Guild Wars 2

Take things in that direction if you want to. That’s your best argument and that’s okay. None of what has been said changes the fact that the in game economy was manipulated by bots and that ANet didn’t remove their contribution, if it can be called one, from the game.

Endrance.1680:

During the first 3 months of launch GW2 experienced a huge botting problem. This is no secret. During this time the bots flooded the economy dramatically increasing the price of gems. While the staff did a great job of smashing all the bots, they never removed all of the gold produced by the bots from the game. Why haven’t they done so? With gems being literally worth more than the American dollar, people are spending a lot of real world cash on gems to then convert them into in game gold or spending them in the gem store for upgrades.

Not to burst any bubbles but almost everything is worth more than the american dollar.

Endrance.1680:

None of what has been said changes the fact

Pretty much sums up what it’s like to try and discuss with you. We won’t confuse you with facts, you already have an opinion. Take things in that direction if you want to. That’s your best argument and that’s okay.

I do have an opinion and I’ve been given no data and no evidence to change it. I stand firm in what I stated. You obviously have nothing to contribute, Iruwen, seeing as you just quoted something I said and tried to fire back at me with it. This thread was meant to be constructive.

Endrance.1680:

I do have an opinion

Endrance.1680:

None of what has been said changes the fact

You’re a funny guy.

Endrance.1680:

I’ve been given no data and no evidence to change it.

You have seen the evidence. You just chose not to believe it. I’m going to quote it again for you.

John Smith.4610:

I think you’re overvaluing what was created by bots during that time period. GW2 is massive (by definition I suppose, but also in reality) what those bots made for a couple of weeks isn’t 1/1000th of the total turn of this economy since launch.

marnick.4305:

Endrance.1680:

During the first 3 months of launch GW2 experienced a huge botting problem. This is no secret. During this time the bots flooded the economy dramatically increasing the price of gems. While the staff did a great job of smashing all the bots, they never removed all of the gold produced by the bots from the game. Why haven’t they done so? With gems being literally worth more than the American dollar, people are spending a lot of real world cash on gems to then convert them into in game gold or spending them in the gem store for upgrades.

Not to burst any bubbles but almost everything is worth more than the american dollar.

Not to throw this thread off track, but lets not be spreading false information.

The US dollar is currently the 12th highest valued currency(1) out of the 183 currencies recognized by the United Nations(2).

(1)- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highest-valued_currency_unit
(2)- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_circulating_currencies

John Smith,

As far as opinions and facts go I have an opinion based on some facts. Such as bots being around longer than “a couple of weeks”. You can cut and paste and make multiple statements look like a contradiction all day. This forum is full of them. Other topics in this forum aren’t being discussed as well like what happened to the gold that was being produced by the bots. Was it taken out of the game? How much did they generate exactly? How much did this effect the market? You’ve given one “statistic”. 1/1000th. How much exactly is that? It’s all tracked so why can’t we see it? Keeping people off topic and making arguments out of questions instead of answering them is a politicians job. Customer service should not be confused with politics.

Endrance.1680:

Again this thread was meant to be constructive. Cute though.

Constructive? IMO this thread is almost like a joke.

You opinion is that bots makes huge impact to the game economy because “you think” bots have higher/just enough contribution to the market than players.

And a Dev with actual data tell you that whatever you think about bots, they are not as effective to the market as you were to solely believe from “your own personal experience.”

If your opinion and your facts are true, Guild Wars 2 bots to players population ratio would be close to 1:1, but in reality is no where near that amount.

This is not at all what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that botting was a huge issue when this game launched and it lasted about 3 months. The dev’s made it known that they were working on the botting problem and did not hide it. During that time a large sum of gold was poured into the trading post. I want to know how much it effected the economy. I’ve stated this multiple times. Before you go on posting what you think I’m saying, read again. Don’t use my opinions to make some bogus statement that player population to bot population is 1:1. You came up with that garbage, not me.

Also I never once have made the statement that I think bots have higher or just enough contribution to the market over players. I also never stated in “my own personal experience”. Don’t try and skew what I’ve said.

Endrance.1680:

This is not at all what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that botting was a huge issue when this game launched and it lasted about 3 months. The dev’s made it known that they were working on the botting problem and did not hide it. During that time a large sum of gold was poured into the trading post. I want to know how much it effected the economy. I’ve stated this multiple times. Before you go on posting what you think I’m saying, read again. Don’t use my opinions to make some bogus statement that player population to bot population is 1:1. You came up with that garbage, not me.

How long do you think a bot will last? Few weeks but no more than a month is what I got from Dev’s post.

And during these few weeks bots earn the large sum of gold you mention, which is not enough to effect the market as a whole and is state by Mr. John Smith(Who has the data and the tool to prove it!)

Farming is not a very good way of acquiring gold, a player who do CoF speed run few hours per day will earn even larger sum of gold than a bot can earn whole day.

I did come up with 1:1, which is greatly inspire by your personal opinion.

This mysterious bots army which earn large sum of gold since launch is getting really tiresome, and I can tell you the player base as a whole is definitely earning more than that.

This is an interesting thread.

Endrance seems to be alleging that ArenaNet is actively engaging in some sort of conspiracy to defraud it’s players by allowing the gold generated by gold sellers to remain in the game economy, thereby artificially inflating prices and forcing the players to spend inordinate amounts of real world cash just to keep up with progression.

Interesting.

I find it curious though, that he also seems to be requesting information from ArenaNet that would verify they are committing fraud. Or, at the very least, they have mislead or lied about the steps they took to safeguard their game economy from gold sellers.

What are the odds that conspirators will offer evidence that proves they are engaged in a conspiracy?

It’s fun to read, but I’m not sure that is what’s actually happening here.

I think it’s more likely that Endrance is himself, a gold buyer.

I think he bought gold at some point but his supplier got caught by the ban hammer during the bot crackdown. And now, he’s here, months after the fact, phishing for “evidence” that he can use to justify to himself that buying gold via gold sellers isn’t harmful to the game economy.

That or he’s just trollin’. /shrug

So, to boil it down, if I understand this correctly, you are saying that bots bought gems with their ill gotten gold and thus drove the price for gems up. You would now like Anet to trace how many gems where bought from those accounts and adjust the gem price down accordingly?

One bot may not last long at all but there aren’t just a few of these bots. There are many of them and they are inserted into the game daily. It’s not an issue of the longevity of any particular bot Yeni. While I am aware that John Smith may have the data to prove it, he has not released it on the forum as of yet. That is what I am asking for. So good for you! You are right! He does have some data! While one bot may not be able to earn a lot of gold in one day, many bots can earn a respectable sum and with that combined effort, alter the economy. Good for you and your critical thinking skills! You did come up with the 1:1 ratio and I’m glad that I could be an inspiration. We need more critical thinkers!

Well John, you tried. Can we jump now?

Honestly, I’m having trouble following the argument, so I don’t have much to add. I can suggest that if you want a constructive discussion, you’d have better luck not painting ANet as corrupt profit mongers.

Bots flooded the market with gold, I got that part. Although from John’s response, it sounds like flooded is too strong a word. Endurance is upset that the ill gotten gains weren’t deleted. I got that part, although I’m not sure how technically feasible removing the “bad” gold from the market is…

Someone buys gold from a RMT and uses it to dump a thousand swords into the forge and sells a precursor to an innocent bystander, how do you take that gold out of the market? Do you take the money away from the thousand sword sellers or take away the precursor? Ok, let’s put a pin in that for a minute.

What’s the next part of the argument? How exactly does the price of gems come into it? Why would I buy gold to buy gems, when I can just buy them directly? I’m not being snarky, I’m trying to understand. The gold infusion by the bots would have spread out over the entire market, and after a little turbulence, settled out right? I’m not understanding the problem.

Rouven.7409:

So, to boil it down, if I understand this correctly, you are saying that bots bought gems with their ill gotten gold and thus drove the price for gems up. You would now like Anet to trace how many gems where bought from those accounts and adjust the gem price down accordingly?

Essentially, yes. I understand that this may cost ANet some money and that’s never fun, but neither is it fun for us to have to pay for the damage caused by the bots. If it really is as miniscule as stated by John Smith then it won’t be too much of a hit to ANet and they will be doing what they have always claimed, looking out for the best interest of the players. If it really is a huge blow to the bank account, then obviously the effect on the economy is a lot harsher than they have said.

I’m trying to understand why the bots would have ever bought gems? That seems like the worst move they would make with their gains. Their purpose is typically to fund gold-sellers… I don’t see where there would be value for them in buying gems.

JaironKalach.4938:

I’m trying to understand why the bots would have ever bought gems? That seems like the worst move they would make with their gains. Their purpose is typically to fund gold-sellers… I don’t see where there would be value for them in buying gems.

Bots don’t buy gems, player who buy gold does. RMT is bad.

JaironKalach.4938:

I’m trying to understand why the bots would have ever bought gems? That seems like the worst move they would make with their gains. Their purpose is typically to fund gold-sellers… I don’t see where there would be value for them in buying gems.

Beyond that, it stands to reason that the bots may have had large sums of coin on their accounts when the accounts were banned. By Endrance’s logic, Anet needs to find a way to reintroduce that coin to the market, further inflating prices, in order to “correct” for the effects those bots had.

I may not be understanding this totally. You are saying bots went out and farmed for gold and then bought gems to drive the price for gems up.

May I ask why they would do this. It doesn’t make sense to me. First off, the bots were farming to get gold they could turn around and sell it for RL money. Now if I was a gold seller I would want the cost for gems to go up so more people would use me, but at what cost and time frame.

It would make more sense that they would just sell the gold they got and not worry about the cost of gems. I don’t even see this as a possible idea. I have seen gems prices spike (when something new comes) and I have seen them drop. I have also watch the inflation which has been a steady rate. That is very possible as players earn more gold through play, which in turn they buy some gems. If the bots did as much damage as you are thinking the price of gems would be 3 to 10 more gold then they are now.

Syeria.4812:

JaironKalach.4938:

I’m trying to understand why the bots would have ever bought gems? That seems like the worst move they would make with their gains. Their purpose is typically to fund gold-sellers… I don’t see where there would be value for them in buying gems.

Beyond that, it stands to reason that the bots may have had large sums of coin on their accounts when the accounts were banned. By Endrance’s logic, Anet needs to find a way to reintroduce that coin to the market, further inflating prices, in order to “correct” for the effects those bots had.

Again this is not what I am saying. This is what you gather. I’m not talking about what they bots had on them when they were banned. I’m talking about the amount of gold they injected into the TP. You talk as if botting has stopped and it hasn’t.

Endrance.1680:

Syeria.4812:

JaironKalach.4938:

I’m trying to understand why the bots would have ever bought gems? That seems like the worst move they would make with their gains. Their purpose is typically to fund gold-sellers… I don’t see where there would be value for them in buying gems.

Beyond that, it stands to reason that the bots may have had large sums of coin on their accounts when the accounts were banned. By Endrance’s logic, Anet needs to find a way to reintroduce that coin to the market, further inflating prices, in order to “correct” for the effects those bots had.

Again this is not what I am saying. This is what you gather. I’m not talking about what they bots had on them when they were banned. I’m talking about the amount of gold they injected into the TP. You talk as if botting has stopped and it hasn’t.

Then you obviously don’t understand how any of the game market works. You can’t claim they “injected” money into the TP then conveniently ignore the massive quantities they took out. A goldselling bot would have absolutely no value if it injected more coin into the TP than it took out. The amount of currency bots took out of the system almost certainly outweighs the coin they created by a very large margin. If it doesn’t, then the bots couldn’t have possibly been effective, and therefore it’s a non-issue.

Endrance.1680:

I do have an opinion and I’ve been given no data and no evidence to change it.

You’ve been given multiple statements, which you’ve chosen to disregard.

If you don’t trust these statements, why ever would you trust any data that was presented to you? What would be your next request, to have it audited by a third party? And no doubt, you’d expect ANET to cover the cost of that audit as well, right?

In my opinion enough ANET resources have been squandered with this request, and don’t really see any to come of any further expenditure of their resources. John and many others have been more then gracious and accomodating with your requests, which you’ve returned with nothing but disregard and doubt.

Ah…. So… The theory is:

Bots farm gold
Bots sell gold to unscrupulous players
Unscrupulous players buy gems using their (discounted) gold, therefore driving up gem prices.

The conclusion being that ANet should track the effect of the gem purchases from those players who bought the ill-gotten gold from bots.

Now, we know that ANet tracks people who buy gold from RMT bots (I believe that they were banned as well.) So this should be partially possible to track.

I’m a little bit disappointed that Endrance didn’t take John Smith up on his challenge. Here, then are the things I would want to know to substantiate such a claim:

1. The total gems sold for in game gold during August, September, October, and November.
2. The total gems sold to players who were banned for botting during that same time period.

The same information expressed in some other meaningful aggregate would likely be acceptable. (Average per day, etc)

Now… Even if John gives us that information, we are only part of the way. Because the argument is based on the concept that there were a set of transactions there that would not have been there in other ways. Assuming that there was a significant reduction in the amount of RMT transactions with the November bot ban, and a corresponding increase in the amount of legitimate transactions through the gem store… Well… That’s a theory that would have to be proven, as well… So to get an eye on those things, I would start but not finish with the per player average of gems→gold and gold→gems.

After that, one must posit further scenarios and back them up with more data. (Holiday increases? Population shifts? Real world economy changes?)

Hjorje.9453:

I may not be understanding this totally. You are saying bots went out and farmed for gold and then bought gems to drive the price for gems up.

May I ask why they would do this. It doesn’t make sense to me. First off, the bots were farming to get gold they could turn around and sell it for RL money. Now if I was a gold seller I would want the cost for gems to go up so more people would use me, but at what cost and time frame.

It would make more sense that they would just sell the gold they got and not worry about the cost of gems. I don’t even see this as a possible idea. I have seen gems prices spike (when something new comes) and I have seen them drop. I have also watch the inflation which has been a steady rate. That is very possible as players earn more gold through play, which in turn they buy some gems. If the bots did as much damage as you are thinking the price of gems would be 3 to 10 more gold then they are now.

Actually, it would be extremely counter productive for bots (assuming them to be gold sellers) to drive up the gold price of gems. As that rate rises, the gem price of gold falls which means people purchasing gold legitimately get more gold for their dollar if they exchange those gems for coin. The more gold they get per dollar, the more gold the gold sellers have to offer per dollar to keep people using their exchange. So, the higher that rate rises, the less profitable gold selling is. Why would the bots do something to deliberately harm themselves?

Did you actually ever complete a large volume transaction in gold to gems transfer or the other way round? Even if some people bought huge amounts of gold, I’m 99,% sure they still couldn’t even touch that market in the slightest. But I’m also pretty sure John won’t tell us anything about the volume of gems purchased because that’s data internal to their business, unlike asking about ectos for example. I wouldn’t tell anybody either. Also if you compare the data of gems and other goods at gw2spidy, I actually don’t see anything that would lead me to the conclusion that the market was manipulated. All I see is the steeper inflation I’d expect with a new economy as it turns into a stable state.

I’m amused by players attempting to fish for the answer they want to hear from a game dev who’s obviously smart enough to know that’s what the players are attempting to do.

I think the bottom line is that some information are simply out of reach for players. it doesn’t mean there is a conspiracy or we are being lied to. It doesn’t matter anyways considering that some people are even willing to question truths they are being told. Apparently nothing will appease that insanity.

AsK yourself two things:

1. What purpose would it serve if Anet was lying to you? Personally, I don’t see any. Do you really think they go out of their way to let us talk to a dev? Thinking Anet is lying to you is a rather obtuse position to have.
2. What convinces you they are telling the truth or lying? If it’s based on your own personal observation, you should really re-evaluate your godly self-awareness. maybe I’m just talking out my rear end but I don’t think anyone’s personal observation is an accurate reflection of what’s happening in-game.

JaironKalach.4938:

Ah…. So… The theory is:

Bots farm gold
Bots sell gold to unscrupulous players
Unscrupulous players buy gems using their (discounted) gold, therefore driving up gem prices.

The conclusion being that ANet should track the effect of the gem purchases from those players who bought the ill-gotten gold from bots.

Thanks for the summary. I see the fallacy. Problem here is that gold doesn’t discriminate. Gems bought with legit or black market gold are the same. So if black market gold drives gem prices, so does legit gold. Question is what the ratio of Black market gold is to legit. Of course, if you think Anet only lies to us always, you have already convinced yourself that bots are manipulating the whole economy.

I don’t think I’m saying anything new here, but the question is rather interesting: What if bots ARE running our economy? Is there anything indicative in the behaviour of the economy ingame that would suggest one way or the other?

I personally don’t see it. Whether someone is a bot or ‘real’ player is completely transparent to me. If a bot draws in gold/mats at a rate that would be equivalent to 10 players, then to me as an outside observer, it just looks like 10 players. I have no indication that any particular material/gold comes from a particular source. It doesn’t impact the game either … the revenue isn’t made from monthly subs so from a publisher POV, it also looks like 10 players. A bot doesn’t affect the rate of resource generation anymore than an equivalent number of players does.

I’m going to walk the dog and have a cigar to think a bit more about it. I don’t think bots matter .. they simply appear as super automated players making money.

Obtena.7952:

1. What purpose would it serve if Anet was lying to you? Personally, I don’t see any.

Well isn’t that something. Maybe you ought to think harder next time, it doesn’t take much, I promise you.

Obtena.7952:

1. What purpose would it serve if Anet was lying to you? Personally, I don’t see any. Do you really think they go out of their way to let us talk to a dev? Thinking Anet is lying to you is a rather obtuse position to have.
2. What convinces you they are telling the truth or lying? If it’s based on your own personal observation, you should really re-evaluate your godly self-awareness. maybe I’m just talking out my rear end but I don’t think anyone’s personal observation is an accurate reflection of what’s happening in-game.

These two things are actually pretty common human behaviors.

Most people will create their own opinions on things they don’t know based on anecdotal data, assumption, logic or personal reasonment.
If they happen to meet a person who has said data in his hands and/or knows the matter at hand they will still be lenient to abandon their initial idea.

I work as a Paramedic in a hospital and this happens every day, all day.
People will zero knowledge of medicine come there with an opinion of what happened to them/their relatives – and regardless of what you tell them, they will still believe it’s what they think and that I haven’t looked deep enough.

The main issue with this is that most times you cannot prove a theory is wrong because:
- The data to prove it might be either inaccessible, lost or outdates thus ineligible for evidence.
- The data could be deemed as incorrect aka false positives or calculation mistakes

When one person has transformed an opinion into a fact inside his mind, there is no way you are changing his mind.
I think this behavior (of turning opinions gotten by reasoning without evidence turned into dogmatic fact) is possibly one of the most counterproductive things in the world; it creates a lot of mess starting from nothing at all.

Not to mention, this is a sloppery slope fallacy.
The OP assumes that the little revenue made by bots has somehow created a chain-effect that had major weight on the economy.

offtopic: seen about 10+ teleporting bot actively farming ore nodes in last month. i added them to my contact and report them on a daily base for at least two weeks. About 3 script bot that farm specific locations in orr, added to contact and have been reporting them for awhile.

For a few months now, I was earning quite a buck with the mystic forge. Every day, I would go and retrieve 105 green identical items I had an buy order out for. It were never 80, it were never 120. Weekdays, weekends, high times, low times, patch day, server outage day, it never seemed to affect my buy rate. It made no sense on any level, but I was not one to complain.

I then took the items and converted them in the mystic forge at a 1:6 chance. If they remained green, the result would be worth between 3-20 silver. If they ended up gold they would either sell for around 40 or 75 silver depending on which type of gold item you would get. On weekends the price could go as high as one gold. This was literally like printing money. This method cannot be scaled. There is a limited amount of cheap buyorders which get fulfilled every day. If ten players were doing the method, the shared profits would not amount to much. On the other hand, buying what’s on the market will kill your break even. For the most part, I had only one competitor at best, for a very long period nobody else but me seemed to have bought anything. I had to compete with other sellers of my upgraded merchandise, but that never was an issue either. Items in general were bought off the market faster than they entered it.

Since the last patch, the value of these gold items went below 10s. Within 12h of release. However, the people buying my items did not vanish. Oh no, they still buy every single item I am offering to sell, just for a way lower price. Weirdly enough, the green items all retained their value. Those items I sell have the same level, why anybody would pay twice the money for the green version of the same thing is beyond me.

If you ask me, a portion of the market is already “virtualized”. Not consisting of Chinese bots, but of simulated AI powered agents keeping the market partially in balance. I feel like I profited off a weird kink in the system and refuse to believe real people were involved. It it is duping, then it is duping of the dumb sort and one would assume there were better things to dupe.

Gasoline.2570:

Obtena.7952:

1. What purpose would it serve if Anet was lying to you? Personally, I don’t see any.

Well isn’t that something. Maybe you ought to think harder next time, it doesn’t take much, I promise you.

What is more impressive is that you dodged the question thinking your response was appropriate. Either you think the answer to it is obvious to bother posting or you have none. I’m willing to guess it’s the latter. I’m being honest. I don’t see any reason for them to lie about it. It’s not a matter of thinking much harder as you seem to suggest.

Honestly, what does Anet have to gain by lying to you about anything related to bots?

I wouldn’t go as far as to say that the market is corrupt but, it’s definatley manipulated. In the same way that a central bank manipulates interest rates to dictate the value of money.

It’s in Arenanets best interest to have a slow growing inflation in the the system. Why? Because it’s easier to manipulate the value of gems than it is to manipulate the value of gold. If they can manipulate the value of gems; they are indirectly manipulating the value of gold. The gem store is thier source of revenue.

How long can the playerbase tolerate gem price manipulation remains to be seen. I would argue that the breaking point will occur when the majority of the playerbase will feel the need to buy gems in order to avoid the boring gameplay.

Strange i feel a little alone here in my feeling that the market isnt “corrupt” enough.

JS has by word and from what we have seen of the market quite hands off. Relying on the market to adjust its self rather than trying to micromanage the huge volume of transactions that occour daily to try and please the vocal members of the forums.

Gem prices will rise from simple economics, when the game started it was OMG i made my first gold, it seemed like a fortune now dumping 30g on ectos while they were cheep to knock off my clovers was by comparrison a small amout.

More people have more gold so when some thing like a cute back pack comes along they can buy more gems and are willing to pay more for them. When the sale ends gems drop. I would think it was actually in the interst of Anet to have the gem market totally hands off to encourage free trade back and forth.

I am sure there is a quote from the Devs some where that the price is totally player driven sadly i cant find it at the moment to back my opinion.

Gold sellers are generally very low paid workers in outside countries. These workers have very few jobs, specifically they focus on one task such as gold farming or monitoring bots.
A different person would do the effort of hacking/phishing/buying accounts with stolen information or in desperate situations from actual revenue. The traditional gold farmer seeks to:

1.Gain gold
2.Sell Gold

1.
a.Gaining gold through players selling for very low amounts, then in turn selling to make profit.
b.Gaining gold through farming, botting, or stolen/stripped accounts.

2.
a.RMT then sells through websites, most of which are simply umbrella companies (fake named sites that all work for 1 real company) each offering a cheaper price than the other.
b.Sells through in game spam, which fortunately is a dead end in GW2 as they lose the account immediately, thus hurting their profit.

Some quick facts about RMT:
The person doing the selling/buying/botting usually gets paid very little to keep costs down. These people usually work in groups in small closed off rooms with many computers and desks etc. Most the time these people are in other countries and sell either-
a.Directly to companies that sell to players.
b.Directly to players via their own site.

Now keeping in mind not all rmt are asian, “bad people”, or evil so to speak. Some may simply be making a small living, but this is besides the point. RMT IS bad, and it IS against the rules of every MMO I can think of.

Arenanet does an amazing job of deleting bots and rmt. I do not log in to RMT spam every single day like some other games I won’t mention.

Now as for the buying gem with the ill gotten gold, imo, this seems false. An RMT is given limited time and are paid for their work. Meaning that if they do not make a good amount of gold they do not get paid, and have limited time to do so. Most likely an RMT will not take a chance on buying gems to inflate/deflate anything. RMT focus on one thing and that is making money as quickly and efficiently as possible.

As for the calling out arenanet on exact numbers, well I can tell you from maybe 12+ years of MMO’s not once have I ever seen a game company give away their tactics on bots/rmt. People like FFXI GM’s would create teams to work on botting/hacking/rmt etc, and they would tell you "X amount of rmt/botters have been banned and X amount of gold has been removed from the system. Beyond that we need not know what goes on. Botting may not be gone, but it certainly is no where near the epic proportions of other games. John Smith has done very well to answer questions in an intelligent and formal manner without simply closing the thread or not caring.

There is a ton of other things to be worked on, there’s a ton of threads that could use the devs,leads,cc’s,cm’s, attention. there are bugs, glitches, imbalances, living story work, development work, all that need attention more than someones wish to understand how security works in someones business. There is a key to understanding security, those on the inside have the tools and know-how, whilst those on the outside know only what they can find or are told. I don’t believe Arenanet is out to get anyone, is hiding things that could hurt the game, or is in any way hindering their own game.

People can continue to bash them, the employees, and their work, but this is all for nothing. if all this thread was is to voice concern then I think it has hit its mark. We all understand it was a bad situation, that RMT are bad and hamper game progression and fluidity, but we cannot call-out these people working on the game every 5 minutes because we want to know exactly how they do every little thing. They aren’t controlling us through some scheme or web of lies. And if I ever had that feeling surely I wouldn’t be here. I spent time under leaders in the military who truly would lie just to hush the concerns of personnel, who would risk lives on hunches or quick plans. What I’m saying is there are bad people out there who are corrupt and look to take advantage of you, of everyone. But this company, this game, is not the rabbit hole and clearly some people have started the drop down the tin foil hat tunnel of illusion.

cargan.5689:

Strange i feel a little alone here in my feeling that the market isnt “corrupt” enough.

JS has by word and from what we have seen of the market quite hands off. Relying on the market to adjust its self rather than trying to micromanage the huge volume of transactions that occour daily to try and please the vocal members of the forums.

Gem prices will rise from simple economics, when the game started it was OMG i made my first gold, it seemed like a fortune now dumping 30g on ectos while they were cheep to knock off my clovers was by comparrison a small amout.

More people have more gold so when some thing like a cute back pack comes along they can buy more gems and are willing to pay more for them. When the sale ends gems drop. I would think it was actually in the interst of Anet to have the gem market totally hands off to encourage free trade back and forth.

I am sure there is a quote from the Devs some where that the price is totally player driven sadly i cant find it at the moment to back my opinion.

“John Smith.4610:
As a quick aside. Gems in the currency exchange are finite. You may buy gems with real money to your hearts content, but if you don’t put any of them gems into the currency exchange the currency exchange’s stock of gems never changes.
John Smith.4610:
Think of it this way. The government can print as much money as they want, that doesn’t mean your bank account has access to that money. The currency exchange does not have access to gem creation. It has a limited stock that players add and subtract from.”
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Help-I-don-t-understand-gem-supply-concept/first#post1535605

Was this it?

Oh boy, we had one chance to get more data from John Smith and we blew it.
I use “we” loosely here

Cauldron.1653:

Oh boy, we had one chance to get more data from John Smith and we blew it.
I use “we” loosely here

And that is the skill of John Smith… making you think you ever had a chance

Did you really think the OP would take the time, or effort to really think out what data to request in order to really substantiate their claim instead of contining to just carry on as they did? I would bet JS had a good inkling of what and he was offering in good faith.

I want to thank everyone here for the contributions to this topic, both positive and negative. It’s good to see that so many people have constructive ideas and thoughts on an issue that involves us all. I think that ANet has gathered some good opinions from this thread and has heard the players. Thanks again to everyone for their input and their time.

I won’t try and argue things I don’t understand (like the economy) or things that I don’t really have a clear picture of (like the bots impact) but I will say this – the price of gold to gem conversion is too kitten high!

Prerelease, the notion that the game had the option to buy everything from the gem store with in-game gold sounded great but these days 5 gold (a hefty sum for a casual player like myself) will not even buy me 300 gems.

Goatjugsoup.8637:

I won’t try and argue things I don’t understand (like the economy) or things that I don’t really have a clear picture of (like the bots impact) but I will say this – the price of gold to gem conversion is too kitten high!

Prerelease, the notion that the game had the option to buy everything from the gem store with in-game gold sounded great but these days 5 gold (a hefty sum for a casual player like myself) will not even buy me 300 gems.

Its mostly so that people can’t make profit from converting back an forth. Currently 7g 76s buys 300 gems ^^ Though i never convert as gold is pretty easy to make. And I prefer to buy gems outright.

Endrance.1680:

During the first 3 months of launch GW2 experienced a huge botting problem. This is no secret. During this time the bots flooded the economy dramatically increasing the price of gems. While the staff did a great job of smashing all the bots, they never removed all of the gold produced by the bots from the game. Why haven’t they done so? With gems being literally worth more than the American dollar, people are spending a lot of real world cash on gems to then convert them into in game gold or spending them in the gem store for upgrades. What does this mean? This means a consistent flood of money for ArenaNet. There’s nothing wrong with them making cash, that’s what the industry is all about, but it does seem unfair that the players are the ones having to bite the bullet for the damage caused by the bots. There are two simple options to correct this problem that ArenaNet has failed to take. One. They could devalue the gems by gifting each player a set amount of gems. The players would then flood the market with the gems and bring down the value of them giving the players the fair market that they deserve. This would mean less money for ArenaNet of course. The other option is a total reset of the economy. Again this would decrease the cash flowing into the pockets of ArenaNet but isn’t it only fair? Why should we have to continue to suffer an inflated economy when it’s clearly not our fault? It’s a shame.

I wonder where I’ve heard this line of talk before…….oh I remember!

Geotherma.2395:

Was this it?

Not quite as i remembered but thats probably it, thank you