Guild Wars 2

I love this game. I think it one of the greatest games I’ve ever played. Surprisingly, I feel the cash-shop system here is done pretty kitten well (I was afraid when I heard there was going to be one.)

But there’s one thing that smells off, and thinking about it bugs me consistently. It might not be a problem now (is it?), but, for me, it feels like an ominously morphing cell that I’m sure is going to turn into a malignant cancer. It’s the ability to buy gems and immediately trade those gems in for gold.

I notice the price of 1-gold is consistently falling. I, for one, wouldn’t mind in the slightest if this feature was completely removed. (Buying gems w/ gold is 100% ok w/ me, but not the other way around).

What do you guys think?

ArenaNet deserve, and need, to make money. So in that sense I support it. It also limits the impact of gold farming by offering a legitimate option for buying gold.

In an ideal world however I would obviously prefer a more level playing field.

I guess it’s to combat gold sellers and to keep the company in good shape.

AmagicalFishy.6935:

I notice the price of 1-gold is consistently falling. I, for one, wouldn’t mind in the slightest if this feature was completely removed. (Buying gems w/ gold is 100% ok w/ me, but not the other way around).

The exchange between gems and gold is purely based on the players. That is:

• The gems you can buy are gems someone else bought with RL money
• The exchange rates are determined by a supply-and-demand algorithm

If you could not sell Gems for Gold, that would mean that ANet would have to create extra gems whenever someone buys them with Gold. Not really a bad idea, except that then the price would be fully dictated by ANet, without any input from the playerbase.

In fact, the gems-to-gold exchange allows for the gems to not be truly perishable. That is, not all gems are exchanged for items in the Gem Store. This is good, because if Gems were a truly perishable currency, then their price would be even higher.

Of course, to maintain the Gem-to-Gold exchange and to keep it from being exploited by traders, there’s a pretty heavy tax on the Gem-to-Gold conversion. Sadly, that also means that the price of Gems has very little deflation.

As long as Anet can keep themselves from selling “power” in the Gem Store, it’s all good. That’s the most common pitfall of an F2P MMORPG: they sell items that give significant advantage that you can only get with cash.

Olba.5376:

AmagicalFishy.6935:

I notice the price of 1-gold is consistently falling. I, for one, wouldn’t mind in the slightest if this feature was completely removed. (Buying gems w/ gold is 100% ok w/ me, but not the other way around).

The exchange between gems and gold is purely based on the players. That is:

• The gems you can buy are gems someone else bought with RL money
• The exchange rates are determined by a supply-and-demand algorithm

If you could not sell Gems for Gold, that would mean that ANet would have to create extra gems whenever someone buys them with Gold. Not really a bad idea, except that then the price would be fully dictated by ANet, without any input from the playerbase.

In fact, the gems-to-gold exchange allows for the gems to not be truly perishable. That is, not all gems are exchanged for items in the Gem Store. This is good, because if Gems were a truly perishable currency, then their price would be even higher.

Of course, to maintain the Gem-to-Gold exchange and to keep it from being exploited by traders, there’s a pretty heavy tax on the Gem-to-Gold conversion. Sadly, that also means that the price of Gems has very little deflation.

As long as Anet can keep themselves from selling “power” in the Gem Store, it’s all good. That’s the most common pitfall of an F2P MMORPG: they sell items that give significant advantage that you can only get with cash.

Olba,

I know you mean well but you are completely wrong.

Gems are produced at will by them, it is an infinite resource.
The players gem acquisition make the rate gem-gold to fluctuate around a base rate completely controled by them.

The market seems based on supply and demand because of the fluctuations but if you look at the rate change over time since the game launched you will realize that the market is completely controled, both by an artificial gem-gold rate and by loot drop reduction nerf that pushes the players towards buying gems to get gold.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/gem

Thanks and best regards,

Red

P.S. – This post illustrates better the whole scheme: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/78038-gold-wars-2-portrait-of-a-campaign/

RedBaron.6058:

Gems are produced at will by them, it is an infinite resource.
The players gem acquisition make the rate gem-gold to fluctuate around a base rate completely controled by them.

I don’t think I ever said that Gems were a finite resource. And note that I used the world “supply-and-demand algorithm”.

RedBaron.6058:

The market seems based on supply and demand because of the fluctuations but if you look at the rate change over time since the game launched you will realize that the market is completely controled, both by an artificial gem-gold rate and by loot drop reduction nerf that pushes the players towards buying gems to get gold.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/gem

All I am seeing in the graph is gem prices going higher and higher, with very little deflation. This is natural, because the Gems have a much higher perishing rate and lower supply than Gold. You literally cannot exchange Gems for anything without some Gems disappearing. This is not true for Gold, as you can exchange Gold for items through mail. Not to mention that the fee on Gem-to-Gold exchange is much higher than the TP fee on Gold.

And Gems have a naturally lower supply than Gold. Every single player brings in Gold, whereas only some bring in Gems.

Also, the picture you posted shows a “ninja drop nerf” at November 15th. Note that the November 15th patch was when they made Plinx much less frequent, thus obviously people are going to get less drops, since their farming was made less efficient. Also notable that the Gems started climbing in prices at that point. Prior to that, they had been reasonable stable.

Olba.5376:

RedBaron.6058:

Gems are produced at will by them, it is an infinite resource.
The players gem acquisition make the rate gem-gold to fluctuate around a base rate completely controled by them.

I don’t think I ever said that Gems were a finite resource. And note that I used the world “supply-and-demand algorithm”.

RedBaron.6058:

The market seems based on supply and demand because of the fluctuations but if you look at the rate change over time since the game launched you will realize that the market is completely controled, both by an artificial gem-gold rate and by loot drop reduction nerf that pushes the players towards buying gems to get gold.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/gem

All I am seeing in the graph is gem prices going higher and higher, with very little deflation. This is natural, because the Gems have a much higher perishing rate and lower supply than Gold. You literally cannot exchange Gems for anything without some Gems disappearing. This is not true for Gold, as you can exchange Gold for items through mail. Not to mention that the fee on Gem-to-Gold exchange is much higher than the TP fee on Gold.

And Gems have a naturally lower supply than Gold. Every single player brings in Gold, whereas only some bring in Gems.

Also, the picture you posted shows a “ninja drop nerf” at November 15th. Note that the November 15th patch was when they made Plinx much less frequent, thus obviously people are going to get less drops, since their farming was made less efficient. Also notable that the Gems started climbing in prices at that point. Prior to that, they had been reasonable stable.

Olba,

Really?..:)

How do you explain this:

“The area I highlighted in my posted image shows clearly that they introduced an artificial constant raise in gems value against gold (see the nice constant positive gradient!).

http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/7231/bltc17dec2012.jpg

On top of that artificial trade constant gem value raise they put the normal gamer trades and the graph appears with many spikes as normal.

The only problem is that last Friday they delayed the Wintersday event and everyone was expecting the new gem store items and almost nobody bought or traded gems until the patch went live on Saturday.

This curious gamers behaviour revealed the ninja gem versus gold constant value raise introduced by them, as the in-game graph shows.

I think there are not any more doubts about the market manipulation..:)RedBaron.6058125643213 Change in loot parameters or a bug? [Merged]"

The spike in the exchange rate is simply a larger demand for Gems with coin. With more players wanting Gems, the exchange rate gets more expensive.

Gem to gold is basically plex(30 day subscription time) in Eve Online where players buy timecodes for 60 days for $35 and then convert that to two 30 day plexes and sell it on the market for in game money. I dont get what the fuss is all about, Eve Online has allowed such transactions to occur for a long time now without trouble. However, you can see the quantities traded/supply of plex in Eve aannd i trust CCP more than NCSoft.

LOTS of other F2P/cash shop game models use tradable currency; most make the mistake of allowing it to be openly traded, whcih results in market manipulation; people buying up all the supply and drip feeding it back out for huge personal gain.

GW2’s system prevents monopolisation of such a crucial resource but the lack of directness leads to a huge lack of consumer trust… it’s a real conundrum how to solve.

I’d hypothesise plex and EVE handle this better because EVE is already a brutal game of blood and money. The kind’ve player who kitten about not having enough gold for a legend or the rising price of gems would be laughed out the room (How am i ever going to afford a titan!)

RedBaron.6058:

Olba.5376:

RedBaron.6058:

Gems are produced at will by them, it is an infinite resource.
The players gem acquisition make the rate gem-gold to fluctuate around a base rate completely controled by them.

I don’t think I ever said that Gems were a finite resource. And note that I used the world “supply-and-demand algorithm”.

RedBaron.6058:

The market seems based on supply and demand because of the fluctuations but if you look at the rate change over time since the game launched you will realize that the market is completely controled, both by an artificial gem-gold rate and by loot drop reduction nerf that pushes the players towards buying gems to get gold.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/gem

All I am seeing in the graph is gem prices going higher and higher, with very little deflation. This is natural, because the Gems have a much higher perishing rate and lower supply than Gold. You literally cannot exchange Gems for anything without some Gems disappearing. This is not true for Gold, as you can exchange Gold for items through mail. Not to mention that the fee on Gem-to-Gold exchange is much higher than the TP fee on Gold.

And Gems have a naturally lower supply than Gold. Every single player brings in Gold, whereas only some bring in Gems.

Also, the picture you posted shows a “ninja drop nerf” at November 15th. Note that the November 15th patch was when they made Plinx much less frequent, thus obviously people are going to get less drops, since their farming was made less efficient. Also notable that the Gems started climbing in prices at that point. Prior to that, they had been reasonable stable.

Olba,

Really?..:)

How do you explain this:

“The area I highlighted in my posted image shows clearly that they introduced an artificial constant raise in gems value against gold (see the nice constant positive gradient!).

http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/7231/bltc17dec2012.jpg

On top of that artificial trade constant gem value raise they put the normal gamer trades and the graph appears with many spikes as normal.

The only problem is that last Friday they delayed the Wintersday event and everyone was expecting the new gem store items and almost nobody bought or traded gems until the patch went live on Saturday.

This curious gamers behaviour revealed the ninja gem versus gold constant value raise introduced by them, as the in-game graph shows.

I think there are not any more doubts about the market manipulation..:)RedBaron.6058125643213 Change in loot parameters or a bug? [Merged]"

I have to agree with Olga. the picture you show is most likely just a downtime in the exchange rate traker. Gw2spidy have similar grafs when they go offline ( http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/20356 11th of december to 12th) i can explain it further but i think you get the deal. furthermore. IF there was a hidden constant that increased the price on gems then it would certainly not be visible there. IF there is a hidden constant we will never know because Anet will keep this for themselves (as they should)

but seriously, there isn’t any hidden constant. the gold to gem trade is purely based on player to player trading. and of course taking a % of of the traded sums in order to keep abusers/manipulation away. the only source of gems are money → gems. money creates gems and trading it removes some gems and some gold for the heath of the system.

and the reason why the gold increase is because of the economy haven’t stabilized yet. and they are still making changes in the game like removing farming events like plinx. wait until Mars or April next year. then i think the market is stable or close to it. if the gem price keep rising even after a year or two then I might say that there is something going on beneath the surface.

Merry Christmas!

Man, people will see conspiracies everywhere.

Gems on the currency exchange are in limited supply. Only the gems sold for gold are available for to buy for gold.

Huge Christmas event + Makeover Kits = High Demand for Gems
Power trading + People(Time > Money) = Lots of Gold going for gems
People (Money < Time) = Some Gems being sold for gold.

Last population is the smallest. Therefore it takes more gold to get gems.

This is economics 101.

Gilosean.3805:

Man, people will see conspiracies everywhere.

Gems on the currency exchange are in limited supply. Only the gems sold for gold are available for to buy for gold.

Actually they arent, gems and gold are all just number on a server, those number can be changed at any time by any amount for any reason the people controling those servers deem neccesary.
It would appear from the trending of the spidy graphs that some market forces are in effect, that does not mean that tommorow some one will not descide that the rate will be set at one gem for one gold or 10000 for one.

Past performace is no indicator of future results in a completly artifical market.

cargan.5689:

Gilosean.3805:

Man, people will see conspiracies everywhere.

Gems on the currency exchange are in limited supply. Only the gems sold for gold are available for to buy for gold.

Actually they arent, gems and gold are all just number on a server, those number can be changed at any time by any amount for any reason the people controling those servers deem neccesary.

cargan what r u doin’?

It would appear from the trending of the spidy graphs that some market forces are in effect, that does not mean that tommorow some one will not descide that the rate will be set at one gem for one gold or 10000 for one.

Cargan??!!

cargan.5689:

Past performace is no indicator of future results in a completly artifical market.

STAHHP

(this is for those out there who love 9gag)

sorry for the joke cargan but it fitted too well to resist. no offence, if you find this offensive please message me and i’ll remove it ASAP.

ill ignore the first and the third part u said because those things are to complex for me to understand.

why does it appear on the trend that there is a market force going on? is it because it is going up?

but you now what i think then. i think there is a market force making event items to cheap. just look at the candy corn 4-5c ??? and now the ugly stuff. look at the charts, charts donsen’t lie
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/38449
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/38448
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/38450

all of them started high and they drasticly fell in price

same with the candycorn

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/36041

what will happen next? 4-5c legendarys?? Anet you must do something!!! Act

Honestly, while market in a game like this can be manipulated by the company running it (ie. ANet) and while it is obvious that the gem exchange rate is not 1:1 (see below), saying that it is happening or likely to happen is not anything but conspiracy theories in my opinion.

All the while it is true that if you transfer X gems to Y gold and someone transfers Y gold to gems (at the same time) they will never get X, and the difference seems too big for that one transaction to create the difference so there seem to be some hidden fees particularly when transferring gold to gems.

The exchange rates, however, do behave naturally and as one would expect them to (ie. you can make a prediction on what the exchange rate will be like under certain influence, such as an in-game event). So the exchange rate is set by player actions, ergo how much the gem exchange is used… emulating that would be too much work, with little potential gain, so it is fair to assume the exchange rates are, well… fair.

As for buying gold, while the supply is probably technically endless… in that it is unlikely someone could buy the whole gold supply in the gem exchange, even with theoretically unlimited money/gems. The usage of the gem exchange determining the base rates would eventually make the rate of gems to gold climb so high that not even the wealthiest person could keep going.

As for the whole market trends, comparing candy corn development to a legendary is hardly valid… as it is blatant exaggeration in many ways for one. Bots can farm candy corn, but they can not farm legendaries, so anything you can’t have a bot produce an overflowing supply for will behave naturally, in the sense that legendaries for example will never go below the crafting cost, unless someone is a fool and doesn’t do the math (of course the value of time invested is what makes the base price vary, since time is a large component of legendary crafting even if it is done as fast as possible).

In short, the more effectively ANet can combat bots the more natural and more predictable the market will behave, and in that equation currency exchange will not be a source of inflation, as long as ANet doesn’t wish to kill their own virtual economy.

AmagicalFishy.6935:

it feels like an ominously morphing cell that I’m sure is going to turn into a malignant cancer. It’s the ability to buy gems and immediately trade those gems in for gold.

Well, I see it like this: people that buy gold with dollars (through gems) are the ones that keep this game free.

Whenever I see someone with a legendary (or two, or three), I think: there is someone who keeps this game free for me.

I know that they bought it with gold (no one can grind all that) and I know that they bought that gold with dollars through gems (don’t tell me they grinded 1,000 gold, lol).

Will Anet do something about the lowering gold prices in dollars? Yes. You can be sure that they got a marketing departement that calculates two things…

X : the amount of dollars that Anet receives from these buy-gold-with-dollars customers.
Y : the amount of money that Anet looses because people leave the game because of higher prices.

As long as X is higher than Y, they will not lower the dollar price.

Tallis.5607:

Well, I see it like this: people that buy gold with dollars (through gems) are the ones that keep this game free.

Unfortunately, this is something that I don’t believe. I have seen nothing that necessitates a micro-transaction system after already buying the game for $60. Wasn’t Phantasy Star Online, for example, one of the most popular and longest running online games for a long time? And once you bought the game, you had access to the whole game.

I’m of the belief that all micro-transaction systems like the Gem shop are a cost-free profit generator. Given this, it’s one thing to have account-bound aesthetic items or boosts for cash—I dislike it, and think it further advocates a bad direction for games in general—but whatever. It’s another thing to be able to buy the in-game currency with cash.

AmagicalFishy.6935:

Tallis.5607:

Well, I see it like this: people that buy gold with dollars (through gems) are the ones that keep this game free.

Unfortunately, this is something that I don’t believe. I have seen nothing that necessitates a micro-transaction system after already buying the game for $60. Wasn’t Phantasy Star Online, for example, one of the most popular and longest running online games for a long time? And once you bought the game, you had access to the whole game.

I’m of the belief that all micro-transaction systems like the Gem shop are a cost-free profit generator. Given this, it’s one thing to have account-bound aesthetic items or boosts for cash—I dislike it, and think it further advocates a bad direction for games in general—but whatever. It’s another thing to be able to buy the in-game currency with cash.

in a way you’re both right. they probably could keep the servers running for quite a while with just the money from the box sales. however, the gem stores helps to fund the monthly free content we are seeing out of arenanet.

and fishy, if gems were just another item on the TP, would you be OK with that?

Tallis.5607:

AmagicalFishy.6935:

it feels like an ominously morphing cell that I’m sure is going to turn into a malignant cancer. It’s the ability to buy gems and immediately trade those gems in for gold.

Well, I see it like this: people that buy gold with dollars (through gems) are the ones that keep this game free.

Whenever I see someone with a legendary (or two, or three), I think: there is someone who keeps this game free for me.

I know that they bought it with gold (no one can grind all that) and I know that they bought that gold with dollars through gems (don’t tell me they grinded 1,000 gold, lol).

Will Anet do something about the lowering gold prices in dollars? Yes. You can be sure that they got a marketing departement that calculates two things…

X : the amount of dollars that Anet receives from these buy-gold-with-dollars customers.
Y : the amount of money that Anet looses because people leave the game because of higher prices.

As long as X is higher than Y, they will not lower the dollar price.

What makes you think that any substantial amount of Legendary owners have funded their possessions with purchasing gems and thus converting to gold?

Owning one myself, I have not made a single gem purchase with real life money. The other 5 Legendary owners in my guild have not as well. One of them is now working on completing her 4th legendary.

If anything, most people with intelligence find it a better use of time to play the TP and watch the roflgold flow in than spend their real money to achieve the same goal. I certainly don’t know any person who would drop $300-600+ to fund their legendary. Regardless of how much money they make. So remember, that when you see one – you are probably looking at a person who has negatively influenced the in-game economy negatively short-term for their own gain. Not someone who has wasted 15-30 real life hours spent making real life money when they very well know they could have achieved the same goal in a quarter of the time.

On the one hand, (considering the plague of gold sellers) the gem shop is not such a bad idea. But on the other hand I find it quite annoying and even frustrating that after having purchased the game, i’m left feeling like iv only actually purchased two 3rds of the game and that I am clearly expected to further plunge into my wallet in order to finish buying the game.

Who`s moronic idea was it to allow us to only play 5 characters after purchasing the game, when there are more than 5 roles to chose from? Sure, its not a bad idea if you want to milk money from the rich, but people such as my self who live in countries with extremely poor currencies have little to no reasonable options. I Live in Poland and am forced to pay with Euro`s. Euro`s are 5x as expensive as the Polish currency.
Imagine you’re hungry, and you want to buy your self a reasonably priced sandwich, now take that price tag and multiply it 5 times.
(buying gems with in game gold? its a good idea, but at the moment gems are so expensive that in practice the idea is making me feel like I have to become a slave to the game just to get a few extra features which were unreasonably and imo unfairly omitted from the reach of PAYING players.)

The fact that you must share one bank account with all of your characters is equally a bad idea. Its good that you can easily share items between characters, but limiting space so much really seems to go against the whole core grain of what was apparently meant to be a fun game. (though, this problem has actually been slightly alleviated by the addition of more collectable items slots)

Gold is so cheap now compared to gems that it is much better to use a few bucks to get gems to trade for gold and buy all exotics you need.
Why farming gear? Dungeons? WvWvW? Dynamic Events? It is a loss of time.
Just go to the TP.
With 1600 gems (20 euro) you can buy a full exotic armor set and an exotic weapon.

kitanas.3596:

in a way you’re both right. they probably could keep the servers running for quite a while with just the money from the box sales. however, the gem stores helps to fund the monthly free content we are seeing out of arenanet.

and fishy, if gems were just another item on the TP, would you be OK with that?

Originally, I was going to say, “Lots of games prior to micro-transactions had new content,”—but, you’re right. Games like StarCraft, Guild Wars, Phantasy Star Online, etc. didn’t have new monthly content consistently coming out, and that needs funding from somewhere.

If gems were another item on the TP, assuming they can only be bought with gold, I’d be ok with that (but then gems would be pointless).

AmagicalFishy.6935:

kitanas.3596:

in a way you’re both right. they probably could keep the servers running for quite a while with just the money from the box sales. however, the gem stores helps to fund the monthly free content we are seeing out of arenanet.

and fishy, if gems were just another item on the TP, would you be OK with that?

Originally, I was going to say, “Lots of games prior to micro-transactions had new content,”—but, you’re right. Games like StarCraft, Guild Wars, Phantasy Star Online, etc. didn’t have new monthly content consistently coming out, and that needs funding from somewhere.

If gems were another item on the TP, assuming they can only be bought with gold, I’d be ok with that (but then gems would be pointless).

why are you against gems being bough by money ? that is the reason we can have events like halloween, Christmas,lost shore and so on. i mean i can see gems being a good thing to have on the TP then people would truly know its a free market. ( witch i’m 99.9999% sure it is anyway) Having it on tp would probably not be as good. But i don’t know but i think Anet made a very well informed decision when they decided it would be separate from TP.

I’m pretty sure most of this has been said before, but I don’t think there is anything wrong with the Gem to Gold system. I personally have used it once or twice to get the edge, and that is totally okay. Now, that being said, the official gem to gold store is a lot nicer than having more gold bots around spamming and trying to sell illegal gold. Plus, it takes a load off of ANet having to monitor as much of it. There will always be gold spammers, but the official store keeps most of it out.

I personally just think its a better alternative than having the Illegal market running around, and I think that’s about the only real reason it was implemented other than revenue for ANet

Kalipsan.2073:

I’m pretty sure most of this has been said before, but I don’t think there is anything wrong with the Gem to Gold system. I personally have used it once or twice to get the edge, and that is totally okay. Now, that being said, the official gem to gold store is a lot nicer than having more gold bots around spamming and trying to sell illegal gold. Plus, it takes a load off of ANet having to monitor as much of it. There will always be gold spammers, but the official store keeps most of it out.

I personally just think its a better alternative than having the Illegal market running around, and I think that’s about the only real reason it was implemented other than revenue for ANet

The illegal market is huge. Don’t kid yourself. Anet also likes to demonize even the “legitimate” sites as stealing accounts / credit cards / etc. when that simply isn’t true. These sites are more expensive than the less known / less established / shady sites, but even then the value of gold people receive for their real life money is over triple what they’d get if they swiped their credit card for gems.

I don’t personally know anyone (real life and/or in guild) who’d ever consider sinking money into gems to convert to gold. But I know everyone who’d be more than willing to go to 3rd party sellers over Anet if they ever seriously considered trading real money for in-game currency. For the very reason of ridiculous “player driven” pricing. Hint, it’s not 100% player driven.

evo.8640:

The illegal market is huge. Don’t kid yourself. Anet also likes to demonize even the “legitimate” sites as stealing accounts / credit cards / etc. when that simply isn’t true. These sites are more expensive than the less known / less established / shady sites, but even then the value of gold people receive for their real life money is over triple what they’d get if they swiped their credit card for gems.

I don’t personally know anyone (real life and/or in guild) who’d ever consider sinking money into gems to convert to gold. But I know everyone who’d be more than willing to go to 3rd party sellers over Anet if they ever seriously considered trading real money for in-game currency. For the very reason of ridiculous “player driven” pricing. Hint, it’s not 100% player driven.

i dont now how big the illegal market is. i have no idea, i’ve never bought and have almost never visited their sites. but i do know that those that sell in game gold for real money are either scamming you or stealing accounts or botting. ok, there is one exception and that is playing the TP. but even then they are ruining the game in a form that is legal. and i don’t want anyone to ruin GW2, I don’t care if its illegal or legal. how do i know this? simple math. ATM the gemprice is at 50 gems / g meaning you get 1.6g / eu, meaning that if you want to make a decent living on this u will want to be making at least 4eu / h. 4eu/h is around 6.4g/h. and this is at 50gems / g. the sellers have to undercut this rather drastically because its a risk to buy gold from goldsellers ( you can get perma banned) i don’t know the current g/eu on these sites but even at the in-game price on gems are too low if you want to make a living on it. the only way someone can make 10g+/h in-game is to play the market and pretty heavily. So please, don’t kid yourself they are doing this legally or not making it worse for other gamers.

Hint: its not 100% player driven for a reason. ( remember that the only thing that Anet can gain on the trade from gems to gold is the % they take from the change. meaning they want us to trade as much as possible.)

Waraxx.4286:

evo.8640:

The illegal market is huge. Don’t kid yourself. Anet also likes to demonize even the “legitimate” sites as stealing accounts / credit cards / etc. when that simply isn’t true. These sites are more expensive than the less known / less established / shady sites, but even then the value of gold people receive for their real life money is over triple what they’d get if they swiped their credit card for gems.

I don’t personally know anyone (real life and/or in guild) who’d ever consider sinking money into gems to convert to gold. But I know everyone who’d be more than willing to go to 3rd party sellers over Anet if they ever seriously considered trading real money for in-game currency. For the very reason of ridiculous “player driven” pricing. Hint, it’s not 100% player driven.

i dont now how big the illegal market is. i have no idea, i’ve never bought and have almost never visited their sites. but i do know that those that sell in game gold for real money are either scamming you or stealing accounts or botting. ok, there is one exception and that is playing the TP. but even then they are ruining the game in a form that is legal. and i don’t want anyone to ruin GW2, I don’t care if its illegal or legal. how do i know this? simple math. ATM the gemprice is at 50 gems / g meaning you get 1.6g / eu, meaning that if you want to make a decent living on this u will want to be making at least 4eu / h. 4eu/h is around 6.4g/h. and this is at 50gems / g. the sellers have to undercut this rather drastically because its a risk to buy gold from goldsellers ( you can get perma banned) i don’t know the current g/eu on these sites but even at the in-game price on gems are too low if you want to make a living on it. the only way someone can make 10g+/h in-game is to play the market and pretty heavily. So please, don’t kid yourself they are doing this legally or not making it worse for other gamers.

Hint: its not 100% player driven for a reason. ( remember that the only thing that Anet can gain on the trade from gems to gold is the % they take from the change. meaning they want us to trade as much as possible.)

Your accusation dictates that all those who are selling gold as a 3rd party are doing all of the things you mentioned, when indeed there is no real proof of it. Are there botters? Yes. Are there botters who aren’t Chinese gold sellers – they are actual players? Yes. Is every 3rd party service scamming people? No. Is every 3rd party service stealing credit cards? No.

There are some services that have been around for a number of years, most of them are offer incredibly reliable service that obtain their wealth through regular play. Without the use of automated bots or hacks. As it stands, Anet is the only company who has ever made the accusation of such companies stealing credit cards from their purchasers. Of course they have not identified which sites or sellers these are. They only make blanket accusations with absolutely no citation of proof – other than they said so. And hardly any actual players to back up any proof that their credit card was stolen. This spanning across multiple games. Suspicious at best.

As far as botters are concerned, do you think Anet truly cares? They get their royalties from the people who buy the box. For every 1 botter they take care of, 5 more pop up in his/her place. Botting hasn’t declined a single iota since their ban-wave. They stand to lose more than they gain. And since most botters aren’t Chinese gold sellers in this game, they’ve learned they can make more money simply putting their farmed items up at going market price rather than having to severely undercut going rates. After all – they get their money just as quick and they’re getting more of it. It explains why with just as many if not more bots now, why inflation has held up.

The way I see things, the gem market goes widely unused. The price of gems per gold would have stayed much lower with higher transaction volume. The price of gems has instead skyrocketed over a very short amount of time. There’s no way anyone could know, but I would say Anet would be lucky if 10% of the entire player population between all servers – US/EU have made a single purchase of gems with real money. Much less for a 2nd or 3rd purchase. Low transaction volume + Anet manipulation of exchange rates / infinite amount of gems easily explains the sudden rise and current rising price over such a short amount of time since the game has been released.

evo.8640:

Your accusation dictates that all those who are selling gold as a 3rd party are doing all of the things you mentioned, when indeed there is no real proof of it. Are there botters? Yes. Are there botters who aren’t Chinese gold sellers – they are actual players? Yes. Is every 3rd party service scamming people? No. Is every 3rd party service stealing credit cards? No.

as far as i am aware i said “either scamming or …” and not “scamming and …” on the contrary to what you think, I think think very few 3rd party service companies are scamming people. but the fact that there is some few had me to put it in there. far from every 3rd pary is scamming.

There are some services that have been around for a number of years, most of them are offer incredibly reliable service that obtain their wealth through regular play. Without the use of automated bots or hacks. As it stands, Anet is the only company who has ever made the accusation of such companies stealing credit cards from their purchasers. Of course they have not identified which sites or sellers these are. They only make blanket accusations with absolutely no citation of proof – other than they said so. And hardly any actual players to back up any proof that their credit card was stolen. This spanning across multiple games. Suspicious at best.

are they obtaining their wealth from regular play? well the income must be quite low so the living cost in that country must be quite low in order for it to be a decent money/h and if this is the case I have nothing against it cause it isn’t ruing my game or anyother. but the fact remains that if you buy gold- the cheapest will always be the companies that uses bots or other methods that i’m not willing to support and for the player buying gld it doesn’t matter how it was made they are taking the same risk anyway.

As far as botters are concerned, do you think Anet truly cares? They get their royalties from the people who buy the box. For every 1 botter they take care of, 5 more pop up in his/her place. Botting hasn’t declined a single iota since their ban-wave. They stand to lose more than they gain. And since most botters aren’t Chinese gold sellers in this game, they’ve learned they can make more money simply putting their farmed items up at going market price rather than having to severely undercut going rates. After all – they get their money just as quick and they’re getting more of it. It explains why with just as many if not more bots now, why inflation has held up.

botters ruins the game. if the games get ruined no one will play it. if no one plays there will be no gems bought therefore 0 money made. Anet want players. the more players there is the more gems are being bought and that’s a fact. sure they don’t have a subscription fee. but they still need players. also, removing bots removes the competition. and without bots there will only be “honest work” which is impossible to find in-game. and that even i will use sometimes ( not on a company level but with friends on a friendly level.)

The way I see things, the gem market goes widely unused. The price of gems per gold would have stayed much lower with higher transaction volume. The price of gems has instead skyrocketed over a very short amount of time. There’s no way anyone could know, but I would say Anet would be lucky if 10% of the entire player population between all servers – US/EU have made a single purchase of gems with real money. Much less for a 2nd or 3rd purchase. Low transaction volume + Anet manipulation of exchange rates / infinite amount of gems easily explains the sudden rise and current rising price over such a short amount of time since the game has been released.

only Anet sits on this information. but you are probably right that we would have seen a lower cost on gems if 3rd party companies would have existed but i hardly thing anet manipulates it. and if they manipulates it they are doing it poorly. if thy manipulate the market then they are trying to make the gem price be as low as possible because the higher quantity of gems traded the more gems goes down the drain in the exchange process meaning that they make more money. and if they would have manipulated the market we would have seen a much higher price on gems from gold.

Waraxx.4286:

Waraxx’s last post

Well, at least you acknowledge that. Far too many people seem to soak up whatever it is that Anet represenatives have to say about 3rd party.

I’d say quite a few places are indeed obtaining their wealth in regular play. You have to remember, time is not an issue and these accounts run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They rotate people on characters like any typical job shift. And they don’t just run one or two accounts on each server. They likely have several hundred, and the cost of all those keys are easily made back within a week of a games launch. I think when I first checked out to see what $ to GW2 gold conversion was, it was something like $10=5g. Now it’s around $30 = 100g. That being from reliable / legitimate businesses. Obviously as the share of gold has risen between players, so has the conversion rate adjusted accordingly with 3rd party.

Among the websites I’ve scoured when comparing prices and bouncing that off the ridiculous gem market, the disparity of them is relatively low. It’s hard to say which site/business employs the use of bots, but I have not come across one that was substantially lower than the current $30 = 100g range – that would dictate to me the use of bots. No doubt there are services out there that use them, but people are pretty brand loyal, and the respectable 3rd parties out there still are the go-to for no other reason than reliability and trust. And people are generally willing to pay a slightly higher price for that, among saving a few dollars to a business/brand they don’t know or can’t trust.

What you say is true, but that truth only really extends to the pay-to-play model. Of course Anet has more money that they can make. Their potential is unlimited, but they had a goal to be met within the annual quarters. At a certain point, they surpass that and from there, their sales will heavily dwindle. The gem shop is icing on the cake, it’s not what keeps the power on over at Anet. They’ve made all the money they needed to make between August & October to keep this game running for a very long time. Quite literally, it is of no true loss to them – other than maybe morally – if they lost most of the entire player base starting tomorrow. Monetarily, they are just fine and any money they make from here on out – box sales / gem shop is pennies in the bucket. Not anything resembling substantial income for a company in the entertainment business.

However, there is quite ancedotal evidence that botters/extreme farmers promote a healthier in-game economy. This has been true from WoW, LOTRO, Rift, even onto EVE. Inflation is what kills in-game economies, and bots have a direct opposing effect to that.

There is citation on the official GW2 forums where Anet reds confirmed that they do tinker with the conversion price of gems to gold and gold to gems – as they see fit. As well, the gem commodity is unlimited, which is part of the sudden inflation of gem prices. A currency that appears from thin air and holds no true value. Sounds a lot like the US dollar in todays world.

There’s an intrinsic difference between having to seek out other parties from which to buy gold and having an easily accessible, officially advocated way of buying it. While the people who would buy gold from a 3rd party are definitely buying gold the “legit” way, there are a lot more people buying gold who wouldn’t have bought it otherwise because it’s supported by A-Net.