Guild Wars 2

Anyone else noted the huge market manipulation involving the Halloween weapons? Look at these graphs (put them at 1 day and look at the sell listings):

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/36070
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/36056
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/36051

As you can see, between 17:45 ~ 18:30 on Wednesday 31 Oct the prices were pushed up by around 40G for each of these weapons… Given the timing, I’d say that this is the work of one big fish here.

Given the number of weapons available (25 for the staff, 40 for the bow and 60 for the shield) that operation must have cost quite a bit (I’d estimate between 1.5K and 2K gold). However, given the costs required to craft these weapons, I’m sure there’s a profit to be made here.

Obviously, selling the weapons for very low prices was silly and I was also hoping to make some profit on them. However, the scale of this operation is kind of worrying in my opinion. If there are parties that can play the market this way, that seems kind of unhealthy (assuming it was done by a single party, either person or guild or botter).

Isn’t that around the same time the dungeon closed and hence no more weapon drops? It would stand that there would be a hype moment where some called to buy them cheap while you can so it’s not necessarily the work of one person.

Edit: it’s not too dissimilar to speculation on the stock market when prices jump quickly based on a prediction.

We don’t know if the seller removed his sale and put it up for a higher price or if the item was sold and put up again for a higher price.

If you look at sell listing volume, there isn’t a noticeable change there at all (only a very small dip in the raw data). So I’m assuming items are being re-listed at a higher price. This pattern would be quite coincidental if it was new ones being put up and old ones being sold in my opinion.

Also note that the availability after the new pricing increases, so more people are coming to the market due to the higher prices, indicating there was more supply in the game. Also the prices take on a more normal pattern of declining due to undercutting from that point on.

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

We don’t know if the seller removed his sale and put it up for a higher price or if the item was sold and put up again for a higher price.

Well from the graphs you can see that quite a number sold of each weapon. Basically they got bought up to a cut off price and only the high priced ones were left.

Morrar.1764:

If you look at sell listing volume, there isn’t a noticeable change there at all (only a very small dip in the raw data).

I can see quite a dip in raw sell volumes. From 20 to 10, 45 to 17, and 61 to 21.

Lavec.8157:

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

We don’t know if the seller removed his sale and put it up for a higher price or if the item was sold and put up again for a higher price.

Well from the graphs you can see that quite a number sold of each weapon. Basically they got bought up to a cut off price and only the high priced ones were left.

I wonder… Can we actually see what is sold? I mean, can we see the difference between an item being pulled from the TP by the seller and an item being sold to another player? In both cases items are removed from the TP…

Speculation and manipulation are not the same thing. Without further evidence (in particular, evidence that this is the work of a single party), you can’t really justify your claim that this is actually manipulation.

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

I wonder… Can we actually see what is sold? I mean, can we see the difference between an item being pulled from the TP by the seller and an item being sold to another player? In both cases items are removed from the TP…

I’d say that it’s generally a safe bet that price jumps on GW2Spidy correspond to items being sold. There’s two main reasons:
1) For the price to go up from an item being taken down, it would have had to have been the cheapest sell order.
2) The listing fee discourages taking items down in order to put them back up again.

Lavec.8157:

Morrar.1764:

If you look at sell listing volume, there isn’t a noticeable change there at all (only a very small dip in the raw data).

I can see quite a dip in raw sell volumes. From 20 to 10, 45 to 17, and 61 to 21.

Yeah in the raw data there’s a dip of maybe 50% in sell listings, but it last like half an hour tops… So that could be the time needed to complete the operation? It coincides perfectly with the price sky-rocketing…

Obviously, it could be the case that many people suddenly started buying up the lower priced weapons, but the timing and the fact that it’s similar for all 3 weapons made me a bit suspicious.

Then again, I only have the limited data from these graphs and I’m no expert in economy so obviously I could be wrong…

@lackofcheese: well i kind of have a lackofdata here, so I can’t really ‘prove’ anything. But I guess ArenaNet could look into these matters, hence the post.

Sure they can, though to be honest I’m not convinced that it’s a good thing for ArenaNet to take such an active role.

Dynamic markets are simply more fun; besides, people artificially inflating the price creates opportunities for other people to profit as well.

True, others will benefit too and you can see this happening. After the price increase, sell listings have increased and undercutting also start pressing the prices down again. So from there on the market assumes its normal function.

However, it could be worrying IF indeed this was the action of a single party. Why? Just because of the size of it; if a single party could have such an effect on the market, I wouldn’t consider that healthy. I have similar concerns about the precursor market. Moreover, given that bots run rampart in this game (saw more than 50 in a single zone yesterday), I’m also concerned what their influence is. If this ‘worst case scenario’ is true, I think ANet should take action…

Now I know all this is wild speculation as I don’t have the exact data to back it up. However, I did find the pattern of these data quite extraordinary and interesting…. I probably should have at least added a question mark to the title :-D

This is yet another “omg prices droped/increased thus there must have been manipulation involved” No, there have been no “manipulation”. I’m 95% sure of it. and if there was any manipulation being made it was when the priced droped. these weapons are worth alot of money. maybe not as much as foefire weapons and other extremely rare weapons. but they are probably 100g+ and rising as the prices on lodestones rise. im surprised that they went as low as 18g but i suppose that the supply was way above the demand at that point. I bought a few of them then because i knew that the supply would become 0 until we hit the price of crafting it or the next halloween. And the price is only going to rise. money being made.

and if there was tampering being done with the pricing on these weapons. it would’t have been as smooth as the numbers say. If there was tampering there would have been a spike in the cost witch there is not.

You bet there is “market manipulation”. There is nothing sinister or strange about it, everyone with a common sense knew this will happen, and if you did not get a stockpile of those items, you can only blame yourself. That’s how it’s done. But it’s not done by 1 person. I myself bought a couple of those weapons with the sole purpose of selling them at a much higher price in the future. I could already make some 50g profit if I sold the items today, but I think the prices will rise even more. I only wish I bought more of them

@Warraxx: Did you even bother to look at the graphs? A jump from 39G to 73G is not a spike in your book? Wow. I wonder what is then… Also: 95% of all statistics on the interwebz are made up ;-P

@zerospin: Yeah I expected a rise too, but look at how sudden it is and that it happens at the exact same time for all 3 weapons… That’s kind of the point of this thread. Not that people relist stuff, but that it happened in significant quantities, across different weapons and at a single point in time…

One word – goldsellers They make money from gold, and what’s better for them than to make hundreds of gold doing nothing, like by for example reselling a lot of event weapons? They have the means and the motive to do what you say.

@zerospin: That is what I was suspecting as well… But in my opinion that would be quite upsetting, as the ways gold sellers acquire their means are not always pretty and I wouldn’t want them to have such an influence on the economy

I don’t think that this is really any evidence of market manipulation by one person/cartel. I think it’s the aggregate effect of several individuals deciding that there was an opportunity for profit now that supply of these items would dry up.

Well I don’t know about market manipulation but me and 3 of my guild friends each bought 1 of every skin and weapon available before the dungeon closed since the main source of those weapons was being removed… remove the supply, demand stays the same… price rises… profit.

It isn’t some conspiracy theory, it is basic economics

I don’t see this as manipulation at all. The original sellers got their small amount of quick gold by listing their weapon at a very cheap price. People that bought these and re-listed them are also doing it for the same reason. The materials cost for these weapons are estimated to be in the 100g range. Is it really manipulation if the new price went from 10g to 20g to 30g all of which are much lower then the material cost? This is just a simple case of supply/demand and people smart enough to realize this and make a profit.