Guild Wars 2

It’s a simple theory/hypothesis based SOLELY on what I’ve seen in ANET’s actions. This hypothesis has no scientific merit whatsoever. Basically, an easy way to get gems if from the $25 cards that give 2k gems. Then they make packs worth EXACTLY 2k gems (sale price 100% of the time mind you). What if they do this because when you convert gems to gold, it doesn’t grab the gold from other players, but rather puts more gold into the economy. (Obviously we will never know how the exchange is programmed, that’s Anet’s secret, so essentially, it could be the biggest legal gambling scam ever conceived). This puts incentive on the staff to raise the price of gold from gems as much as possible. They have to nerf in game liquid rewards to raise that price and make people feel pressured to buy gems to get gold. This pressure builds up against a high-cost gem to gold wall and the economy takes a huge downturn because people are upset that they can’t get the gold they want without paying more. Long story short, I’m rambling. Discuss, flame, battle, and do what you do forum people.

puts on the tinfoil hat

Rereads

Takes off hat

Why add the extra “anet is lying” to the theory when the exchange itself already acts this way? Or am I just having a durrrr moment?

The gem→gold→gem conversion is an artificial fallacy. The gem store is essentially printing new money and I don’t care what anyone says, there is WAY more gold coming in to the economy via the gem store than is going in to the gem store. In game gold is just worth too much for most people to waste it like that. 142g for just 800 gems…OUCH!!!

Snow.2048:

puts on the tinfoil hat

Rereads

Takes off hat

Why add the extra “anet is lying” to the theory when the exchange itself already acts this way? Or am I just having a durrrr moment?

Because I thought it was a “gems in, gold out from other players” closed loop type of thing. I didn’t think they would just “print” more money out of air. Maybe I was having the durrr moment for not making this realization or being hopefully ignorant, either or.

I don’t think there would be an issue if the exchange wasn’t so heavily manipulated by Anet. If you believe them that the prices are purely driven by the players, you’re sadly mistaken.

If more people are buying gems to convert into gold……then the actual gold to gem rate should change in proportion (like they claimed it would).

It would also be nice if the exchange rate between the two exchanges wasn’t further manipulated by Anet to have a set percentage deficit between them. I think it’s at about 30 percent…when I last looked.

i.e.

If you buy $20.00 worth of gems to buy gold with, and decide you’d rather have the gems back…..you should get the $20.00 worth of gems back by converting the gold you just bought.

As it is, the “giant pool” model that Anet has claimed was in place is total smoke and mirrors. There’s a 30% exchange fee when going back and forth between exchange processes.

Leamas.5803:

The gem->gold->gem conversion is an artificial fallacy. The gem store is essentially printing new money and I don’t care what anyone says, there is WAY more gold coming in to the economy via the gem store than is going in to the gem store. In game gold is just worth too much for most people to waste it like that. 142g for just 800 gems…OUCH!!!

You really can’t buy much for 800 gems.

Bravo bravo!! I’ve been lynched many a time trying to explain some of the finer points that you have all put here. Now let me just blow kitten in the “my gems are traded with players for their gold, determines the exchange rate” fallacy:

This isn’t the TP and I’m not placing order!

Anet would have us believe that the gem/gold exchange works like the TP to determine rate. the TP does determine an items value, black lion skins are a good example. If there are lots of a certain skin from a set, the price is lower, because demand is low. If a different skin from the set only has 3 or 4 listed, then the value is higher as demand is higher.

With gems, there is no way to tell if gems are in demand or if indeed they are in short supply. Because we do not see that information, we have to take anets word for this.

According to the Anet version of its workings, if there is an abundance of gems in the world, then the gold to gems cost will be lower. If there is a low amount of gems available then demand is higher than the supply so the gold to gems cost will be higher.

This hits a number of problems, one being that Anet would never let the amount of gems get low in any shape or form as it would affect their ability to make real cash from selling gems to players via credit card.

This then highlights another problem, if Anet would never limit the amount of gems in circulation, then how come over the past year and a half, 800 gems has gone from 64g for 800 to 150g for 800?

As another here posted, if you paid £20 for X amount of gems and then decided to sell them, you would (and rightly so) expect £20 back for them. As we see in the exchange, we pay more to get 800 gems than we get for selling them.

Anet are fully in control of the price and its manipulation of gem/gold exchange rate. To think otherwise is to believe the conspiracy that Anet are NOT fixing prices.

What you might also call a conspiracy, is an idea taken from TP flippers but also would affect supply and demand of items, this:

If Anet fixes gem/gold prices, what if Anet ( who also control gold into game ) started buying up ALL the expensive items and then relisting them at a far more expensive price, forcing players to think about parting with real cash to be able to afford those items.

Would put RNG into a whole new category if that was happening, but who could stop them from doing this?

A great thread all, nice to see some likeminded posts :-)

Lanaeris.3845:

This hypothesis has no scientific merit whatsoever.

I could not have put it any better.

Here is something interesting i found: I quit GW2 and began playing Blizzard products again. For a little less that $300, i got the full SC2 series, The new Overwatch game (with added skins and other Blizzard games perks), at least 15 Heroes of The Storm champs, and about 15 skins. In GW2, $300 equals 1.5 Legendary weapons. 1.5 Legendary SKINS for $300!!!

Now, i won’t be the one to say its not worth it, because if yer a die hard GW fan, you’d give yer first born for something unique in game. What i am saying, is that the value you get from your money is very questionable when approaching the GW2 Gem Store.

Its just not worth it. And anyone who believes John Smith’s “reduction of liquid assets” to bring down deflation in the game, is fooling themselves, or deserves to be taken as a sucker. All they did was force more fans to purchase more gems, to convert it to gold. There ain’t no “tinfoil hat”. This is the reality of this game. The sooner you realize that, the better off you’ll enjoy the game, knowing that the economy is little more than an elusive trap to get you to buy gems.

Leamas.5803:

The gem->gold->gem conversion is an artificial fallacy. The gem store is essentially printing new money and I don’t care what anyone says, there is WAY more gold coming in to the economy via the gem store than is going in to the gem store. In game gold is just worth too much for most people to waste it like that. 142g for just 800 gems…OUCH!!!

Hard to argue with someone who already has his mind made up. It’s like discussing something with someone with their fingers in their ears going LALALALALALA.

It’s the economist that has taken over the role of gamedirector so there’s really nothing else to expect.

I don’t believe for a second TP either is just driven by players supply and demand. About a month prior to HoT launch the tp-supply of a type of rice-balls (nourishment) stood at 700.000. In one single go ‘someone’ purchased 600.000 of them leaving 100.000 left in TP. That’s 2400 stacks. Who could store that in the first place and what would they do with so many??

Also….

Jimmy Hoffa is buried under Anet’s Washington HQ.

Anet used experimental Chronomancer techniques (FYI all GW2 skills are tested in real life in a secret underground facility before being implemented in the game) to travel back in time to kill JFK. It was a single illusory gunman bullet.

The earth is only three thousand years old (and early mankind coexisted with dinosaurs).

The moon landing was faked.

The earth is flat.

…and many more secret truths.

Well for what it is worth, the gem to gold ratio seems to follow gem demand and gold supply fairly normally. When there is a gemstore promotion, gems rise in demand and value because people need the gems to make purchases and claim the discounts or desired cosmetic. As gold has progressively gotten easier to obtain in the past few years gold has lost it’s value compared to gems in step. Since HoT’s constriction/sinking of gold supply, gems have fallen in value vs gold. Seems reasonable to me.

HenleyLegoMan.4987:

According to the Anet version of its workings, if there is an abundance of gems in the world, then the gold to gems cost will be lower. If there is a low amount of gems available then demand is higher than the supply so the gold to gems cost will be higher.
This hits a number of problems, one being that Anet would never let the amount of gems get low in any shape or form as it would affect their ability to make real cash from selling gems to players via credit card.
This then highlights another problem, if Anet would never limit the amount of gems in circulation, then how come over the past year and a half, 800 gems has gone from 64g for 800 to 150g for 800?

The gem exchange is based on the number of gems IN the exchange, rather than what is in player’s hands. But you can’t really think of the gem exchange containing gems either, rather it has a balance. You are right that the gem exchange likely has an ‘unlimited’ supply of gems.

I think the exchange works by having an internal balance of gems that could be positive or negative (mostly negative). Currently there is a very negative balance of gems in the gem exchange meaning that the exchange has produced more gems, than it has consumed. The exchange rate with gold is then based on this balance, and with a negative balance of gems, gems will exchange for more and more gold. The gem exchange works by discouraging the balance from moving. So the negative balance discourages further ‘loaning’ or creation of gems by making gems worth/cost/sell for more. The gem exchange isn’t like the trading post, because the gem exchange can contain a negative amount of gems while the trading post can’t have negative balance of objects.

The negative balance, means it takes more and more gold to get gems, and it means that it is more likely for people to buy gems so that they can get an increasing amount of gold from the exchange.’

Annika.7084:

I don’t believe for a second TP either is just driven by players supply and demand. About a month prior to HoT launch the tp-supply of a type of rice-balls (nourishment) stood at 700.000. In one single go ‘someone’ purchased 600.000 of them leaving 100.000 left in TP. That’s 2400 stacks. Who could store that in the first place and what would they do with so many??

It’s called playing the market. Lots of people make their gold through TP flipping.

And you don’t need inventory space to store 2400 stacks, you just need not collect the items waiting for delivery in the TP.

So much conspiracy theory in this thread. It would be funny if there wasn’t so much blatant ignorance and refusing to look at facts. I somehow doubt that any of the “anet is evil and manipulates the gem exchange” people pay much attention to the fluctuations in the gem market.

Pandaman.4758:

Annika.7084:

I don’t believe for a second TP either is just driven by players supply and demand. About a month prior to HoT launch the tp-supply of a type of rice-balls (nourishment) stood at 700.000. In one single go ‘someone’ purchased 600.000 of them leaving 100.000 left in TP. That’s 2400 stacks. Who could store that in the first place and what would they do with so many??

It’s called playing the market. Lots of people make their gold through TP flipping.

And you don’t need inventory space to store 2400 stacks, you just need not collect the items waiting for delivery in the TP.

Or they pull one batch out of the trading post, immediately relist at a higher price they expect it to reach later, pull another batch out, relist, pull, relist…..

No extra storage needed.

I think the reason we are seeing worry is because it’s so easy for Anet (unwillingly because of business) to “tweak” the system at any point into their favor without having to tell anybody. If we could make real life money from this game, what they are doing is completely illegal in every sense because of gambling and fixing the odds; Thankfully, that’s not the case, but I just wanted to put things into a different perspective.

You know, there’s two kinds of conspiracy theories that I hear often. The first kind is the one that applies an extremely elaborate and convoluted hidden collaboration to explain a complicated issue where nobody is in control. The second kind is is one that applies an extremely elaborate and convoluted hidden collaboration to explain away common sense. This conspiracy is the latter.

You guys are trying to come up with an elaborate deception to explain something that is really simple. Anet sets up a gem exchange system, and puts in a 30% reduction on the gold -> gem exchange to prevent stock market exchanges. They used a fixed set of gems as a basket, and then program a dynamic exchange rate based on ratio of gems that have been created or destroyed in respect to this basket. The whole “manual manipulation” thing is silly and pointless, when you can just write a simple program that does it for you. It isn’t like the whole “people will buy gems if gems are cheap” thing is going to go away, so you set up an automated system to have the price of gems be adjusted automatically, and let basic economic principle take care of the rest. It wouldn’t even be that hard. Its just fractions!

The throttle on gold -> gem conversions isn’t mean to make things a gigantic gamble. It is meant to make things a stupid gamble. It is there to make using real money to buy gemstore items more appealing, and in-game gold less appealing. I’m fairly certain it acts as a market stabilizer, too.

And there you have it. The conspiracy is that no, Anet didn’t go with an automated, low-maintenance system and explicitly weighted it toward real money exchanges. Instead, they secretly manually manipulate the prices of gems and the prices of items just to mildly inconvenience players, but only in such a way that it makes sense to economists.

I’d hate to be the one to tell you this… wait, no. Scratch that. I love to be the one to tell you this: Liquid rewards in game don’t mean squat regarding the gem conversion. Under an automated system, the price of gems would adjust to inflation eventually. Under a conspiracy based “they’re controlling EVERYTHING!” system, they’d just manually adjust the price anyway, so again it doesn’t matter. Either way that line of thinking doesn’t work.

There is also no way that your exchange can be construed as a misrepresentation. If you buy a $25 gift card for 2000 gems, that is exactly what you get. These gems don’t go away. You can buy the same things you wanted to buy. If you happen to buy something and later regret the decision, there was still no deception. You got exactly what you paid for, as it was listed. Anet isn’t lightly adjusting the value of gem → gold exchanges ever so slightly just to eek out cash from you. It wouldn’t work. You can still pay the same amount of money for the same amount of gems to buy the same item, and if you happen to want to convert gems → gold anyway, you end up in a better position than you were prior. The entirety of the whole “buy it for real money instead” hinges solely on you having the exact amount of gold such that the supposed false-inflation for highly demanded items would adjust the price into a range where you not only don’t possess enough gold, but also lack the ability to make that amount of gold in the allotted timeframe. To elaborate in list form, you would need to be someone who:

A)Is in that narrow range where you could’ve afforded it, but can’t after the gem price spike.
B)Has a playschedule that prevents you from acquiring the difference in price before that item leaves the store (set timeframe undetermined)
C)Is in that specific group that highly desires this item so much that they have to get it
D)Is a person who does not have a resting amount of gems in your pack, thus forcing you to acquire them.
E)Is a person capable of shelling out money as needed to buy the product, but also be a person who would shell out money to buy any product. In a sense, you have to be IRL rich enough to spend cash on a frivolous game, but not IRL rich enough to not care about spending cash on a frivolous game.
F)Is in a specific, very narrow section, wherein the natural inflation that would emerge from a high demand gemstore item via an automated system would insufficient to move the price of that item into such a state that conditions A, B, and D are fulfilled, and thus special intervention is required.

This is not an untapped market. It is a fluke in customer demographics. There is no money to be earned in this. It is the most trivial of things to be deceptive about.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

You know, there’s two kinds of conspiracy theories that I hear often. The first kind is the one that applies an extremely elaborate and convoluted hidden collaboration to explain a complicated issue where nobody is in control. The second kind is is one that applies an extremely elaborate and convoluted hidden collaboration to explain away common sense. This conspiracy is the latter.

You guys are trying to come up with an elaborate deception to explain something that is really simple. Anet sets up a gem exchange system, and puts in a 30% reduction on the gold -> gem exchange to prevent stock market exchanges. They used a fixed set of gems as a basket, and then program a dynamic exchange rate based on ratio of gems that have been created or destroyed in respect to this basket. The whole “manual manipulation” thing is silly and pointless, when you can just write a simple program that does it for you. It isn’t like the whole “people will buy gems if gems are cheap” thing is going to go away, so you set up an automated system to have the price of gems be adjusted automatically, and let basic economic principle take care of the rest. It wouldn’t even be that hard. Its just fractions!

The throttle on gold -> gem conversions isn’t mean to make things a gigantic gamble. It is meant to make things a stupid gamble. It is there to make using real money to buy gemstore items more appealing, and in-game gold less appealing. I’m fairly certain it acts as a market stabilizer, too.

And there you have it. The conspiracy is that no, Anet didn’t go with an automated, low-maintenance system and explicitly weighted it toward real money exchanges. Instead, they secretly manually manipulate the prices of gems and the prices of items just to mildly inconvenience players, but only in such a way that it makes sense to economists.

I’d hate to be the one to tell you this… wait, no. Scratch that. I love to be the one to tell you this: Liquid rewards in game don’t mean squat regarding the gem conversion. Under an automated system, the price of gems would adjust to inflation eventually. Under a conspiracy based “they’re controlling EVERYTHING!” system, they’d just manually adjust the price anyway, so again it doesn’t matter. Either way that line of thinking doesn’t work.

There is also no way that your exchange can be construed as a misrepresentation. If you buy a $25 gift card for 2000 gems, that is exactly what you get. These gems don’t go away. You can buy the same things you wanted to buy. If you happen to buy something and later regret the decision, there was still no deception. You got exactly what you paid for, as it was listed. Anet isn’t lightly adjusting the value of gem -> gold exchanges ever so slightly just to eek out cash from you. It wouldn’t work. You can still pay the same amount of money for the same amount of gems to buy the same item, and if you happen to want to convert gems -> gold anyway, you end up in a better position than you were prior. The entirety of the whole “buy it for real money instead” hinges solely on you having the exact amount of gold such that the supposed false-inflation for highly demanded items would adjust the price into a range where you not only don’t possess enough gold, but also lack the ability to make that amount of gold in the allotted timeframe. To elaborate in list form, you would need to be someone who:

A)Is in that narrow range where you could’ve afforded it, but can’t after the gem price spike.
B)Has a playschedule that prevents you from acquiring the difference in price before that item leaves the store (set timeframe undetermined)
C)Is in that specific group that highly desires this item so much that they have to get it
D)Is a person who does not have a resting amount of gems in your pack, thus forcing you to acquire them.
E)Is a person capable of shelling out money as needed to buy the product, but also be a person who would shell out money to buy any product. In a sense, you have to be IRL rich enough to spend cash on a frivolous game, but not IRL rich enough to not care about spending cash on a frivolous game.
F)Is in a specific, very narrow section, wherein the natural inflation that would emerge from a high demand gemstore item via an automated system would insufficient to move the price of that item into such a state that conditions A, B, and D are fulfilled, and thus special intervention is required.

This is not an untapped market. It is a fluke in customer demographics. There is no money to be earned in this. It is the most trivial of things to be deceptive about.

I love your arguments, but I think you are using far too many “can’t do this” “this is impossible” type logical statements. Don’t see things so black and white. I am not saying there is a group of people watching the gem exchange at every single second on Anet’s side; That’s outlandish like a conspiracy. I am thinking much more concrete and simple. Point being, there is no law against changing their numbers in any small or large way, they can do whatever they please. The world given as an example, if there is money on the line and there is no law prohibiting you from pursuing extra money, chances are you are going to go for it. I am pointing out how easy it is for them to tweak something because it is unregulated. (I am not calling for action from anyone)

Side note, it amuses me to see how many people are so stressed and angry in their lives that they have to attack the points of someone else’s claims or opinions. Don’t like it, move on. Stop trying to impose your views on mine. This thread would disappear if people didn’t care or didn’t want to attack someone else. It’s sill really.

They make money from their currency exchange.

Of course, they control it.

I played a few mmorpg with the same gem<→gold system. Quite honestly all of them are doing the same thing.

I don’t think the open poster says something wrong(besides it’s mostly theory). It’s the part where he make a drama out of it is surprising.

And unlike the open poster, I’m not mad at Anet, because I find them more than fair. The problem is too many players are unwilling to pay 10-15$ per month. Try to play more mmorpg, you’ll find Anet be a really good company.

interesting that this is pointed out.

Lanaeris.3845:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

You know, there’s two kinds of conspiracy theories that I hear often. The first kind is the one that applies an extremely elaborate and convoluted hidden collaboration to explain a complicated issue where nobody is in control. The second kind is is one that applies an extremely elaborate and convoluted hidden collaboration to explain away common sense. This conspiracy is the latter.

You guys are trying to come up with an elaborate deception to explain something that is really simple. Anet sets up a gem exchange system, and puts in a 30% reduction on the gold -> gem exchange to prevent stock market exchanges. They used a fixed set of gems as a basket, and then program a dynamic exchange rate based on ratio of gems that have been created or destroyed in respect to this basket. The whole “manual manipulation” thing is silly and pointless, when you can just write a simple program that does it for you. It isn’t like the whole “people will buy gems if gems are cheap” thing is going to go away, so you set up an automated system to have the price of gems be adjusted automatically, and let basic economic principle take care of the rest. It wouldn’t even be that hard. Its just fractions!

The throttle on gold -> gem conversions isn’t mean to make things a gigantic gamble. It is meant to make things a stupid gamble. It is there to make using real money to buy gemstore items more appealing, and in-game gold less appealing. I’m fairly certain it acts as a market stabilizer, too.

And there you have it. The conspiracy is that no, Anet didn’t go with an automated, low-maintenance system and explicitly weighted it toward real money exchanges. Instead, they secretly manually manipulate the prices of gems and the prices of items just to mildly inconvenience players, but only in such a way that it makes sense to economists.

I’d hate to be the one to tell you this… wait, no. Scratch that. I love to be the one to tell you this: Liquid rewards in game don’t mean squat regarding the gem conversion. Under an automated system, the price of gems would adjust to inflation eventually. Under a conspiracy based “they’re controlling EVERYTHING!” system, they’d just manually adjust the price anyway, so again it doesn’t matter. Either way that line of thinking doesn’t work.

There is also no way that your exchange can be construed as a misrepresentation. If you buy a $25 gift card for 2000 gems, that is exactly what you get. These gems don’t go away. You can buy the same things you wanted to buy. If you happen to buy something and later regret the decision, there was still no deception. You got exactly what you paid for, as it was listed. Anet isn’t lightly adjusting the value of gem -> gold exchanges ever so slightly just to eek out cash from you. It wouldn’t work. You can still pay the same amount of money for the same amount of gems to buy the same item, and if you happen to want to convert gems -> gold anyway, you end up in a better position than you were prior. The entirety of the whole “buy it for real money instead” hinges solely on you having the exact amount of gold such that the supposed false-inflation for highly demanded items would adjust the price into a range where you not only don’t possess enough gold, but also lack the ability to make that amount of gold in the allotted timeframe. To elaborate in list form, you would need to be someone who:

A)Is in that narrow range where you could’ve afforded it, but can’t after the gem price spike.
B)Has a playschedule that prevents you from acquiring the difference in price before that item leaves the store (set timeframe undetermined)
C)Is in that specific group that highly desires this item so much that they have to get it
D)Is a person who does not have a resting amount of gems in your pack, thus forcing you to acquire them.
E)Is a person capable of shelling out money as needed to buy the product, but also be a person who would shell out money to buy any product. In a sense, you have to be IRL rich enough to spend cash on a frivolous game, but not IRL rich enough to not care about spending cash on a frivolous game.
F)Is in a specific, very narrow section, wherein the natural inflation that would emerge from a high demand gemstore item via an automated system would insufficient to move the price of that item into such a state that conditions A, B, and D are fulfilled, and thus special intervention is required.

This is not an untapped market. It is a fluke in customer demographics. There is no money to be earned in this. It is the most trivial of things to be deceptive about.

I love your arguments, but I think you are using far too many “can’t do this” “this is impossible” type logical statements. Don’t see things so black and white. I am not saying there is a group of people watching the gem exchange at every single second on Anet’s side; That’s outlandish like a conspiracy. I am thinking much more concrete and simple. Point being, there is no law against changing their numbers in any small or large way, they can do whatever they please. The world given as an example, if there is money on the line and there is no law prohibiting you from pursuing extra money, chances are you are going to go for it. I am pointing out how easy it is for them to tweak something because it is unregulated. (I am not calling for action from anyone)

There is not a single “can’t” in my arguments. “Can’t” only appears when you are dealing with conspiracies over elaborate and large issues. This is a conspiracy over a simple and small issues. Here, the question is “why”. Like, “why would Anet adjust the income of liquid assets to encourage buying gems when they could’ve just adjusted the exchange rate far more easily”. Or, “why would Anet be manually adjusting the exchange rate when the program as described would take care of everything automatically”. Or, “why would the exchange be based around fixing a gem-exchange gamble when the exchange rate is so heavily taxed in one direction that gambling is heavily discouraged”.

Things like that. The difficulty in your hypothesis is that it is asserting a series of counter-intuitive and deceptive methods to accomplish an ends best achieved by simple and obvious means. It would make for a great Monty Python sketch, and if Dale Gribble said it I would find it funny, but when someone really thinks it…

Lanaeris.3845:

Side note, it amuses me to see how many people are so stressed and angry in their lives that they have to attack the points of someone else’s claims or opinions. Don’t like it, move on. Stop trying to impose your views on mine. This thread would disappear if people didn’t care or didn’t want to attack someone else. It’s sill really.

This is a bit funny here. You made the thread yourself, but then take the high ground and say that it should be buried, instead of having people respond to what you’ve said.. That’s not how it works. If you’ve come to an incorrect conclusion and someone corrects you on it, you should be happy that someone has helped you fix your errors, not defiant because people don’t accept them. If you make a hypothesis, it has to stand up to criticism.

You can’t get away with making an assertion and backtracking by calling it an “opinion”. Opinions are value judgements. Whether chocolate ice cream is good or not is an opinion. Whether Anet is manually manipulating gem prices for hidden motives is not an opinion. It is an assertion of fact. More than that, it is a statement of character, asserting dishonesty in how Anet handles things. The reason why you come to these conclusions is because you’re in a wrong state of mind. You are looking for evil in Anet, and it has led you down a corridor of madness.

There’s also a hypocrisy here: by claiming that others shouldn’t impose their view onto yours and should move on, you are imposing that view on to others. That aside, truth be told, I like doing this. Sometimes I like to pick things apart and see how an argument works. I also like imposing a “view” because the wrong kind of “view”, such as one that seeks evil in others regardless of logic, can cause further problems down the line. Believe it or not, your “view” is not some super special way you get to be a unique individual. It has implications, produces effects, alters behavior. A bad “view” causes bad things to happen. And thus, I have no qualms about correcting someone elses view. You would understand this, as you had no qualms about trying to correct other people’s views.

Of course it works like that. They want paying customers to be able to get gold even if nobody’s converting gold to gems.

Besides, the time investment required to get gold vs. the time investment required to get gems is skewed drastically in favor of gems. I mean if you make 10 dollars an hour that’s 93 GW2 gold per hour with the current exchange rate. So even a low end job will get you more gold per time spent vs spending that time playing GW2.

So people with disposable income inevitably pull way more gold out than farmers put in. Because of that, if it used an actual pool of gold from people converting gold to gems, it would always be empty.

It’s not a conspiracy or some big secret. It’s the only way the system can work.

Khristophoros.7194:

Of course it works like that. They want paying customers to be able to get gold even if nobody’s converting gold to gems.

Besides, the time investment required to get gold vs. the time investment required to get gems is skewed drastically in favor of gems. I mean if you make 10 dollars an hour that’s 93 GW2 gold per hour with the current exchange rate. So even a low end job will get you more gold per time spent vs spending that time playing GW2.

So people with disposable income inevitably pull way more gold out than farmers put in. Because of that, if it used an actual pool of gold from people converting gold to gems, it would always be empty.

It’s not a conspiracy or some big secret. It’s the only way the system can work.

It doesn’t work if you only think in terms of gold/time.
There are many people in this game who either

• Don’t have an income yet (students for example)
• Want to reach everything by doing stuff ingame instead of using cash
• Have too much gold aniways and don’t know what to spend it on (hey, there’s something new in the gemstore)

or are a mix of these. I’ve only ever exchanged gold for gems and never the other way around and I know there are a lot of players that did the same.

Since all the new stuff gets added to the gemstore it’s no wonder that the demand on gems is way higher than the demand on gold. There’s basically nothing new you can get for gold.

Lanaeris.3845:

Side note, it amuses me to see how many people are so stressed and angry in their lives that they have to attack the points of someone else’s claims or opinions. Don’t like it, move on. Stop trying to impose your views on mine. This thread would disappear if people didn’t care or didn’t want to attack someone else. It’s sill really.

marvelous post.

First of all, if you want to pull off cheap rhetorical parlor tricks in the future, you really need to improve on your skills. That must have been the most threadbare and blunt attempt at a self-victimization strategy I have ever seen.

Secondly, this is an open discussion forum. What do you think? All have to praise you for your great insight? If you come up with some claim, of cause people can and will argue against you. Do you think everyone has to let your claim stand for what it is?

Thirdly, you do not even understand the lowest basics of scientific theory. Children learn in middle school what constitutes a hypothesis and a theory. You could at least spend 5 seconds of googling instead of demonstrating your utter lack of basic general scientific education.

Leamas.5803:

The gem->gold->gem conversion is an artificial fallacy. The gem store is essentially printing new money and I don’t care what anyone says, there is WAY more gold coming in to the economy via the gem store than is going in to the gem store. In game gold is just worth too much for most people to waste it like that. 142g for just 800 gems…OUCH!!!

Since release, i bought more than 100k gems with gold.

BunjiKugashira.9754:

Khristophoros.7194:

Of course it works like that. They want paying customers to be able to get gold even if nobody’s converting gold to gems.

Besides, the time investment required to get gold vs. the time investment required to get gems is skewed drastically in favor of gems. I mean if you make 10 dollars an hour that’s 93 GW2 gold per hour with the current exchange rate. So even a low end job will get you more gold per time spent vs spending that time playing GW2.

So people with disposable income inevitably pull way more gold out than farmers put in. Because of that, if it used an actual pool of gold from people converting gold to gems, it would always be empty.

It’s not a conspiracy or some big secret. It’s the only way the system can work.

It doesn’t work if you only think in terms of gold/time.
There are many people in this game who either

• Don’t have an income yet (students for example)
• Want to reach everything by doing stuff ingame instead of using cash
• Have too much gold aniways and don’t know what to spend it on (hey, there’s something new in the gemstore)

or are a mix of these. I’ve only ever exchanged gold for gems and never the other way around and I know there are a lot of players that did the same.

Since all the new stuff gets added to the gemstore it’s no wonder that the demand on gems is way higher than the demand on gold. There’s basically nothing new you can get for gold.

If the playerbase was split 50/50 between people who primarily buy gems with money, and people who primarily farm for their gold, the people trading in gems for gold would pull out way more gold than the other group. That’s because they’re spending their time more efficiently by grinding IRL instead of grinding GW2.

Let’s say for example we have player A and player B to represent each group.

I’ll be generous and say player A can farm 30 gold an hour. Player B gets 15 dollars an hour at work. With the current exchange rate he can get 140 gold for 15 dollars spent on gems. So he only puts in 1 hour of his time to get more than 4x the gold that the player A would be able to put into the system after 1 hour of farming. And we’re talking a hardcore farmer. I dunno can you even get 30 gold/hour? I don’t think so.

So the number of people who don’t buy gems would have to vastly outnumber the people who buy gems, otherwise the pool of gold would constantly be empty.

And it has never been empty so…

Come on people, ANet can’t eat your virtual golds for a living! Buy gems ffs!
Obligatory /s.

After reading all the posts from people who were upset about having to spend $50 for an expansion after playing for free for 3 years, I’m not so sure that the numbers of people who spend real money to buy gems are higher or even equal to the number of people who buy gems with gold.

Most people have real life needs for their money. It’s easy to say they can work a few extra hours, but not so easy in real life with job restrictions on overtime and family commitments. When most people play, its entertainment time. I doubt they factor in their paycheck from their job when they are counting the time to get X amount of gold.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

After reading all the posts from people who were upset about having to spend $50 for an expansion after playing for free for 3 years, I’m not so sure that the numbers of people who spend real money to buy gems are higher or even equal to the number of people who buy gems with gold.

Most people have real life needs for their money. It’s easy to say they can work a few extra hours, but not so easy in real life with job restrictions on overtime and family commitments. When most people play, its entertainment time. I doubt they factor in their paycheck from their job when they are counting the time to get X amount of gold.

Well there would have to be a lot more people who don’t buy gems. Like a 20 to 1 ratio or maybe more.

Besides, what would the benefit be of using a pool of gold instead of the “printing money” approach? The way the game works already just creates stuff from nothing anyway. Whenever something drops for you or you get a reward from doing anything, it’s not drawing from a pool of stuff. It just creates it for you.

This all works because the game also makes stuff disappear. When you spend gold at a merchant or the TP takes a cut, it doesn’t go to a pool anywhere. It just goes away. Same thing when you use materials to craft.

So these things aren’t needed. You just have to balance the creation and destruction of resources in this type of system. It’s not like real life where it’s literally limited by the physical resources of the world. There’s no reason to do that in any part of the game, including the gem-gold exchange.

I got 4800 gems right now, but the rates are so kitten, I’m waiting on the next hyped cash shop item which will be Christmas to convert. 800 gems is only 90-95g (N)

In all my time in this game/on these forums, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone comment on how they have exchanged Gems for Gold. Well, maybe once….

I’ve never done that, but I must have exchanged thousands of Gold for Gems. I think it’s fantastic that we have that opportunity; else, many of us would have much less Gem Store items/services.

I’m not sure why players feel ArenaNet/Devs tell bald-faced lies, either. It’s been explained exactly how the Gem/Gold – Gold/Gem exchange works on this very forum.

I guess some feel better if they think they might be/can be taken advantage of…or something. I don’t know.

Annika.7084:

It’s the economist that has taken over the role of gamedirector so there’s really nothing else to expect.

I don’t believe for a second TP either is just driven by players supply and demand. About a month prior to HoT launch the tp-supply of a type of rice-balls (nourishment) stood at 700.000. In one single go ‘someone’ purchased 600.000 of them leaving 100.000 left in TP. That’s 2400 stacks. Who could store that in the first place and what would they do with so many??

You don’t have to believe it — not only is the TP driven by player supply & demand, but that also explains the actual market fluctuations we see, whereas the evidence cannot be easily explained if it were driven by ANet manipulating the market (not just the mechanical sinks and faucets).

Just because you can’t think of a way to hoard 2,400 stacks doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. I know a lot of players who bought accounts at $10 and use them to stack investments:

• Account A puts in purchase orders for item I and never picks them up.
• Owner waits until item I hits their target price.
• Owner collects the item, sells it via Account A and starts again with item J.
• Profit.

In addition, it’s pretty common for savvy traders to come to similar conclusions about the direction of the market and decide to dump supplies at about the same time. (Heck, it’s common for un-savvy traders to read a forum or reddit post and decide to do the same thing at the same time.)

tl;dr the unseen hand of Adam (or John) Smith still moves markets, whether you believe it or not.

I think some of you guys are underestimating how much can be manipulated with system design (as in, they don’t need someone with a top hat and long nails cackling behind a curtain while pulling strings).

For instance, as far as I can tell, the gem/gold exchange is such that the richer people get in raw gold and the more enticed everybody is to spend large amounts in the store, the worse the exchange rate is going to get for the average person doing gold to gems. Or to put it differently, imagine that only 20% of players have the RL funds to buy gems regularly, but 80% gets enough gold to exchange a fair bit. This is probably not an accurate assessment of the numbers in game, but the point is, if/when it’s lopsided like that, the exchange rate is naturally going to shift in one direction or the other.

With HoT, there was a decrease in the gold cost for getting gems with gold (not much of one, but something) and this makes sense because 1) the economy and guilds and such as they are, are heavy on gold sinks due to everybody wanting stuff immediately and 2) a lot of people probably splurged on the full version of HoT, giving them each 4k gems to potentially convert to gold.

The instability and the gold sinks, yes… in the short-term, at least, it looks quite a lot like incentivizing people to buy more gems. That part is probably true to a point. It seems unlikely to me that they are sincerely just trying to lower the overall pool of gold in the game, considering that the wealth of players seems only to push the gem exchange in a direction that incentivizes people to buy more gems for gold. Either way, it seems the incentive largely goes in the direction of “buy more gems,” which, if it isn’t intentional, must be a very happy mistake for them.

The mystery stories about that Arenanet manipulates the gem exchange stem from the problem that these persons don’t know how the exchange actually works. For example, what “player driven” means.

In the past, John Smith, one of the game economists, gave hints on how the exchange works. Of course, you are free to suspect conspiracy and insist that a Arenanet empoyee tells lies about game mechanics, but I am sure that all what he says is in fact true and tells about the game.

He essentially said something around this, and I take this as hard facts:

- Gem exchange is player driven
- Gem and Gold isn’t generated out of thin air within the gem exchange
- There are 2 pools: gem pool and gold pool
- The gem exchange works autonomously since game start

From this, we can deduct the exchange mechanics:

- If a player sells gems and receives gold, the gold is taken from the gold pool and the gems are added to the gem pool
- If a player sells gold and receives gems, the gems are taken from the gem pool and the gold is added to the gold pool

The above is the core of the gem exchange. The gem/gold price is computed from the ratio of the gold pool to the gem pool. The larger the gold pool, the higher the price, and the larger the gem pool, the lower the price. This resembles the supply/demand relationship.

Additionally there is the rule that not all gold paid is added to the gold pool but only 85% of it.
And not all gold you buy if you sell gems is paid but only 85%.
Together this makes the 27.75% difference between buy and sell price of the gems. We can see the 27.75% gap in each gem price statistics.

At game launch, the gem pool and gold pool was empty, so you needed some starting gold and gems. I assume for every new account a fixed amount of gold and gems is added to the pools on account creation. I assume 1 gem and 16 copper is added (more on this later) for each account creation.

I thought about the gem/gold formula for a long time and tried to produce something that explains all the price developments we have seen in the game since start.

I don’t want to bore you with all the reasoning, but simply present the formulas.

M is the amount of money in the gold pool
G is the amount of gems in the gem pool

Price p für g gems:

                g
p = M * -----
            G-g+1

.
And the other way round: how many gems do I receive if I pay m gold:

             G+1
g = m * -----
            M+m

.
G and M are adjusted after each such transaction.

If you run buy and sell simulations with millions of transactions with these formulas, the pools behave like we see ingame. The pools are also stable: no pool runs away or becomes empty.

I find the above formulas are correct for the general case and describe the gem exchange since game launch. They are not 100% correct, though, because rounding errors would taint the pool ratio in the long run and they also don’t explain the price difference if you buy 100 gems in one transaction or 100 times 1 gem. There is some stuff added in the buy/sell dialog with integer arithmetic, because you cannot pay 0.5 copper or buy 0.3 gems but only whole numbers. But this is minor.

That’s it. No mystery, no conspiracy. The gem exchange just works without manipulation. It is fueled with gems players buy for money and with gold you get by playing the game. How they exchange these 2 goods is described above – just a mathematical algorithm that doesn’t need to be manipulated.

The prices are “manipulated” by changing supply and demand of gems and gold, but not by manipulating the algorithm or pool size in the gem exchange itself. Put up a nice skin into the gem shop: people buy gems, so the gem price raises. Reduce drop rates ingame, so the supply of gold lowers, so the gem price lowers as well.

One last thing. About the initial fill of the pools at release. If you take the earliest reports of gem/gold prices in 2012, which was “I got 528 gems für 1 gold at release” in one of the forum posts somewhere, you paid 18.94 copper per gem, which is 18.95 * 0,85 = 16,1 copper in the pool. Voila.

Leamas.5803:

The gem->gold->gem conversion is an artificial fallacy. The gem store is essentially printing new money and I don’t care what anyone says, there is WAY more gold coming in to the economy via the gem store than is going in to the gem store. In game gold is just worth too much for most people to waste it like that. 142g for just 800 gems…OUCH!!!

It’s sad too, I remember back when I first started playing in November of the launch year that I could trade 1g for 10 gems. I miss that ratio, it was perfect!

RyuDragnier.9476:

It’s sad too, I remember back when I first started playing in November of the launch year that I could trade 1g for 10 gems. I miss that ratio, it was perfect!

I don’t think we’re ever going to see those prices again.

This argument has been made pretty firmly on almost every forum. More so since Heart of Thorns release.

The nerf of dungeon gold removed the only ‘liquid’ gold source from the game. Simultaneously Silverwastes got nerfed. So, they nerfed all access to gold from Open-World rewards too.

2,166 gems converts to 250 gold today. 339.80 gold converts to just 2000 gems. That’s an 89 gold difference.
Instead of the Gem Store working as it did up until the Trade Post change we now have a flat gold amount we can get from gems to gold and a flat amount we can get from gold to gems.
Summary:
Anet wants more money and aren’t willing to show us the market values anymore. If you aren’t charting it yourself or with an app there’s no way to know if Anet’s manipulating the value or if there’s an honest trade here.

Alternate summary:
WoW charges you with subscriptions. Anet charges you with gems.

Okay, so plenty more interesting posts here which are good to read! My only addition would be this:

If indeed there is a negative amount of gems in the pool, then people would have to spend more gold on gems. This cannot be denied by myself.

But it then raises the important question that if there is a negative amount of gems in the pool:

1. Have people stopped buying them and
2. If not, what is happening to the gems people buy?

Also, if there was a negative amount of gems in the market, then this would mean that players would not be about to trade gold for gems until gems were available once more. This cannot be true. Players do not place orders for gems. If someone buys gems with cash to trade for gold it happens immediately.

If as John smith states, the exchange is player driven, then players would be able to determine the cost of the exchange. But as we cannot see how many gems are available, then it does make one question the system in its current state.

As I said before, There are ALWAYS gems available for cash. So as long as this is so, then the whole gem pool amount theory is not a valid one I’m afraid. Unless the gems bought with cash go into a different pool after being traded for gold.

I read this thread and just laughed. The amount of people who dont understand how demand and supply works is mind boggling.

I think the worst was the people expecting to be able to convert gems to gold and then back again and expect to get the same amount of gems at the end.
Can you imagine the amount of player manipulation there would be with gem/gold rates if there was no “tax” because I can!
I was exchanging all my gold into gems at the start of the fame to open bank slots/char slots etc as were quite a few other people I know. I knew the initial exchange rates were untenable and it was obvious that in being able to convert gold into a gems meant that the exchange rate would fall and continue to drop.
While anet introduce things into the gem store, then people will always be converting gold into gems. The only way this flow could be reversed would be if anet released exclusive items that could only be bought for high values of gold.

HenleyLegoMan.4987:

As I said before, There are ALWAYS gems available for cash. So as long as this is so, then the whole gem pool amount theory is not a valid one I’m afraid. Unless the gems bought with cash go into a different pool after being traded for gold.

Gems you buy with cash end up in your account wallet. In the moment you buy them they come into existence (are created from thin air). These don’t show up on the gem exchange, because they are your own. Buying gems with cash is the only way to create gems from thin air, or create them at all. (edit: every 5000 AP you get 400 gems – these are also created from thin air, I suppose)

Once you sell one of your gems on the gem exchange, they’re deducted from your wallet and added to the gem pool that is embedded in the gem exchange. At the same time the corresponding gold is deducted from the gold pool of the gem exchange and added to your wallet.

Gold is created from thin air by playing the game, and only by playing the game. If you sell an item to a NPC merchant, the item is destroyed and you get some copper or silver. This copper didn’t exist before, it is created and exists since that moment you sell the item. Or you get some gold from an event completion: the moment the event completes, the gold is created and placed into your wallet. Don’t confuse this with the trading post. The trading post exchanges gold and items between players. It doesn’t create gold or items, it just manages the exchange of existing items/gold between players. And also don’t confuse this with the gem exchange: the gem exchange exchanges gold and gems between players.

The gold pool and gem pool of the gem exchange can get empty. But that didn’t happen yet, because nobody would pay the price for the last gem in the pool (yet): it would simply be too expensive. Nobody would pay 100 gold for 1 gem, for example.

And for emptying the gold pool: as soon as some very rich man buys an abundance of gems with thousands of $ and begins to sell them on the gem exchange for gold, the gem price lowers and gamers would begin buying the just-sold gems into their own wallet, refilling the gold pool at the same time. So the gold pool never gets empty as well, as long as there is at least one copper in the wallets of the players.

So you are saying that the gems spent on gem store items are not added to the pool? Because if they are, then that means more gems in the pool which should mean less gold to play because there are gems available.

If they are not added to the pool then fair enough. But begs the question to how the very first player bought gems with gold, when nobody had put gems into the pool!

So anet must have put some gems in the pool to begin with if that is the case. So if they can add them to pool to make it cost less gold to get them, then they can remove gems to reduce supply and result in more gold to buy them.

What do you think?

No, gems spent in the gem store are destroyed. This is the way of the gems: they are created by buying them for cash and destroyed by spending them in the shop.

The way of the gold is similar: gold is created by playing the game and is destroyed in various gold sinks of the game, like the trading post fee, travel costs, commander books, recipes…

Yes, the gem pool in the gem exchange started with something to begin. I explained in my first post in this thread where that may have come from: 1 gem per newly created account into the gem pool, and 16 copper per newly created account into the gold pool.

I assume there exists in fact the possibility for Arenanet to manually raise or lower the contents of the gold and gem pools of the gem exchange. But that’s not necessary. The gem exchange works perfectly without such manipulation. The formulas I presented are able to explain every historic development of the prices fine. There is no need for manual adjustment. And upon inspection of the price development, there is no indication that manual adjustments took ever place.

thisisit.6954:

Can you imagine the amount of player manipulation there would be with gem/gold rates if there was no “tax” because I can!

I don’t think manipulation will be that much, since if price spike, there will be more people spending real cash to trade for gems.

Silmar Alech.4305:

The mystery stories about that Arenanet manipulates the gem exchange stem from the problem that these persons don’t know how the exchange actually works. For example, what “player driven” means.

In the past, John Smith, one of the game economists, gave hints on how the exchange works. Of course, you are free to suspect conspiracy and insist that a Arenanet empoyee tells lies about game mechanics, but I am sure that all what he says is in fact true and tells about the game.

He essentially said something around this, and I take this as hard facts:

- Gem exchange is player driven
- Gem and Gold isn’t generated out of thin air within the gem exchange
- There are 2 pools: gem pool and gold pool
- The gem exchange works autonomously since game start

From this, we can deduct the exchange mechanics:

- If a player sells gems and receives gold, the gold is taken from the gold pool and the gems are added to the gem pool
- If a player sells gold and receives gems, the gems are taken from the gem pool and the gold is added to the gold pool

The above is the core of the gem exchange. The gem/gold price is computed from the ratio of the gold pool to the gem pool. The larger the gold pool, the higher the price, and the larger the gem pool, the lower the price. This resembles the supply/demand relationship.

Additionally there is the rule that not all gold paid is added to the gold pool but only 85% of it.
And not all gold you buy if you sell gems is paid but only 85%.
Together this makes the 27.75% difference between buy and sell price of the gems. We can see the 27.75% gap in each gem price statistics.

At game launch, the gem pool and gold pool was empty, so you needed some starting gold and gems. I assume for every new account a fixed amount of gold and gems is added to the pools on account creation. I assume 1 gem and 16 copper is added (more on this later) for each account creation.

I thought about the gem/gold formula for a long time and tried to produce something that explains all the price developments we have seen in the game since start.

I don’t want to bore you with all the reasoning, but simply present the formulas.

M is the amount of money in the gold pool
G is the amount of gems in the gem pool

Price p für g gems:

                g
p = M * -----
            G-g+1

.
And the other way round: how many gems do I receive if I pay m gold:

             G+1
g = m * -----
            M+m

.
G and M are adjusted after each such transaction.

If you run buy and sell simulations with millions of transactions with these formulas, the pools behave like we see ingame. The pools are also stable: no pool runs away or becomes empty.

I find the above formulas are correct for the general case and describe the gem exchange since game launch. They are not 100% correct, though, because rounding errors would taint the pool ratio in the long run and they also don’t explain the price difference if you buy 100 gems in one transaction or 100 times 1 gem. There is some stuff added in the buy/sell dialog with integer arithmetic, because you cannot pay 0.5 copper or buy 0.3 gems but only whole numbers. But this is minor.

That’s it. No mystery, no conspiracy. The gem exchange just works without manipulation. It is fueled with gems players buy for money and with gold you get by playing the game. How they exchange these 2 goods is described above – just a mathematical algorithm that doesn’t need to be manipulated.

The prices are “manipulated” by changing supply and demand of gems and gold, but not by manipulating the algorithm or pool size in the gem exchange itself. Put up a nice skin into the gem shop: people buy gems, so the gem price raises. Reduce drop rates ingame, so the supply of gold lowers, so the gem price lowers as well.

One last thing. About the initial fill of the pools at release. If you take the earliest reports of gem/gold prices in 2012, which was “I got 528 gems für 1 gold at release” in one of the forum posts somewhere, you paid 18.94 copper per gem, which is 18.95 * 0,85 = 16,1 copper in the pool. Voila.

You absolutely must have misunderstood/misread what John Smith said. We’re going to need a quote.

The system can’t work with actual pools of currency. It would run out of one or the other, more than likely gold. It wouldn’t be able to sustain the pool.

I’ve explained why. And no, I don’t think it’s a conspiracy or some kind of shady manipulation. It’s just the only way the system can work.

A few of the quotes would be these:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/So-much-for-the-bag-bank-slot-sale/1492252
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/So-much-for-the-bag-bank-slot-sale/1491917
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/bltc/Who-sets-Gem-prices/705345

You don’t understand how the ratio between the pools sets the price. The pools will not run empty, because if they get near empty, the price would go so high or so low that players react accordingly, so the price adjust in the other direction and the pools refill from player transactions.

If the gem pool gets about empty, the gem price raises so high that nobody would buy gems any more but sell them instead to get big money for only very few gems. And so the gem pool refills.

And if the gold pool gets about empty, the gem price lowers so much that everybody starts to buy gems, because gems are so dirt cheap at the same time. The gold pool refills with that.

Silmar Alech.4305:

No, gems spent in the gem store are destroyed. This is the way of the gems: they are created by buying them for cash and destroyed by spending them in the shop.

The way of the gold is similar: gold is created by playing the game and is destroyed in various gold sinks of the game, like the trading post fee, travel costs, commander books, recipes…

Yes, the gem pool in the gem exchange started with something to begin. I explained in my first post in this thread where that may have come from: 1 gem per newly created account into the gem pool, and 16 copper per newly created account into the gold pool.

I assume there exists in fact the possibility for Arenanet to manually raise or lower the contents of the gold and gem pools of the gem exchange. But that’s not necessary. The gem exchange works perfectly without such manipulation. The formulas I presented are able to explain every historic development of the prices fine. There is no need for manual adjustment. And upon inspection of the price development, there is no indication that manual adjustments took ever place.

I don’t think anyone knows how it works besides Anet. Most likely everything Anet says is probably true, but since they never really said that much, no one knows what is actually going on.

But I find it more of a player entitlement problem. They want quality entertainment, but is too stingy on contribute money. This game is possible because of the hardworking employees of Anet, and investors willing to take a chance on making mmorpg.

The laughable part is players keep calling game company evil. When the players are what causing the problem(being too stingy on paying real cash to the mmorpg industry).

laokoko.7403:

The laughable part is players keep calling game company evil. When the players are what causing the problem. “Oh I want quality entertainment, I’m just too stingy to pay money for it.”

Yes, calling a company evil only because they want to make money, is in fact laughable. It’s the core business of a company to make money.

You have to look at their actions. It is evil, if the company tries to extract money from the players without delivering content that is even remotely worth the price players pay for it. If you ask me, the high price for skins in the store is somewhat questionable, and the concept of the black lion keys definitely is.