Guild Wars 2

The new greens don’t explain why the price has been free falling the last few months. Would be see a reply from the devs if the reintroduction of the skins was intentional, a dup exploit, or just random bug. Estimated amount of skin are now around ten of thousands.

Belorn.2659:

The new greens don’t explain why the price has been free falling the last few months. Would be see a reply from the devs if the reintroduction of the skins was intentional, a dup exploit, or just random bug. Estimated amount of skin are now around ten of thousands.

Yeah that green shield weapon has nothing to do with why it is dropping.

Firstly you can’t get the actual skin item from it which is what is being dumped en masse. Secondly occurrences of this are obviously very rare and cannot realistically be easily reproduced, it may even be a bug (I’m guessing so).

A couple of rare occurrences of creating an actual grinning shield doesn’t correlate to 1000s of shield skins.

Didn’t John Smith say he would look into it in the Reddit thread?

He did. We’ll have to wait on his report, if we get one.

In the meantime, a little info: for every skin consumable that is produced for the Black Lion store or other reward, (at least) two other corresponding items are made – an equippable item, usually level 0; and a PvP version, like we used to have before the Wardrobe. The PvP variant will pop up in the API if someone takes a weapon with that skin into the arena, but the equippable item usually lurks hidden, forever unseen. Unless something weird happens.

For example I have a full set of level 0 rare Primeval Armor. The stats kinda suck but it’s still good for starter characters.

I can’t say what the purpose of these items are, but they probably exist to handle some kind of error or exception handling. Something to prevent a crash in the event of future unexpected programming.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Didn’t John Smith say he would look into it in the Reddit thread?

He said he’d look into the actual ghastly shield as a weapon. Who knows whether that includes the ghastly skin itself. I find it hard to believe it (the rather large skin supply/dumping) wouldn’t have come across their radar already.

This is obviously the kind of hoarding and market manipulation some folks have been complaining about for ages and the economy guy kept saying doesn’t happen.

Looks like the green weapon from the forge was an upcoming bonus that wormed itself into the live code. It’s legit.

To add onto what Sariel said:

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

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

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

Color me suprised. Guess they want to keep forging stuff relevant after precursor collections got added (as t5 mat sink I guess?)

Looks like the destroyer scythe is part of the new drop table.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4g3t53/so_i_found_this/d2gv996

Don’t see any listed on the TP according to gw2tp though.

Ayrilana.1396:

Looks like the destroyer scythe is part of the new drop table.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4g3t53/so_i_found_this/d2gv996

Don’t see any listed on the TP according to gw2tp though.

http://db.dulfy.net/search/scythe
he is lieing. it would be in the API now if he would have found one

Malediktus.9250:

Ayrilana.1396:

Looks like the destroyer scythe is part of the new drop table.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4g3t53/so_i_found_this/d2gv996

Don’t see any listed on the TP according to gw2tp though.

http://db.dulfy.net/search/scythe
he is lieing. it would be in the API now if he would have found one

Ah. Thanks for pointing that out.

Ayrilana.1396:

Malediktus.9250:

Ayrilana.1396:

Looks like the destroyer scythe is part of the new drop table.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4g3t53/so_i_found_this/d2gv996

Don’t see any listed on the TP according to gw2tp though.

http://db.dulfy.net/search/scythe
he is lieing. it would be in the API now if he would have found one

Ah. Thanks for pointing that out.

Aren’t api tools disabled because of a bug?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/api/HEADS-UP-v2-characters-temporarily-disabled/first#post6120219

Edit: https://www.gw2bltc.com/en/

Mr Smith, can you please investigate this further? I believe you have some internal devs, or friends of devs, that were aware of this change a few months ago, which led to an unfair advantage to the individuals who were aware of this before hand.

John Smith.4610:

We accidentally shipped a MF change that has some rare items like Halloween skins in the tables. So this is WAI just earlier than expected

Could you possibly answer the question about why so many of the Ghastly shield skins have appeared on the TP lately?

I like how everyone was SURE this was some big scary dupe as their first mental option rather than “maybe the last patch added something?”

Like, if it’s not on a wiki or a reddit post, it MUST be cheating right?

Does anyone else remember what MMOs were like before wiki culture?

PopeUrban.2578:

I like how everyone was SURE this was some big scary dupe as their first mental option rather than “maybe the last patch added something?”

Like, if it’s not on a wiki or a reddit post, it MUST be cheating right?

Does anyone else remember what MMOs were like before wiki culture?

The problem is that things started shifting before the patch. We don’t know how many shields are out there, but it was the increased effort to sell off old inventory that put it on people’s radar. It could have a normal explanation (returning players, for example,) but in light of the new Mystic Forge recipes, it definitely looks suspicious.

Redenaz.8631:

PopeUrban.2578:

I like how everyone was SURE this was some big scary dupe as their first mental option rather than “maybe the last patch added something?”

Like, if it’s not on a wiki or a reddit post, it MUST be cheating right?

Does anyone else remember what MMOs were like before wiki culture?

The problem is that things started shifting before the patch. We don’t know how many shields are out there, but it was the increased effort to sell off old inventory that put it on people’s radar. It could have a normal explanation (returning players, for example,) but in light of the new Mystic Forge recipes, it definitely looks suspicious.

People with lots of investment value were told that a number of valuable items were becoming avaliable (legendaries) and certain valuable items were reciving a major economic shift (scribing materials, crafting materials in general)

This looks like a standard pattern of liquidating assets to buy low. It’s speculative behavior. People started liquidating the shields because they wanted to buy up mats to level scribing cheaper and build new legendaries, both activities directed at players with large amounts of standing account gold value.

I personally bought up a lot of wood, and sold several things to do so, as I assumed that a new shortbow recipie would be popular as an alternative to the polarizing pony bow, and that a new shortbow would probably require a lot of wood. I also assumed that with a cust to scribing, demand for wood to turn in to paper would go up and wanted to get my own stocks handled.

In order to get those piles of wood, I liquidated several high value items I’d been sitting on. This is behavior you’re always going to see the moment any rumor starts about high value items or economic rebalances of any kind.

Redenaz.8631:

PopeUrban.2578:

I like how everyone was SURE this was some big scary dupe as their first mental option rather than “maybe the last patch added something?”

Like, if it’s not on a wiki or a reddit post, it MUST be cheating right?

Does anyone else remember what MMOs were like before wiki culture?

The problem is that things started shifting before the patch. We don’t know how many shields are out there, but it was the increased effort to sell off old inventory that put it on people’s radar. It could have a normal explanation (returning players, for example,) but in light of the new Mystic Forge recipes, it definitely looks suspicious.

We just had a 100% correct leak come out recently.

It’s not beyond a possibility that certain staff are leaking info to their friends and the right person/s found out and dumped their GGS supply before the news of the greens hit the player base.

Substance E.4852:

Redenaz.8631:

PopeUrban.2578:

I like how everyone was SURE this was some big scary dupe as their first mental option rather than “maybe the last patch added something?”

Like, if it’s not on a wiki or a reddit post, it MUST be cheating right?

Does anyone else remember what MMOs were like before wiki culture?

The problem is that things started shifting before the patch. We don’t know how many shields are out there, but it was the increased effort to sell off old inventory that put it on people’s radar. It could have a normal explanation (returning players, for example,) but in light of the new Mystic Forge recipes, it definitely looks suspicious.

We just had a 100% correct leak come out recently.

It’s not beyond a possibility that certain staff are leaking info to their friends and the right person/s found out and dumped their GGS supply before the news of the greens hit the player base.

What was the 100% leak? The patch notes?

Looking at the history quickly, I don’t see anything really surprising. About the time we started to really know the date when HoT would be released, the price on this started to drop. As said above, at least in part that could have been liquidating things to prepare for HoT, as well as the chance of more of the shields appearing on the market come halloween. There were rumors like that, and it had happened the prior halloween after all.

Actions like that, even by just one person with how few have been available, can have a cascading effect. People see a sudden drop and get spooked, quickly selling their stock. This, in turn, spooks other investors, and so on. There are many factors that need to be taken into account.

What I’m interested in, is why in early Feb there was an apparent increase in the volume of buy orders of over 16,000 for a 48 hour period, without the price really increasing, or more being sold or bought. Glitch in data? big push to temporarily store money in the trading post buy orders that wouldn’t really get filled anytime soon? idk. Far too lazy to find out if something happened with the reports pulled from the trading post by websites.

Redenaz.8631:

The problem is that things started shifting before the patch. We don’t know how many shields are out there, but it was the increased effort to sell off old inventory that put it on people’s radar. It could have a normal explanation (returning players, for example,) but in light of the new Mystic Forge recipes, it definitely looks suspicious.

This definitely seems to be the case. It would be a large coincidence that 1500 shields were dumped like never before, just prior to such a drastic change being released for this specific item.

A question for the community/devs: If a dev is giving this info out to their friends online, is that breaking any rules? I know who is dumping the shields and he made a ton of money doing this, not to mention the money saved by dodging the potential crash from the MF loot table changes.

PopeUrban.2578:

I like how everyone was SURE this was some big scary dupe as their first mental option rather than “maybe the last patch added something?”

Like, if it’s not on a wiki or a reddit post, it MUST be cheating right?

Does anyone else remember what MMOs were like before wiki culture?

Here’s the problem in your thinking:

The item produced by the forge is a weapon. It only showed up last week.

The item they are worrying about being duped is a skin consumable.

Fexcad.1962:

A question for the community/devs: If a dev is giving this info out to their friends online, is that breaking any rules? I know who is dumping the shields and he made a ton of money doing this, not to mention the money saved by dodging the potential crash from the MF loot table changes.

Pretty sure the NDA covers things like this.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Ayrilana.1396:

Malediktus.9250:

Ayrilana.1396:

Looks like the destroyer scythe is part of the new drop table.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4g3t53/so_i_found_this/d2gv996

Don’t see any listed on the TP according to gw2tp though.

http://db.dulfy.net/search/scythe
he is lieing. it would be in the API now if he would have found one

Ah. Thanks for pointing that out.

Aren’t api tools disabled because of a bug?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/api/HEADS-UP-v2-characters-temporarily-disabled/first#post6120219

Edit: https://www.gw2bltc.com/en/

Only the character API is disabled. Items is still working.

I’m inclined to believe the Destroyer Scythe did not get generated, but the regular Scythe might have. Its entry is here:

http://db.dulfy.net/item/36333

slamfunction.7462:

Mr Smith, can you please investigate this further? I believe you have some internal devs, or friends of devs, that were aware of this change a few months ago, which led to an unfair advantage to the individuals who were aware of this before hand.

I am actually quite sure of this. I know several people who have access to alpha builds (for example to test raids) and they always know things like new recipes way ahead of time and tell everyone on Teamspeak about it and take advantage of it themselevs, too.

Fexcad.1962:

Redenaz.8631:

The problem is that things started shifting before the patch. We don’t know how many shields are out there, but it was the increased effort to sell off old inventory that put it on people’s radar. It could have a normal explanation (returning players, for example,) but in light of the new Mystic Forge recipes, it definitely looks suspicious.

This definitely seems to be the case. It would be a large coincidence that 1500 shields were dumped like never before, just prior to such a drastic change being released for this specific item.

A question for the community/devs: If a dev is giving this info out to their friends online, is that breaking any rules? I know who is dumping the shields and he made a ton of money doing this, not to mention the money saved by dodging the potential crash from the MF loot table changes.

I’d think it shady.

Ayrilana.1396:

Substance E.4852:

Redenaz.8631:

PopeUrban.2578:

I like how everyone was SURE this was some big scary dupe as their first mental option rather than “maybe the last patch added something?”

Like, if it’s not on a wiki or a reddit post, it MUST be cheating right?

Does anyone else remember what MMOs were like before wiki culture?

The problem is that things started shifting before the patch. We don’t know how many shields are out there, but it was the increased effort to sell off old inventory that put it on people’s radar. It could have a normal explanation (returning players, for example,) but in light of the new Mystic Forge recipes, it definitely looks suspicious.

We just had a 100% correct leak come out recently.

It’s not beyond a possibility that certain staff are leaking info to their friends and the right person/s found out and dumped their GGS supply before the news of the greens hit the player base.

What was the 100% leak? The patch notes?

The paste bin leak about the WvW notes that came out less than a week before the patch were all correct to my knowledge including the details about changes to the layout of parts of the Desert Borderlands.

Unfortunately, we’ve heard a lot about the new halloween weapons but nothing on the actual halloween skins, which is actually what this topic is about. I’m not sure we will hear anything either. It certainly doesn’t sound like an exploit was involved or else something would have been said, but as for insider trading? I’d bet everything I own on it.

The fact that you can get the shield from the mystic forge is a separate issue even if someone had knowledge of this before it happened. From what I have read so far, getting one is pretty much as hard as getting precursor, so there is no real threat to the supply at least from that.

These things dropped just 3 months into the game, with 100 more thanks to the raffle 2 years later….and that’s it. Sure when they first dropped you could buy them for 20g to 50 gold. That was a lot of gold back then….precursors sold pretty much for the same at that time.

Why would some buy hundreds if not thousands of them, just to hold onto them even when they were selling for 5000 gold. I’m no power trader, but that seems like a poor strategy.

In the past 4 or 5 months, at least 1000 if not much more have put up for sale. I just don’t see an explanation for this without some kind of exploit

Again I could be all wrong, but if some power trader did buy all of these up, he sure did a poor job of maximizing his profits. As it stands now he’s lucky to get 200 gold per shield. The again if he found a exploit, why would he care.

I see John Smith has chimed in here. Unfortunately, it was only obout the mystic forge thing and not about the seemingly limitless skins being dumped darn near everyday. Please chime in again about this and not about the mystic forge thing.

Yes I’d still like to see a comment from him or any other dev but if it’s all above board which I suspect it is, there’s not much for them to say… although ’it’s all above board’ would be nice, lol.

Well the most recent dumps over night (well, not over night for Americans) were people panic cancelling their posts, or perhaps wisely cutting their losses, and dumping to buy orders. The supply on the TP is actually down by 20 odd from prior to the announcement.

John Smith.4610:

We accidentally shipped a MF change that has some rare items like Halloween skins in the tables. So this is WAI just earlier than expected

just wondering, is it going to stay like this? I’d like to try my hand at getting ghastly grinning shield and chain sword/destroyer scythe

Hell, don’t worry about it, the way prices are going just buy one off the Trading Post and save yourself the grief….:)

Tom.6478:

Hell, don’t worry about it, the way prices are going just buy one off the Trading Post and save yourself the grief….:)

nah… I crafted a dusk with 3 exotic shields and a mf stone, luck is a goddess, and I shall believe in her.

Xbon.9086:

John Smith.4610:

We accidentally shipped a MF change that has some rare items like Halloween skins in the tables. So this is WAI just earlier than expected

just wondering, is it going to stay like this? I’d like to try my hand at getting ghastly grinning shield and chain sword/destroyer scythe

Just to note, if you mean the Chain-Whip Sword, that is a Gem Store only item so I highly doubt that is included in the new mystic forge rare skin/item drop tables.

Regarding the rest of your question, my impression of these items persisting in the drop table is that it is likely a permanent addition. However, I expect these newly added items are likely to vary over time, such as other item sets being added and some currently added items being removed – similar to the black lion weapon skins rotating in and out of BL chests and certain sets being available or not available at the BL merchant. May be wrong, but that is my impression of how they seem to have implemented this behavior of such rare items being in the drop table.

StinVec.3621:

Xbon.9086:

John Smith.4610:

We accidentally shipped a MF change that has some rare items like Halloween skins in the tables. So this is WAI just earlier than expected

just wondering, is it going to stay like this? I’d like to try my hand at getting ghastly grinning shield and chain sword/destroyer scythe

Just to note, if you mean the Chain-Whip Sword, that is a Gem Store only item so I highly doubt that is included in the new mystic forge rare skin/item drop tables.

Regarding the rest of your question, my impression of these items persisting in the drop table is that it is likely a permanent addition. However, I expect these newly added items are likely to vary over time, such as other item sets being added and some currently added items being removed – similar to the black lion weapon skins rotating in and out of BL chests and certain sets being available or not available at the BL merchant. May be wrong, but that is my impression of how they seem to have implemented this behavior of such rare items being in the drop table.

found my answer in another thread, they pulled “most” of the changes, and will reintroduce them later in a big mystic forge update

I am actually very happy you are giving a way to get “orphan skins” back into the game. I am not happy that someone with inside information was able to dump all of their hoarded skins over so long of a period of time. It should have been caught and action taken before people actually spotted it, and definitely soon after it was brought to the companies attention.

Substance E.4852:

Ayrilana.1396:

Substance E.4852:

Redenaz.8631:

PopeUrban.2578:

I like how everyone was SURE this was some big scary dupe as their first mental option rather than “maybe the last patch added something?”

Like, if it’s not on a wiki or a reddit post, it MUST be cheating right?

Does anyone else remember what MMOs were like before wiki culture?

The problem is that things started shifting before the patch. We don’t know how many shields are out there, but it was the increased effort to sell off old inventory that put it on people’s radar. It could have a normal explanation (returning players, for example,) but in light of the new Mystic Forge recipes, it definitely looks suspicious.

We just had a 100% correct leak come out recently.

It’s not beyond a possibility that certain staff are leaking info to their friends and the right person/s found out and dumped their GGS supply before the news of the greens hit the player base.

What was the 100% leak? The patch notes?

The paste bin leak about the WvW notes that came out less than a week before the patch were all correct to my knowledge including the details about changes to the layout of parts of the Desert Borderlands.

Balance patch notes are usually intentional leaks. Economic-impact leaks on the other side would be something Anet would rather avoid.

On the other hand there were some subtle hints that night have made people worry about Anet possibly returning those skins in the next Halloween update. If that happened, all people holding on to them migh end up with a massive loss.

John Smith.4610:

We accidentally shipped a MF change that has some rare items like Halloween skins in the tables. So this is WAI just earlier than expected

I have a feeling this isn’t the first time something like this has happened… it would be really interesting to hear how come it seems to be easier than it should to accidentally put stuff in the live game that shouldn’t have ended up there yet.

Yargesh.4965:

I am actually very happy you are giving a way to get “orphan skins” back into the game. I am not happy that someone with inside information was able to dump all of their hoarded skins over so long of a period of time. It should have been caught and action taken before people actually spotted it, and definitely soon after it was brought to the companies attention.

This, 100 times.

I agree with you that it’s nice to get access to things we may not have been able to get. My son was around and played during the first Mad King Halloween event and has the greatsword and I think a few other things, but we didn’t join him till a few months later. Scarlet, we were around for, but gotta love RNG.

Someone mentioned in either this thread or another on this topic, that stuff happens, information leaks from one department to another in a small work environment (it’s about 250 people or so, right?), well, maybe. What shouldn’t be happening is this stuff getting to people outside of that work environment, especially when it means it’ll gain them an advantage over those who don’t get that information. Small or large, doesn’t matter, IMO. It’s the professional thing to do to keep your “in the know” stuff to yourself (many people practice this with their jobs every day), especially when the touted policy around here is to keep mum on things so we "have presents to unwrap on release day…” factor we hear about so much. What about the unfair advantages factor?

• edit- wanted to address the post above mine:

Crise.9401:

John Smith.4610:

We accidentally shipped a MF change that has some rare items like Halloween skins in the tables. So this is WAI just earlier than expected

I have a feeling this isn’t the first time something like this has happened… it would be really interesting to hear how come it seems to be easier than it should to accidentally put stuff in the live game that shouldn’t have ended up there yet.

nods I can see how something might miss a patch, like when they didn’t get the Profession Ground Target Decal in game when the patch notes said they had, and players were confused when they weren’t there, but this?

Didn’t need to be inside information, just data mined from the previous SAB patch. That was when the last sell off started with supply growing from around 100.

Behellagh.1468:

Didn’t need to be inside information, just data mined from the previous SAB patch. That was when the last sell off started with supply growing from around 100.

Do we know if it was data mined? That kind of thing is usually like wild fire with threads from That Shaman popping up on Reddit and then speculation here, etc.

• edit- like this one (March 31st).. or the one before that one (March 22nd)?
  Here is March 8th one. February 23rd was nothing to share. January 26th doesn’t show anything either.

Siobhan.5273:

Behellagh.1468:

Didn’t need to be inside information, just data mined from the previous SAB patch. That was when the last sell off started with supply growing from around 100.

Do we know if it was data mined? That kind of thing is usually like wild fire with threads from That Shaman popping up on Reddit and then speculation here, etc.

• edit- like this one.

Nope, no evidence at all of it being data mined. However plenty of evidence of it being leaked. Just consider that the halloween shields and greatsaws were unloaded, while the Staves were not. Seems like pretty accurate info was passed along.

The ‘major’ dumps started back up on 20th March. There was a smaller one 13th March. Maybe that’s what prompted the dumps to start back up again, hard to say really. Maybe the dude just felt like the price had gone back up to what he wanted and started dumping again. Who knows. It’s pretty suspect if you ask me but yeah the other explanation is also possible.

Belexes.4923:

Siobhan.5273:

Behellagh.1468:

Didn’t need to be inside information, just data mined from the previous SAB patch. That was when the last sell off started with supply growing from around 100.

Do we know if it was data mined? That kind of thing is usually like wild fire with threads from That Shaman popping up on Reddit and then speculation here, etc.

• edit- like this one (March 31st).. or the one before that one (March 22nd)?
  Here is March 8th one. February 23rd was nothing to share. January 26th doesn’t show anything either..

Nope, no evidence at all of it being data mined. However plenty of evidence of it being leaked. Just consider that the halloween shields and greatsaws were unloaded, while the Staves were not. Seems like pretty accurate info was passed along.

While you were replying to me, I was doing some more research. I could find nothing that indicates this information was data mined.

Frankly, we’ll never get a straight answer, we all know this. It’s been brought up before. I watched the season premiere of ‘Veep’ last night, and the title “Economic Czar” struck me as an appropriate title for Mr. Smith., and even though he’s already the ‘Economics guy’, we really don’t seem to be getting far with this issue. Perhaps a new spin will do! However, we know a little more than we knew yesterday, and sometimes, that’s gotta count for something, because the fact is, it’s their company, and if this is how things are played, que sera sera!

Behellagh.1468:

Didn’t need to be inside information, just data mined from the previous SAB patch. That was when the last sell off started with supply growing from around 100.

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

“A few players have noticed that new items can be obtained in the Mystic Forge since last week’s update. We added a number of new items to the possible rewards for combining rare weapons in the mystic forge, including Bloodbound weapons, Aetherized weapons, Shadow of the Mad King weapons, and some orphaned skins from Living World season 1.”

Unless they datamined the future, this is not a likely possibility.

Yes, believe it or not I can read. Why wouldn’t I read a thread started by a Dev repeating a thread on reddit? Or any thread with a dev response. I was merely suggesting alternatives to the assertion that there was a deliberate case of insider information or trading.

The question is whether it was an accidental slip, intentionally telling a few close friends or just somebody clever put 2+2 together and got ahead of the curve. It’s not up to debate that since the end of March and this patch rolling out that the supply on the TP has increased as new ones undercut older ones. The question is what started it.

Now it was mentioned, I can think of twice, that when asked about old discontinued skins that they said they would look into bringing them back. Didn’t say when, didn’t say how. Rewarding those who are using the MF Item Sink is an interesting way to do it, bringing back those skins.

Oh boy, dumped as low as 70g. Inexhaustible supply it would seem, lol.

Amurond.4590:

The ‘major’ dumps started back up on 20th March. There was a smaller one 13th March. Maybe that’s what prompted the dumps to start back up again, hard to say really. Maybe the dude just felt like the price had gone back up to what he wanted and started dumping again. Who knows. It’s pretty suspect if you ask me but yeah the other explanation is also possible.

Except the trend started before HoT, easily seen on the graphs, which offers alternative explanations and/or influences on why people might sell.

Additionally, ~Jan 15th had a very similar increase and then drop in price that March had.

Looking at this time 2 years ago, there had been a ramp up in price, and then a subsequent plummet. In fact, just before that increase in Feb ’14, looks like one had been put up for only 444 gold? Looks like someone bought it and probably immediately tried to flip it for twice what the sell price had been just before that.

This whole conspiracy thing is based in large part on a misinterpretation of data. Could it have actually happened? Can’t 100% rule it out, no. But there are plenty of other causes, some very likely.

Look at it this way. Let’s make a few assumptions. You are sitting on a few of these skins in April ‘15. Let’s say you have a dozen or so, that you had bought here and there as investments for a surplus of gold. June ’15 hits and you see your investment suddenly gain even more value. Perhaps you even take advantage of it by selling off a couple, but of course someone else has the same idea. But it works out, they all sell. Sept ’15 rolls around, and perhaps you get a bit nervous. Remembering that in ’14 Anet had a raffle giving away 100 of the shields. You think to yourself, What if they did something similar this year? What if they add it to the mystic forge? Or give some new way to get the skin?

HoT release date has also been announced, what if a new legendary drops the demand for ghastly grinning shield a bit? The price is the highest it has ever been. So you put a few up for sale. Someone else may have the same idea and do the same. This could cause yet another person to get nervous the bubble may be popping on it’s value, causing them to also start selling off stock. On the other side, buyers are afraid the price will go back up at any time, and the current price is now the lowest it has been in a year. That starts to slow the drop in price, even goes up a bit, until someone else decides to dump some of their stock which in turn triggers others to do so.

Although put a bit crudely, these are things that should be taken into account. Given the relatively small supply of the skins, this pattern is one that should be expected. I didn’t even include above that with the release of HoT, perhaps someone wanted to get liquid gold in preparation for everything anticipated and hoped for out of HoT. Perhaps to dump into other things for speculation. There are a myriad reasons someone might start selling off a few high priced skins, and a myriad other reasons someone else might start doing the same, but with nervousness at an apparent price drop thrown in. This can and does quickly cascade into the bottom falling out.

And now, people know that the mystic forge could give the halloween skins, albeit rarely, so with an increase in effective skin supply (I am saying effective because while it is a weapon not the skin itself, it accomplishes the same thing for those wanting the skin), there is nothing to raise the price right now.