Guild Wars 2

ANet needs to be competitive with Gold Prices; 3rd party is crushing them.
Currently, for $1 you can get 0.95g through the Gem Store – Currency Exchange, direct from ANet.
3rd party offers 3.61g for each $1.

I really, REALLY dislike gold sellers and never intend to buy through them; it’s just disappointing to realize that I’m effectively being punished by doing things honestly/according to the rules.
If ever I wanted to buy Gold, it would effectively be at a severe loss to me to buy it through ANet’s Gem Store – Currency Exchange when compared with a 3rd party alternative.

What is there that can be done to address this and make it more worthwhile to buy Gold through ANet?

ANet is letting the TP work itself. Just because 3rd parties are selling for cheaper if they competed with those lower prices it would kill the economy and values of everything would start dropping.

SevenWhite.4367:

What is there that can be done to address this and make it more worthwhile to buy Gold through ANet?

Well, buying the gold via ArenaNet comes with the added bonus of not getting your account either banned for a ToS violation or hacked by the nice chappie you gave your money to.

Contrariwise, understand that it isn’t ANet setting their gold prices HIGHER than their ‘competitors’ – what happens is the opposite, the gold sellers set their prices LOWER than the official ones. They have to, because if they cost as much as official channels nobody would buy from them and risk all the bad things that can happen when you do. Because of the way most gold farmers operate, their actual costs are very low so no matter how low they set their prices they’ll make a profit.

SevenWhite.4367:

ANet needs to be competitive with Gold Prices; 3rd party is crushing them.
Currently, for $1 you can get 0.95g through the Gem Store – Currency Exchange, direct from ANet.
3rd party offers 3.61g for each $1.

I really, REALLY dislike gold sellers and never intend to buy through them; it’s just disappointing to realize that I’m effectively being punished by doing things honestly/according to the rules.
If ever I wanted to buy Gold, it would effectively be at a severe loss to me to buy it through ANet’s Gem Store – Currency Exchange when compared with a 3rd party alternative.

What is there that can be done to address this and make it more worthwhile to buy Gold through ANet?

lol why should they be competitive? You’re assuming the buying gold from Arenanet has the same risk as buying gold from gold sellers.

Arenanet indirectly controls this market since they can ban (and rightfully so) people who can purchase gold.

People buy from Arenanet for the security that they get from making the transactions and supporting the developers/designers and other staff who make the game successful.

So no, they don’t need to be competitive. In fact, they should crush the competition by eliminating it. And they just did that, although temporarily, with the ban wave the past few days.

If they were competitive gold sellers would leave the game eventually. If Anet made it so that gold sellers no longer made money, they would leave and go to a more profitable game. Or at least there would be less of them.

However I think that would be extreme and would crush the economy.

Ethics.4519:

If they were competitive gold sellers would leave the game eventually. If Anet made it so that gold sellers no longer made money, they would leave and go to a more profitable game. Or at least there would be less of them.

However I think that would be extreme and would crush the economy.

Gold selling is highly profitable, that is why they’re so persistent.

It costs them, what $40 per account? They can make that back really quickly.

Arenanet would overall lose more money by pricing down their gem prices. It’s unfeasible and bad business sense.

It’s like telling Gucci to price their $2000 bag down to $50 to combat counterfeits. Totally unreasonable.

Vol.5241:

Ethics.4519:

If they were competitive gold sellers would leave the game eventually. If Anet made it so that gold sellers no longer made money, they would leave and go to a more profitable game. Or at least there would be less of them.

However I think that would be extreme and would crush the economy.

Gold selling is highly profitable, that is why they’re so persistent.

It costs them, what $40 per account? They can make that back really quickly.

Arenanet would overall lose more money by pricing down their gem prices. It’s unfeasible and bad business sense.

It’s like telling Gucci to price their $2000 bag down to $50 to combat counterfeits. Totally unreasonable.

Why not that handbag only cost gucci $25 to make anyway throw a name on it and presto instant profit.

Just saying. ANet can ban the Gold Sellers that are spamming selling gold, but for people who go looking for them on websites, there’s not much ANet can do about it, so people can (and will) buy from 3rd party because they get almost 4x the Gold for their $.
If ANet sold their Gold at a closer margin, the tiny bit more Gold one could get from a 3rd party source would no longer be a feasibly large enough margin to justify the risks of buying from them, and it would help combat Gold Sellers. Yes, they will always be around, but part of the reason that there are so frickin’ many still is because there’s a 400% bonus for buying from them when compared to the ‘white market’ alternative of going through official sources, a.k.a. ANet.

The gold->gem and gem->gold prices are set by players.

However, it’s gold sellers that are indirectly driving the price of the gold exchange:

Player A buys 300g from the gold sellers. Some of that gold probably gets spent on gems, a little on gold sinks, and the rest on the TP. This has several effects:

1) The ratio moves a little to favor guying gold with gems, helping out the legit gold buyers

2) Driving up the price of gems when bought with gold

3) General inflation by injecting money

1. and #3 directly hurt players making gold via cash drops. Players farming mats to sell are relatively unharmed, because inflation makes their sales worth more in general

Now multiply that by hundreds of players buying gold from farmers.

It costs gold sellers nothing actually to run their business. I found a very serious exploit into Anet’s security recently on YouTube when looking for/watching Colin’s 2013 video. I will not go into any more details though, but I managed to get the info to the right people to shut them down for good. What they are doing gets them accounts for free to put it plainly.

We may see the last of the gold sellers/bots and hackers.

If it wasn’t for my concern and curiosity we may still be full of these jerks.

Vol.5241:

Ethics.4519:

If they were competitive gold sellers would leave the game eventually. If Anet made it so that gold sellers no longer made money, they would leave and go to a more profitable game. Or at least there would be less of them.

However I think that would be extreme and would crush the economy.

Gold selling is highly profitable, that is why they’re so persistent.

It costs them, what $40 per account? They can make that back really quickly.

Arenanet would overall lose more money by pricing down their gem prices. It’s unfeasible and bad business sense.

It’s like telling Gucci to price their $2000 bag down to $50 to combat counterfeits. Totally unreasonable.

Bingo, except that it doesn’t even cost them $40 per account if they use hacked accounts, stolen credit cards or do a chargeback on the cards they do use – all of which are standard tactics.

1/ A.net doesn’t set the prices, the players do. The exchange rate is set by supply and demand.

2/ the advantage gems give are : not having your account banned. Not having your account hacked. Supporting the game. Not supporting maffia.