Muling Idea

[London Kay]

Since muling has become such an issue, I have two ideas.

1.Subscription for the monthlies. Make it a requirement to get the monthly $20/month. people will buy the monthlies regardless , this will be good for game and also good for the value of monthlies. With the subscription, still one per account.

2. Require 50 star level along with the gold to purchase a monthly.

[Kissy My]

ooo.. thats very interesting...

[Adriella Spencer]

If it's switching to a pay option, I think it should be affordable at US$4.99 or something. This is a bit too exclusionary for something that has always been a core draw of the game though

Any account-based limit would eventually be overcome with time, whether it is a restriction on how many you can buy or own, how soon a new account can buy or trade and even on XP. Remember, a would-be muler is sufficiently motivated by greed to go through the hassle of creating new emails and new SV accounts just to make their main a little richer. They are not deterred by effort once it can bring great rewards. I personally think the XP-requirement may slow them down a bit but not stop them. Having qualification criteria and limits only frustrates and punishes good players, not the bad ones.

The only way to effectively discourage deviant behavior like this is to attack the incentive that is driving it i.e. the potential to earn lots of gold from reselling. Essentially, that would mean doing something drastic like capping the resale value or disabling the sell function or ability to trade the monthly collectibles indefinitely. I don't see SV doing that either because they have always allowed us to operate in a free market.

I don't think anything could be realistically done about the muling beyond banning those found to be doing it and reprimanding those who knowingly buy from them

[Grace Judes]

I dislike the idea of a subscription to be honest, not everyone can just splurge 20 dollars a month into a game, and the monthly collectibles are worth less gold than 20$ would give. We should move away from the subscription model, and find another solution to this problem. I'm sure it is not that hard to track down mulers.

[Maya Saran]

While I think that the idea of a subscription might be helpful - although I would go for 10$ instead of 20$, it can only be implemented if it is possible for all players to make a payment.
As long as players can't even buy any packages or gold or VIP from the store because they live in countries where there is no valid payment method for them (I am talking about the whole Euro-Zone), it wouldn't be fair to give monthlys out for real money only.