Guild Wars 2

Remember this tidbit: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/john-smith-on-the-guild-wars-2-virtual-economy/, where the beta gw2 economy was compared to the 2007 US economy?

Idk bout ya’ll (<—the way we spell it from where I’m from), but I’m pretty confident that we (as a game economy) have moved a lot closer to “the haves and the have nots”. As the game progresses and the tp (trading post)and gem:gold ratio indicate, prices are w/o doubt on the rise, for the most part faster than most can keep up. This leads us to a massive gap where “the haves” (minority)control the gw2 economy and “the have nots” (majority)are left to feed “the haves”.

As anyone can see, those with early starts were able to capitalize on cheap gem prices. Those joining late to the party will have a much more difficult time obtaining gems via in game methods. This has created another disparity in terms of the “ig” economy. I completely understand the reason prices of gems are on the rise. I just feel bad for the late comers(<-that have 2 m’s? idk) /new players.

All that said (it’s not much I know), I just find it odd that in a game where we come to escape our day to day lives, we have almost a copy of what most of us consider an (not sure of the appropriate word choice) unfortunate disparity.

I’ve wondered about it too. I was hoping their in-house economy guy would talk to us more. I don’t like making gold, and have just enough to cover costs, so I’ll probably always be on or near the bottom, but most players are far below the rich minority I assume.

You do realize that if gem prices rise, then the new players can get a bigger return on them if they convert real dollar gems to gold, right?
The more this happens the more the price will drop until it goes back to a level that benefits the people doing gold—>gems again.

Granted, it’s not perfect. They say they modeled it after CCP’s EvE PLEX system despite missing the two major factors that make that system work the way it does, but it’s not going to spiral out of control any time soon either.

It’s a basic system of capitalism, and in that respect it’s working totally fine. People with more money than you didn’t necessarily work harder, and it’s not necessarily fair to the newcomer. Luckily the TP largely disallows the rich to use their wealth as leverage to get more wealth, so it’s certainly a controlled economy in that sense.

Unfortunately, no other system is really viable in an MMO.

This is how economics works. The people who work harder, spend more time and are smarter get more money then people who don’t and aren’t. Short of communism where Anet physically equalizes the money every few days this will always be the case, and in fact the smarter people would still get around that as well.

There are also the lottery winners who get extremely lucky, but just like the real life lottery, if they couldn’t make that much money on their own in the first place they will just dump it back into the economy and become just as well or poor off as before.

Education time and investment are the ways to make money regardless of the place or system. Everyone has access to the same game, and the same information, what you do with that is what determines how much money you make.

Essence Snow.3194:

Idk bout ya’ll (<—the way we spell it from where I’m from)

Where I’m from, you’ve got the apostrophe in the wrong spot It’s an abbreviation for you all, y’all.

It would be really interesting to see a reprise of John Smith’s earlier analysis now that there are more folks in the game. In a response to a thread in the Black Lion forum, John has said that they’re looking into issues, but that they’re being careful to not make sweeping changes that have undesirable side-effects.

The only issue I see with a gap between the haves and have-nots is if there is no way for the have-nots to improve their lot because the haves are shutting them out. I don’t see any evidence that’s what’s happening. If you started the game today, do you have a chance to be able to make enough money to afford salvage packs, gathering tools, decent gear and such so that you can gather items of value? Yes. Will it take you more time to make money than someone who already has a bunch of money in the bank because they bought into the market when gem prices were different? Yes.

You don’t need a full set of exotics to do the highest level content or most profitable content. There’s really not a lot of barriers to entry into the market, you just have to bootstrap.

Bizarre thread…original post is a person complaining that Guild Wars 2 which he/she uses as an escape from reality is not meeting their expectations due to having an economy which reminds them of their own financial woes…?

I’d suggest perhaps your expectations were either unrealistic or inappropriate, or that you simple chose the wrong game…either way the issue/problems sits with you.

Of course if you have a considered opinion with regards to improvements to economy within the game then by all means lets hear it

I’m afraid that the bot owners are stockpiling gems with their gains and driving prices up so they can make even more money.

This is the largely the result of an endless stream of currency, people will blame gold-sellers, but they are only a small part of the problem. The largest inflation in real life is caused by the government printing too much money. Money only has value so long as there is a limited supply.

GW2, like all MMOs, creates money out of thin air each time a quest is completed, a mob is killed, or an event is completed. Much like the US government has been doing for years over-printing US currency.

The more money you create, the less each individual unit of money is worth. The less money is worth the more merchants, traders, and businessmen want for their goods and services. The only way to break the cycle is to stop making money, the only way to reduce the inflation is to destroy currency.

This is why allowing real world $$ to mix with in game currency is a bad idea. Great idea in theory – and that is about it.

Conncept.7638:

This is the largely the result of an endless stream of currency, people will blame gold-sellers, but they are only a small part of the problem. The largest inflation in real life is caused by the government printing too much money. Money only has value so long as there is a limited supply.

GW2, like all MMOs, creates money out of thin air each time a quest is completed, a mob is killed, or an event is completed. Much like the US government has been doing for years over-printing US currency.

The more money you create, the less each individual unit of money is worth. The less money is worth the more merchants, traders, and businessmen want for their goods and services. The only way to break the cycle is to stop making money, the only way to reduce the inflation is to destroy currency.

You forgot one important thing.
When one buys anything from merchant, that money is completely gone.
When one repairs or uses a waypoint, that money is completely gone.
GW2 might be creating thousands of gold daily but it also deletes thousands of gold.
One people repairing is 10s, but 100k people repairing is 1mil silver = 10k gold gone completely.
Let alone AH fees.

Red Falcon.8257:

Conncept.7638:

This is the largely the result of an endless stream of currency, people will blame gold-sellers, but they are only a small part of the problem. The largest inflation in real life is caused by the government printing too much money. Money only has value so long as there is a limited supply. Especially since a lot of those are optional, fees of convenience.

GW2, like all MMOs, creates money out of thin air each time a quest is completed, a mob is killed, or an event is completed. Much like the US government has been doing for years over-printing US currency.

The more money you create, the less each individual unit of money is worth. The less money is worth the more merchants, traders, and businessmen want for their goods and services. The only way to break the cycle is to stop making money, the only way to reduce the inflation is to destroy currency.

You forgot one important thing.
When one buys anything from merchant, that money is completely gone.
When one repairs or uses a waypoint, that money is completely gone.
GW2 might be creating thousands of gold daily but it also deletes thousands of gold.
One people repairing is 10s, but 100k people repairing is 1mil silver = 10k gold gone completely.
Let alone AH fees.

I’m well aware of the money sinks programmed in to the game, but I don’t think they are enough, and I think Arenanet is figuring that out for themselves as we speak.

Sinning.7483:

Bizarre thread…original post is a person complaining that Guild Wars 2 which he/she uses as an escape from reality is not meeting their expectations due to having an economy which reminds them of their own financial woes…?

I’d suggest perhaps your expectations were either unrealistic or inappropriate, or that you simple chose the wrong game…either way the issue/problems sits with you.

Of course if you have a considered opinion with regards to improvements to economy within the game then by all means lets hear it

Ahhh assumptions…lol. I was noting that the current ig economy is nothing like the only official posted write-up on it and thus misleading.

I play too much to have any personal issues with the ig economy. I am more concerned about other players who are either just starting out or who have a more casual play style. They will be the ones who are effected by this the most. Where population is of vital importance it’s not really a good thing to have such barriers for a majority of the current or possible future population when they have the choice to play or not. As for rl economies…well let’s just say my family doesn’t need to worry bout that too much and as such I am extremely fortunate to where I don’t have to either.

The basic improvement would be to make the ig economy more friendly to the masses, since they are the ones that keep the game population elevated. With out them the game will suffer. Idk how exactly to go about this, but I w/o question believe they should take another look at it and evaluate how it effects the mass of their players.

@ Essence Snow

Not following what your issue is here.

As mentioned by other ppl posting in this thread….a new player now gets more in game Gold for Gems now…so they win if using this method to get $ for in-game economy.

Frankly GW2 has very little that a player needs to spend money on…..its not hard to get enough money to teleport around and repair and fit out 3-4 toons with Exotic Gear…food is crazy cheap…what else is there? Probably only gold sink of significance is siege gear for WvW.

@ Concept

Agree that there is not enough re Gold sinks in this game….its kinda weird, the whole “we want everything now, cheap, fair, easy” mentality means that we have an environment where there is nothing worthy in the game that costs a great deal….the ppl with a heap of gold (usually the people who always want more gold) have little choice but to drive up the prices of the little there is worthy of buying/selling in the game.

I don’t like the fact that the best way to make money is playing the TP. Actually earning gold in the world is long and tedious, and buying it is unappealing.

“I don’t like the fact that the best way to make money is playing the TP. Actually earning gold in the world is long and tedious, and buying it is unappealing.”

Unfortunately, there are far more undercutters than there are resellers. The basic rule of thumb is anything less than exotic will only have undercutters whereas only certain exotics will have resellers (those who buy stuff just to resell at a higher price).

Under cutters is partly due to the TP spanning all servers. The other problem is if it’s not max level or exceptionally useful it wont sell for more than vendor price.

In one breath the problem is rising prices due to inflation. In the next, the problem is falling prices due to “undercutters”.

Personally, I see no economic problems that stop people from playing the game. In the absence of rent-seeking opportunities, wealth gaps don’t actually hurt anyone. Even gem stockpiling doesn’t really hurt anyone, since in order to profit from it the stockpilers will eventually have to take their profit (sell), at which point the price will be driven back down. Meanwhile, we can still get gems the way we were intended to get them: more money for ANet.

It’s just more fruitful just keeping the mats (unless you somehow frequently get T6, but ironically those are the mats you actually want to keep and therefore wouldn’t have an incentive to sell in the firstplace) and making money via Orr questing and vendoring greens and blues and salvaging yellows you get in Orr.

Also. some vendor goods like gift recipes and icy runestones have a fixed price, and making literally hundreds of rares and salvaging them to afford these becomes more tedious than even probably Anet intended. If crafted goods were more expensive then it would be easier to afford the in-game vendor materials and recipes.

What is this, Occupy Wall Street?

Seriously OP, take your political leanings elsewhere. Trickle up poverty is not a way to “Correct” a game economy.

You have a large player base that is casual, and not concerned with massing wealth but rather getting a few hours of gameplay in per week. No one needs defending.

It’s kind of interesting how if a MMO tried to do a socialistic style economy where everyone just evenly splits everyone’s earnings each week it would get low subs/players yet some people thinks it’s such a great and fair way to go irl.

I guess it would be one way to get people to stop hitting anti bot code doing events.. who the hell would do that stuff if all the gold/karma they got were evenly distributed to the server’s population?

If you’re troubled by being a have-not instead of a have, come join up in an occupy Cursed Shores movement.

I imagine some people feel strapped for cash, cuz there’s always those who spend more than they should.

What I’ve seen for newbie crafting or leveling is the prices have come down for 1-79 stuff, there’s still a lot of leveling gear to be had for mere coppers over vendor price, and prices have come down for a lot of the 80/400 stuff, too.

I look for inflation but don’t see it on much.

Rich and poor are words created by humans to describe thier share of our planets finite resources. We should live in a world where those resources are evenly distributed but, unfortunatley our puny little brains aren’t capable of developing the technology to replace human labor with mechanical labor… yet.

In a video game Rich and Poor have absolutely no meaning. The resources are infinite, not finite. If they are finite; then thier supply is artificially supressed. Keep that in mind.

Stiv.1820:

It’s kind of interesting how if a MMO tried to do a socialistic style economy where everyone just evenly splits everyone’s earnings each week it would get low subs/players yet some people thinks it’s such a great and fair way to go irl.

I guess it would be one way to get people to stop hitting anti bot code doing events.. who the hell would do that stuff if all the gold/karma they got were evenly distributed to the server’s population?

Umm, that’s communism, not socialism, and the reason why communism is bad is because only a select few elite have control over the means of production while pretending to exalt and care about the working class. The opposite extreme has the same result, only it’s a select few price fixing monopolies that control everything. In both scenarios there is no upward social mobility and those at the top are the house, and the house always rigs rules to favor itself. An example is the education system, some schools have shop classes and military recruiters whereas others have an emphasis on “leadership” and other abilities and prep them for the Ivy League. It isn’t just about money, because many people have tried throwing money at Deerfield admissions staff and failed to get their kid admitted, no, it’s something else. Money is only one thread in the web of classism.

Calae.1738:

Rich and poor are words created by humans to describe thier share of our planets finite resources. We should live in a world where those resources are evenly distributed but, unfortunatley our puny little brains aren’t capable of developing the technology to replace human labor with mechanical labor… yet.

In a video game Rich and Poor have absolutely no meaning. The resources are infinite, not finite. If they are finite; then their supply is artificially suppressed. Keep that in mind.

Not sure what you are getting at with replacing human labour with mechanical labour, A lot of jobs have been lost over the years due to mechanical labour, machines are constantly replacing people, as good and efficient these machines are, technology has its downside, larger profit margins, larger output, less jobs for people, price of goods still going up, doesn’t create a good economy.

Calae.1738:

Rich and poor are words created by humans to describe thier share of our planets finite resources. We should live in a world where those resources are evenly distributed but, unfortunatley our puny little brains aren’t capable of developing the technology to replace human labor with mechanical labor… yet.

In a video game Rich and Poor have absolutely no meaning. The resources are infinite, not finite. If they are finite; then thier supply is artificially supressed. Keep that in mind.

So you basically think we should exacerbate blue-collar unemployment? Who would own the land where the machines work? While I believe executives earn far too much relative to the work they do I still nevertheless believe they deserve their executive’s cut, which should be much (but not to the extent it is now, that’s not even counting capital gains, which is where the bulk of their money comes from and not their salary) more than a floor worker (who is currently paid too little on average, especially since most work in China for hardly anything).

Essentially, those in higher stations in society require more money as their decisions effect far more people than those in lower strata. This is why if a president (of a country or company) screws up it effects millions of people whereas if a janitor screws up then no big deal, he just has to go back to whatever spot he missed.

A question… Does one actually need tons of gold in this game?

At present time I’m running around in full exotic gear and have 25g in my bank with nothing to spend it on really.

So I could care less about the select few that have hundreds of gold, as there’s basically nothing worth buying in my humble opinion

I did notice a pretty significant shift in the Gold→Gems though. As I recall there was a time not too long ago where 25s got you 100 gems. Now it seems you need to pay 84s for 100 gems. Not that there’s anything worth buying in the shop anyway, but it is a little unnerving to see such differences.

ANet decides what gems are worth by how much gems are injected into the market, now that most of the sales-income from the game is spent they need the prices to go up to make the few people left playing buy more gems.

Aveneo.2068:

I did notice a pretty significant shift in the Gold->Gems though. As I recall there was a time not too long ago where 25s got you 100 gems. Now it seems you need to pay 84s for 100 gems. Not that there’s anything worth buying in the shop anyway, but it is a little unnerving to see such differences.

I believe Gems price follows a classic offer/demand equation, so if most of the people will buy gems with gold then the gem price will rise because there is little offer, and if this trend continue the gem price will reach to a point where buying it with gold will be too much time consuming (to produce enough gold in game activities) and thus buying gems with cash will be more profitable.

Also you might add that while gem offer stays constant or rise slowly, the gold amount, the offer of gold, rise more easily and faster.

It’s amazing how much the value of gems has gone up, I bought to extra bank slots converting my gold to gems in the early days but now I don’t have enough gold to get the gems to buy more slots.

The problem I see is that even the people buying gems with real money might potentially hold out their conversion until a more favourable rate. After all, why trade in today when next week you might get a little bit more? If too many people adopt this stance then the value of gems is only going to go up to the point that trading in your gold for gems is no longer viable.

The only question then is when will it crash? The value of gems so high that it can’t increase further because players can no longer afford it with in game gold. The time is ripe for gem holders to cash in and you have thousands of players doing their bank runs, all looking to trade in their gems at the awesome rate. The value of gems plummets and players can start buying gems with gold again at a reasonable rate.

It strikes me that our current system might not be stable at all, it might just cycle between rising gem prices and crashes periodically.

@Agemnon.4608

I don’t think you understood what I meant.

Money is a claim on human labor. The only thing that gives money any value is labor. Energy and resources are not extracted form the earth out of thin air. They require massive human labor. Machines and technology have allowed us to extract and process resources to sustain our exponentially growing population levels and will continue to do so until a physical mathematical limit is reached.

The reason why anyone has jobs is because we don’t yet have the techology to make machines replace human labor.

defrule.7236:

It’s amazing how much the value of gems has gone up, I bought to extra bank slots converting my gold to gems in the early days but now I don’t have enough gold to get the gems to buy more slots.

The problem I see is that even the people buying gems with real money might potentially hold out their conversion until a more favourable rate. After all, why trade in today when next week you might get a little bit more?

I don’t think there’s much need to trade gems for gold for most players anymore. We all reached a place where our characters’ gear is acceptable and our gold-income is greater than our spending. I still have some gems left-over, but I don’t particularly need gold, until such time that I’m close enough to start looking for a legendary-precursor (but I have a LOT more grinding to do before then).

The stuff to buy now are with other currency (karma, tokens, glory), and I guess fluff like dyes and minis if you’re into that.

PS: you guys are way off topic talking about real world stuff

I agree with mulch.

Gold is losing value daily due to the fact that there is nothing interesting to spend it on. That’s a good reason why gems are expensive.

What we are experiencing is gold inflation mixed with price of goods deflation. Less demand for goods mixed with increasing supply.

Calae.1738:

I agree with mulch.

Gold is losing value daily due to the fact that there is nothing interesting to spend it on. That’s a good reason why gems are expensive.

What we are experiencing is gold inflation mixed with price of goods deflation. Less demand for goods mixed with increasing supply.

In no particular order fine transmutation stones, black lion salvage kits, gems to gold exchange (which is too low I think), magic find and karma boosters, and minis would like a word with you.