Ok, so in a recent interview conducted by a French gaming site, there was this; I went ahead and put in bold and underlined the part that concerns moi.

- LA : One of the biggest deficiencies of the first GW was the lack of real economic tools such as an auction house or a private store mode, so we were forced to sell auction-style but then we were unable to really play. Not considering the fact there was not a unique trade outpost, this did not ease the task. What is planned in GW2?

Curtis Johnson – Game Designer: Guild Wars 2 includes a full Marketplace for players, which will differ from the usual MMO auction house in a number of ways. The biggest and most important difference is GW2’s Marketplace supports postings from both buyers and sellers. You might put your sword up for sale, then offer 100 gold for the specific axe you’re looking for without having to find any specific seller. The market can display the history of average value and trends for an item, making it easy to determine a fair value for your goods. It might be worth waiting to sell your item, depending if the price is rising or falling.

Items you put up for sale may sell while you’re offline, and the funds will be deposited in your account bank. You must be in game to put a new item up for sale, but you will be able to browse the market, bid from your account bank, or cancel your own auctions and offers while logged in to a web browser without running the game.

If you are like me, your first instinct is to think "wow thats a really innovative idea that will certainly come in handy".  Then as you think a little bit more.....you might say "uhmmmm, a web interface for my GW2 bank account and auction house - hack my account please?"

I highly doubt that I am the only one that is a little leary about this, especially since this game is being published by NCsoft - not exactly secruity experts from my experience.  I am totally stoked about this game, but I just got a flash of logging into my account to find my character butt naked and broke as joke.

Hah, then there is the added benefit of having to experience what NCsoft calls "customer support" - hopefully Arenanet will be handling it, I honestly don't know.

Why do you believe that web based banking is less secure than anything else.  Real banks use web based transactions and have for years.  Not that a game would be as secure as real banking servers, but what makes you think it would be less secure than say a login server?  Dont give out your password and dont let your little brother install keyloggers on your computer.

Originally posted by svann

Why do you believe that web based banking is less secure than anything else.  Real banks use web based transactions and have for years.  Not that a game would be as secure as real banking servers, but what makes you think it would be less secure than say a login server?  Dont give out your password and dont let your little brother install keyloggers on your computer.

Exactly

It doesn't really matter - your NCSoft Master Account is already web-based. And as posted before it makes no difference in security, it's still a data center, and your vulnerable browsing will still be able to compromise your account (watch out for phishing, like Aion and World of Warcraft, I believe it will run rampant as in your mail box being flooded with phishing attempts).

Interesting that they will feature a more advanced than average browser function.

There's the gorilla next door charging for similar stuff, with the addition of being able to place orders from your browser, but I wonder if it will also feature price histories and graphs (yeah, I know EVE has that, it also features local markets and local banks, but this won't happen in GW2, and it would make no sense considering it will feature instant travel methods).

I think it's a good idea. I can't see THAT many people getting hacked and their stuff getting stolen. But there will always be the people who go to some link and type in their stuff and think it's the bank when in reality its just some phishing site. Oh well, it will end up working well for the smart people.

Originally posted by svann

Why do you believe that web based banking is less secure than anything else.  Real banks use web based transactions and have for years.  Not that a game would be as secure as real banking servers, but what makes you think it would be less secure than say a login server?  Dont give out your password and dont let your little brother install keyloggers on your computer.

Real banks spend millions on their web security. I doubt an MMO will.

In any case - I don't even do RL banking online.

Originally posted by svann

Why do you believe that web based banking is less secure than anything else.  Real banks use web based transactions and have for years.  Not that a game would be as secure as real banking servers, but what makes you think it would be less secure than say a login server?  Dont give out your password and dont let your little brother install keyloggers on your computer.

I do network security and cyber surety for the military.

To put it plainly, any web - based account access is in any form is a security issue, custom software clients (like the client you run for the launcher of an MMO) are far more secure.  I don't care so much about the auction house functionality, or the fact that it gives access to your GW2 bank in the game - the thing I am concerned with is allowing access to your account AT ALL through the web, trust me it's practically an invitation for a hacker.  Though you are correct in that some accounts are lost to key loggers, far more are compromised through web access. 

And yes, many banks do online banking, but are you forgetting or simply ignorant of the massive number of accounts that are stolen on a daily basis?  They have entire departments devoted solely to recovering accounts that were compromised through online access.  Also, if you want to compare the resources devoted to both the protection and recovery of a real life bank account to that of an account on a video game, you are just being silly - I can assure you that when $10,000 is lost in the real world, people try a  hell of a lot harder to find it than when your Golden Greatsword Of the Hawk was jacked because of some loser hacker.

Having access to your game account through a web-based login is historically far easier to compromise when compared to other access points, and it simply gives hackers another means by which to access your account - sorry, these are the facts.

Originally posted by EricDanie

It doesn't really matter - your NCSoft Master Account is already web-based. And as posted before it makes no difference in security, it's still a data center, and your vulnerable browsing will still be able to compromise your account (watch out for phishing, like Aion and World of Warcraft, I believe it will run rampant as in your mail box being flooded with phishing attempts).

Interesting that they will feature a more advanced than average browser function.

There's the gorilla next door charging for similar stuff, with the addition of being able to place orders from your browser, but I wonder if it will also feature price histories and graphs (yeah, I know EVE has that, it also features local markets and local banks, but this won't happen in GW2, and it would make no sense considering it will feature instant travel methods).

 I'll give you that - I suppose it is sorta moot considering your master account access is via the web.  NCsoft products are already compromised due to that.

Originally posted by Palomides

I highly doubt that I am the only one that is a little leary about this, especially since this game is being published by NCsoft - not exactly secruity experts from my experience.  I am totally stoked about this game, but I just got a flash of logging into my account to find my character butt naked and broke as joke.

Hah, then there is the added benefit of having to experience what NCsoft calls "customer support" - hopefully Arenanet will be handling it, I honestly don't know.

That bit made me laugh lol. Yea hopefully they come up with a decent security mechanism for this little innovation. GW atm now asks for a character name before you log in. I don't care if I have to answer 10 questions before I can access the GW2 banking system, as long as it prevents my account getting hacked I'm happy. *sigh*, if only the hackers could just go f*** themselves the world would be a better place.

Id be happy with that, but i mean, they should give you the choice to allow yourself to be part of that whole online banking auction house group; because i mean there will be people that will LOVE that, because that means they can trade while at work or only when they have a quick second, but then theres gonna be the skeptics like myself that just dont want anything to do with it. If ima buy something, ima be in game lol ; I dunno, i think it should be a choice to be allowed to buy or sell ... or to make it extremely case sensetive, i mean hell, if i had to answer a list of questions EVERYTIME to do that, then sure, id be for it. But i doubt thatll happen, itll prolly just be more password or key pin numbers like they already have to enter your master account ...

still cant remember my damn master account name, sad .. id still be playing Guild  Wars if i could remember it XD lol ;

Originally posted by kinido

Id be happy with that, but i mean, they should give you the choice to allow yourself to be part of that whole online banking auction house group; because i mean there will be people that will LOVE that, because that means they can trade while at work or only when they have a quick second, but then theres gonna be the skeptics like myself that just dont want anything to do with it. If ima buy something, ima be in game lol ; I dunno, i think it should be a choice to be allowed to buy or sell ... or to make it extremely case sensetive, i mean hell, if i had to answer a list of questions EVERYTIME to do that, then sure, id be for it. But i doubt thatll happen, itll prolly just be more password or key pin numbers like they already have to enter your master account ...

 

still cant remember my damn master account name, sad .. id still be playing Guild  Wars if i could remember it XD lol ;

 It doesn't sound like (and it would be pretty stupid of them to) it is going to be ONLY through the website. It sounds like it will be an ingame AH as usual, but also with the option to access it from the website.

The A-Net team has a history of making browser-enabled content for Guild Wars.  Awhile back, they had the Xunlai Tournament House, where players could access the website to bet on the winners of the monthly GvG and HvH tournaments; participating would give in-game reward points.    It was an optional system, you had to manually sign-up to use it.  Additionally, when you signed up for it, you were asked to create a new password for the browser content separate from your game-account password.  As far as I know, this system never had any issues with getting hacked.  The system, however, did have issues reintegrating the data from the browser content back into the game; the issue was not the fault of browser content, but in the game engine (the engine wasn't designed to receive external data, and the code used to reward accounts often would bug and redistribute reward points with each minor patch) which lead to eventual removal.

With GW2, the A-net team has been very vocal about the use of social media integration with the game, so the addition of browser access to an auction house doesn't surprise me.  Since the game has been being developed with external content in mind, I don't think that there will be issues as was seen with the Xunlai House.  And judging from their past example of browser content, it will be entirely optional and most likely require additional registration.

As for the customer support with GW... its always really good.  You start by submitting a support ticket through PlayNC and the support ticket is then forwarded immediately to the GW Support Team.  They are exceptionally skilled, and they provide feedback directly to the dev team.  Another good thing with GW, the dev team is also very helpful.  You can find them on the official Wiki and they have a large presence in game (they also tend to lurk in any related forums); so you can sometimes get help just by asking the devs.

Originally posted by therez0

The A-Net team has a history of making browser-enabled content for Guild Wars.  Awhile back, they had the Xunlai Tournament House, where players could access the website to bet on the winners of the monthly GvG and HvH tournaments; participating would give in-game reward points.    It was an optional system, you had to manually sign-up to use it.  Additionally, when you signed up for it, you were asked to create a new password for the browser content separate from your game-account password.  As far as I know, this system never had any issues with getting hacked.  The system, however, did have issues reintegrating the data from the browser content back into the game; the issue was not the fault of browser content, but in the game engine (the engine wasn't designed to receive external data, and the code used to reward accounts often would bug and redistribute reward points with each minor patch) which lead to eventual removal.

With GW2, the A-net team has been very vocal about the use of social media integration with the game, so the addition of browser access to an auction house doesn't surprise me.  Since the game has been being developed with external content in mind, I don't think that there will be issues as was seen with the Xunlai House.  And judging from their past example of browser content, it will be entirely optional and most likely require additional registration.

As for the customer support with GW... its always really good.  You start by submitting a support ticket through PlayNC and the support ticket is then forwarded immediately to the GW Support Team.  They are exceptionally skilled, and they provide feedback directly to the dev team.  Another good thing with GW, the dev team is also very helpful.  You can find them on the official Wiki and they have a large presence in game (they also tend to lurk in any related forums); so you can sometimes get help just by asking the devs.

 Excellent post couldn't have said it better myself.

Wow, this is a great feature. Now I can merch my items during my lunch break. The game is looking better and better all the time.

Isnt this the same thing WoW is charging an extra $2 a month for in their game? :)

seems so...

if they do this.. it should definetly be via a dedicated program, otherwise your right about the security... it only takes one little glitch in your php and bam sql injection.....

I like this. It seems a lot like the market that Eve has, only as stated above me without the regional fluxuations. 

As for the security issues people are afraid of, this whole system is optional I'm sure; you don't have to participate if you don't want to. Personally, A-net is one of the developers I will fully trust because they have always delivered for me. I can't wait to be at lunch, logging into my GW2 account from my droid, and getting business done. Sounds fantastic.

Originally posted by therez0

The A-Net team has a history of making browser-enabled content for Guild Wars.  Awhile back, they had the Xunlai Tournament House, where players could access the website to bet on the winners of the monthly GvG and HvH tournaments; participating would give in-game reward points.    It was an optional system, you had to manually sign-up to use it.  Additionally, when you signed up for it, you were asked to create a new password for the browser content separate from your game-account password.  As far as I know, this system never had any issues with getting hacked.  The system, however, did have issues reintegrating the data from the browser content back into the game; the issue was not the fault of browser content, but in the game engine (the engine wasn't designed to receive external data, and the code used to reward accounts often would bug and redistribute reward points with each minor patch) which lead to eventual removal.

With GW2, the A-net team has been very vocal about the use of social media integration with the game, so the addition of browser access to an auction house doesn't surprise me.  Since the game has been being developed with external content in mind, I don't think that there will be issues as was seen with the Xunlai House.  And judging from their past example of browser content, it will be entirely optional and most likely require additional registration.

As for the customer support with GW... its always really good.  You start by submitting a support ticket through PlayNC and the support ticket is then forwarded immediately to the GW Support Team.  They are exceptionally skilled, and they provide feedback directly to the dev team.  Another good thing with GW, the dev team is also very helpful.  You can find them on the official Wiki and they have a large presence in game (they also tend to lurk in any related forums); so you can sometimes get help just by asking the devs.

Great post but I will have to disagree with NCSoft's Support team. They have the WORST Support team of any MMORPG. Cheack out the Lineage 2 , Aion and GW Boards and people blast them for the total lack of customer service or assistance in game and out. Look at other MMORPG's boards or fan sites and you will see a growing community of people who would not touch NCSoft with a 10 foot pole or play any of their games ever again.

If there truly is browser banking that will be fucking awesome. Surprised this hasnt really been used before in a large title.