I don’t see the problem here.
I… just… how…. what?
Gold out of the economy is gold out of the economy I guess.
This election is all over the place, Kiel is a human female (most popular race/gender combo) that was prominently featured in recent content and has also been portrayed as your typical hero (the path of least resistance favour her). Evon is seen to represent RNG in the store and is portrayed as a shady cartoon villain. He had minimal involvement in the game until the election so he’s unfamiliar and he’s a male charr (probably more popular than a female charr but less popular than a female human). Superficially, Kiel wins this one.
The Abaddon fractal seems to have pulled more passionate support from vocal players, the appeal of a clash between gods seems to be greater than an asuran experiment gone wrong. Abaddon has nostalgia value and plays to lore that GW1 players are familair with. Asura in general are less popular and the Thaumanova Reactor has less mystery because many of us visit it every day. Superficially this probably goes to Evon, but it’s the most subjective one.
Waypoints are a core part of the game and an unknown discount is better than no discount. Black Lion Keys cater to a niche group (although recent changes make them prominent in every patch in the future, they are still a gem item and future value of cheaper keys is probably considerable). We don’t know how much the cheaper keys will save us both in terms of how much individuals may spend in the store to gamble on weapons and in terms of how much increasing the pool of keys increases the pool of weapon skins on the TP. Even if the reality was the majority of players would save between 20-40g by having cheaper keys over cheaper waypoints, there is no way to establish that now, it requires speculation (even if it is strongly supported) and the value of cheaper WPs is certain. You might not ever buy a key, everyone who plays in the four weeks after the election will use a WP. The total amount you spend on WPs in a month is likely minimal. The total amount of money, time and effort you spend attempting to acquire monthly skins is probably far greater. Most players won’t make this connection and this one will likely go to Kiel.
Then it gets even messier when we factor in multiple votes. Who will the grind happy people vote for? Who will the TP flipping people buy votes for? Who will the CoF farmers vote for? The richest people in the game (and the ones who may choose to try and buy the election) will likely vote for Evon. Turning gold into gems and then selling popular skins from tickets could be a viable medium-high end market, especially with a key discount. A gold investment over the next two weeks could pay off big for them in the future. Grinders will probably also choose to vote for Evon. Skin acquisition appeals to these people and reduction in key costs lessens the grind they have to do to acquire more keys and more chances for chests.
The average “Alliance” mentality (Alliance was by far the most popular faction in WoW) probably means the majority of casual players will be voting for Kiel. She’s “attractive”, familair and portrayed as a hero. It all comes down to how many people will take the path of least resistance and how much will they play to do so. Take note that the Living Story achievements for this event were designed in a way which herds players into doing some kind of voting activity, essentially designing it so that players doing the Living Story achievements will be voting multiple times. Rather than allowing the mass of casuals to vote once or twice until they are bored and letting apathy take over, the majority of people will be attempting multiple activities and acquiring multiple votes for whichever side they represent. This creates a situation where the casuals will vote a lot and the competition to buy the election is much harder.
It’s impossible to predict the election, there are too many variables. In that sense ArenaNet has created a very successful in game election. Players care about the results as both sides have offered things that appeal to players in some way or another. It’s probably the most involving Living Story event so far, so it’s been fairly successful on that level (although it’s appeal is not story content, but rather the rewards and influence on fractal design rather than the majority of people caring about the characters and what’s good for Lion’s Arch and the story itself). The election isn’t balanced, I doubt the end result will be close to 50/50, the candidates appeal to wideley different demographics. What we don’t know yet is which of these demographics represents the most votes.
