Guild Wars 2

Ever since the Chaos Gloves showed up on the Gem Store the Gem Exchange Rate have never been this high!

The average, ever since I joined the game back at September of 2015, has been around 160 gold for 800 gems.. and even with that rate I had trouble saving up. Now it went straight up 200 and it’s been a nightmare to get that many as I have a busy real life. Even when I manage to get online, I usually just stay to chat with a few friends as I afk a lot or just do the dailies.

Not many people seem to worry about this, which I find it odd. People say that once the rates go high, the chances of it returnign back to what was considered “normal” are slim. Others say that the game’s economy is crumbling, such is the fate of a MMO and that the future of GW2 is dark. I’ve seen other MMOs where things like this happened.. and look at them now. They’re dead as they can be.

I don’t even recall it being this high during the March sales. What’s happening on the Store that it’s making so many people buy gems? The Chaos Gloves’ hype is gone. People aren’t getting it like swarms. Even when there’s no sales happening, it’s still an expensive number.

people are hoarding gems because gold are easy in AB…..

They’re putting in new gliders, new weapon skins and bringing back old mini pets, armor and outfits as well as new account bound slots and the new harvesting tool skin. They’re adding or bringing back items at a steady pace. Combine that with people making more gold than they used to and prices go up.

With the new dailies your 160-200g leap is just 20 extra days of doing practicly nothing other than play like normal.

That said, I do think that Anet is keeping it inflated.

It may be difficult to amass much Gold when one mostly chats, afks, or merely does the Daily. You might try playing in one of the more lucrative maps, and/or gather mats to sell.

Good luck.

When HoT launched, gold influx into the game economy got curbed by quite a bit. Dungeons for example.

This in turn made more people buy gems with real money to convert to gold and had less people convert their hard earned gold into gems.

The gold-gem price droped to 14-15 gold per 100 gems and kept stable at 16-17 gold.

Now the gold influx was drastically increased. People feel happier with their gold value increasing while not realising that prices increased by close to 20-30% on certain commodities.

Simply put: easier gold to come by means more inflation which has an effect on the gem-gold exchange. Watch the spike close to the April update which changed the HoT areas and added the 2gold daily bonus. https://gw2efficiency.com/currencies/gems

Fundamentally, at the old rate it was more desirable to pay gold to get gems than it was to pay cash for gems to get gold. This is probably due to a change in the ease of making gold.

gem price has been steadily increasing over the years and will continue to increase
currency inflation
it is sad but that’s life…

while it is true for a short period there is a slight drop of gem price during hot, but during that period a lot of people also quit the game. it also important to take note that before the patch for reward improvement was released, the gem price has been going back up

It’s the AB meta farming that is flooding the game with surplus gold. Inflation.

DoctorDing.5890:

It’s the AB meta farming that is flooding the game with surplus gold. Inflation.

I don’t really think AB multiloot is producing any inflation. Most of the profit come from items which are traded to other players so, even if the champbags produce some gold our of thin air, the whole farm probably ends up destroying gold.
It’s perfectly possible, however, for some AB farmers to be earning so much gold these days that purchasing “expensive” things, like gemstore commodities, has actually become easier.

Easier gold plus less players than before caused it to go up xD

I used to buy bl keys but after a while of poor ticket scrap drops I stopped, I bought almost every outfit and glider but as I saw them putting more and more into the cash shop and less into the game I stopped with that as well.

The amount of cash shop stuff been brought out since HoT is close to double that compared to what the HoT expansion actually gave you.

I can’t really fault anet for using the economics of gems as a method for selling more gems. Gems are optional and don’t provide a competitive advantage and higher prices means people are more likely to pay cash for them. They are a business, so this helps keep the servers operating.

That said, I wish they’d go back down to where they were before the spring update. That would take a gold sink, so they would have to add things in-game people want to spend gold on from an NPC. They’d sell the same number of gems either way because people would buy gems to exchange for gold for said sink. What that sink is would be beyond me. Skins maybe, but cultural armor is already expensive and I’m not sure how many people buy those.

I could really use some bank tabs.

I’m only converting gold to gems as needed. It’s largely stopped my gem purchases for the moment. I’m sure a lot of people are just holding onto their gold also. I have spent a bit on direct gold purchases though; mostly for larger bags and harvesting nodes for my home instance. When or if the conversion rate comes down I’ll buy some of the gem items I’ve been wanting for. Until then I’m just saving up for them.

The Gold to Gem ratio is based on player transactions.

If most players are buying gems with cash and converting them to gold, then the gold cost of buying gems goes down.

If most players are buying gems with gold, then the gold cost of buying gems goes up.

So with the recent increase in the gold price, we know that most players are buying gems with gold.

So the question is, what has caused this trend?

Obviously the increase in liquid gold via the daily reward means that ALL players now have more gold available to spend on gems, so that’s definitely part of it.

The steady stream of sales and limited time offers is also acting as an incentive for people to convert their gold into gems as well.

There may be other factors at play as well, but the point is that until some factors change, or new factors push in the other direction, we aren’t going to see the ratio go down.

I’m not convinced the price is going to significantly decrease any time soon.

The AB farm has given players gold to spend on whatever they like.

RandomWolf.3986:

it’s been a nightmare to get that many as I have a busy real life. Even when I manage to get online, I usually just stay to chat with a few friends as I afk a lot or just do the dailies.

It seems like you don’t get actually do anything to get gold when you are online. That would be the start of your problem.

I don’t worry about what the rate is, there isn’t anything I can do to influence it. I can either do something in-game that makes me more gold per hour and play more hours or just save up a bit longer for something. Or you know, I can look at what I need gems for and 99% of the time, you don’t need that item anyway. Yet another glider skin? Yet another outfit?

If I really did need that glider skin and hadn’t played long enough or hard enough and maybe it was a limited time offer.. I’d just buy it with real money. YMMV.

AB doesn’t generate gold. You people need to stop harping on this, it’s a red herring. It may even sink some gold because of salvaging costs and fewer keys are given out from metas than farming would require.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Grand_Exalted_Chest

See, no coin.

This problem could easily be fixed if Arenanet gave, lets say 100 gems, to every player who owns the game.

Radiobiology.6185:

This problem could easily be fixed if Arenanet gave, lets say 100 gems, to every player who owns the game.

It would cause a blip for a few days and then return to where it was before.

Hesacon.8735:

AB doesn’t generate gold. You people need to stop harping on this, it’s a red herring. It may even sink some gold because of salvaging costs and fewer keys are given out from metas than farming would require.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Grand_Exalted_Chest

See, no coin.

You might want to look at that page yourself. Black diamonds don’t generate gold right oh and the champ bags don’t generate silver as well?

Hesacon.8735:

AB doesn’t generate gold. You people need to stop harping on this, it’s a red herring. It may even sink some gold because of salvaging costs and fewer keys are given out from metas than farming would require.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Grand_Exalted_Chest

See, no coin.

You are correct that massive amounts of gold are not be made out of thin air from AB.
But getting 50 rares a run and selling some and salvaging for ectos then selling that on the TP to other players that are not interested in AB or don’t own HoT. They are getting wealthy by selling those items to player base as a whole however large this player base is verses the AB farmers.

Hesacon.8735:

AB doesn’t generate gold. You people need to stop harping on this, it’s a red herring. It may even sink some gold because of salvaging costs and fewer keys are given out from metas than farming would require.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Grand_Exalted_Chest

See, no coin.

Not sure myself why people automatically run to AB or other farms that provide material rewards mostly.

Then again, no need to look far to find the new gold sources:

- increased rewards in fractals (starting aproximately mid december) if you look at the graph I posted earlier, that correlates very close with the 1 week after begin of a steady increase in gem-gold price
- beginning of April daily reward addition of 2g/day. again, look at the graph, a clear spike is visible

One thing which people forget though: there are 2 ways to reduce gold-gem price. The second being to get people to buy gems (with doller/euro/etc.) and sell them. If the farming is to lucrative (no matter if material or direct gold), the real money->gem conversion declines thus reducing the amount of gems sold for gold thus making gems for gold more expensive. So while AB and other material farms might not directly influence gold inflation, they might have an impact on the gem-gold rate through customer attrition.

Trinnitty.8256:

Hesacon.8735:

AB doesn’t generate gold. You people need to stop harping on this, it’s a red herring. It may even sink some gold because of salvaging costs and fewer keys are given out from metas than farming would require.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Grand_Exalted_Chest

See, no coin.

You are correct that massive amounts of gold are not be made out of thin air from AB.
But getting 50 rares a run and selling some and salvaging for ectos then selling that on the TP to other players that are not interested in AB or don’t own HoT. They are getting wealthy by selling those items to player base as a whole however large this player base is verses the AB farmers.

Yes, but you’re not printing money, you’re exchanging it. Exchanging money doesn’t cause inflation, generating it does.

Sird.4536:

Hesacon.8735:

AB doesn’t generate gold. You people need to stop harping on this, it’s a red herring. It may even sink some gold because of salvaging costs and fewer keys are given out from metas than farming would require.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Grand_Exalted_Chest

See, no coin.

You might want to look at that page yourself. Black diamonds don’t generate gold right oh and the champ bags don’t generate silver as well?

Generate means brand new. If you sell something to another player then no new gold is generated. It’s only transferred from one player to another (and some gold is lost due to the taxes).

Hesacon.8735:

Trinnitty.8256:

Hesacon.8735:

AB doesn’t generate gold. You people need to stop harping on this, it’s a red herring. It may even sink some gold because of salvaging costs and fewer keys are given out from metas than farming would require.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Grand_Exalted_Chest

See, no coin.

You are correct that massive amounts of gold are not be made out of thin air from AB.
But getting 50 rares a run and selling some and salvaging for ectos then selling that on the TP to other players that are not interested in AB or don’t own HoT. They are getting wealthy by selling those items to player base as a whole however large this player base is verses the AB farmers.

Yes, but you’re not printing money, you’re exchanging it. Exchanging money doesn’t cause inflation, generating it does.

I’m not saying inflation is causing gem price spikes. I’m saying 1,000 players farm AB selling it to 100,000 players who don’t farm AB then transfer wealth to AB farmers. Then the AB farmers new wealth gives them opportunitty to buy up gems they normally wouldn’t.

Theres even dedicated AB guild that has a system to farm AB.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Sird.4536:

Hesacon.8735:

AB doesn’t generate gold. You people need to stop harping on this, it’s a red herring. It may even sink some gold because of salvaging costs and fewer keys are given out from metas than farming would require.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Grand_Exalted_Chest

See, no coin.

You might want to look at that page yourself. Black diamonds don’t generate gold right oh and the champ bags don’t generate silver as well?

Generate means brand new. If you sell something to another player then no new gold is generated. It’s only transferred from one player to another (and some gold is lost due to the taxes).

Fair enough it doesn’t generate gold but no one that mentioned AB here said it generated gold. Still means people doing the AB farm are getting more gold to spend on whatever they want.

Sird.4536:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Sird.4536:

Hesacon.8735:

AB doesn’t generate gold. You people need to stop harping on this, it’s a red herring. It may even sink some gold because of salvaging costs and fewer keys are given out from metas than farming would require.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Grand_Exalted_Chest

See, no coin.

You might want to look at that page yourself. Black diamonds don’t generate gold right oh and the champ bags don’t generate silver as well?

Generate means brand new. If you sell something to another player then no new gold is generated. It’s only transferred from one player to another (and some gold is lost due to the taxes).

Fair enough it doesn’t generate gold but no one that mentioned AB here said it generated gold. Still means people doing the AB farm are getting more gold to spend on whatever they want.

They kind of did say. You were saying black diamonds generate gold and

DoctorDing.5890:

It’s the AB meta farming that is flooding the game with surplus gold. Inflation.

If AB gold is only being transferred and some is being lost with each transfer then it’s not flooding the game and causing inflation.

Hesacon.8735:

Trinnitty.8256:

Hesacon.8735:

AB doesn’t generate gold. You people need to stop harping on this, it’s a red herring. It may even sink some gold because of salvaging costs and fewer keys are given out from metas than farming would require.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Grand_Exalted_Chest

See, no coin.

You are correct that massive amounts of gold are not be made out of thin air from AB.
But getting 50 rares a run and selling some and salvaging for ectos then selling that on the TP to other players that are not interested in AB or don’t own HoT. They are getting wealthy by selling those items to player base as a whole however large this player base is verses the AB farmers.

Yes, but you’re not printing money, you’re exchanging it. Exchanging money doesn’t cause inflation, generating it does.

I think that’s too much simplify of economic model. Because porpotion of rich and poor people can also affect the price of luxury items without having an inflation.

Weather better farming methods have an effect on gem price I don’t know.

It’s interesting how cheap it is to buy a legendary now. I think people having a well paid job can probably buy a legendary with 1 day work. That being said legeandary seems increase in price also.

laokoko.7403:

Hesacon.8735:

Trinnitty.8256:

Hesacon.8735:

AB doesn’t generate gold. You people need to stop harping on this, it’s a red herring. It may even sink some gold because of salvaging costs and fewer keys are given out from metas than farming would require.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Grand_Exalted_Chest

See, no coin.

You are correct that massive amounts of gold are not be made out of thin air from AB.
But getting 50 rares a run and selling some and salvaging for ectos then selling that on the TP to other players that are not interested in AB or don’t own HoT. They are getting wealthy by selling those items to player base as a whole however large this player base is verses the AB farmers.

Yes, but you’re not printing money, you’re exchanging it. Exchanging money doesn’t cause inflation, generating it does.

I think that’s too much simplify of economic model. Because porpotion of rich and poor people can also affect the price of luxury items without having an inflation.

Weather better farming methods have an effect on gem price I don’t know.

It’s interesting how cheap it is to buy a legendary now. I think people having a well paid job can probably buy a legendary with 1 day work. That being said legeandary seems increase in price also.

Well, the same can be said about Ectos. AB gives a lot of rares, which are salvaged into Ectos, yet ectos are going up in price not down.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Sird.4536:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Sird.4536:

Hesacon.8735:

AB doesn’t generate gold. You people need to stop harping on this, it’s a red herring. It may even sink some gold because of salvaging costs and fewer keys are given out from metas than farming would require.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Grand_Exalted_Chest

See, no coin.

You might want to look at that page yourself. Black diamonds don’t generate gold right oh and the champ bags don’t generate silver as well?

Generate means brand new. If you sell something to another player then no new gold is generated. It’s only transferred from one player to another (and some gold is lost due to the taxes).

Fair enough it doesn’t generate gold but no one that mentioned AB here said it generated gold. Still means people doing the AB farm are getting more gold to spend on whatever they want.

They kind of did say. You were saying black diamonds generate gold and

DoctorDing.5890:

It’s the AB meta farming that is flooding the game with surplus gold. Inflation.

If AB gold is only being transferred and some is being lost with each transfer then it’s not flooding the game and causing inflation.

I didn’t mean generate in that way…

Sird.4536:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Sird.4536:

Hesacon.8735:

AB doesn’t generate gold. You people need to stop harping on this, it’s a red herring. It may even sink some gold because of salvaging costs and fewer keys are given out from metas than farming would require.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Grand_Exalted_Chest

See, no coin.

You might want to look at that page yourself. Black diamonds don’t generate gold right oh and the champ bags don’t generate silver as well?

Generate means brand new. If you sell something to another player then no new gold is generated. It’s only transferred from one player to another (and some gold is lost due to the taxes).

Fair enough it doesn’t generate gold but no one that mentioned AB here said it generated gold. Still means people doing the AB farm are getting more gold to spend on whatever they want.

Yes, but the person who sold it to them spent gold, and 15% of said gold vanished into the trading company as taxes. So the buyer has less gold to spend now. And the seller 85% the value of ectos.

If anything, AB is acting like a gold sink.

Ellieanna.5027:

laokoko.7403:

Hesacon.8735:

Trinnitty.8256:

Hesacon.8735:

AB doesn’t generate gold. You people need to stop harping on this, it’s a red herring. It may even sink some gold because of salvaging costs and fewer keys are given out from metas than farming would require.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Grand_Exalted_Chest

See, no coin.

You are correct that massive amounts of gold are not be made out of thin air from AB.
But getting 50 rares a run and selling some and salvaging for ectos then selling that on the TP to other players that are not interested in AB or don’t own HoT. They are getting wealthy by selling those items to player base as a whole however large this player base is verses the AB farmers.

Yes, but you’re not printing money, you’re exchanging it. Exchanging money doesn’t cause inflation, generating it does.

I think that’s too much simplify of economic model. Because porpotion of rich and poor people can also affect the price of luxury items without having an inflation.

Weather better farming methods have an effect on gem price I don’t know.

It’s interesting how cheap it is to buy a legendary now. I think people having a well paid job can probably buy a legendary with 1 day work. That being said legeandary seems increase in price also.

Well, the same can be said about Ectos. AB gives a lot of rares, which are salvaged into Ectos, yet ectos are going up in price not down.

I think that’s the surest sign that AB is not damaging anything, it might be slowing ecto prices more than anything.

Having a few players with lots of gold will not impact the gem exchange rate in any meaningful way because there is a limited number of things to spend gems on, thus the wealthy players have a lower demand for gems because they already own the things that can be bought with them.

Having all players with more gold WILL impact the gem exchange because they are now ALL participating in exchanging their extra gold for gems to buy a few items.

Sird.4536:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Sird.4536:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Sird.4536:

Hesacon.8735:

AB doesn’t generate gold. You people need to stop harping on this, it’s a red herring. It may even sink some gold because of salvaging costs and fewer keys are given out from metas than farming would require.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Grand_Exalted_Chest

See, no coin.

You might want to look at that page yourself. Black diamonds don’t generate gold right oh and the champ bags don’t generate silver as well?

Generate means brand new. If you sell something to another player then no new gold is generated. It’s only transferred from one player to another (and some gold is lost due to the taxes).

Fair enough it doesn’t generate gold but no one that mentioned AB here said it generated gold. Still means people doing the AB farm are getting more gold to spend on whatever they want.

They kind of did say. You were saying black diamonds generate gold and

DoctorDing.5890:

It’s the AB meta farming that is flooding the game with surplus gold. Inflation.

If AB gold is only being transferred and some is being lost with each transfer then it’s not flooding the game and causing inflation.

I didn’t mean generate in that way…

At any rate, even if one person gets rich from AB farming, when he buys gems with gold his gold is going to someone gold poor. If he buys mats with his gold, his gold is going to someone who farmed those mats in some way. The AB wealth might flow to him from non AB players but then it goes back out again.

I’m not complaining about AB i’m right there farming it too. I know I’ve accumalted more gold than ever for minimum amount of effort. I even bought copper fed salvage o matic because of the massive loot in short amount of time. salvaging while running in those long hallways ;P

Usually when anet is silent on a matter means its probably being fixed or they would chime in by now.

There are several factors contributing to the high gold:gem rate:

• The increase of the rate has been relatively flat for a long time; it’s been due for an increase.
• ANet used to be terrible about stocking their own gem shop with stuff that people want to buy — the rate used to decrease substantially at times, especially near wintersday (when people got gift cards). Recently, they hardly let 2-3 days go by without adding or returning something popular to the store.
• In particular, they’ve added several specific items that were big fan favorites (notably: chaos gloves) and things that people didn’t even know they wanted (cosmic mining tool, glider skins).
• Especially in particular, the introduction of shared inventory slots is still putting pressure on the number of people willing to spend a premium to convert gold to gems.
• No one mentions the impact of recent WvW changes, many of which have created interest in changing servers: linkages and (temporary) resetting of tiers has created incentive to move to previously lower-pop worlds. 500 gems/player adds up when whole guilds move together.

tl;dr it’s not any one thing; it’s an entire series of changes that are causing the demand for gems to grow.

There are a couple of silver linings to this:

• New players can spend less real life cash to establish an in-game nest egg.
• This puts increased pressure on real money traders to stay competitive with ‘legal’ exchange rates.

This is a side effect of how ANet makes real life money to keep their business afloat.

A simple strategy they use is to have a non-stop, one right after the other set of “must-haves”. Some people think they have to have every mini in the game or the AP that goes with completing mini collections for example. To them, the minis are “must haves”. So, they spend all their gold on the things they “must have”, then something else comes out that they “must have” so they buy gems with real life money. However, on the way to this point, by spending enormous quantities of gold on gems, the price of gems skyrockets. This of course makes it even more likely that people will turn to real money instead of game money, which puts money in ANet’s pockets.

Right off the top of my head I can’t think of a solution that doesn’t mean less real-life money for ANet, so I don’t think this is going to be fixed anytime soon.

If I recall correctly, if people buy gems with real life money and then trade those gems for in-game gold at a ridiculously poor exchange rate, the price of gems drops. However, very few people percentage wise ever do this. You have to be pretty wealthy (or stupid with money) to spend real money on gems, then take a huge loss converting those gems to gold.

The system is flawed in that it leans in favor of internal inflation of gem prices.

Although theoretically it is self-correcting, in practice it is not.

P.S. (Edited) I suppose they could tweak this by increasing the amount of gold that people get for selling gems. This would also be more of an incentive for people to spend real money to buy gems. This is the only solution that I can think of that won’t hurt ANet’s wallet.

Nutjob.9021:

This is a side effect of how ANet makes real life money to keep their business afloat.

A simple strategy they use is to have a non-stop, one right after the other set of “must-haves”. Some people think they have to have every mini in the game or the AP that goes with completing mini collections for example. To them, the minis are “must haves”. So, they spend all their gold on the things they “must have”, then something else comes out that the “must have” so they buy gems with real life money. However, on the way to this point, by spending enormous quantities of gold on gems, the price of gems skyrockets. This of course makes it even more likely that people will turn to real money instead of game money, which puts money in ANet’s pockets.

Right off the top of my head I can’t think of a solution that doesn’t mean less real-life money for ANet, so I don’t think this is going to be fixed anytime soon.

If I recall correctly, if people buy gems with real life money and then trade those gems for in-game gold at a ridiculously poor exchange rate, the price of gems drops. However, very few people percentage wise ever do this. You have to be pretty wealthy (or stupid with money) to spend real money on gems, then take a huge loss converting those gems to gold.

The system is flawed in that it leans in favor of internal inflation of gem prices.

Although theoretically it is self-correcting, in practice it is not.

Well, we have at least one person on the forum claiming that spending $10,000 to get gold is “pocket change” for “a lot of people,” so no telling how much some people spend.

If you can’t afford the gold to gems, its time to use real cash. If you can’t/don’t want to to spend real money, then you have to suck it up and accept that this is how it is.

Gathering wood for 20 or 30 minutes along with your normal dailies should be able to offset any gold gathering issues.

Truthfully, gold has never been easier to gain than the present.

chefdiablo.6791:

Gathering wood for 20 or 30 minutes along with your normal dailies should be able to offset any gold gathering issues.

Truthfully, gold has never been easier to gain than the present.

Indeed, I’ve made 250g in about 2 weeks, and I don’t play all that much, 2-3 hours a day, normally dragon stand.

Sird.4536:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Sird.4536:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Sird.4536:

Hesacon.8735:

AB doesn’t generate gold. You people need to stop harping on this, it’s a red herring. It may even sink some gold because of salvaging costs and fewer keys are given out from metas than farming would require.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Grand_Exalted_Chest

See, no coin.

You might want to look at that page yourself. Black diamonds don’t generate gold right oh and the champ bags don’t generate silver as well?

Generate means brand new. If you sell something to another player then no new gold is generated. It’s only transferred from one player to another (and some gold is lost due to the taxes).

Fair enough it doesn’t generate gold but no one that mentioned AB here said it generated gold. Still means people doing the AB farm are getting more gold to spend on whatever they want.

They kind of did say. You were saying black diamonds generate gold and

DoctorDing.5890:

It’s the AB meta farming that is flooding the game with surplus gold. Inflation.

If AB gold is only being transferred and some is being lost with each transfer then it’s not flooding the game and causing inflation.

I didn’t mean generate in that way…

Just adding my opinion to this discussion because i found it odd to find you on the general forums, Sird.

I think AB farm definatly adds to the rising gold/gem ratio these days. Historically, the gold/gem ratio rose quite a bit during the anniversary sales last August, from 16g to 27g for 100 gems. The price dropped back down again to 20g for 100 gems after the Anni Sales, until HoT got released a month later. Then it dropped even more until mid JAnuary, as many players, who bought upgraded pre purchases of Hot, spent their gems to get gold. Since then, it has risen again, as many premium purchasers already spent their gems and so the balance between gems and gold in the exchange went up again.

Since the start of the year, we have also seen some iterations to the economy, especially the earning potential for average players, including the buffs to dungeons, fractals and raids and the introduction of daily gold and map rewards. Most of these, of course, are direct gold faucets, which generate more gold on a daily basis, so its only natural that the exchange ratio goes up.

So where does AB get into the mix? Its right that most of the loot from the AB “exploit” farm doesnt directly create gold out of thin air. Most of the value of the loot comes from selling it on the tp.
But apart from the various gold faucets (and sinks), there are also 2 mayor gold reserves, one is the gem exchange and one is the trading post.

The gem exchange stores gold in times of inflation (like now, when people need less play time to accumulate a certain amount of gold due to recent patches). And it releases gold as a faucet in the time of need. The couple of weeks after HoT release were a good example. Plenty of people tried to rush things, new legendary weapons, armor, backpacks, guild halls etc. And plenty of people had plenty of gems to spend from premium pre purchases.

The AB farm tabs into another gold supply, the trading post. IF you combine the value of all the buy orders on the tp, which you have to deposit, its a massive amount.
So naturally, if a decent farm pops up, the most general loot on the tp takes a mayor dip in value and the value of all the buy orders filled gets spun back into the economy, inflating it.

So right now, the average gold earning potential for average players is very high, compared to HoT release, from general gold faucets. They pump that gold into the gem exchange. Lots of gold from the tp is also getting released, being pumped into the gem exchange.

Gem price goes up.

Edit: Not really relevant in this discussion but account wallets and guild banks also make up a mayor gold deposit in the economy. RMT traders and hackers too in concert with rolled back accounts (recreating/duplicating wealth) as a gold faucet.

The main culprit is that we have way more people playing since the QoL patch at April 19. The gems prices started to go back up since then.

Of course being more easy to make gold right now help too, daily completion gives 2 gold + no DR on HoT maps. AB always was lucrative like it is now, the diference is that we have way more successful maps since the QoL changes.

Aside that depends on what offers we have on the gem store. The prices got really up on last days because the Phalanx Armor – many people wanted it (including myself), with the “4 days only”, most of then farmed like crazy…

…or dumped unused karma at a certain glove vendor lol

Well, being honest the prices will not go back to what they was before April 19. To be that cheap will need happen a true disaster at the game to make most the people who got back/start to playing, well, stop playing the game.

3 bag slots( basically mandatory on every character you want to play if you want to do anything at this point, honestly) costs as much as over half the precursors in the game now.

$20 of gems just to buy 3 bag slots isn’t ok either.

These prices were ok when you could just buy stuff like bags/bank space for gold and then spend USD on stuff like gliders/skins(Which are properly priced at $4-8 each), but with the gold to gem convert rates we have right now, no, not at all

I rather like the current rates. Getting more gold for my gems is very nice.

Remember that Q1 2016 Report?
And how Item sales Majorly influenced the earnings for Gw2?

1. F2p Accounts are not converting to paid HoT’s accounts as much as they thought. (old news)
2. Many people left as well as their money a result of Gw2 going F2P.
3. The money has to come from somewhere, y’know.

I am sure someone will tell me everything I said is wrong but, what do I know. Gw2 isn’t about collecting skins at all! And surely with no other source of revenue and the $200,000 prize pool for pro leagues made everything perfect and profitable right?
I wonder how many of those multi thousand gold skins are now brought down into the margin of using real money to switch over to gems and gold; by having them accessible via the mystic forge by devaluing them on the T.P?
Could it be the result of Auric Basin? Who knows?

Regardless, I am sure it’s caused and the result of some mistake ArenaNet could have avoided.

And now players will be farming in FGS for the next week starting tomorrow so even core players will be able to make a lot of gold.

Hello everyone

As you probably noticed, the Gold to Gems exchange rate is really bad at the moment.
In fact, if you let gw2spidy show you the charts for the whole time since release of GW2, you will see that it is at it’s highest point right now.

What do you think are the reasons for this?
Do you think Arenanet should intervene and change the rate for the good of the players?

https://www.gw2spidy.com/gem
set zoom to “all”

Well, the way the system works the exchange rate was only ever gonna go up. The increases we’ve been seeing are probably a result of more frequent gem store updates, and the practice of time-limiting cosmetic items.

In the good old days when they made armour sets every few months, cosmetic and novelty items were mostly permanent, rather than limited time offers, so there was less of the ‘omg I must have this NOW’ that causes the massive spikes.

The game has also matured quite a bit, lots of people who’ve achieved their in-game goals now have a decent bit of gold and nothing else to do with it.

Of course, I’d have liked if there was a cap on the exchange rate but it is not in the company’s interests to do so. The higher it goes the more likely players are to spend money on gems, both for gem store purchases and gold conversion.

Do I want a precursor or 3 bag slots for my character? Pretty much there atm.

I feel bad for new players.