Guild Wars 2

So, I’m sure everyone’s aware of the current economic issues we’re experiencing. A quick look at the gem store history tracker will show you that the value of gold relative to gems (and therefore real-world currency) is dropping like a stone. This is bound to happen in any situation where money is created infinitely and is not removed from the economy (No Real World Examples, Please! =p). What is happening now is that a ton of money is being brought into the economy, and then just floats from player to player., with only a small amount being removed from things like fast travel, repairs, skill resets, vendor purchases, etc.

What this results in is valuable items becoming more and more valuable. For example, a week or so ago a Dawn of Rage was going for about 15 gold. Yesterday, I saw one for over 50. This is terminal inflation and can’t be sustained. Now, steps are currently being taken by the devs to limit the amount of gold entering the economy, such as nerfing the gold rewards for dungeon runs and disabling the caravan escorts in WvW, as these were some of the chief offenders. One of the problems that still remains, however, is removing gold from the economy.

Now, everybody hates gold sinks, but you can’t deny that thy serve a purpose. Now, instead of adding a dozen more gold sinks, I’ve noticed a few that already exist that seem to be under-utilized. The main one that comes to mind is control point upgrades in WvWvW. In fact, my server’s held Stonemist Castle for almost a week now and it’s still not fully upgraded. These upgrades are fairly expensive, and some of them only provide a marginal benefit to the defenders, and confer little if no personal benefit to the one who upgrades it. So, how do we get people to spend more money on upgrades? Simple.

Achievements. If we learned anything from GW1, it’s that a player WILL spend hours upon hours getting killed over and over by a level 6 spider in pre-searing Ascalon so that it will level up to the point they can kill it for XP and hit level 20, as long as there’s an achievement involved. Just toss in another WvWvW achievement for how much gold you’ve spent on control point upgrades, and wealthy players will be racing each other to upgrade them. Set the top tier, and of course title (Call it “Ultimate Bankroller,” possibly? =p), to something like 100 or even 500 gold, and there you go, a massive amount of gold being taken out of the economy, improved WvWvW gameplay, and best of all it’s through a voluntary mechanic. Toss in another one for buying siege weapon BPs for even more fun and gold being removed.