Some changes as of August 1st

@Methos: Oh, sweet! It didn't specify which forums it was affecting in the post itself, only "the Art Forums", so I wasn't sure if those would be affected as well. Thank you! And that one hidebox rule is rad, thank you for the clarification! :D

I'm up for a short while nursing a bit of pain in my leg (cramp is fun) so I figure I'll shoot some answers before heading back to sleep. Just gonna get these two since the questions follow on so well from one another o/ Yes, uniformity. We broke the uniformity with changing that one and really that's not been okay for some time. We didn't really know what to do. With us finding out that people were messaging the users who are no longer staff, we kinda decided we had to do something rather than mulling it over. They aren't really intended to be quick-links, honestly. That's what the bookmarks are for. To put it simply, we realized that we were inadvertently running afoul of our own rules regarding not having misleading names for links. The simplest solution was not to link the counters at all. Basically, the counters are counting something based on the site, say interaction points, or number of scours - things like that... But they have a name associated with them. That being the name, mostly, of a user. So we have, for instance, Uzumi - which is Scour missions - but it linked to Uzumi's page. That's misleading in two ways, potentially. - If it links to Uzumi's page, it's misleading because it's counting scours, so shouldn't it link to the relevant thing? That being the Scours page, of course. - If it links to the Scours page, well - the text associated with the link is "Uzumi". Uzumi isn't on the Scours page, so... That's misleading too. We'll figure this out, of course feedback on that is more than welcome and we appreciate the suggestions! <3 As for the ZC question, I'm a little unclear on what's meant through the wording there. So! To be upfront, I'll say what it is that I got from that and you can correct if I'm wrong! :) "If RMT is removed does that mean that users will not be able to trade ZC for real world currency with other players?" Yes, that would mean that, sadly. I'll be honest, I didn't need to include the information that there was consideration (initially) for completely disallowing RMT. But, personally, I want to be transparent. It was a consideration and it's a big one, at that, so I feel it's pertinent to say that it was a consideration even if we're not doing it. I feel the response to the issues we've been having was a little on the emotional side and it needed dialing back. It is frustrating and annoying to have to deal with these things (and being blamed when we can't fix certain things because they're entirely out of our control) so, I can definitely understand why there was the idea of sorta saying "Let's just not allow it, then", but... I don't feel like that's fair. I feel like it's better to have a more... Level-headed approach. I do understand why other games do have it so it's not allowed as well, but we're not them. And freedom of currency, so long as it's mandated properly and the users know where they stand, should be okay. It being disallowed is not the end goal and it will take it being an extreme, or a legal necessity (aka. having no choice in the matter), for me to genuinely get behind it.

I think what pixelkitty meant, is that with RMT being removed, are we only able to buy zc from the site itself and not from other users in any way, even if it's PFQ goods and not real money?

First of all, just to make sure this is clear, RMT is not being removed. That is a very key thing to note. ^^' If it were to be disallowed, you would be able to trade zc / buy things with zc. The only thing not allowed would be directly purchasing anything with any manner of real life currency (GBP / USD / EUR). We don't want that to be the case, though, so the hope is that with the clarity of our stance that the issues we've been presented will, at the very least, lessen. We'll of course help where we can - we're not waving our hands of this entirely, we're just wanting people to be aware and realise that we can't, for instance, get someone's money back from a PayPal transaction. That's not on us, that's on Paypal. Perhaps it would also be an idea for us to offer a quick "what to do if you've been scammed and you've already sent payment via. PayPal" guide of sorts. I mean, there's no obligation but maybe that would be helpful to people out there! :D Ofc, my first piece of advice when paying for something is NEVER send it as a "friend / family" payment. You're paying for goods and services so select THAT option. Otherwise, if you get scammed, even PayPal won't be able to help you. (I'm gonna go sleep now o/ )

Sorry if this is obvious and I'm just missing it - but what exactly has changed about the rules around RMT? I thought that was already a kind of "at your own risk" thing, under the "off site trading" umbrella?

It's more of a clarification to what we consider (un)acceptable. Some users attempted to get away with scams because of the reason you brought up. "At your own risk" does not mean "consequence-free" if staff can help it. We may not be able to get your money back for you, but we will also not allow an individual to continue their scam if the receipts are on-site.

My reason for the ouch is that the conversion rates are not... friendly to usd users? But if it's unlikely to be banned and this is more of a clarification that's not really an issue. A guide would be very helpful. (Don't send as friends and family, don't send the text pin that some people try to scam with, don't confirm anything was received until you've received it all etc etc)

Ok, that makes sense, thank you.

great, i kept in my eveview that real money trade should not e and you guys are implementing it, im so happy every week there are so many quitting posts in orum that it eeels peiplety this game to earn money

From what I understand you're saying that people play the game to earn money? The reason people, most often, ask for real money is because they spent real money on the game. It's earning back what was spent. Also, they aren't banning RMT. It's still happening, it's just more clearly not endorsed.