The overall rule on this shard regarding trade of items is "Buyer beware" (caveat emptor). There have been cases in the past when a buyer bought something that didn't meet expectations, and when this was reported, I asked the seller to consider refunding the trade. In most cases, it was reversed, buyer was happy. I don't know if the seller reversed the trade because they felt in a way intimidated, you know how it might be when the +Authority "asks" for something
though well, I've tried my best to to make it clear to the seller that it was a legitimate trade and it's completely up to them and that there will be no black marks on their record, if they decide not to undo the trade. Similar stories were also in cases of trade errors, for example making an ED sell order on [exex for 52... not 52k, but "52"... gold. To the seller in this case, it seemed as if exex ate their money, but the issue clears up after looking into the trade logs. I then contact the buyer, who is happy to have bought a stack of ED at a bargain price. After explaining to them the user error of the seller, in most or if not all cases, they got in touch and made adjustments to make it into a fair transaction.
Though, in October there were two high-value transactions, that were borderline scams, though opinions differ:
- A decorative diablo statuette, labeled "mini diablo", priced at 500ED, for which the buyer thought was an ethereal mount.
- mini diablo.png (11.56 KiB) Viewed 10099 times
- veteran sphinx.png (33.74 KiB) Viewed 10100 times
But doing nothing in this case, does support these questionable sales practices... Take any item that seems cool, try to sell it for a huge amount of money, in which case the high price tag implies that it's rare & usable, wait for it to sell, and you're in the clear.
So, looking at both sides of the issue:
Arguments for keeping the Caveat emptor (buyer beware) policy:
- It's a simple rule. All sales are final.
- Knowing an items worth and doing research is part of the game.
- Definition of a trade is "money is exchanged for goods".
- Once the seller gets money, they spend it for another thing, which can make it hard to undo trades.
- The two problematic items mentioned above didn't have misleading seller's description, and had no properties that would be the same as ethereal mounts: "mini diablo 2015" is not the same as "ethereal diablo", the veteran reward item had a clearly written "veteran reward: 72 months".
- The buyer might be satisfied with the item at first, but then a few days later find a better/cheaper option.
- It's impossible to say for sure whether a price on an item is "fair", or expensive, or just a scam. Jailing sellers because of a high price tag is too subjective.
- If trades would have to be reversed, the seller would then just put the item back on the vendor and wait for another player to buy it.
- Our shard is already so baby-proof, adding more safeties is a never-ending problem.
Bottom line: Making a rule where staff would have to determine whether this is actually a scam or not, and then also undo the trade (and the seller might have already spent the cash on something else), can be too time consuming if these issues are too frequent.
Arguments for changing the rule to Caveat venditor (buyer satisfaction guarantee) policy:
- Excelsior is a community where we play alongside eachother, not against eachother. It's in our motto, "respect other members of the community"
- Undoing the trade isn't harmful to the seller at all - they can just
- Definition of a trade is "seller gets money from a satisfied buyer".
- It's a very complicated game, getting scammed in the process will turn away new players who don't yet know all of the details.
- Not changing the rule creates an environment where tolerating questionable trade practices actually promotes such activity, with fair players seeing it as a frustration and either picking up the same practice, or stop playing.
- This is already an unwritten rule (de facto), and the codex should reflect this fact by writing it down.
Bottom line: these are the values of Excelsior, it makes our shard what it is - friendly community, safe environment, and being able to form long term connections.
(These are the arguments came up with so far.... Although the number of arguments is not equal, it's the weight of each of them that counts most).
There's a technical solution I could make in the game. As you are buying an item, a notification would pop up:
- if it's something you can't use (e.g. veteran reward) it would show a big red warning to notify the buyer that they won't be able to use this item.
- for any item, it would display a description of what it is: "decorative item", "weapon", "ethereal mount", "a shrunken pet (dragon)"
I'm looking for more input, so that whatever rule we end up with, it's something we discussed first. Or maybe there's a middle path, a hybrid of both.
If you have recently had a similar issue: bought an item, and then realized that you either can't use or it's not what you expected, I'll apprecite if you can either post a reply here, or you can also send a ticket through the in-game helpsystem. So that I can be aware of all similar issues.
i see one house, 20 titan hammer stacked for decorative, are you imagine??? 20 titan hammer means 40000ED and its using for decorative lol 
