Guild Wars 2

A few other economic factors that are a little more micro on this point (note, this is nowhere near an exhaustive list):

Complimentary goods: The old economic example of complimentary goods is “left shoes” and “right shoes.” Some goods compliment each other, and therefore affect each other’s price. Now, a set of complimentary goods in GW2 are lodestones and T6 mats. Both are ingredients to legendary weapons. If the price of lodestones falls (let’s say because Anet implemented a way for you to acquire lodestones via karma, increasing the supply) the demand for complimentary goods like T6 mats will likely rise.

Rather than go through the whole microecon 101 type spiel on this, look at a real world equivalent: console videogames. Let’s say the PS3 costs $400. The PS3 and PS3 games are complimentary goods. Now at $400 a certain number of people will buy a PS3, and those people will buy a certain number of PS3 games. Now if Sony drops the price of a PS3 to $300, more people will buy the PS3 because it’s cheaper. But with more people buying PS3s, there are more people who want to buy PS3 games. So, because the price of PS3s fell, the demand for PS3 games rose.

Circling this back to GW2 items, lodestones fell in price, which led to an increase in demand for a complimentary good, T6 mats. Because of that increase in demand there is pressure for the price to rise. Now, because Anet increased the drop rate of most T6 mats (by making Risen drop more than bones) the supply of those mats increased, causing pressure for the price to fall. It turns out that for an item like Armored Scales, these pressures are approximately equal and as such the price has remained at about the same level it was at 2.5 weeks ago, despite increased supply.

This is the natural and expected economic behavior.

I think one thing that breaks any kind of real economic speculation about well, getting resources, and putting resources in the market, is the RNG factor. Sure players love being noticed, but I think we love being lucky way more.

Mystic forge really changes any sane look at economic factors in game. Of course higher ups are the ones putting more into the system (e.g. endgame zone farming, crafting for 400 in smithing, jeweling, etc,) that adds a lot … but salvages/ putting things into the forge (both which have added benefits, just not economic), add a game element that really breaks any true economic speculation . . .

How, for example, does a player that does not buy gems, does not trade gold, but farms the game for mats to put into the forge, add an element to the game? It’s a classic RNG set up when that player say farms some exotics from Orr and puts them all into the forge and gets a precursor. That would be a huge amount of profit.

But, on the other hand, lodestones are a perfect example of something to farm for in game that would be a projected, replenishing and diminishing cash and supply. Hard to get, higher cash. Fractals is good for the economy in this sense, because we would not have much of an economy without added opportunity. And the added opportunity adds to our interest right, adds to our cost. However, In the end I think the economy comes down to a crazy balance that really can’t be managed by any standard economic practice, because of an RNG lottery mechanic, WHILE getting gold from steady sources here and there.

From my perspective, food is the steadiest source of economic trade in game. Other than that, I’d say there would be more supply/demand were tokens from dungeons no longer account bound, which would be pretty steady because getting any great ITEMS from dungeons is so lacking as it stands (low RNG, stronger economic system).

(ed. What exists is a mix of economy and RNG, it’s the MMO world, not the real world. So, really, players can achieve something really great by playing the game, and not even touching the market, but suddenly be thrown into the market if they get their hands on something they can sell to fund for what they’re goin for in the long run… Unless the game was totally built off of some cash shop to get precursors, lodestones, clovers, etc, e.g. pay for packs, Thank —- this isn’t that, we have a pretty classic GAMING economy).