Isn't that the whole point of trading posts in games like those? O_o
Higher-level characters need common materials to craft the better materials for their high-level stuff. Thus they purchase the common materials from trading posts rather than gather the stuff themselves. Am I wrong?
That's what I thought. I guess not.
There was a previous occurrence that was similar, way back when the game launched. A dev had apperantly put an absurdly low price for a materiel by accident on an NPC vendor. Players bought the item for the absurdly low price, (this was at launch, so not everyone knew the price was erroneous) and then turned it into something else, that could turn a profit just being vendored back. The oversight was corrected (a week after it was found) and everybody who bought more than a few of the item were temp banned.
However this time the prices were low due to excessive supply and no demand on the trading post, none of the mats are even available from NPCs, nor could players vendor the results for profit, it all had to be done through the trading post. NPC vendors were not involved at all. ArenaNet is saying it's the same thing. It's got a few of my friends actually afraid to play the game, worried that it's only a matter of time before they get banned for crossing some invisible line of improper gameplay.
The company seems so afraid of letting people know about exploits that they will not comment or even hint at what is an exploit and what is not. Even when directly asked, yet they still keep track, and ban hundreds of accounts at once for exploits that happened weeks ago. That is bad enough, but now they seem to be banning for exploits that are not exploits. Why do most of the good games have to have an evil side...