Bartertown.com

Greetings! I was recently issued a Board Warning due to a post I made about selling some City of Heroes/City of Villains Game Time Cards. I'm not sure if there was some confusion on what exactly I was offering, but I was told listing them is a violation of rule #12:

Rule #12: Digital paraphernalia (accounts, items, cards, etc) Are Not Acceptable Trade Goods.
Do not post ads selling or soliciting MMORPG accounts, items, or currency. No Everquest, no Diablo 2, no Star Wars Galaxies, no World of Warcraft, or anything else in the multi-player online roleplaying game genre. Do not think you are being clever by selling a CD and sticking a piece of paper with your account information in the package with it. That still counts as a violation and you will be banned if we find out about it.

Furthermore, no online collectible card game items/accounts/currencies. If you've got a super-awesome card on Magic Online, DO NOT come here to trade it.

If you have a WoW trading card that can affect the online WoW game, contact an Administrator BEFORE you post it for trade.

I'm not sure if it was mixed up with being some sort of digital-card like that Magic-Online thing, or maybe some sort of thing to do with being in-game, but what I had listed was a SUBSCRIPTION card. My best comparison would be to an XBox Live Gold card; they sell them in all sorts of stores and get you access to the premium content and whatnot. Here's a link to Amazon selling the same thing:
http://www.amazon.com/NCsoft-30-Day-Gam ... 761&sr=8-1
Furthermore, the items I had listed are brand new & sealed in the plastic still. There's no way I could "stick a piece of paper with [my] account information in the package with it." Nor would I want to since the game went Free-To-Play late last year and I can go play my characters anytime; I just don't need the VIP access that these timecards give you (I've been playing it on & off since it came in 2004; I'd never give away my characters).

I don't know if it was just a misunderstanding on what the listing was actually for, or if the site legitimately doesn't allow timecards/subscription cards, but as I've seen plenty of listings including XBox Live Gold cards, I think the rule may be a little unclear or use too general of terms and may need a little clarification/editing.

I would never risk the reputation here I've spent years building up to do something stupid like sell in-game gold or sell a WoW account or any other violation of the rules like that (and especially not when I've got other listings I don't want jeapardized also). Thanks guys!

PS - Its nice to know the mods are awake and browsing the forums!

Hiya,

You may find this discussion relevant:

viewtopic.php?f=40&t=85404&p=165383&hil ... ld#p165383

I also did a quick search for Xbox Live Gold cards, and I don't seen any ads offering such for sale. Feel free to PM me if you found one.

The general policy is a blanket ban on items of this type in order to avoid running afoul of other party interests; the net is cast wide, and may sweep up some things that you may think should be permitted, but it is far more straight forward on the administrative side. Consider also that Bartertown has no formal legal counsel to review the ins and outs of user agreements.

Hope that helps.

Well as a related note, are XBox Live Gold cards allowed to be sold/traded via Bartertown? Because if they're not then I can definitely see why this listing would be against the rules. As I said, my listing was for BRAND NEW, FACTORY SEALED packages; the same you'd get sent from Amazon or find at Best Buy (before they turned them into those little scratch-off timecards like XBox Live Gold).

In the other post (link), an acceptable example was given: (something along the lines of)
"Well my grandma gave me this game World of Warcraft for Christmas, but I don't want it. Wanna buy it?"

My listing is pretty similar:
"I got these subscription cards as Christmas gifts and I don't want them. Anyone wanna buy them?"

I now understand (thanks to the link provided by Sorrow) that part of the problem was that I had offered to just open the package and send the code to whoever bought them to save them on shipping. I now completely understand that this is against the rules and I'm sorry for that one; if I'm allowed to list the items in the future, I'll be sure to only offer to ship the unopened packages to people so they can open it for themselves. My apologies on that one.

PS - Thanks for the link, Sorrow! It gave me a bit more perspective on the issue.