Guild Wars 2

I have good news and bad news. The good news is there is an absolute price cap to gems, where $10 of gold bought from a gold seller will buy 600 gems. The bad news is we’re not even close to that absolute cap.

I received an email from a seller selling 10G for roughly $2.25. The gold seller prices have come down a bit, and they may be able to bring the price lower. Using today’s price using 1G and 77 gems to find out the conversion rates, here’s where the prices stand. (I would have liked to use 10G and 1000 gems, but I don’t have that) 1G can be traded into 56 gems, and 77 gems traded into about 1G.

At $2.25 for 10G, you’d get 44.44G for $10.

To be equal to AreaNet’s 600 gems for $10, that 44.44G would have to buy 600 gems. (roughly, removing consideration for exchange rates being slightly worse when converting gems to gold.) Therefore, 100 gems would cost 7.4G. and 1G would buy 13.5 gems. That’s roughly 4.15 times the current exchange rate. Do you think gems can quadruple in price?

A character expansion slot would then cost 59.2G. (converting the gold into 800 gems) That seems steep, but I think it’s possible. Hardcore farmers could earn that in a week. An addicted player might need a month of farming, and the casual player could buy the expansion for a little over $13. (except they don’t sell gems in that quantity :P)

What it comes down to is: Do you think the price of gems can go up until the gold sellers/botters price themselves out of the market? Or do you think gem prices will stabilize at some point that botters will always be around? As the $10 approaches 600 gems, fewer and fewer people will buy from botters. It’s ingenius, really. And while I really think the final prices will drive many beginning players away, there is a stable end somewhere in the future.

Your post doesn’t make sense to me. Most people leave gold sellers out of the equation when debating anything about the gem prices because frankly, they’re irrelevant.

Yes you could buy theoretically gold from these bots. However the cost is the following: they hack your account, strip it of valuables and steal it for botting. In case this doesn’t happen, you will get perma-banned since gold buying goes against the EULA, you will not get an appeal. As such, you lose your entire account either way.

Either that, or you just buy the gems without putting your account at serious risk. Your choice.

Satori.3256:

What it comes down to is: Do you think the price of gems can go up until the gold sellers/botters price themselves out of the market? Or do you think gem prices will stabilize at some point that botters will always be around?

No matter how pricey the gold/gem ratio gets bots and gold sellers will always be around, it’s a fact of life for any MMO like a runny nose that lingers after a cold.

marnick.4305:

Yes you could buy theoretically gold from these bots. However the cost is the following: they hack your account, strip it of valuables and steal it for botting.

While I’m not endorsing buying gold from 3rd party websites I’d like to point out that what you’ve said fundamentally incorrect since after sending you some mail they can’t auto-magically hack your account unless you give them those details, in which case you’re an idiot.

Q: Do you think gems can quadruple in price?
A: They already have.

I bought gems back when 1G could get 300+ gems.
Now 1G gets you around 56 gems.

From Areanet you receive 800 gems for $10.00, not 600.

I am amazed that ANet is not doing more about farmers (I admit they are doing more than most MMOs). Every $ spent buying gold from a farmer is a $ that could have been spent in the gem store.

The last time I looked around a month ago, you could get 4x the gold from a farmer that you could get from the gem store

Brutal Arts.6307:

marnick.4305:

Yes you could buy theoretically gold from these bots. However the cost is the following: they hack your account, strip it of valuables and steal it for botting.

While I’m not endorsing buying gold from 3rd party websites I’d like to point out that what you’ve said fundamentally incorrect since after sending you some mail they can’t auto-magically hack your account unless you give them those details, in which case you’re an idiot.

Or they can take your credit card information (which you have to give them so they can be paid) and buy another account. or six. and use those for botting.

John Smith.4610:

Gold sellers hack accounts
When you give them money, you are funding hacking of accounts
Your account may be hacked, but it isn’t a direct transaction

When you buy gold from goldsellers you’re attempting to get a better deal from people who steal accounts, hurt the gaming industry, and steal credit cards. To me, that’s an awful thing to do.

You support Gold Sellers with every nerf to drop rates. Stop trying to force us to covert gems to gold. Make the cash shop attractive in another way.

kitanas.3596:

Or they can take your credit card information (which you have to give them so they can be paid)

No. Paypal.

John Smith,

- do ALL Gold Sellers hack account? some? most?
- why not make “legit” gold sellers (no bots, no hacking) part of the economy, a-net sells gold (gems), why cant the players? that would make the economy much broader/ stable
- … or allow players to convert gems to real money … only way to get a “non-manipulated” economy.

Ofc a-net would need to be able to REALLY ban all bots & hackers …. quickly.

Esturk.2183:

Stop trying to force us to covert gems to gold. Make the cash shop attractive in another way.

That’s simple: stop allowing people to buy gems for gold. Then if you want something that requires gems, you must pay cash. Would that make folks happier? I sincerely doubt it.

Economics is complicated. Arena is in the tough spot of trying to balance two economies (the in-game economy and their need to generate real-world revenue). You pay nothing to play the game online once you bought it, but it costs AN plenty to keep the doors open.

but but but, nerfed drop rates are primarily a result of bots (aka gold sellers).

Zenless.6791:

That’s simple: stop allowing people to buy gems for gold. Then if you want something that requires gems, you must pay cash. Would that make folks happier? I sincerely doubt it.

Well, on that note, people seemed pretty happy in GW1, despite cash shop items requiring cash. See the thing is, people like honest business. An honest proposition allows the buyer to make an informed decision about whether they want the product or not. If a company wants money, and asks for the money up front, people can make a yes-or-no choice and then put it out of their minds. Just like with MMO sub fees. You either agree to pay the $15, or you don’t and lose nothing. The way GW2 was set up, people bought into the game because they were led to believe that they could reasonably do everything for free, but they find out after the fact (and after their $60) that the truth is they can’t. Had they known the truth beforehand, would they have bought into the game and spent the time to get to 80? Maybe some would have, but many others wouldn’t, and those are the people who are now upset.

So the short answer is yes, people would be happy with that system because that system is honest and would have told everyone beforehand whether or not to buy in. Those that would not be happy with the cash shop would not have purchased the game in the first place, and therefore would not be here complaining. They would be happy not playing and never having played GW2. But Anet apparently wanted to capture as many box sales as possible, and basically lied to do it. So 2 million sales later, everybody’s here, and some of them are mad.

Zenless.6791:

Esturk.2183:

Stop trying to force us to covert gems to gold. Make the cash shop attractive in another way.

That’s simple: stop allowing people to buy gems for gold. Then if you want something that requires gems, you must pay cash. Would that make folks happier? I sincerely doubt it.

Economics is complicated. Arena is in the tough spot of trying to balance two economies (the in-game economy and their need to generate real-world revenue). You pay nothing to play the game online once you bought it, but it costs AN plenty to keep the doors open.

That’s not the solution, but even that is better than what we have now. My problem isn’t the cash shop (which I was using), it’s the nerf to drop rates to get people to convert gems to gold. There is more to the cash shop than just gold.

Leablo.2651:

…The way GW2 was set up, people bought into the game because they were led to believe that they could reasonably do everything for free, but they find out after the fact (and after their $60) that the truth is they can’t…

I’d like to know what it is in the game that requires additional out-of-pocket real life cash to achieve please?

So far, I have found nothing in game that I have needed to pay dollars for.

Mystic.5934:

but but but, nerfed drop rates are primarily a result of bots (aka gold sellers).

Nerfing drop rates does not affect bots. It simply drives the price up. In fact, once a certain rarity of drops is achieved, it even helps bots, because noone else can get what they have to offer on their own.

On the contrary, it’s making gold and other valuable drops more accessible to common players by other avenues of play that makes gold sellers and what they have to offer less used (and less profitable).

If you want to prevent farming those avenues, well, there are lot of ways to do that – dailies, random quests (in GW1 Zaishen style) with good rewards, significantly increased one-time rewards (map completion etc), increased WvW/PvP rewards (as those modes of play do not lend themselves too well to scripting), etc.

Anet sure make gold sellers attractive with the terrible mat drop rates and insanely high mat requirements for legendaries.

Just saying.

John Smith, are you aware of the terrible drop rates?
If not:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Change-in-loot-parameters-or-a-bug-Merged/first
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Loot-Drop-Rate-Bug/first

Is it a bug or intended to get people buying more gems with cash?

I just want to see Anet go into the market and adjust the gems to gold price to better compete with the bots. They already have two advantages:

1) They’re legitimate
2) They’re direct source

That gives them a much bigger competitive edge, so much so that they don’t realistically need to sell gems at the 3rd party rate. They could get away with a 30-50% markup and still capture most of the market. If they priced at the same rate as the 3rd party, Anet would capture the entire market.

I really see no reason for doing this other than to try and be fair to gold -> gem converters, and to try and quell all the people who would get mad and say the game is all about buying things with real money. If I could pay Anet the same amount of money and receive the same amount of gold as I could from a 3rd party, you bet your kittens I’d do it. It would hardly trivialize certain aspects either. Even at 3rd party seller rates, legendaries would still cost over $200-300, which is well out of a lot of players willing-to-pay ranges.

John Smith.4610:

Gold sellers hack accounts
When you give them money, you are funding hacking of accounts
Your account may be hacked, but it isn’t a direct transaction

When you buy gold from goldsellers you’re attempting to get a better deal from people who steal accounts, hurt the gaming industry, and steal credit cards. To me, that’s an awful thing to do.

then give more gold for my buck!

Highvoltage.7946:

John Smith.4610:

Gold sellers hack accounts
When you give them money, you are funding hacking of accounts
Your account may be hacked, but it isn’t a direct transaction

When you buy gold from goldsellers you’re attempting to get a better deal from people who steal accounts, hurt the gaming industry, and steal credit cards. To me, that’s an awful thing to do.

then give more gold for my buck!

Bingo..

There is a market because Anets is broken..

Look at other mmo with “gems”.. EQ2 as example.. They have sony points.. same thing as gems..

No gold sellers there because their market works

Darmikau.9413:

I just want to see Anet go into the market and adjust the gems to gold price to better compete with the bots. They already have two advantages:

1) They’re legitimate
2) They’re direct source

That gives them a much bigger competitive edge, so much so that they don’t realistically need to sell gems at the 3rd party rate. They could get away with a 30-50% markup and still capture most of the market. If they priced at the same rate as the 3rd party, Anet would capture the entire market.

I really see no reason for doing this other than to try and be fair to gold -> gem converters, and to try and quell all the people who would get mad and say the game is all about buying things with real money. If I could pay Anet the same amount of money and receive the same amount of gold as I could from a 3rd party, you bet your kittens I’d do it. It would hardly trivialize certain aspects either. Even at 3rd party seller rates, legendaries would still cost over $200-300, which is well out of a lot of players willing-to-pay ranges.

how about preventing inflation? I fthey were to fix the gem→gold price at some high value, there would be a large surge of gold into the economy. which would cause prices to rise, which would cause those who don’t buy gold with gems to complain even more!

@John Smith.

So gold sellers hurt the game industry, yet you sell gold to your own customers! So your nerf to all drop rates and banning bots for gold selling websites are in no way linked to the fact your just trying to get rid of competition for your players money then?

skotie.2614:

@John Smith.

So gold sellers hurt the game industry, yet you sell gold to your own customers! So your nerf to all drop rates and banning bots for gold selling websites are in no way linked to the fact your just trying to get rid of competition for your players money then?

You missed his point, and by quite a wide margin. The issue with gold sellers is not what they do with the gold, but how they obtain it. Hacking, credit card fraud and the like are the problem.

If you’re trying to twist this into, “Yeah, but Anet wants us to buy gold from Anet!!!”, then welcome to how the game is monetized. They have bills to pay, too.

Bingo..

There is a market because Anets is broken..

Look at other mmo with “gems”.. EQ2 as example.. They have sony points.. same thing as gems..

No gold sellers there because their market works

right, it has nothing to do with eq2 being a lot less popular and thus having a very small market to earn real cash off. /sarcasm off

You do know that gold sellers change their prices and if ANet ever changed their real money → gem → gold conversion significantly so that it’s really easy to buy gold for cheap, gold sellers will just make their prices cheaper, right?

“Gold sellers only charge 5 dollars for 10 gold” → “ANet charges 6 dollars for 10 gold” → “Gold sellers only charge 2 dollars for 10 gold” → “ANet charges 3 dollars for 10 gold” → “Gold sellers charge 5 dollars for 100 gold” → “ANet charges 6 dollars for 100 gold” → Inflation goes out of control becuase now ANet’s setting up a way to make currency that isn’t related to the amount of gold removed by the economy from people purchasing gems (unless you think people would ALSO be okay with “I have to pay 100 gold to get 6 dollars worth of gems”, which I promise you, they would not be).

@Oghier.

I understand what your saying but the point I’m trying to make is they are about 1 step up in the food chain from the illegal virtual crack dealer…. they are the legal virtual crack dealer.

What I’m trying to accomplish with my statements is two fold. Yes I would like Arenanet to pretty much all but come out and say yes they are kind of twisting your arm to get you to buy gold by making it harder to obtain with nerfs(not going to happen entirely I know for legal reasons). I would also like them to explain why they are, because they too are a business and unfortunately an online game cannot be entirely “free to play” Arenanet does not run on hopes and dreams. No naturally they put in ways for players to give them cash for things they want. But most will find the simple cosmetic upgrades won’t be worth their money, so they have to do something to make you want to spent your real cash on them again apart from new sales and bringing out an expansion already.

The customers kind of ask for this by endorsing a free to play game. You know there are people working to maintain this game, you know they have to pay those people to do their jobs yet you want them to do it for free? Wow, but I’m the entitled one because I would have rather paid them a subscription fee to be able to make money in game at a non mind-numbingly slow pace? Right.

I honestly believe a solution to this could have been to significantly increase character drop rates. Now that brings with it inflation, counter that with tons of more in game NPC shops that carry almost all in game items characters would be buying, give them a set price. Now you effectively control your in game trading post prices because no one in their right mind will pay say 500 gold even if they have say have 3000 gold, when they can buy the item from a vendor for 200g right? The only time you would was if you somehow didn’t know about those NPC’s. So almost all sales between players would be undercuts of prices capped by NPC’s. But they cannot do that, because this would also stop people form wanting to buy gold from them, and yes they will need money to keep the game running.

Now who does this tick off. The elitist hardcore players. You guys are probably the only ones in the game who play under the impression that if you played 1000+ more hours then I did that somehow makes you a better gamer, and that means you’ll have these better items and only you and those like you have these items because you were “good” players. Tell me what about those items is actually a challenge to obtain for them please. The biggest factors of influence in obtaining a legendary is time and luck.

There is one thing I do see the hardcore players seem to enforce and it’s WORK not FUN or even DIFFICULT/CHALLENGING. That somehow normal rational thinking players not wanting to sit in unrealistically long time sinks for gear that, believe what you will, WILL be replaced. Arenanet has even said they have level increases planned for future expansions what fun will that be if all your gear is simply going to carry over to those expansions. No new gear really? How will they not introduce new weapons and gear into the game?

I wouldn’t have so much of a problem I think with the elitist mindset if you were actually bragging about something that as worthy of bragging about. Like a world boss who your guild was first to defeat and then no one else could even kill the thing for what another 3 months. But getting a legendary required none of that and while you may have done something similar to what I’m saying these types of things were not a requirement to getting these weapons. So what are you bragging about the fact you’ve played longer and were more lucky? Wow.

TL;DR

There’s no need to even purchase Gems. The game doesn’t require it by any means to play or complete. Players make the decision to get Gems purely for cosmetic purposes. There are minor buffs too, but you can get smaller ones via Guild banners. And as for buying Gems to convert to Gold to make TP purchases, there’s no “need” for that too, as you have a chance to get all these items from just playing the game.

So all this “force us to covert gems to gold” hold no ground whatsoever. You want Gems, you make the choice to buy them (via Gold or $$$).

Navi.7142:

John Smith, are you aware of the terrible drop rates?
If not:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Change-in-loot-parameters-or-a-bug-Merged/first
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Loot-Drop-Rate-Bug/first

Is it a bug or intended to get people buying more gems with cash?

Ive given up on them trying to give us an answer (apart from the very vague AMA answer) to this. But yeah, the droprates will and do affect pricing on the tp making people needing even more gold to buy stuff on the tp, thus increasing the chances of people buying from goldsellers (because, aside from the devastating side effect for buying from goldsellers, they are cheaper which seems to be the only thing people see. If nobody bought from goldsellers, the goldsellers would go away eventually).

The matter of need vs want is a tricky one (yet oh so simple). Not because there is an actual need, but because players think they need (when they really just want, but dont actually need to play the game).

Lysico.4906 said:

“Bingo..

There is a market because Anets is broken..

Look at other mmo with “gems”.. EQ2 as example.. They have sony points.. same thing as gems..

No gold sellers there because their market works”

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search query in google was “EQ2 gold”, site adresses removed as i dont want to be banned, but where there is a mmo, there are lazy people, where there are lazy people, gold sellers will appear.
(i did not click on the links as im not stupid enough to risk geting keylogged/trojanned)

but there is no such thing as gold seller free mmo

Leablo.2651:

The way GW2 was set up, people bought into the game because they were led to believe that they could reasonably do everything for free, but they find out after the fact (and after their $60) that the truth is they can’t. Had they known the truth beforehand, would they have bought into the game and spent the time to get to 80? Maybe some would have, but many others wouldn’t, and those are the people who are now upset.

I’m the first to admit that I didn’t follow GW2 until after launch. You seem to be suggesting that (a) Anet came out and said that everyone would be able to do everything in-game without spending any extra cash and (b) people do in fact need to spend cash to get something.

Again, perhaps it’s just me but when I signed up for an MMO that doesn’t have a subscription payment, I assumed it was because they were monetizing their business through paid in-game features. Whether it was extra professions, races, gear, maps, costumes, or whatever… they were going to offer something that was desirable enough that at least some people would continue to fund their operation.

When I discovered that literally everything in the game is accessible and achievable without paying cash, I was frankly surprised. Personally, I think it’s great that Anet is willing to let the hard core gamers — the ones who spend the most time online and use the most real-world resources — “earn” everything they need in game to get the stuff that casual guys like me instead pay cash for. Me, I bought $50 worth of gems as soon as I signed up…

Gold sellers only hack the accounts of idiots that use the same pw and user name of their games.

Compete with the gold sellers and I bet youd make a crap load more cash than you are now. Im just sayin.