Guild Wars 2

TP barons, aka people who treat the TP as part of the meta game, from speculating on price movements to cornering particular markets to finding ways of manipulating bid/ask spreads, have a great deal of control over prices in the economy (not unlike real life).

A problem arising from this is that many high-value items, from precursors to T6 mats to Mystic Conduits are constantly being bought up en-masse re-listed either at higher prices, or trickled back into the market at more limited rates. The target market for these action is not the dungeon running, karma-grinding regular players, but rather other wealthy TP barons with hundreds or thousands of gold to spare.

Exacerbating the problem is that ArenaNet keeps nerfing the ways for everyone else to keep up with that price inflation, from implementing DR to removing the Rich Orichalcum Node in the Champion Karka hive, to the general poor drop rates on anything valuable from simply spending your time playing the game, be it sPvP, WvW, dungeons, or regular PvE, rather than the TP meta.

With each of these nerfs it is becoming more and more the case that only way to keep with TP price inflation is to actually shift our play, from the game to the TP meta, which undermines ANet’s stated philosophy ‘that you should be able to get the most powerful rewards simply by playing the game the way you want.’

I would love to hear ArenaNet’s resident economist John Smith’s take on this issue, and whether it is working as intended, or not.

Pretty sure that box in the Laurels vendor that’s suppose to give sixth-tier mats will solve this problem.
Once ANet implements more ways to get Laurels (it’s so dang obvious), people will start buying those like hotcakes.

Yes, for those who haven’t seen the vendor yet, you read that right. SIXTH-TIER. As in, the top-tier.
I’m not actually all that familiar with top-tier stuff, but I’m hoping that includes Lodestones!

Hope that’s the case, early reports look interesting:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/17geuy/lost_orrian_jewelery_box_45_k_karma_each_chance/

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/17hcyx/results_of_opening_85_lost_orrian_jewel_boxes/

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/17hl6c/possibility_of_getting_more_karma_than_you_spent/