black market: more or less in GW2?
Goldselling was/is also rampant in WoW. It doesn’t have a way to buy gold with real money (or didn’t when I quit last year) but since it had a subscription model, it had huge timesinks instead. People bought gold as shortcut to Epics and other things that would’ve taken days to farm together (reputation items).
GW2 is cleverly aimed at the market of gamers that have less time and more disposable income, which includes a bulk of avid gamers that were in school or university when WoW came out but now have jobs and families. Because of this it has more things that are directly or only obtainable with gold, so by definition the desire for gold will be higher.
The “problem” is also directly ArenaNets own problem, since black market sales directly compete with their own gem shop. Blizzard in contrast already gets their money at the start of the month, so they don’t care as much. This means ArenaNet will work harder to reduce botting and RMTs and the risk to illegal gold buyers will also be higher, balancing the increase temptation.
Black market gold sales are a really interesting conundrum.
On one hand, they have come to the conclusion that people are going to buy gold for this game, period. Nothing they can do will stop this. So, from that perspective, it makes sense to give up fighting it directly and provide a legitimate way for players to buy gold (fighting it indirectly).
On the other hand, that makes buying gold a revenue stream. And without a monthly fee, it is the primary revenue stream in GW2. This means you actually need players to buy gold. So, you tune the game to subtly drive players to want more gold (extremely high gold sinks, obvious quality-of-life improvements like large bank space, etc.).
However, because players are driven to buy gold, you are also increasing the allure of the black market again. And because the black market gold is “free,” the legit market will never be able to beat its prices. And so the temptation to use the black market remains, even though part of the original point of the gold-selling system was to combat it.
Now, I don’t own a multi-national, billion-dollar company and I don’t know all they know. But clearly, they have decided that the temptation to use the black market as driven by extremely tightly-tuned gold sinks in-game – plus the revenue it generates – is worth more than fighting the temptation to use the black market without heavy tuning or revenue streams. My ultimate question is: are people more or less tempted to use the black market in a game like GW2 vs. a game without a legitimate gold selling mechanic? Did they make the problem worse, but they’re also using it as revenue so that’s ok? Or does it actually help cut down on people’s use of the black market, and the revenue is a bonus?
ArenaNet’s revenue comes from the sale of gems, not from the conversion of gems into gold. The gold you get when you sell your gems is supplied by other players who want those gems, so ArenaNet only indirectly benefits from these transactions.
Yes, there are gold sinks in game, but most MMO games have gold sinks as a way of keeping in-game inflation in check regardless of whether they have legitimate means of buying gold or not. I do not think the GW2 economy is tuned so tightly that players need to buy gold just to keep playing.
Easy enough to see in Diablo 3. Almost no black market gold sellers. One thing you left out of your analysis is that, if selling gold is allowed, it opens up the entire player base to provide supply. Like with narcotics IRL, the only reason the black market is lucrative is because it’s the black market, it’s officially disallowed so most people won’t engage in it so supply is short. In actuality, black market gold represents a tiny percentage of the amount of gold in the system. So open up the rest of the system, flood the supply of gold available for RMT, and it pretty much destroys the black market overnight. It also helps to stabilize the economy since RMT becomes a permanent part of the system rather than a cat-and-mouse game like we have now, where suddenly banning thousands of farmers causes prices to skyrocket.
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If anet’s own dollar → gem → gold ratio wasn’t so unreasonable, I’d imagine black market wouldn’t be an issue in the 1st place. They need to realize that offering good deals to customers is a good idea…
I don’t think one could say Blizzard cares about gold selling less than Anet. Both companies want what is best for their customers and their game. Also, Blizzard’s problem is roughly 5 times what Anet’s problem is from sheer sub numbers. And finally, Blizzard is (or was) definitely introducing legal gold buying recently though pets that could be purchased for real money and sold on the auction house. It’s hard to really compare WoW to Anet but on the other hand it’s hard not to compare anything to WoW.
Astraea: I went out of my way not to say that anyone needs to buy gold to play.
I never played D3 so I don’t know anything about their black market, but I would be shocked if one didn’t exist at all. I think that game would be a good comparison, though.
Slic: Legit gold buying will never be able to compete with black market prices. If they drop their prices in half, the black market will as well. Black market gold has no cost.
Are you talking about Anet selling gold from the shop or anyone being able to sell gold? There is a huge difference. If only Anet would be able to sell gold at a rate they determine, you’re right, that would not address the black market issue because obviously Anet would not want to compete with them. But if anyone can sell gold (which is the model in D3) then there is really no point to a black market, as players (who play for fun) can easily compete with the professional farmers (who require some base amount of pay for their work) on margins. As soon as the price of gold is driven down to less than what could be made at an equivalent minimum wage job, the pros go away. Anet could not sell gold that cheaply though, because unlike players, they would be introducing vast amounts of gold from nowhere, and that would ruin the in-game economy.
Slic: Legit gold buying will never be able to compete with black market prices. If they drop their prices in half, the black market will as well. Black market gold has no cost.
Black market gold does have a cost. Gold farmers/botters/etc have to spend time and effort to get in-game gold. They have to risk going to jail for stolen credit cards, etc. They get paid like regular employees of any business. A lot of the ppl that actually sit at a computer and gold farm are college kids, etc. trying to make a quick buck to help w/their tuition fees.
Again, there is a cost and a risk to producing black market gold, and if anet finds a more reasonable price range for gems then said black markets will be hard pressed to compete, even if they do undercut the official rate. Because black market is a risk to player accounts. The reason most players are currently attracted to the black market is that risk doesn’t outweigh the large difference between cost effectiveness.
Slic: Legit gold buying will never be able to compete with black market prices. If they drop their prices in half, the black market will as well. Black market gold has no cost.
Black market gold does have a cost. Gold farmers/botters/etc have to spend time and effort to get in-game gold. They have to risk going to jail for stolen credit cards, etc. They get paid like regular employees of any business. A lot of the ppl that actually sit at a computer and gold farm are college kids, etc. trying to make a quick buck to help w/their tuition fees.
Again, there is a cost and a risk to producing black market gold, and if anet finds a more reasonable price range for gems then said black markets will be hard pressed to compete, even if they do undercut the official rate. Because black market is a risk to player accounts. The reason most players are currently attracted to the black market is that risk doesn’t outweigh the large difference between cost effectiveness.
sigh. Areanet doesn’t set the prices for gem→gold. that is governed by players converting gems→gold, and vice versa.
On to the OP, I would say that people are less inclined to buy gold from illegitiment sources, due to the legal option being available.
On gems to gold. If the price goes up a bit more I will definitely be buying gems to sell for gold. I only have so much time and shaving off some hours by getting gold makes a lot of sense. I was actually surprised how low the gold to gems rate has been. I figured it would hit 1G per 100 really fast then go up more from there.