Guild Wars 2

So me and a friend were talking about random lore regarding current events and got to the topic of currency.
We were wondering if there is actual lore as to why the currency of the world changed from gold and platinum(GW1) to copper/silver/gold(GW2).

I googled some old threads which were inconclusive. It could simply be because 250 years have passed and naturally currencies change, esp as Tyria has become more inclusive of multiple races now. When platinum was a thing, we werent trading with Asura, Norn until late in the GW1 era and especially not with Charr. Human influence has also heavily waned. Standardising to a new currency makes sense.

I have vague recollections of platinum still being mentioned in game by npcs though. Perhaps platinum currency has massively inflated and is very rare to obtain now.

The Xunlai agents must have taken all the plat with them when they left. They were the guardians of all the vaults that the plat was stored in back then and had the spare keys. In the 250 years between gw1 and gw2 when they weren’t being watched they obviously looted all those accounts and ran off with all that plat. They probably went off to Cantha and built big mansions on the seashore with your inheritance.

I forget which asura personal story it is, but Zojja bets, and wins, “platinum” due to your success. Whether that’s a coin or an ingot, who knows?

Sadly there is little to no hard lore about what has occurred to the currency in the game. We know that platinum does exist in the game, both in books and in game, but it seems to only exist among the richest of individuals. My favorite theory about the change of currency revolves around Lion’s Arch. When humans moved out and multiracial pirates and Zaishen moved in, the Pirates likely brought their own currency into the area, which consisted on gold, silver and copper coins in Guild Wars 1. Eventually as Lion’s Arch traded with all races and became a trade empire, it made the most sense to adopt their currency in order to ease trade.

Again, though, this is all just a series of guesses and such. So take it all with a grain of salt.

It didn’t.

In GW1, copper and silver existed in the lore (several trophy coins dropped were in copper/silver/gold, such as the Zaishen Coins) but were not used mechanically because Anet wanted to avoid the traditional copper/silver/gold currencies that were a staple among fantasy games (IIRC).

In GW2, there are multiple remarks to platinum being used by richer NPCs – most notably the ransom letter for Demmi Beetlestone during the Order of Whispers’ C4 storyline.

Basically the only thing that changed was the mechanical system, which truthfully should have platinum when you hit 1,000 gold if it were to reflect the lore, but for some reason (you’d have to ask Anet) it doesn’t.