Guild Wars 2

As in title. When I started the game the average price for 100 gems was ~1.7g and when I first converted gold—>gems it was 2.2g. Now it is 22g. I feel like the price is set by Anet to boost gem sells, as back then why would you spend 10€ on a character slot if you could just buy it for ~20 gold. Now if you think about it, spending ~170g on a character slot is well… slightly expensive so you might actually consider getting it for 10€.

Gem price inflation/deflation is entirely player driven. Gems are created by us, I think it is, when we purchase gems with money, and are destroyed/taken out of circulation when we convert ingame gold to gems.

Price in ingame gold for 100 gems depends on the ratio between creation/destruction of gems – think John Smith orignally mentioned something like this being the mechanic.

Theres a finite amount of gems ingame at any one time and their price depends on supply.

Hope I got it right enough to make sense.

Imagine the exchange being two buckets, one with gems, one with gold. The value of gems is based on how much gold there is relative to gems. As players buy gems with gold, there is fewer gems and more gold in the exchange so the price for the gems remaining goes up. When players sell gems for gold, the opposite is true and gems become cheaper.

The exchange was kickstarted with a little gold and a kittenton of gems at launch which is why gems were dirt cheap at the very beginning.

Behellagh.1468:

Imagine the exchange being two buckets, one with gems, one with gold. The value of gems is based on how much gold there is relative to gems. As players buy gems with gold, there is fewer gems and more gold in the exchange so the price for the gems remaining goes up. When players sell gems for gold, the opposite is true and gems become cheaper.

The exchange was kickstarted with a little gold and a kittenton of gems at launch which is why gems were dirt cheap at the very beginning.

This.

And ever since then far more people have been buying gems with gold than the other way around, so the price has continued to rise.

You can see this if you use a site like GW2Spidy to see how the exchange rate has changed over time. The price of gems jumps up every time new items are released in the gem store and then gradually drops until the next release. Over the summer when there was hardly anything new in-game it dropped dramatically, then more than doubled when the Anniversary sale started.

I suppose in theory Anet could manually change it so buying gems was cheaper again, but all that would happen is that players would take advantage of the cheap exchange rate to buy as many gems as they can until it went back to the original price.

This is why during good BL sales, gem prices cost so much. People are buying lots of gem with gold. When the sale over, it drops, people trying to cash in with the high gold earn now, or some people trying to make money back from the gem they bought to get their gold back.

Well those spikes makes it attractive to buy gems with cash and exchange them for gold which then drops the price. I imagine the hot dog/bun problem, selling gems in fix sizes that don’t always align to prices of items, thus leaving left over gems, may also be a source of sold gems.

Daedalus.4193:

Gem price inflation/deflation is entirely player driven. Gems are created by us, I think it is, when we purchase gems with money, and are destroyed/taken out of circulation when we convert ingame gold to gems.

Price in ingame gold for 100 gems depends on the ratio between creation/destruction of gems – think John Smith orignally mentioned something like this being the mechanic.

Theres a finite amount of gems ingame at any one time and their price depends on supply.

Hope I got it right enough to make sense.

Not quite right.

Gems to gold conversion rates aren’t based on the total amount of gems people have purchased. They’re based on the total amount people have sold, and thus added to the currency market.

Basically, when the game launched, the marketplace was seeded with an initial stock of gems and gold. I can’t remember what that rate was, but that was the only time the rate was ever defined by anet. When the first person bought gems with gold, it removed gems from the gem pile, and added gold to the gold pile, increasing the gold value of gems. When the first person bought gold with gems, they added more gems to that pile, lowering the gold value of gems.

At any given time the gold to gems rate is influenced only by how many people are converting gold to gems or back, as they’re not technically converting them, but rather buying them at a variable market rate determined by supply and demand and not by any other outside factor.

When you see the gem price spike, it’s because there are more people buying gems with gold than buying gold with gems. When you see the gem price drop, it’s because more people are buying gold with gems than buying gems with gold.

Daedalus.4193:

Gem price inflation/deflation is entirely player driven. Gems are created by us, I think it is, when we purchase gems with money, and are destroyed/taken out of circulation when we convert ingame gold to gems.

Price in ingame gold for 100 gems depends on the ratio between creation/destruction of gems – think John Smith orignally mentioned something like this being the mechanic.

Theres a finite amount of gems ingame at any one time and their price depends on supply.

Hope I got it right enough to make sense.

The gems dont really get taken out of circulation, if someone uses the gold/gem exchange, as they go to his account. There usually is a 15% fee for transactions of gold/gems gems/gold but i think the fee is usually paid in gold, not gems.

The real sink for gems is the gem store, if you buy anything there with gems, the gems are destroyed. And gems get only created by real money (except the ones that initially went into the gem exchange at launch and those handed out for free).