Guild Wars 2

Hello All,

In the past we’ve seen grand ploys to garnish your hard-earned cash into the GW2 gem store. Nothing so innocent as a really fab skin, or a black lion ticket. No, no… We’ve seen straight up “gambling” (halloween raffle for Halloween 2013 skins) and “Salami Slicing” (gem to gold exchange UI update).

Now, we are faced with the next big thing in ANet’s corrupted history: Insider Trading.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with insider trading, please google it.

How did Anet perform the illegal action of insider trading? Let me draw your attention to this very post:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/ghastly-grinning-shield-skin/first#post6071210

Now, i would like to draw your attention to this post, where an ANet developer released a comment on the GW2 sub-Reddit, but ANET_AndrewM:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4g3t53/so_i_found_this/d2grweu

“This is part of some updates that I’ve been working on with the mystic forge, though we had not intended it to go out with last weeks build, as some parts of the change still need some work.

I didn’t put this in the update notes since it wasn’t meant to go live yet, but since it apparently went through, we added the Bloodbound weapons, Shadow of the Mad King weapons, and some weapons with no way to get them anymore like Scarlet’s Kiss to the mystic forge as possible rewards for combining rare weapons."

Is this just “merely coincidence”? Could it be “merely coincidence” that a small group of players just all of sudden, decided to start lowering the prices on their backstocks of Halloween 2013 weapon skins? Could it just be “merely coincidence” that the market on such items was at an all time low, in terms of demand, that affected the price?

I’ll let you answer that, but for me, the two posts are liking writing on the wall.

Since we’ve easily allowed gambling, and salami slicing to occur without much resistance from the community, i believe this too shall pass, as no one will really care, and proceed to be happy about their new Halloween 2013 skin, much like i am with my new greatsaw. However, i wonder ‘how far’ is ‘too far’?

7/26/2016 – Update: It has happened again. This time with Stabilizing Matrix. Someone over on the subreddit found it: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4ur0o1/stabilizing_matrices_and_insider_trading/

John Smith.4610:

What is salami slicing?

Like what they did in Office Space to embezzle money.

My only question is are you (Anet) sure that this came out with last week’s patch and not from an earlier one?

This situation makes me both suspicious of the recent price drops and also very hungry now.

There was a thread about this awhile back here on these forums.

• Edit- and the .jpg above is a frytinfoil .. I think he gets it.

John Smith.4610:

What is salami slicing?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_slicing

Remember the movie “Office Space”? That was the most mainstream example of it in media.

More to how it affects GW2: Remember when ya’ll messed with the gem-to-gold exchange? Well, it just so happens that if you have an odd amount of gems, these gems are never truly spent, unless you keep buying gems, and eventually come up with an ‘even value spent’, to zero out the amount of gems you actually have.

For example:
- I pay $10 for 800 gems.
- I buy an some sort of kit or etc for 460 gems
- This now leaves me with 340 gems
- i find something else to buy for 300 gems
- I now have 40 gems left
- i can’t buy anything for 40 gems, in the gem store
- So, to make value of that 40 gems, i convert it to gold
- Depending on the gem to gold rate, i’ll almost always still have anywhere from 1-10 gems left over, that i can’t do anything with
- Each gem is 0.0125 cents
- This leads to anywhere from 0.0125 to 0.125 cents that i’ve spent, that never sees any return, unless i buy more gems, and repeat the process until i zero out my gem balance

You can multiply these numbers by however many active customers you have, and see the scheme unfold every month, unless these are repeat customers. But, theres no solid way for the playerbase to know this. So, it can only be assumed that the gem to gold UI update was an elaborate salami slicing scheme.

John Smith.4610:

Ha, I went right to urban dictionary assuming it was more…slangy? I should have searched better.

Thats great John…so what can you do about this? Its unfair on both accounts. You are the ‘economy guy’, so therefore, you are essentially the game’s “SEC”. Can you review this, and report back on what steps or actions are being done to prevent or correct it?

According to that other post in this thread, it seems to be an ongoing thing. Since real money can be involved here, i can’t stress the seriousness of this matter. Please advise.

Most all of this is beyond me without even more dumbed-down explanation. In the spirit of optimism and ignorance, I’m going to imagine this was all a coincidence.

OP, I think you need to reread the definition of Insider Trading. Your accusation has nothing to do with the company manipulating RL stocks and securities using insider knowledge.

As much as players might want them to be, weapon/armor skins aren’t stocks.

While you’re rereading Insider Trading, I strongly urge you look up the term Libel.

~EW

slamfunction.7462:

John Smith.4610:

Ha, I went right to urban dictionary assuming it was more…slangy? I should have searched better.

Thats great John…so what can you do about this? Its unfair on both accounts. You are the ‘economy guy’, so therefore, you are essentially the game’s “SEC”. Can you review this, and report back on what steps or actions are being done to prevent or correct it?

According to that other post in this thread, it seems to be an ongoing thing. Since real money can be involved here, i can’t stress the seriousness of this matter. Please advise.

Public PTRs and open display of PTR data mining would curb it. Not a likely route they will take though.

@Razor, I think the idea is that the secret few they allow on private test realms are subject to sensitive material they can leverage for profit on live servers, anticipating price changes.

ronpierce.2760:

slamfunction.7462:

John Smith.4610:

Ha, I went right to urban dictionary assuming it was more…slangy? I should have searched better.

Thats great John…so what can you do about this? Its unfair on both accounts. You are the ‘economy guy’, so therefore, you are essentially the game’s “SEC”. Can you review this, and report back on what steps or actions are being done to prevent or correct it?

According to that other post in this thread, it seems to be an ongoing thing. Since real money can be involved here, i can’t stress the seriousness of this matter. Please advise.

Public PTRs and open display of PTR data mining would curb it. Not a likely route they will take though.

@Razor, I think the idea is that the secret few they allow on private test realms are subject to sensitive material they can leverage for profit on live servers, anticipating price changes.

Ok, I think I kinda get that. But isn’t that such a teeny, tiny minority that it doesn’t matter much?

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

OP, I think you need to reread the definition of Insider Trading. Your accusation has nothing to do with the company manipulating RL stocks and securities using insider knowledge.

As much as players might want them to be, weapon/armor skins aren’t stocks.

While you’re rereading Insider Trading, I strongly urge you look up the term Libel.

~EW

Yeah…see, thats where things get to the point of ‘it just doesn’t matter’. Because it is a game, or form of entertainment, the same ethics and laws that govern a real world economy don’t apply. Thats what you are saying. And most likely, John, nor Anet, will do anything about this. So, it obligation or question of economic “fairness” resides with the community.

I’m saying that since real money is being used in THIS economy, it does matter. It matters alot. Since your basic player is being manipulated by a corporate entity.

Take it as you will.

This just in: Everything is a conspiracy.

The fact is that, when an Anet employee plays the live game they are always privy in one way or another to some form of insider information. That’s unavoidable.

However, the fact is that those same employees don’t really care to utilize that information in ways that impact the economy overly much, as they are such a small percentage of the live player base that any move they make can only result in negligable economic impact.

You seem to be under the impression that a significant portion of these weapon skins rested in the accounts of Anet employees. Given the cluster-wide nature of the GW2 auction house, it’s inconcievable that Anet employees’ live account make up a significant enough portion of the market for anything to have a notable impact.

When you see speculators buying things up or price fixing, the law of averages indicates an almost direct certainty that it’s another normal player, not an Anet employee responsible, simply because the auction house system serves the entire region

My Chaos Weapons have been continually hammered to oblivion by Anet (how many times were these reintroduced, and now they’re available straight up as BL chest drops?), and now my Balthazar weaps, which are cheaper now than they were when they were readily available. Must be a conspiracy…

But, oh well lol, win some, lose some. The Ghastly shields deserve to get “nerfed” some compared to how much other skins have been.

Just goes to show you shouldn’t hang on to things forever. Take comfort in the fact that you can still profit off the Halloween skins you haven’t sold, unless people purchased em later, at higher values.
(seriously, Balths weaps are less than half they were when they were at their cheapest)

slamfunction.7462:

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

OP, I think you need to reread the definition of Insider Trading. Your accusation has nothing to do with the company manipulating RL stocks and securities using insider knowledge.

As much as players might want them to be, weapon/armor skins aren’t stocks.

While you’re rereading Insider Trading, I strongly urge you look up the term Libel.

~EW

Yeah…see, thats where things get to the point of ‘it just doesn’t matter’. Because it is a game, or form of entertainment, the same ethics and laws that govern a real world economy don’t apply. Thats what you are saying. And most likely, John, nor Anet, will do anything about this. So, it obligation or question of economic “fairness” resides with the community.

I’m saying that since real money is being used in THIS economy, it does matter. It matters alot. Since your basic player is being manipulated by a corporate entity.

Take it as you will.

No, I’m not saying it doesn’t matter. I’m saying that because of the parallel you’re seeing you’re making an accusation of a very serious crime that is inapplicable in this situation. This situation has nothing to do with RL stocks and securities.

At the very least your post violates the forums Code of Conduct… but it could stretch into Libel. I don’t think you fully understand the implications of your choice of words.

~EW

PopeUrban.2578:

This just in: Everything is a conspiracy.

The fact is that, when an Anet employee plays the live game they are always privy in one way or another to some form of insider information. That’s unavoidable.

However, the fact is that those same employees don’t really care to utilize that information in ways that impact the economy overly much, as they are such a small percentage of the live player base that any move they make can only result in negligable economic impact.

You seem to be under the impression that a significant portion of these weapon skins rested in the accounts of Anet employees. Given the cluster-wide nature of the GW2 auction house, it’s inconcievable that Anet employees’ live account make up a significant enough portion of the market for anything to have a notable impact.

When you see speculators buying things up or price fixing, the law of averages indicates an almost direct certainty that it’s another normal player, not an Anet employee responsible, simply because the auction house system serves the entire region

I’m not sure only Devs have access to private test realms at all times. I know for a fact there have been instances of too tier players having access to content early to test the changes and provide feedback. Now, I don’t know how common that is, but if it does happen more regularly than expected (which is never announced anyways, as far as I can tell), it’s not so much a conspiracy as a problem with people using early information to their gain. That’s… Really not that hard to believe… And who’s to really fault them other than ethics police?

@Razor, yeah it can be a big deal. If it is in fact the case (and there has been other evidence of this), it explains a lot of large price swings which affect all players wanting to get in on new content that is pre-rigged, if you will, to cost more and line the pockets of early testers.

Of course, that is, depending on how often these private testing a occur with players close to the devs.

I’ve discussed and understood some class changes, for instance, by working closely with the devs on balance and feedback. Luckily that’s just PvP and has no real lasting benefit, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility.

ALL that said, it’s probably not that big of a deal overall. It’s just really kitten lucky for those players. I can’t blame them though. Especially ones who dump high priced items about to crash to limit the losses coming. It’d be hard to not want to jump at that, knowing the price was soon to plummet.

PopeUrban.2578:

This just in: Everything is a conspiracy.

The fact is that, when an Anet employee plays the live game they are always privy in one way or another to some form of insider information. That’s unavoidable.

However, the fact is that those same employees don’t really care to utilize that information in ways that impact the economy overly much, as they are such a small percentage of the live player base that any move they make can only result in negligable economic impact.

You seem to be under the impression that a significant portion of these weapon skins rested in the accounts of Anet employees. Given the cluster-wide nature of the GW2 auction house, it’s inconcievable that Anet employees’ live account make up a significant enough portion of the market for anything to have a notable impact.

When you see speculators buying things up or price fixing, the law of averages indicates an almost direct certainty that it’s another normal player, not an Anet employee responsible, simply because the auction house system serves the entire region

This is not what they’re saying at all.

This is.

So in short, some people got access to info or datamining info about some new cool collection achievements and before the patch hits in they buy up all the items/mats needed to get that achievement and gain profit when the achievement goes live?

Well that sucks, go and “disable” datamining , and monitor the people who you give access to patch previews or testing

ronpierce.2760:

PopeUrban.2578:

This just in: Everything is a conspiracy.

The fact is that, when an Anet employee plays the live game they are always privy in one way or another to some form of insider information. That’s unavoidable.

However, the fact is that those same employees don’t really care to utilize that information in ways that impact the economy overly much, as they are such a small percentage of the live player base that any move they make can only result in negligable economic impact.

You seem to be under the impression that a significant portion of these weapon skins rested in the accounts of Anet employees. Given the cluster-wide nature of the GW2 auction house, it’s inconcievable that Anet employees’ live account make up a significant enough portion of the market for anything to have a notable impact.

When you see speculators buying things up or price fixing, the law of averages indicates an almost direct certainty that it’s another normal player, not an Anet employee responsible, simply because the auction house system serves the entire region

I’m not sure only Devs have access to private test realms at all times. I know for a fact there have been instances of too tier players having access to content early to test the changes and provide feedback. Now, I don’t know how common that is, but if it does happen more regularly than expected (which is never announced anyways, as far as I can tell), it’s not so much a conspiracy as a problem with people using early information to their gain. That’s… Really not that hard to believe… And who’s to really fault them other than ethics police?

@Razor, yeah it can be a big deal. If it is in fact the case (and there has been other evidence of this), it explains a lot of large price swings which affect all players wanting to get in on new content that is pre-rigged, if you will, to cost more and line the pockets of early testers.

Of course, that is, depending on how often these private testing a occur with players close to the devs.

I’ve discussed and understood some class changes, for instance, by working closely with the devs on balance and feedback. Luckily that’s just PvP and has no real lasting benefit, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility.

ALL that said, it’s probably not that big of a deal overall. It’s just really kitten lucky for those players. I can’t blame them though. Especially ones who dump high priced items about to crash to limit the losses coming. It’d be hard to not want to jump at that, knowing the price was soon to plummet.

Sure, but even if we’re talking about people with access to those testing environments, it’s still a small enough portion of the population to be of negligable impact.

What’s interesting about MMO economies in a game that isn’t designed around consistant supply and demand is that nothing is sacred. The value of an item can fluctuate wildly at the drop of a hat. Combine that with almost certain inflation in MMO economies (especially economies, like GW2, where the vast majority of final product goods experience no repeat purchases due to there being no attrition/desctruction of those items built in to the system) and you find an environment almost openly hostile to long term investment.

And that’s okay. The economy isn’t designed around long term investment. it’s designed around short term trading for personal gain, and it expects players to immediately spend that wealth.

Economic fairness in terms of any sort of “investment economy” simply isn’t a pillar a game like GW2’s economy is designed around. It’s important that costs to crate/acquire items are reasonable, not that the payouts for hoarding items and consistant, because the core acquisition structure of the game is modeled around using, not saving items.

GW2 simply isn’t designed to encourage users to save. It’s designed to encourage users to spend. Thus, the “fairness” argument is moot simply because profiting through simply playing the market isn’t a primary design goal as it would be in a game designed with a permanent crafting/use loop. Most items are bought or made once per user, and that’s the model the game is designed around.

Its not a design goal for people to hoard skins, so making sure the system is fair for those people isn’t a priority.

PopeUrban.2578:

ronpierce.2760:

PopeUrban.2578:

This just in: Everything is a conspiracy.

The fact is that, when an Anet employee plays the live game they are always privy in one way or another to some form of insider information. That’s unavoidable.

However, the fact is that those same employees don’t really care to utilize that information in ways that impact the economy overly much, as they are such a small percentage of the live player base that any move they make can only result in negligable economic impact.

You seem to be under the impression that a significant portion of these weapon skins rested in the accounts of Anet employees. Given the cluster-wide nature of the GW2 auction house, it’s inconcievable that Anet employees’ live account make up a significant enough portion of the market for anything to have a notable impact.

When you see speculators buying things up or price fixing, the law of averages indicates an almost direct certainty that it’s another normal player, not an Anet employee responsible, simply because the auction house system serves the entire region

I’m not sure only Devs have access to private test realms at all times. I know for a fact there have been instances of too tier players having access to content early to test the changes and provide feedback. Now, I don’t know how common that is, but if it does happen more regularly than expected (which is never announced anyways, as far as I can tell), it’s not so much a conspiracy as a problem with people using early information to their gain. That’s… Really not that hard to believe… And who’s to really fault them other than ethics police?

@Razor, yeah it can be a big deal. If it is in fact the case (and there has been other evidence of this), it explains a lot of large price swings which affect all players wanting to get in on new content that is pre-rigged, if you will, to cost more and line the pockets of early testers.

Of course, that is, depending on how often these private testing a occur with players close to the devs.

I’ve discussed and understood some class changes, for instance, by working closely with the devs on balance and feedback. Luckily that’s just PvP and has no real lasting benefit, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility.

ALL that said, it’s probably not that big of a deal overall. It’s just really kitten lucky for those players. I can’t blame them though. Especially ones who dump high priced items about to crash to limit the losses coming. It’d be hard to not want to jump at that, knowing the price was soon to plummet.

Sure, but even if we’re talking about people with access to those testing environments, it’s still a small enough portion of the population to be of negligable impact.

What’s interesting about MMO economies in a game that isn’t designed around economic fairness is that nothing is sacred. The value of an item can fluctuate wildly at the drop of a hat. Combine that with almost certain inflation in MMO economies (especially economies, like GW2, where the vast majority of final product goods experience no repeat purchases due to there being no attrition/desctruction of those items built in to the system) and you find an environment almost openly hostile to long term investment.

And that’s okay. The economy isn’t designed around long term investment. it’s designed around short term trading for personal gain, and it expects players to immediately spend that wealth.

Economic fairness in terms of any sort of “investment economy” simply isn’t a pillar a game like GW2’s economy is designed around. It’s important that costs to crate/acquire items are reasonable, not that the payouts for hoarding items and consistant, because the core acquisition structure of the game is modeled around using, not saving items.

Just so we’re clear, I’m not the one complaining here. I’m just explaining the possible validity of the situation. It’s very plausible. The issue at hand lies within fairness, and it’s easy to be upset a very select few get an upper hand and more game enjoyment because of developer preference. If (I say IF) it’s true, one could potentially make HUGE profits on expected price changes due to a single patch.

I don’t really care, if it is the case, lucky them. I don’t do a ton of pve anyways (so it affects me less). But to say it’s just a crazy conspiracy and paranoia… I just don’t think that’s so easy to say, that’s all. Trying to be fair here.

Very possible, no I don’t really think it matters that much, but yes, I think it can be fairly impactful even if I don’t agree that impact matters.

Yeah, that’s basically what I’m saying.

If you break it down enough, it’s impossible for that kind of economic equity to be completely fair, but at the same time it doesn’t really matter all that much.

The alternative is to not have actual real people testing things, ar developers actually playing their own game, which would have far more dire consequences for the game than a slight advantage on a handful of high value trades in a game in which gold buys, at most, a shiny new texture for some gear.

So MAYBE its a little unfair, but it’s okay in the grand scheme of things because it’s largely a game about killing stuff, and racking up gold is a by product, rather than the other way around.

The problem with this wonderfully elaborate conspiracy theory is that according to the OP someone from Anet said these weapons come from combining rares in the Mystic Forge. Which is probably the single most common use of the Forge.

For it to be ‘insider trading’, someone at Anet taking advantage of a secret change it’d have to be a recipe regular players would almost certainly never find out. Like…I don’t know combine 5 T1 snowflakes, a seasoned wood staff head, lettuce and bloodstone dust and it’ll drop one of those weapons.

Getting them from combining rares would also explain the rapid increase in supply and drop in price. As various people have pointed out whenever this topic comes up if it was one person, or even a small group of people either ‘hacking’ the game to produce new skins or simply selling off old ones they’ve been hanging onto they’re being really stupid about it. So many have been listed, undercutting previous prices, that the price has dropped dramatically, effectively ruining the appeal of doing it.

If anyone was in control of the price it’d make more sense to just list a few at a time, they’d actually make more gold and there’d be less risk of drawing attention and getting caught.

Whereas what we’re seeing here is exactly what happens when either a new item or a new supply hits and tons of people are taking advantage of it. Like when they increased the drop rate of the weapons from the Aetherpath.

The thing with gems is more like the old problem with hot dogs and hot dog buns but that has been fixed in recent years. In GW2 you can “fix” that by buying some gems with gold. It also seems to be an extremely common practice in any game with a cash shop. GW1 was probably one of the only exceptions.

I opened this thread thinking it was about actual Insider Trading that someone at Anet was arrested on.

slamfunction.7462:

John Smith.4610:

What is salami slicing?

For example:
- I pay $10 for 800 gems.
- I buy an some sort of kit or etc for 460 gems
- This now leaves me with 340 gems
- i find something else to buy for 300 gems
- I now have 40 gems left
- i can’t buy anything for 40 gems, in the gem store
- So, to make value of that 40 gems, i convert it to gold
- Depending on the gem to gold rate, i’ll almost always still have anywhere from 1-10 gems left over, that i can’t do anything with
- Each gem is 0.0125 cents
- This leads to anywhere from 0.0125 to 0.125 cents that i’ve spent, that never sees any return, unless i buy more gems, and repeat the process until i zero out my gem balance

You can multiply these numbers by however many active customers you have, and see the scheme unfold every month, unless these are repeat customers. But, theres no solid way for the playerbase to know this. So, it can only be assumed that the gem to gold UI update was an elaborate salami slicing scheme.

Well, if it bothers you that much, here is a solution.

1: Figure out the number of gems you need to cash out to gold.
2: Farm stuff until you can afford to buy that number of gems with the gold gained by farming.
3: Buy the needed gems.
4: Turn gems back into gold.

Or →

An easier solution…don’t buy gems.

Danikat.8537:

For it to be ‘insider trading’, someone at Anet taking advantage of a secret change it’d have to be a recipe regular players would almost certainly never find out. Like…I don’t know combine 5 T1 snowflakes, a seasoned wood staff head, lettuce and bloodstone dust and it’ll drop one of those weapons.

You do realize that the whole idea this theory pivots on is that the bubble burst happened before the patch that supposedly erroneously introduced the greens to the MF table.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/New-items-in-the-Mystic-Forge/first#post6120287

I.E. someone knew such a change was coming and dumped their supply before it lost value.

Substance E.4852:

Danikat.8537:

For it to be ‘insider trading’, someone at Anet taking advantage of a secret change it’d have to be a recipe regular players would almost certainly never find out. Like…I don’t know combine 5 T1 snowflakes, a seasoned wood staff head, lettuce and bloodstone dust and it’ll drop one of those weapons.

You do realize that the whole idea this theory pivots on is that the bubble burst happened before the patch that supposedly erroneously introduced the greens to the MF table.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/New-items-in-the-Mystic-Forge/first#post6120287

I.E. someone knew such a change was coming and dumped their supply before it lost value.

My thinking: some player knew a low level dev, and they chit chatted… Then that one player decided to be a kitten friend, and just did what you said they did. Sound about right?

I don’t get it. The complaint, before, was that someone had way too many Halloween Skins (specifically Ghastly Grinning), and then the weapons starting dropping from the Forge.

Two different concerns to me. Whether the person or persons knew or didn’t know about the upcoming Forge weapons, I thought the real concern was that they had so many of the skins (which are something completely different).

Either way, I don’t think this, or the supposed ‘salami slicing’ makes much difference; both were remedied rather quickly.

Flowe.1835:

My thinking: some player knew a low level dev, and they chit chatted… Then that one player decided to be a kitten friend, and just did what you said they did. Sound about right?

More or less.

Having 250+ people all working in close proximity in the same office means things get around and people overhear things they shouldn’t.

I mean, hell, if the one post is to be believed, this wasn’t even supposed to be in the patch in the first place. Clearly, communication on this element wasn’t up to par.

Just to be clear, I’m not saying this is what happened, but anyone who thinks it’s impossible or so unlikely as to not be considerable is just burying their head in the sand.

From the sounds of things, some players had a bunch of Halloween weapon skins but were only selling them 1 at a time on the trading post to keep the prices high.

Then players found they could get certain skins from the mystic forge, and this lowered the value of the Halloween weapon skins as more players tossed items into the MF. The players hoarding their skins dumped them all in the TP to get as much gold as they can before they became worthless.

As stated by a dev, the skins in the mystic forge wasn’t suppose to happen yet. But it’s already had an impact on the game.

As for the currency exchange: the minimum you can sell gems for is 1 gold for how ever many is the current rate. So if the current rate is 3 gems for 1 gold and you have 5 to sell, you’ll end up with 2 you can’t get rid of.

Here’s the thing: some players don’t realize that when selling gems in the currency exchange you pay a fee, just like when selling items in the trading post. I don’t know how much the fee is but I’m sure it’s a fixed percentage. The problem with that is the fee is completely hidden, so you never know how much it is.

That’s why there’s a discrepancy. You pay more to buy gems then you get for selling gems. Not an accurate figure, just an example: buy 5 gems for 10 gold, or sell 5 gems for 9 gold, a 1 gold difference.

It would be nice if you could actually sell a single gem in the currency exchange if that’s all you have left to sell. There was 1 time I sold some gems and wound up with a few I couldn’t get rid of. Not enough gems to buy something in the gem shop, and about 1-3 gems too little to sell them off. It would also be nice to have the hidden fee actually listed so players know how much gold they’re losing when selling gems.

Substance E.4852:

Flowe.1835:

My thinking: some player knew a low level dev, and they chit chatted… Then that one player decided to be a kitten friend, and just did what you said they did. Sound about right?

More or less.

Having 250+ people all working in close proximity in the same office means things get around and people overhear things they shouldn’t.

I mean, hell, if the one post is to be believed, this wasn’t even supposed to be in the patch in the first place. Clearly, communication on this element wasn’t up to par.

Just to be clear, I’m not saying this is what happened, but anyone who thinks it’s impossible or so unlikely as to not be considerable is just burying their head in the sand.

I think they should just remove the mystic forge items patch for now, so that the economy doesn’t collapse. Otherwise I’m in concurrence that Arena Net do not benefit much (if at all) from kittening up in game economy.

Charrbeque.8729:

From the sounds of things, some players had a bunch of Halloween weapon skins but were only selling them 1 at a time on the trading post to keep the prices high.

Then players found they could get certain skins from the mystic forge, and this lowered the value of the Halloween weapon skins as more players tossed items into the MF. The players hoarding their skins dumped them all in the TP to get as much gold as they can before they became worthless.

Except the drop in price started about the same time we were told the release date of HoT.

Flowe.1835:

Substance E.4852:

Flowe.1835:

My thinking: some player knew a low level dev, and they chit chatted… Then that one player decided to be a kitten friend, and just did what you said they did. Sound about right?

More or less.

Having 250+ people all working in close proximity in the same office means things get around and people overhear things they shouldn’t.

I mean, hell, if the one post is to be believed, this wasn’t even supposed to be in the patch in the first place. Clearly, communication on this element wasn’t up to par.

Just to be clear, I’m not saying this is what happened, but anyone who thinks it’s impossible or so unlikely as to not be considerable is just burying their head in the sand.

I think they should just remove the mystic forge items patch for now, so that the economy doesn’t collapse. Otherwise I’m in concurrence that Arena Net do not benefit much (if at all) from kittening up in game economy.

Collapse what? The only thing that is effected by this is the value of the hordes of skins people have been stashing away. They gambled and lost. Maybe they’ll think twice before creating a bubble on speculation.

Nothing bad is actually happening on a global scale.

If anything all this does is give people more reasons to MF rares.

I’m sure ArenaNet are keeping an eye on things.

:PutsOnTinFoilHat:

The Ferengi are to blame. Always trying to corner the market.

I wish I could afford a nice moon somewhere in the Alpha Quadrant and retire. But noooOooOOo. Them drat Ferengi gotta gotta take up all the gold for themselves.

The jokes on them though. Once they find out it’s just plain old gold and not pressed latinum, it will be too late.

There was a guy in LA before the quarterly update, he was spamming the map chat, desperately trying to sell his Ilex of Dreams for 300g. I didn’t understand him, because the lowest sell order was ~370g at that time and players almost never sell items in map chat.

Could it be possible that there are “markers” people have found in the game data after an update?

Also, since this game belongs to Anet, maybe they inject and remove items that don’t belong to anyone to stimulate the economy. Ive wondered about this for a while now. If prices get out of hand and people play the market hard enough, or if prices become ridiculous, they step in to “normalize” it.

Cobrakon.3108:

Could it be possible that there are “markers” people have found in the game data after an update?

Also, since this game belongs to Anet, maybe they inject and remove items that don’t belong to anyone to stimulate the economy. Ive wondered about this for a while now. If prices get out of hand and people play the market hard enough, or if prices become ridiculous, they step in to “normalize” it.

If they do step in, it’s not be directly creating “nothing” from something.They’ll create new supply and/or demand sources of those things, not directly dump those items into the market.

as soon as you start talking like a conspiracy theorist, i tune you out. blahblahinsidejobblahkitteningblah

I could imagine players getting to be good “friends” with anet employees, who might knowingly or unknowingly let slip tidbits of info, like the increased drop rate of aetherpath skins.

Before the Halloween patch last year an anet employee who ran with us occasionally told us there’s something come that he’s excited about (turns out he was talking about the bat shoulder skin), but that’s all he gave us lol, nothing that could’ve helped us with preparing for getting it. Not all people are as able to keep their lips sealed though.

Let me ask you this….can you, honestly, trust a man who uses an overly grand and dramatic writing style to make an accusation with little to no actual evidence?

Is it “merely coincidence” that he uses excessive amounts of quotations to imply coincidence when a direct link would not be deduced if the evidence was presented neutrally?

Is it “merely coincidence” that he uses a writing style with phrases like “I will let you answer that” or “Let me ask you this” that imply neutrality when he is also leading people to the conclusion he wants them to draw?

Is it “merely coincidence” that his writing style implies guilt has already been clearly established when the evidence presented could be explained with half a dozen or more benign and completely reasonable explanations?

I will let you answer that, but to me, this is just like writing on the wall that points to one and only one truth.

MadRabbit.3179:

Let me ask you this….can you, honestly, trust a man who uses an overly grand and dramatic writing style to make an accusation with little to no actual evidence?

Is it “merely coincidence” that he uses excessive amounts of quotations to imply coincidence when a direct link would not be deduced if the evidence was presented neutrally?

Is it “merely coincidence” that he uses a writing style with phrases like “I will let you answer that” or “Let me ask you this” that imply neutrality when he is also leading people to the conclusion he wants them to draw?

Is it “merely coincidence” that his writing style implies guilt has already been clearly established when the evidence presented could be explained with half a dozen or more benign and completely reasonable explanations?

I will let you answer that, but to me, this is just like writing on the wall that points to one and only one truth.

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

He’s full of kitten and he knows it.

But seriously, dude, writing like this isn’t helping promote actual discussion nor is it scoring you any points with anyone with high school level critical thinking skills.

So then, let me ask one more question: Is it “merely coincidence” that John Smith has not answered me, or the community, with any explanation within 24 hours of this post being created? Since you like to pick apart my issue, let me be more specific: Is it merely coincidence that he hasn’t replied on how the involved parties (may or may not be a dev, directly) knew to begin dumping the items in question, and steadily lowering the price over the course of a month, or two?

Troll me all you want, but i’d like some answers, and i can assure you that it wasn’t “dumb luck” or “intelligent marketing”, or even “leaked patch details from a previous patch”. I can assure you of these things, because as a community, we are so driven for any “bone”(of information) that ANet throws to us, in terms of news, or progress on this game, that as soon as one person knows it, it goes viral both here, and on the subreddit.

And, its not only JUST the halloween skins. My community brought me up to speed on other incidents, just like this one. Such as the items on the TP that were collection items for an achievement called “Treasure hunter”. Apparently, the prices on these items soared, just before the announcement or patch was rolled out, where these changes went live.

Again, trolling me, is trolling yourselves. I understand you are so passionate about the game, that any idea of deceit from a company you’ve come to love and trust is the foulest thing you can imagine. It may not even be something the company condones. It may just be some dev’s buddies who got some insight that led them to this advantage on the market. That being said, i believe that ANet owes its playerbase some sort of assurance that the issue has been found, resolved, and will be prevented the next time something like this could potentially occur.

So, call everything i say is a fallacy, but the evidence is in the community’s observations, which have been thoroughly documented, not only on these forums, but on the subreddit as well. I think we deserve some sort of fairplay assurances from ANet internally, as well as their rules on hacking and cheating.

slamfunction.7462:

So then, let me ask one more question: Is it “merely coincidence” that John Smith has not answered me, or the community, with any explanation within 24 hours of this post being created? Since you like to pick apart my issue, let me be more specific: Is it merely coincidence that he hasn’t replied on how the involved parties (may or may not be a dev, directly) knew to begin dumping the items in question, and steadily lowering the price over the course of a month, or two?

Dude, John is a busy guy. It’s not coincidence, it’s common sense; he doesn’t have the time or priority to come here and deal with tin-hatters. He is busy working to make the game great, as he should be.

You need to contact your local reaper and chill.

It’s not mere coincidence, it just escapes you that perhaps your theory isn’t worth addressing.

slamfunction.7462:

So then, let me ask one more question: Is it “merely coincidence” that John Smith has not answered me, or the community, with any explanation within 24 hours of this post being created?

No, of course it isn’t.

1. Anet devs do not answer often, nor do they answer everyone. Not getting answered is the usual state.

2. 24 hours is a bit short for answer anyway.

3. John Smith generally answers only when there are some serious concerns raised.

slamfunction.7462:

Since you like to pick apart my issue, let me be more specific: Is it merely coincidence that he hasn’t replied on how the involved parties (may or may not be a dev, directly) knew to begin dumping the items in question, and steadily lowering the price over the course of a month, or two?

And here you go again with treating your unproven suspicions as facts.

slamfunction.7462:

And, its not only JUST the halloween skins. My community brought me up to speed on other incidents, just like this one. Such as the items on the TP that were collection items for an achievement called “Treasure hunter”. Apparently, the prices on these items soared, just before the announcement or patch was rolled out, where these changes went live.

That’s actually not true, check your facts first.

slamfunction.7462:

That being said, i believe that ANet owes its playerbase some sort of assurance that the issue has been found, resolved, and will be prevented the next time something like this could potentially occur.

Only if there indeed is an issue. Which at this point hasn’t been proven yet.

1 word. Capitalism.

Insider knowledge is getting abused a lot. There are players that have access to alpha builds (like some newspages and raid testers) and they spread information on teamspeaks and of course for their own use. If Anet thinks this isnt happening they are fooling themselves.

slamfunction.7462:

So then, let me ask one more question: Is it “merely coincidence” that John Smith has not answered me, or the community, with any explanation within 24 hours of this post being created? Since you like to pick apart my issue, let me be more specific: Is it merely coincidence that he hasn’t replied on how the involved parties (may or may not be a dev, directly) knew to begin dumping the items in question, and steadily lowering the price over the course of a month, or two?
-snipping the tinfoil-

You’ve gotta be pretty ignorant to not realize that JS HAS answered you. The mere fact he responded to you with just a picture of people wearing tinfoil hats should be enough for you to come to the conclusion that you’re full of kitten as others have stated.

The only other reason for this sort of ignorance is that you’re one of the people who hoarded those skins and basically lost hard with this patch.

slamfunction.7462:

So then, let me ask one more question: Is it “merely coincidence” that John Smith has not answered me, or the community, with any explanation within 24 hours of this post being created? Since you like to pick apart my issue, let me be more specific: Is it merely coincidence that he hasn’t replied on how the involved parties (may or may not be a dev, directly) knew to begin dumping the items in question, and steadily lowering the price over the course of a month, or two?

No, not at all, but once again, you are implying that there is only one definitive answer to this question and that’s just John not responding, because he is hiding something or another.

Another very plausible answer is that you are being kind of a kitten and he doesn’t particularly want to answer, since he’s not bound to.

I mean, some completely anonymous poster writes up an overzealous accusation based on no solid evidence and then demands answers? Who do you think you are? Besides pretending to be a righteous prosecutor on an episode of Law and Order.

Troll me all you want, but i’d like some answers, and i can assure you that it wasn’t “dumb luck” or “intelligent marketing”, or even “leaked patch details from a previous patch”. I can assure you of these things, because as a community, we are so driven for any “bone”(of information) that ANet throws to us, in terms of news, or progress on this game, that as soon as one person knows it, it goes viral both here, and on the subreddit.

No, you can’t. You can’t assure me of ANY of those things AT ALL and that’s why I am being satirical here. You have no solid evidence at all. Nothing. Zero. It’s nothing more than conjecture.

It CAN be lucky speculation.
It CAN be a developer casually talking about a new feature in a public setting that eventually got around to certain profiteers.

You are a LONG way from a developer sharing information for a cut of profits or a developer with some kind of hidden account flipping assets for his own gain.

I understand Arenanet employees are bound by NDAs, so why would they do that? Why risk their jobs? You say real money is involved, but its only involved in the sense of a devaluation of the currency that players used to buy their gold. You can’t take gold and liquidate it to straight cash directly; there is very little net benefit here besides the acquisition of in game currency, something not everyone cares a whole lot about. I’m sure in all those of episodes of Law and Order someone mentioned something about motive and it being important.

You don’t even know how long the feature has been in development or when it was conceived. You have like 6th months worth of strange of prices you are tracing back to this single feature and you don’t even have that piece of information.

You aren’t here to discuss this issue. You are here to tell everyone exactly how it is even though you can’t.

And, its not only JUST the halloween skins. My community brought me up to speed on other incidents, just like this one. Such as the items on the TP that were collection items for an achievement called “Treasure hunter”. Apparently, the prices on these items soared, just before the announcement or patch was rolled out, where these changes went live.

Interesting incidents that are worth discussion, but those arent in your post, so what do you want me to say?

Again, trolling me, is trolling yourselves.

No trolling you is trolling you. For everyone else, it’s a satirical piece that highlights how imbalanced and overly zealous your point of view is at the moment. That’s a pretty valuable contribution to this thread.

I understand you are so passionate about the game, that any idea of deceit from a company you’ve come to love and trust is the foulest thing you can imagine. It may not even be something the company condones. It may just be some dev’s buddies who got some insight that led them to this advantage on the market. That being said, i believe that ANet owes its playerbase some sort of assurance that the issue has been found, resolved, and will be prevented the next time something like this could potentially occur.

Still falsely claiming you have proven something you haven’t. It’s not that I am not entertaining the possibility of it being insider trading. It’s that I am not flat out buying what you are selling hook, line and sinker and the way you have chosen to present this (and still are presenting it) doesn’t leave room for any consideration to this not being malicious actions on the part of an Anet employee.

So, call everything i say is a fallacy, but the evidence is in the community’s observations, which have been thoroughly documented, not only on these forums, but on the subreddit as well. I think we deserve some sort of fairplay assurances from ANet internally, as well as their rules on hacking and cheating.

And there is actually some interesting stuff there that’s worth looking into, but you are false portraying it as a bloody knife packaged with a video of murder being committed
and a signed confession and it’s none of those things.

I can assure you of these things, because as a community, we are so driven for any “bone”(of information) that ANet throws to us, in terms of news, or progress on this game, that as soon as one person knows it, it goes viral both here, and on the subreddit.

Just wondering. If the above is true, why didn’t everyone know about the new MF recipes long before the patch? I mean, the premise is some one(s) knew about it and profited, no? Then why didn’t we all know?

Hmmm….