...though I guess they could ban numbers without actually seeing them as long as they're in their computer system. They'll know exactly who to watch in the next little while as the RMT community rebuilds. 700 accounts may SEEM piddly, but the result of these main gil transferring accounts being nixed has been the gilsellers offloading a buttload of their non-banned characters. Otherwise they'd still have gil up on all the servers for sale and not a sudden massive jump in accounts for sale. Not that this upswing in account selling is unusual given the upcoming release of the X360 version of the game. Also it isn't as easy as you might think to get a bunch of new Reg. Codes for new chars. This will slow the RMT people down quite a bit unless they want to trumpet their return by starting a surge in account creation. The first run of accounts bans didn't do much, but this one has hit much harder. I applaud SE. Though I do wonder what changes they made in the last couple of weeks during those maintenance period. I suppose they aren't saying because the RMTs would just find their way around it if they knew.

Thank you S-E! This won't fix the problems 100% but it's a step in the right direction.

I don't think gil buyers should be banned... I don't think they ment to ***** up the economy... it's just w/in american culture (especially Generaion Y and Generation O)to have instant gratification. This is just an excellent example of this character flaw.

Personally I think the buyers should have some sort of punishment. stripped of job levels to 1/2 of what their current lvls are.... stripped of rank and maybe a gil fine to pay?? I dunno...

just my thoughts....

anyways, i'm just happy SE is trying to do something.

lmao oops hit wrong macro ..... it is about time SE did do something about gil sellers n such but like all good things it wont last long nor will prices go back to the way they "were" like when NA released the game cheap stuff was great i was on shiva then...but through migration went to Midgarsormr lol outrageuos prices crazy prices lol then the gilsellers really kiked into gear and they went p00f 50mil for SH+1 like wtf i dont need 1 but hell that aint worth that much 10mil at most (well it was b4 the b00m) but u most said SE kik backs hmmm prolly true others say finally yay but how long will it last Noone Knows
all we can do is farm our asses off make our own money and critisise those who buy gil and hope for them all to farm with us ..wel not with us but u know wut i mean l8r pplz

/Cheer to SE for doing something.

Of course now I wish I had waited to buy some gear that I did, I could have saved a bundle.

But I suppose it comes out even in the end.

Still maybe I can convince SE to let me have some gil back? ;P

As was said in a previous post that I agree with, The reason you may be seeing a lot of the normal gilsellers on your servers, is because maybe they're a bit harder to pinpoint. You have to think, I highly doubt your favorite Gilsellers are actually the ones who hand out gil when someone buys it.

Odds are the accounts that were banned were those unknown few housing all the gil that your favorite gilsellers collect. Least, that's what I feel.

peace,
CR

I’m glad they’re taking it slow. I’d rather deal with RMT people then get banned for something I did that may have looked suspicious.

As for setting up a sting, on the surface it seems like a really good idea, but I think it may be a little more complex then that. Say SE buys gil from a character and tracks that gil back to one other character… well, transferring gil in itself is not a violation of the TOS. And what if many people are giving gil to the gilseller character, not just through the AH delivery, but also through bazaar and AH sales? Can you safely assume they’re all into RMT and ban them all?

The way I would do RMT if I were IGE would be to set up a few layers of obfuscation. You have a disposable account (this would be the one that actually transfers money to players, and is at the most risk). This character would always have a few million on him, in order to quickly respond to sales requests. An SE employee would have to go pretty far back to find out where that gil came from originally.

I’d have a few dozen “banker” accounts to hold gil, not too much on any one character, in order to avoid losing tons of gil if they get banned. I’d set up inflated bazaar sales and AH sales between the bankers and the transfer characters, probably using another layer or two of middleman characters, in order to transfer gil without using the delivery system or direct trading. Tracing all this back to me, not to mention all my dozens of banker accounts, would be a huge undertaking. Which leaves SE with two options… to take it slow and steady, or to wield the banhammer recklessly, catching tons of gilsellers and a fair number of legitimate players in the process.

If I can think of this, then I bet IGE has thought of it too. Actually, they probably have something even better to cover their tracks.

300 billion is a lot of gil. At a going rate of, let’s say, $10 per million (just guessing, I don’t know), then that’s $3,000,000 “street price” that the gilsellers lost. That has GOT to hurt :)

Holy ****! I just searched IGE's site. I looked on most server's and NO GIL on manyof them..

So I then searched characters/accounts for sale, and BOOOOOOM 393 for sale at the moment. Now, I've never seen the accounts for sale, or searched for them, so is that a normal number? Or is that IGE's scape goat money maker? Did they have all those accounts for sale just waiting, but due to the gil being wiped out, this is their emergency fund?

Any ideas would be welcomed, that's insane ^-^. Any thoughts?

I can't speak for other servers, as all my characters are here on Gilgamesh. But I have to say that a HUGE number of people on my server, long suspected to be gilsellers and botters, have dissapeared. Our prices are still outrageous, but they're not HIDEOUS anymore. SHs have, for the time being, dropped to 9 mil... they WERE about 30 mil.

There's still a few suspects hanging around, but around here it's been almost haunting how easy it is to suddenly get some NMs that were camped 24/7 before.

And really folks, SE is not a company of gods. They can't fix EVERYTHING at once. Like a true economy, it takes time to fix itself. I do think it's funny how a lot of known gilbuyers are currently flat broke because they blew all their gil paying huge amounts for items, half the time just to show off. The have no idea where/what to farm, what to do, what have you. Meanwhile those of us who stuck to the old tried and true methods are still sailing along.

I admit, they're not ALL gone, and there's still some people they need to slap down(I'm not paying 80k for one stack of Sole Sushi, sorry), but at least they're making SOME effort.

i haven't seen any effect in lakshmi all the prices are still about same for stuff here...

I know it's not a whole lot that has been taken from FFXI economy, but it's starting to show. I'm constantly trying to craft things and sell what is popular among players so I can make gil, and I've noticed prices falling all over the place from leather to crystals. I hope S.E. continues with trying to make this game fair to play and not let it continue to be a nightmare for my husband and I due to outrageous prices.

>.> its 300 billion gil. not US currency, not UK currency. Vanadiel currency.

...and unless i'm missing something 300 billion is 300,000,000,000 no matter where you are

EDIT: spelling twice lol.
eye r a gude speeler O.o

Edited, Thu Feb 9 11:51:40 2006