Guild Wars 2

So i’ve haven’t been playing this as long as others but did get it on retail release 8/28. I’ve been playing MMO’s for longer than I care to share (text BBS stuff for example..lol). Yes, of course, the original MMO career came with EQ. My elementalist is 54 nearly 55 and I have a few issues with the game but one that I want to discuss is the economy. The trading post has been down more than it’s been up so that is my biggest issue. However, even with that issue people just post most items (that I have noticed) at vendor trash prices. I can deal with that, it’ll change over time i’m guessing. The problem I’m having though is making silver (since gold is even rarer).

So far for me none of my crafting makes any real money because mats are hard to find and the selling price of stuff is super low (thinking it will change over time though). My items with artificer sell for vendor prices, the food i’ve cooked (400 cooking) sell for insanely low (saw 1 level 75 food item selling for 1c). Farming mats is stupid long since it’s off random mobs with random, and apparently ridiculously low, drop rates. I got rid of tailoring for now since all the randomness is even worth trying to get cloth to drop. At my level of artificer I need 8 of one small item just to make one item (that is a lot of farming with the random factor thrown in). Your level is reduced to the level of the zone you’re in so you can’t “farm” per say like in other MMO’s. It’s not like I can go in, pull some mobs, take them down and rinse and repeat. I have to be careful with every kill for the most part. Additionally, nothing (up to my current level) sells for anything spectacular (30c here, 50c there and the occassional 75c to 1s piece if I’m lucky). This is assuming I even get a drop off the mobs. Then it costs 15s to buy a Master salvage kit (which you may or may not get anything from it when you salvage) and 1GOLD to buy the Master Trait book. The Waypoints that I have noticed, and i’m sure it’s higher later on, get as high as 2s.

I’m not bashing and making my point in just a second. This game is amazing in a lot of ways, the most beautiful looking scenery I’ve seen in an MMO in forever for example, a unique combat system for another. The crafting system, while not very profitable, is quite fun to do. Then you think there is no end-game as intended and WvW takes 3+ hours for my friends (7 hours one day). I’m not sure how I can get in quicker but I think there is a glitch (created a character on wrong server initially, deleted and rerolled on friends server but WvW sees me in original deleted toons server but that is another topic for another forum).

So having said all that to get to my very simple point..lol.. What to look forward to in the end? Make a new toon and start over from scratch? PvP or wait in the insanely long queue for WvW. Farm Karma until your eyes bleed (I heard one item costs 64k Karma)? How do you make silver? Farming for longer than any regular MMO for all the different types of mats that drop to craft 1 item that’ll sell for less than 1s (I haven’t figured out better drop rates yet or if certain mobs only drop certain items other than the obvious ones)?

Again, I’m coming to these forums not to bash but to express my very valid concerns and because I do enjoy it tremendoulsy but I don’t want to be frustrated just to make 10silver, etc.

Any suggestions on sites to check drop rates other than the main popular ones (GWDB for example)? Mobs that drop certain mats, etc.? General comments?

Thank you for your time and I hope to get some constructive comments.

OMG that was really long..lol..just kept typing..lol..feel free to skip to end to get to my point and questions..lol..

I’m not rich, but I’ve never felt like I couldn’t make enough money. I blew a bunch of money and Karma cooking for fun (instead of leveling it efficiently) and I still had the money for my tier train ups, harvesting tools, salvage kits, dungeon repairs, and guild bling.

I just do events, do the dailies, sell my extra common materials (yeah they’re cheap on the TP but they cost me next to nothing to harvest), sell any blues I find to a vendor, sell the greens on the TP, and consider carefully what I salvage (I need leather and cloth, so weapons and such get sold).

If you’re a 400 cook, you might consider buying up those cheap materials and making some dyes. Those always sell for me. Farming mobs outside of the events really doesn’t work that well because the mobs aren’t dense enough. Learn where the dense humanoid events happen, slot for AOE damage, and reap a bunch of those little bags. The events in the Norn areas are pretty good – Dredge and Svanir. I think some of the centaur assaults in the human lands are good too, but I haven’t spent a lot of time there.

Oh and as far as end game? Well I’ve played 120 hours or so and only have 35% map completion. Have you found all three hidden jumping puzzles in Lion’s Arch yet? Scaling down is a good thing here, because you can experience the starter areas without one-shotting stuff, (although you will still have an advantage because of your traits and utility skills) and the rewards scale up to you.

You continue to earn skill points after 80, so you could play with the mystic forge recipes, which have components that cost skill points. The tournament PvP is always fresh because people can change up their builds at will, so it’s a lot about the meta game. At least in GW1 as soon as a flavor of the month came along, there were folks playing builds to counter it. There’s lots of variation in the dungeons also because of the different modes.

Because GW2 is much more about exploration than the WoW-likes, you sort of make your own end game based on what appeals to you. I believe that new events are going to be added after the load issues get sorted, so it might be worth revisiting certain areas.

Just as a heads up, there is apparently a form of anti-farming code in the game where you will get fewer and fewer drops if you consistently farm the same monster type. For best results, try switching up your activities / monster farming zones every so often. I don’t know much about this, though, if someone could correct me or elaborate.

Agree with the OP, the making and spending ratio is wrong.

I don’t understand why people expect crafting to make money. When crafting an item most people will sell the item for loss just to level the crafting skill. When crafting also gives experience there is even more reason to sell the crafted item for a loss.