Guild Wars 2

I know that there are players that have a thousand gold or more, but the vast majority of us doesn’t have anywhere close to that amount. I also believe that the reason why platinum isn’t part of the game is because it’s standard for the copper, silver, gold currency system to be in western style RPGs; it’s rare to have currency go into platinum or be some sort of material that is worth more than a gold piece/coin.

That being said, I’m writing this post because earlier today, while completing a personal quest for my daily, I read a specific letter involving ransom, and the letter asked for a thousand platinum. Now, players from GW1 will recognize the word platinum because back then, a platinum piece was equal to a thousand gold.

Later, when I was in the black lion trading center, I overheard the oft-repeated “It’s 20 gold for a centaur spearhead” line. I realized that 20 gold can be a lot of money to a lot of players.

This had me wondering: Are we, the players, considered poor in terms of official lore? If so, does this notion, in some ways, cast us in the “poor adventurer” trope?

I have a tendency to separate the lore currency exchange rate and the player currency gain rate.

In GW1, during Gates of Kryta, you had a farmer claim it to be a total outrage for a head of lettuce to be worth four gold coins, claiming he could clothe his entire family (size of said family unknown) for that much, and said farmer and the merchant he was bartering with settled on three heads of lettuce for four golds. To players, you couldn’t arm yourself with the most simplistic armor sets for less than 15 gold iirc, and most drinks and food cost 100-200 gold coins.

Then you have what you said for GW2, and then some others. Though the ransom is intended to be a ridiculously high amount treated as nothing (a bag of platinum coins in Ghosts of Ascalon, iirc, was treated as making the adventurers rich as heck).

If we were to take dialogue as a basis for how rich/poor we players are, in GW1 we were filthy rich and in GW2 we are filthy poor.

gold is more a mechanic then a part of lore. As for inflation there is a reasonable explanation to be given. The xunlai agency had the magic master chest containing all the valuables off all the xunlai chests in the world in their HQ in Kaineng center. it is even visable through the gate there. So as to why gold is now so much more worth and platinum isnt considered in normal trading.. Well I think that it is cause Cantha and so the master chest is cut off from us. wether or not that is going to hold on IF we ever visit cantha in gw2 is unknown.

But for the rest, the market system is difficult enough without using lore to explain it properly.

The economy is really something you have to take with a large suspension of disbelief. When a gold ingot – which normally contains enough gold for dozens of coins – can be worth (checks trading post) 1.94 silver or less than 1/50th of a single gold piece – either the value of coins is most definitely not in the value of the metal (in which case I’d be curious as to why counterfeiting isn’t rampant – does each gold coin contain a little asuran device from the Lion’s Arch Mint that serves as an authenticator?)

Personally, I think it would make a lot more sense if it was silver/gold/platinum, but I guess it’s too late now…