People are amassing more and more gold day by day. Due to this, market prices fluctuate, and the general currency grows weaker in value as the days go by. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem; markets in MMOs have a tendency of balancing themselves out between supply/demand and price.
However; this is not the case for the static price of the Commander book: 100g.
As more players get wealthier by the second, the Commander book becomes more and more affordable. Some people buy it due to the fact that they lead a WvW guild, and it seemed like a natural thing to do. Unfortunately, others may buy it for the prestige, or for the stupid blue icon above their head. This leads to an outbreak of random commanders spread throughout the battlefield, some skilled, some not so skilled.
Let’s put it like this. We all know of the ‘zerg’ in WvW, in which a large amount of players move as a single unit. This zerg is usually led by a commander (either willingly or not) and will sometimes succeed, and will sometimes fail. I like to call the commander the ‘Shepherd’ of the zerg (and no, not the Mass Effect Commander, as I pray there will be no terrible endings for this request). Now imagine 6 shepherds trying to lead a zerg, all giving conflicting orders (or none at all). This would naturally confuse the zerg, leading it to inaction.
Thus, I propose applying a few prerequisites that one would need to fulfill in order to be able to purchase a commander book. Players would not only have to pay 100g, but would also have to fulfill these conditions:
1) X Amount of Badges of Honor: This would be the most obvious choice, as Badges of Honor show that you at least participated in a WvW event of some sort.
2) X Amount of Karma: If people are not going for their legendaries, they’re going to have a large excess of unused karma. Why not use it to become a commander? The more amount of karma you have proves that you’ve played the game longer (normally). With this much experience under his or her belt, it would be no surprise that the commander was at least competent at his or her role.
3) X Amount of Skill Points: Same as the above. People who play a game more often tend to be better than those who have played it less.
4) The player must have obtained a certain title. Preferrably one related to WvW, such as ‘Ultimate Dominator.’ (This is a more extreme one, as the WvW titles are QUITE hard to obtain)
And so forth~. These are just suggestions of what prerequisites should look like, I’m not sure how balanced they actually are.
tl;dr : There will be WAY too many commanders out on the field in the next month, it’s gonna get real confusing. Prerequisites would help balance that out, I hope.