Guild Wars 2

I was just curious if they’ve said how they’re doing the China release, rather it will share the economy of the rest of the world or if it’s separate.

Chinese servers will not share the economy with Euro/NA servers.

Of course not. They wouldn’t stand a chance in this economy.

Think of the supply, the prices will drop due to the abundance of supply! We would only hope….

Think of the gold farming – prices will rise.

Vol.5241:

Of course not. They wouldn’t stand a chance in this economy.

Correction:

WE wouldn’t stand a chance. Think of all the gold farmers.

Vol.5241:

Of course not. They wouldn’t stand a chance in this economy.

Where did you get this info?

Hell Avenger.7021:

Vol.5241:

Of course not. They wouldn’t stand a chance in this economy.

Where did you get this info?

I would think so, considering that it is an entirely different market operating under a different entity. You can’t make the argument between EU and NA since they are operated by the same entity.

Not to mention you have an entirely different set of skins in the Chinese game due to their censorship laws ( but let’s not get political here)

Awhile back there was a comparison between skins and users noticed noticeable differences. You can’t account for that in a world-wide TP.

And the economic disadvantage would be on the Chinese’ part.

Yes they are notorious for botting but that’s not stopping them from doing that here on NA/EU. And Anet has done a good job on botting ever since their massive ban wave last November. The economic disadvantage would be that they would be so far behind on accumulating gold that they would have a minor impact compared to NA/EU players.

Does that mean that NA/EU accounts and Chinese accounts can’t mail items to each other? Because if they can and there are 2 different markets, there is potential for problems.

JK Arrow.7102:

Does that mean that NA/EU accounts and Chinese accounts can’t mail items to each other? Because if they can and there are 2 different markets, there is potential for problems.

Which is why they won’t allow that. Arbitrage would be insane.

Which bears the question, will we no longer have John’s undivided attention? gasp
Or will they hire Zhang San?

The markets cannot be compatible. The Chinese version of the game (Which I assume will be hosted by NCSoft Shangai or a third-party licensee rather than by NCSoft SK, West or Seattle, whichever hosts GW2 for NA) has censored content which includes revised textures and possibly even models. This would create a serious issue for trading because ANet would now have to develop a system wherein if a Chinese player sells a censored item to an NA player, said item would be removed and the NA player would receive a brand new uncensored version and vise versa. Okay so that’s not overly difficult to do (I’m a software dev), albeit I don’t know how ANet coded the TP system. Not to mention that all of the CH servers will need to sync to and constantly communicate with the NA servers, which can become slow if the host network is being flooded with traffic from players since we’re talking almost a 6,000 mile span between servers. I’ll assume the TP is handled on a separate physical server, but even still, unless they’re dragging fiber optic lines across the bottom of the ocean or paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a month to beam data via satellite, it’s gonna get slow.

Secondly, as stated before, people will most definitely take advantage of the arbitrage between markets to make insane amounts of gold.

Why go through all the unnecessary weeks of further development to the TP, possible rollbacks, bugs, etc. to solve a problem that’s easily ameliorated by simply completely separating the two markets. No harm done. As I always like to say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Consider this: The ratio of actual players to RMT employees in China is abysmal. They would use the joined markets to amass thousands of gold, which they sell for real currency by flooding the markets with ill-gotten goods, which will cause ridiculous inflation. The only bots that get caught are ones using public or semi-public bots and ones that are reported by another player. ANet can’t watch tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of players and with ANet’s mostly efficient way of banning botters (Periodic mass ban waves), the market will get flooded even if they get caught. Unfortunately, even if ANet manages to ban, say, 10,000 bot accounts, 0.3% of the total account holders in the US, there are still another 20,000+ bots that haven’t gotten caught and may never.

On the other hand, NCSoft releasing this game in China is an extremely smart sales strategy. They’ll both be utilizing China’s massive population of MMO players and the RMT market. China’s MMO gaming population consists of nearly 3,000% of the US MMO gaming population. Initial sales could exceed GW2’s total sales in NA and EU within half a year. Let’s say bi-annual mass ban waves disabling 100,000 accounts. A good percentage of them will proceed to buy another copy and continue botting. Assuming GW2 will cost ~¥360 (China equivalent to $60USD), that’s a bi-annual, pre-tax, net income of up to $6,000,000USD just off of sales to RMT companies. Include gem store sales and retail/digital sales to people other than RMT companies and you more than likely have a much higher net income off of GW2 than in NA/EU.

omg I wish, everything would be the way it was at launch, 20 silver for 100 gems, and everything would be affordable again…never gonna see it happen, no way they would let that happen again

Shpongle.6025:

omg I wish, everything would be the way it was at launch, 20 silver for 100 gems, and everything would be affordable again…never gonna see it happen, no way they would let that happen again

O.o I didn’t have 20 silver at launch. It took me ages to get my first gold since you only got a few copper for each reward. 20 silver then is like several gold now.

The reason it won’t happen is not because “they won’t let it happen” but because everyone has more money now. Some people have a LOT more money. Since the price of gems is dependent on supply and demand, how can it be 20 silver for 100? One person now could buy thousands of gems. Maybe hundreds of thousands at that price. There is no way it could be so cheap when the average person has so much more money as compared to launch.