Guild Wars 2

Hi,

I just started playing gw2 and so far I like it, however I have a question that I’m hoping can be answered.

The other night I bought $10 worth of gems for later down the road thinking that it would be a nice option if ever i needed gold. Today I looked at the conversion rates and noticed it costs more gold to buy gems than the gems give you. i.e.

trade 100 gems: get 1g 28s 54c
buy 100 gems: pay 1g 84s 0c

My question is, if this is a straight economy why is there a disparity between buying and selling? I would assume that if player ‘a’ wants to buy gems from player ‘b’ then player ‘b’ should get all the coins that player ‘a’ is paying for x amount of gold.

If someone could explain this to me I’d be most grateful.
SpecTRe X

(prices as they are on 12/26/2012)

There’s a pretty heavy fee on trading Gems to Gold.

That is in place so that people cannot buy Gold and hoard it for an event and sell it for profit. In other words, ANet does not want traders flipping Gems, which is their RL currency.

Perfectly understandable if you ask me. And a much better solution that Blizzard, who I hear would ban people who flip items in the RMAH.

As Olba stated, it’s to prevent speculators from playing the Gem market as they would a stock market. Consider the difference a premium that you need to pay.

Well, that clears it up, thanks.

I think if it’s going to be like that they should set a flat transfer rate for gold then because I’m waiting until i get more gold for my $10 otherwise whats the point, right? I’d be ripping myself off.

Although isnt it still possible to flip gold → gems → gold again? It would just be a little harder I’d think. As for blizzard I couldnt say, this is my first mmorpg it just struck me as odd but personally I’d have no problem with a ban system like that except I’d expect I’d expect it to come down on players that abused it and not someone flipping small amounts over long periods.

Thanks again for the answer,
SpecTRe X

It’s possible to flip around events just fine. It’s less possible to manipulate (you + 50 friends buy up 5000 gold worth of gems and sell them right away for the inflated price). This is the same reason gems aren’t a commodity on the trading post. Besides the fact that it’d mean people would have to wait longer for buy/sell orders to fill, making a limited supply available on the trading post at various price points means that a group that can afford to buy them all up can spike the price for their own gain.

It has always irked me they did it this way. We all think they want everyone to buy gems with money, yet discourage it in the gem to gold conversion. Personally, when I see that it costs 1.8g to buy 100 gems, but 100 gems will only get you 1.3g, I am filled with a desire to go find an alternate source of gold that pays full conversion value. The fact that gold sellers give you like 10x more gold has nothing to do with it, it’s that I feel cheated out of the difference between these rates.
Now, I haven’t actually bought gold with $, I’m just saying what I would do if the time ever came. The difference in buying and selling gems just makes me not want to deal through it. If they were the same exchange rate, I wouldn’t feel cheated by them – it just feels like the gold sellers are more legitimate and not trying to rip you off.

Maybe have an option to buy gold directly with $ at the gold→gem rate? So if $10 would get you 800 gems, and 1.8g gets you 100 gems, then $10 would get you 14.4g, which you could then use to buy 800 gems if you so desired.

@Mystic: Yes, this is exactly why I posted this in the first place. I don’t know if any of you play world of tanks, but the feeling I get from this fluctuating price is close to how I feel when the devs of WoT modify the characteristics of premium tanks.

Although I hadn’t considered buying gold from a gold seller when I initially bought the gems, the more I think about it the more I will probably go that route if I decide to buy more down the line. It seems to me there is little benefit to buying and converting gems for gold which is a shame since I’d rather be giving my money to Anet to keep improving this game.