Guild Wars 2

Good Day,

Out of simple curiosity I am interested in the mechanics of gold purchasing. More specifically how being able to purchase gold in game has affected third party vendor’s ability to successfully market gold.

It has become commonplace to see spam in high population maps for third party gold vendors. In every instance I see this, I can’t but ask myself, “how can they compete with the in game economy?” Granted the game is in it’s infancy, so this may be a temporary thing before gold farmers realize they can’t compete.

I’m curious as to what Anet’s in game economists take is on this?

Off topic, whats with the price floor on the trading house?

Thanks,

Thesearmsrsnakes

meant also to ask if the price floor throws off equilibrium in game, or if thats even a concern?

Price floor = easy mode or people too mentally-lacking (actually sounds worse than if i used a KiTtEn word) to bother with the price-value trade off.

Gold sellers will die off. Report features are gonna make sure of that,

I haven’t look at the price of gold for third pt and anet…but it seems that if the difference is small, that should discourage third pt seller because of security and legality issue.

As for price floor, if an item’s equilibrium is below vendor, it’ll just be vendor. The impact is that these item will just stay there and not sell if there are no demand at even vendor price. If the floor is removed, it should drop lower to a price where someone is willing to buy…and if not…to the price that it’s salvaged mats is worth. If it is above vendor, then no issue.

Gold selling is, obviously, not allowed – and buying gold from them is a bannable offense. Also to note that most of these sellers are just trying to get you to pay to give them your password, so that they can turn your account into another spam account. That aside, however, and completely ignoring the fact that you’re an idiot if you buy from them because no, you won’t see that gold…

Most of these gold sellers are offering gold at a cheaper rate than ANET.

Right now, for example, you can buy 800 gems for 2g62s, or 32.75c per gem. However, selling gems back for gold is only equal to ~13.5c per gem. (I’m pretty sure I did that math right, anyway lol) Obviously, the ratio is far from even. Now if we’re comparing that to what anet sells gems for:

800 gems for $10, or 1g8s when you trade gems for gold.

Say a gold seller advertises 1g for $5 USD. I see advertising for less, but let’s say that. That’s automatically about half the price approximately for that gold. Now since it costs more to trade for gems than the other way around, you wouldn’t get 800 gems for it – however, in the end, it would still cost about $10 for the same amount of gems if you’re trading gold for gems, if not a little more – 800 gems is just shy of 3g, which would be closer to $15 from a gem seller.

So it depends entirely how you’re looking at it (and also relies on my early AM math being accurate, which someone correct my math if it’s not lol). If gold selling happened to be a legit business and you were looking for just copious amounts of gold and NOT gems, a gold seller would, in theory, be the better bet. However, if you’re looking for gold to make into gems, buying right from ANET would be the better bet. There are also gem sellers, though not as common, but I’m sure the math evens out approximately the same. Again, if my math holds up.

(I did the prices yesterday so they may be a touch inaccurate this morning.)

gabo.6721:

Price floor = easy mode or people too mentally-lacking (actually sounds worse than if i used a KiTtEn word) to bother with the price-value trade off.

Gold sellers will die off. Report features are gonna make sure of that,

Will it? Unless it becomes economically inviable for them to open new accounts and the huge slice of people with rubbish account security wise up, the report feature isn’t going to have any lasting effect.

I have to wonder how many people are actually purchasing gold from third party sellers. It’s hard to believe it’s really that much.

In game currently (just checked a few minutes ago), you can get 1 gold for $4.86. I’ve seen advertising for as low as $2.50 (I think- I don’t really read that carefully before I report and block them, but that sounds about right).

So, you CAN save money by buying from third party sellers, but by doing so, you take a couple of pretty significant risks.

The first is getting hacked. It’s not even a little bit of an exaggeration to say that most of those companies use hacked accounts to farm and advertise their gold sales. A good portion of those hacked accounts are hacked by means of some malicious software(i.e. keylogger) that potential gold buyers picked up by visiting the gold seller’s web site.

The second and no less important is the risk of being caught and banned. From a strictly financial point of view, you’d need to buy at least 25 gold before being caught to make up for the risk of losing the $60 for your account. However, since if you are caught an banned, you’d also lose all of the gold you had bought that way, making the risk actually infinite. There’s also the issue of losing all of the progression you’ve made aside from the gold you bought.

Given the risks, I find it difficult to believe there are really that many people who haven’t considered them, or that have ignored them, and used 3rd party gold sellers. There just can’t be enough buyers to make it worth it for the sellers, can there?

If anyone reading this is considering buying from a 3rd party seller to save a little money, please consider all of the risks before you do so. Not only could you lose all of the progress you’ve made on your characters, but you could also lose all of the gold you bought, as well as the cost of the game. Do the smart thing, and buy your gold through the gem store.

“Do the smart thing, and buy your gold through the gem store.”

The problem with that advice?
People are getting flagged and not able to buy gems to trade for gold.
They are running into a fraud prevention scheme that locks the account
and prevents the use of credit cards and paypal.
Big thread about it in the accounts forum.

One problem I see with buying gems is the following:

1. Spammer/Hacker gets into someones account.
2. Hacker first takes all that person’s gold THEN also uses a stolen credit card or PayPal account to buy as many gems as possible.
3. Hacker turns those gems into gold.
4. Hacker then starts spamming their website advertisement in /map
5. Some poor soul (biting my tongue) falls for this and buys from Hacker.
6. Hacker makes 100% profit.
7. Hacked account at some point gets reported.
8. Gold transfer gets tracked back to poor soul that bought it and their account gets banned.

And yes hackers do use stolen bank account info like this. I’ve had a stolen credit card used to transfer a character from one server to another in another game several years ago.