History of Crown Selling/Buying
With the arrival of Gifting, where players can now purchase items on the ingame Crown Store (currency/cosmetic store) with real currency for their friends, Community Manager Gina Bruno noted in 2018:
To clarify, trading an in-game item for other in-game items is allowed; trading in-game items for real-world money or other out-of-game items is strictly prohibited.
This was quite the clever play as essentially players could "sell" or "buy" ESO gold legally or rather within the guidelines of the Terms of Service while putting pressure on illegal gold sellers/buyers outside of the Terms of Service. In the meantime, Zenimax Online Studios garnered the profits (quite literally in the millions). It is not clear how much of an impact Crown selling or buying had on the previously highly active botters between a rise in bans and a rise in Crown selling/buying.
With the approval of Zenimax Online Studios, Crown selling and buying skyrocketed among the playerbase on every platform and server leading to the creation of Tamriel Crown Exchange which prominently sold at standard rates with a robust broker system on both PC/NA and PC/EU. Furthermore with a rise in PvE carries, Crown buying and selling also rose.
Later, the creation of World Crown Exchange, Crown Black Market & Crown Network (PC/EU's sucessor to Tamriel Crown Exchange) led to the four servers becoming the main exchange Discord servers for Crowns with a few other small servers thriving including a Russian-speaking server.
What is clear was the impact on the ingame economies as guilds also resorted to Crown selling and Crown Store prizes to maintain and hike up Guild Trader prices. Indeed, Rawl'kha Traders on PC/NA even experienced troll bids that won for several weeks.
The long-term effects of Crown selling/buying remains a concern although due to the nature of ingame gold sinks, rates and ingame economy, nothing too serious has occurred as of the year 2020.
Rates typically fluctuated between 100:1 (Gold to Crowns exchange rate) to 300+:1 on PC/NA while rates soared above 300:1 on PC/EU due to population and supply/demand differences as of 2020.
Rates typically stayed stable at around 100:1 (Gold to Crowns exchange rate) to 150:1 on Xbox/NA, Xbox/EU, PS4/NA and PS4/EU as of 2020.
Buying or Selling Crowns
Certain items on the Crown Store are not giftable to other players including Skyshards. Houses are giftable as of the Markarth DLC or Update 28.
Regardless of whether you're selling or buying Crowns, be wary of doing so in Zone Chat as there are scammers. It is advised you take screenshots and also make sure to communicate with your buyers or sellers from Zone Chat or other stranger-danger places in the game as Customer Support can help you in case you do get scammed out of your Crowns or ESO gold.
If you don't want to take the risk you can check out the following Discord servers that are verified to be safe.
Crown Exchange Discord Server
ESOU itself provides an area for Crown Exchange. Join our server!
- Our ā Discord server rules still apply to the exchange of goods and services. This means RMT (Real Money Transactions, such as exchanging gold for real currency or ingame items for real currency), trading illicit products and selling/buying ESO accounts along with any conduct that breaks Discord or Elder Scrolls Online Terms of Service are not allowed.
- Use ā our Verify-or-Report channel to get a tag/role that indicates your reputation as either a Crown buyer or Crown seller for future transactions. Submissions must include proof of how much you've sold or bought with buyer or seller names involved.
At this point in time, we have 5 levels of verification: 5k Crowns, 15k Crowns, 25k, 50k or 100k Crowns bought or sold. It's advised you submit evidence/receipts for each tier rather than having us add up all of your transactions for you. If you were/are a verified buyer or seller in other verified Crown Exchange servers, you can submit proof of that as well so we can grandfather you in.
- Verification tags will be added to the ESO University Bot where you or anyone else can bring up your credentials on your Discord account in any Discord server our bot is in so this helps other people and servers identify your reputation so you can transact more easily outside of this server.
- It's advised you set your ESOU Discord server name to your actual account name ingame so it's easier to facilitate transactions.
- Report scammers to our Moderator team with details/evidence and also submit scam reports to Zenimax Online Studios Customer Support directly in order to resolve potential damages. Particularly for Crowns - whether you're selling or buying them - be wary of doing so in Zone Chat, Discord or other mediums as there will ALWAYS be scammers. It is advised you take screenshots and have a conversation with the buyer or seller INGAME (NOT outside of game) so Customer Support can help you in case you do get scammed out of your Crowns or ESO gold.
- Scammers will be heavily punished. Scammers will not only be banned from both the ESOU Discord server and its future projects but we will add your characters' and account names to a blacklist for use by any community.
- Please use the non-Crown WTS or WTB channels for anything including material sales, crafting services and Stickerbook sales. Crown exchange or carry advertisements are prohibited in these channels.
Note: We currently do not have a Crown Broker system in place and are working on it.
World Crown Exchange also provides crown exchange services.