Guild Wars 2

I thought at first they would stabilize but they continue to sink lower and lower. Last check a minute ago was 1G for 261 gems, highest it has been was 1G for 411 gems on the 8th of Sept. So in 11 days the price has decreased 37%. It was 322 for 1G Just on Monday.

Is this based on in game actions or has Anet purposely collapsed the gem market so that trading in game gold for them isnt ‘worth’ it? I find it hard to believe that no one at all is buying Gems now and selling them, especially since every day they reach an all time high in trade value for in game gold.

I know gold is easier to make than most thought, but still there are new players coming into the game daily it seems and I would suspect some of them would spend 10 or 20 bucks to raise 4 or 5 gold real quick.

I know it is probably killing the gold spammers, which is a decent side effect but it sure makes it less then worthwhile to spend more than 2G on something that used to cost a G and 30 silver.

Let’s see if I can explain this to you and everyone else that is complaining about it..

- The game was just released, I’m going to assume that most people are focused on spending their gold on gear/crafting skills/etc rather than spending them on buying pretty things with gems, such as character slots they aren’t going to use yet, bank tabs that are overpriced (imo), etc.

- Because people are spending their gold on other things, the price of gems will continue to drop until people start buying them on a regular basis. In other words, there will be a point where the vast majority of the population that just started playing are satisfied with their characters gear, crafting skills, etc. At this point people will be looking for something else to spend their gold on and the price for gems will increase along side the demand for them.

- Simply put, the price of gems will continue to fall until the demand for them increases, at which point the price will begin to increase.

If 1g buys you 261 gems now, and before 1g bought you 411 gems, doesn’t that mean that the price of gems has gone up? How is that a free fall?

Why would that be? I would rather go with the assumption that the more gold is on the market that could potentially be spent on gems the higher the price will get. Perhaps coupled with the amount of gems actually purchased with real money.

Kabuki.9103:

If 1g buys you 261 gems now, and before 1g bought you 411 gems, doesn’t that mean that the price of gems has gone up? How is that a free fall?

This. I don’t understand the OP.

I think most people with a bit of gold spare have been buying gems. The problem is that a few peeps have made hundreds (perhaps thousands) of gold via various means and are now buying huge amounts of gems, hence raising the cost.

Basically expect a lot of volitility in the price of gems for at least a few months when they will find some natural equilibrium.

Prices fluctuate hourly so referencing two separate occasions while neglecting all the data in between seems rather moot. As it stands, it’s not very profitable to spend my money on gems, then sell those gems to the community. Not even remotely… I can spend those gems on other materials that will generate me a far greater profit. I’m sure most other players feel the same way. It doesn’t help with gold sellers dropping 10g for $15 either… Why spend $10 on currency trades to get 2g?

Case in point, less suppliers (we have no good reason to sell gems honestly) = higher prices. Instead of getting 411 gems per 1g, that’s why your only getting 260. I’d love to dump a few $100 on the cash shop and make a rip roaring profit of gold, but I’d basically be bending over and accepting a foot up my kitten.

prices of gems raised sharply last week from around 28 silver per 100 to upto 44 silver per 100 that is not freefall it is the the exact opposite.

What I don’t understand is what is actually controlling “market” price, if it’s based on the amount of gems being bought with gold then doesn’t that mean the price will rise continuously since as the game goes on more and more gold is generated in the world?

@Deulon You’re completely wrong. The reason you get fewer gems for 1 gold is because of the demand for GOLD now. By dropping the exchange rate, players are paying more $ for gems to get the gold they want. ANet is clearly trying to make up revenues lost from the BLTP being down so much as of late.

Pictish.3410:

prices of gems raised sharply last week from around 28 silver per 100 to upto 44 silver per 100 that is not freefall it is the the exact opposite.

He’s talking about the number of gems you could get per gold, not the amount of gold per 100 gems. It’s the same thing really, just the inverse of each other.

Basically its more buyers, less sellers. People have realized they could use those gems to purchase items which (as the market prices stand now with some items) could easily generate me 20g with a little bit of effort. Which sounds better 20g for $10 or 2g for $10? Just wait and see, unless something changes drastically the purchasing power of gold in the gem market is going to continue to decline.

Man what? Gem price is crazy high.
a few days ago I bought 250 gems for like 67 silver
now its 80silver for less than 200 gems.
Thats an increase…

When I last looked, there were two rather substantial price spikes in the history graph. Someone’s dropping a huge amount of in-game gold into gems. There seems to be some sort of mechanic that erases or normalizes that spike quickly (a manual rollback, possibly). I suspect some gold farming business is trying to test how much they can game the system to favor their own business.

I imagine that some of the recent down time is probably the Anet response, looking for a long-term solution.

I’ve been checking daily the prices of buying gems for gold and it has slowly increased in price over the last few weeks. In fact I’m almost certain it has slowly climbed since game launch as I’ve never seen the price of gems lower than the previous day/days price. In fact, I was wondering if the reason the BLTC is (in part) down because of a massive spike in the price in the last two days where it cost double what the average price was over the previous two weeks. Because the price of gems for gold and gold for gems is like a stock market the prices will always fluctuate and trends may be visible and even possibly predictable but the prices will only be what people are willing to spend. So if everyone mostly feels they aren’t getting enough gold for their gems then they won’t buy, effectively reducing supply and continued demand will raise the price. The same goes for buying gems with gold. If everyone mostly feels it cost too much gold for the gems then the demand will fall while supply remains, effectively lowering the price. As most people begin to realize the rate of earning gold this will help in settling the price range out to an extent. But the laws of supply and demand combined with perceived value will continue to be the main driving factor to the prices.

The way I see it on the initial release of the BLTC a lot of people spent real cash on gems to gain initial capital (for bag slots, mini pets, and what we are most interested in when it comes to gem price fluctuations – gold). Now things are getting calmer, thus the gem supply is going down. Not that I don’t enjoy being able to get 300+ gems for 1g, but I don’t see this sticking around as a long term trend. We will likely see a quite lower price at some point due to the lesser number of people spending real cash. This can probably be countered if ArenaNet add into the game enough interesting and desired gold syncs. We see this even now – in another thread in this very forum people are complaining about the insufficient ratio between reward vs. expenses (repairs and so on). Well, this is happening exactly because ANet needs you to spend real cash to keep the show going.

@ Jia

Why would this be the case? Don’t get me wrong, I’m just trying to understand why there seems to be the notion that this is about supply/demand etc.

Gems are to be bought via real cash and they represent a certain value. If the majority of players have 100G each in their wallets it only makes sense to adjust the price up, because otherwise they could afford everything available in the store for in-game gold.

Thus it only seems logical to me that the system will monitor available in-game cash in circulation, even if it’s a simple Totalgold/Players calculation.

Another variable at play is that there are more level 80s. More level 80s means that there is more gold in the system. More gold means more purchasing power.

At the start of the game (within the first week) having ten gold was a big thing. Heck, some people still didn’t have 1 gold.

Now having 100 gold is a big thing. A lot of people don’t have 10g yet. Most people have at least 1g.

As money continues to build up in the system there is more discretionary spending. That includes the purchase of gems. Since more people are buying gems the price of them is going up. Or, your relative purchase of 1 gold is buying less gems.

As the ratio of how much gold you can get from gems (instead of how many gems one can get with gold) hits an attractive spot more people will buy gems with real money and sell them for the gold.

After all, it feels so much better to get 10g (an arbitrary value) instead of 1g even if in terms of relative purchasing power they are the same as it pertains to the player economy. The NPC economy remains fixed so buying gems and selling them for a low amount of gold doesn’t get people what they want quickly.

I expect that the price of gems relative to gold will continue to increase. Or, to flip it back to the OP’s point of view: gold will buy even fewer gems.

Rouven.7409:

They have told us that the buying and selling of gems is designed like a stock market which means the players buying and selling the gems is what influences the prices. Just like a stock market supply and demand plays a part in how the price of the stock is determined. But it is also the perceived value of the stock that also determines it’s price. This is more or less exactly how buying and selling gems works. Though it is unknown as far as I’m aware how much of weight each determining factor has on the prices.

whiran.1473:

Buying power may very well be a factor in the prices of buying and selling of gems. After all the more gold people are willing to spend on gems the more gold people who sell gems can get and so the prices would go up. And this is something that it would appear has taken place at a steady pace since launch. But it doesn’t explain the sudden doubling of price that took place in one day and stuck at that price the following day. I’m going to be logging in later tonight when I get home, but if someone was able to see what the price was when the BLTC was back up we could have a reference. I was thinking that perhaps there was an exploit dicovered or something that caused that sudden burst up in price.

But otherwise yes like you I expect it will climb steadily with the average buying power. For example, and I know some will complain apples and oranges, in lord of the rings online in the beginning things costing a few gold was seen as crazy expensive. But once people realized that the average person ended up with 10s of gold or even maybe 100+ gold by the time they hit the level cap and continued to grow in wealth by repeating content.

But back to gems the price will still be influenced by what people are willing to spend. More so for buying gems with gold. This is because the more people gold people are willing to spend on gems the more likely people are to sell gems for gold since they will get more for their real money. But remember like a stock market the more people selling shares (gems) the more likely the price is to drop. This is the supply and demand part of a market like that. The prices definitely drop if more shares (gems[supply]) are put up for sale than there are buyers (demand).

Now that people are hitting the level cap we are getting an idea of what the average person can expect to have in wealth by the time they hit the level cap. I know I was more willing to spend more on gems than I was early on simply because I began to see how much I could make at that point. I still don’t know for sure how much I could have by cap.

I used to buy 450gems for 1g12s. Now 450gems costs me ~1g90s. OP is herp ddeerrpp.

So prices for gems are not going to go down unless people start selling gems for gold??

I’m afraid they will just continue to go up and up and up then…

ANet has to make money I guess.

Jia Shen.4217:

Rouven.7409:

They have told us that the buying and selling of gems is designed like a stock market which means the players buying and selling the gems is what influences the prices. Just like a stock market supply and demand plays a part in how the price of the stock is determined. But it is also the perceived value of the stock that also determines it’s price. This is more or less exactly how buying and selling gems works. Though it is unknown as far as I’m aware how much of weight each determining factor has on the prices.
(…)

I have not seen a statement like that, definitely interesting. Can you remember where this was said?

As of right now, more gold is entering the game extremely fast do to how new the game is. As more gold is added to the game, gem will cost more because more people can buy them.

If prices get too high people will be buying gems with real money and buying in game gold. That is if they can stop people from gold farming and selling it.

The gem market is also too hard to play since the trade from gold to gem and back loses you like 20% of your money at any point in time.

I’m fairly certain tne only gems availiable for purchase with gold have already been purchased by someone else for real money which they then decided to sell in game. The fewer people buying gems with $$$ means there will be fewer gems availiable for people wanting to buy them with gold. As supply drops and demand increases the gold price per gem will increase. The gems availiable for purchase via gold don’t just magically appear for sale.

I guess I was indeed wrong, although I still don’t see it clearly expressed that the only gems available are the ones bought and sold by other players.

http://www.arena.net/blog/mike-obrien-on-microtransactions-in-guild-wars-2

So umm, in other words – if all of you guys start buying gems for real cash and trade them for gold – the price will go down and I can afford some again?

Something I predicted a while back…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Looking-forward-to-a-Make-Over-Option-For-Re-Customizing-Your-Character-s-Look/first#post100804

As long as higher level = more gold, the cost of gems will keep going up, as long as the average player level goes up. It won’t stabilize before then.

Rouven.7409:

So umm, in other words – if all of you guys start buying gems for real cash and trade them for gold – the price will go down and I can afford some again?

Yea… gem prices are nowhere near there equilibrium. As I said, I’ll make a kitten ton more money investing those gems into my own character…

KwwB.3895:

I used to buy 450gems for 1g12s. Now 450gems costs me ~1g90s. OP is herp ddeerrpp.

So prices for gems are not going to go down unless people start selling gems for gold??

I’m afraid they will just continue to go up and up and up then…

… and as we get more typical MMO gamers joining GW2 (you know the kind, unemployed, twenty something, basement dwelling forum trolls, whom have nothing better to do than farm gold 24/7), expect there to be large amounts of disposable gold floating around, which will be converted to gems, for those nice Black Lion trinkets of awesomesauce.

So the price of Gems will keep rising, until it is simply impossible to farm enough gold to buy 1 gem.

If you want the price to drop, encourage more Guild Wars 2 gamers to get a IRL job.

Knew that gem prices will rise as people get higher and get the gear they wanted, so while leveling i used my moneys to gems and bought account upgrades instead putting it temporary gear and other that kind stuff.

It’s rising along with inflation as intended. Gems are becoming more expensive over time.

If people aren’t buying gems with real money then the prices will go up as supply is going down. If a lot of people start buying gems with cash and selling them then the prices go down. That’s how economics work. :-)

Rouven.7409

It was said in discussions during the closed beta on the beta forums. I’m not sure if there is any other current source that contains that official information. But if you think about the system is a stock market type. The gems are like shares. People buy and sell the gems. The only difference between a stock market and the gem exchange is that the maximum number of shares that can be up for sale is not constant. Because people can buy gems with real money and sell them into the system.

And it is possible that if enough were to do so that it could also influence the price. Because it would increase the available supply. And if demand stays constant during that time the price could/would go down. Same if those gems were supplied by those who bought them with gold but we are more likely to see gems be bought with real money than those bought with gold since most people are not going to buy and sell gems like it is a stock (an investment).

More of the information supplied during beta was that the only time that gems would not come from other players would be when they initially seed the exchange so that the system can establish an initial pricing. I was unable to play the game due to FPS performance issues they had for some players. I was capped at 5 fps making it impossible to play. Now I get 20 fps average with the workaround and is tolerable until they completely fix the performance issues. But anyways so I was not there for the stats of that initial seeding. But statistically the price has steadily risen since the beginning. As long as the average players accumulated gold goes up the price of gems would be expected to go up. But there are always the several variables that affect supply and demand. And they will constantly influence the price.The more drastic one of the variables occurs the more drastic the affect on the price.

Thanks for the detailed reply Jia.

I guess in the end that makes more sense as well and I can understand this, my only reservation left is – how many people really buy gems to trade them? I can’t see myself doing that – but hey, if there is a large enough playerbase doing it the better.
My plan thus far is to buy $10-$20 a month worth and I’ll try to add some gems here and there for the “smaller” things on sale – like the boxing gloves or maybe a pck of minis. We’ll see what happens when I run out of things to buy (potentially).

One thing I imagine that hurts is that the things you’d usually spend real money on to circumvent grind aren’t present in GW2, and the things that are grindy are VERY grindy. As a result, buying gems is pointless, as you’d literally need hundreds of USD to get enough gems to convert to get what you want. So, no gem purchases.

I know I’m gonna buy my gems with real money if the trend continues. And if I happen to need gold, I’ll just sell some.

I work full time and don’t want to spend 90% of my gaming time trying to find some money…

Plague: And yet there are lots of posts from people who are trying to buy gems for real money and can’t due to problems with the payment authorization system.

So, there is definitely some interest in buying gems with real money even with the conversion ratio sitting where it is (100 gems will get you 27 silver and 72 copper at the time of this writing).