Guild Wars 2

A well thought out interesting detailed post Allisa Wonderland.8192

On your point about GW2 not being a closed economy you are correct.

But, in real life neither is the worlds economy either, and in particular the US, UK, and Euro area, being as you possibly know the 3 largest economies in the world.

Currently we are experiencing what is called quantitative easing which is the printing of money by government via the prime/central banks to stimulate the economy and purchasing debt. A fine line needs to be drawn between preventing disflation and default or causing inflation.

Gold purchases here in GW2 by gems is the equal of quantitative easing which many people here may not have factored into their calculations, hence the economy here “may not be the traditional one of a ongoing MMO”, ……..“understood by gamers”

Here, Arenanet may, or may not take steps to control the in game economy post launch, I understand the company has recruited an economist so we will see

It amuses me gamers always say their game economy has no connection with real life economies, they are all wrong

It seems to me that the economy is balanced around some calculated amount of gem-gold trading (and vice-versa). In every MMO known to man, a certain proportion of the playerbase has always “bought gold”. Realistically, while it’s more fun to play the game through au naturel, sometimes you just can’t be bothered, and want that armor now, or just some little boost – i.e. I don’t think the majority who do that are silly about it, it’s just a wee top up now and then. And frankly, I think it’s a bit of a relief for most players when you can do that legitimately and give the money to the devs.

Again, the only voices that are raised against that is really from people who have more time than money, relatively speaking.

So, whatever is happening with the way the TP is designed, I’m pretty sure that must be a part of its design.

I think the flood of cheap blue/green stuff will obviously dry up. As someone who’s been availing himself of the cheap wep/armor prices and cheerfully re-kitting myself every few levels, I’ve already noticed the supply is pretty dry by lvl 30.

Another point: just because you’re used to thinking of “gold” as abundant, it’s just a psychological thing. In this game, even coppers matter, and “gold” is something special. Silver is how you reckon most stuff by rule of thumb. Just think of “Silver” in this game the same way you’d think of “Gold” in another game, with “Gold” in this game being equivalent to “Platinum” in other games. I understand that games eventually inflate to where the coppers aren’t even worth thinking about, but maybe Arenanet intend that not to happen with this game.

In this, as in many other things, GW2 is just different from what people are used to, and either you adapt or leave, no big deal.

There ARE items that sell well above their trader value.

Iron and soft wood don’t. But Small Scale, Vial of Weak Blood, and similar blue items used at the same level as iron and soft-wood do sell at a price substantially higher than the vendor price-floor. The price on those things is going up because the drop rate’s gone down with the flood of butter and chocolate.

So… if you want to farm something and sell it for good $$, make it the expensive stuff.

Think of why the market works the way it does — we’ll always be adding loads of metal and wood because it’s easy to get and we get xp/achieves for gathering it, as part of the daily achievement. There’ll always be lots of surplus armor and weapons cuz of drops and cuz each crafter has to make way more items than they can use just to level up.

To make money, try trading the stuff that’s in demand.

gabo.6721:

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

So, out of curiosity, what does everyone think the main factor is here?

I think its the same “greed” exhibited in the OP. There is a “money rush” and the time-value of money is too good to pass up.

Remember, under-cutters do so with the assumption that they’ll make the money NOW. Its like saying “Hey, you’re greedy, i’m greedy, i’ll at least grab my money ASAP so i know at least some of my greed will be satisfied rather than being left hanging like those selling higher”.

I’m actually monitoring the price movement of some items, trying to look for an opening to strike.

If they are “effectively” losing money compared to NPC selling, its a benefit to some other player and the seller paid a holding cost to use an overhead storage. A gold sink is a gold sink. Only thing i’d probably like to see is higher tax if the items have to travel across worlds thus giving priority buying to local goods, maybe something related to WvW.

It’s more convenience than greed.

The typical MMO player doesn’t particularly want to “play the market” — that is, spend time studying prices of items, looking for volume and price disparity patterns, calculating meticulously the differences between selling at a vendor vs paying transaction costs on the TP and so on. The typical player wants to kill stuff and sees the TP as a means to an end — that is, a means to cash out loot drops that the player doesn’t want to use themselves.

As to why people like this (i.e., most players) don’t just sell to vendors, I think the main reason is that it is more convenient for them to sell on the TP (especially by filling orders) than it is to find a vendor. In other games, vendors were always more convenient to use than the market, because you had to physically go to the market to buy and sell there. In this game, the market is everywhere for buying and selling, while vendors may not be very close to where you are, and you may not want to backtrack to find the vendors to sell your items. The TP just feels like a much more convenient way to do it, and, for most players, they don’t care if they are losing a few coppers here and there, because it’s like a “convenience fee” for them to be able to cash out their unwanted loot as quickly and easily as possible.

If Anet disabled the ability to access the market (especially the sell market, because that’s the main driver here), from anywhere, and required you to be physically present at a TP to sell items, supply of a lot of items would drop. It would be more similar to other MMOs, where people “saved” items in inventory to sell at the TP when they were next back in town where the TP is, and otherwise used vendors to empty their bags of unwanted loot for some cash. This reduced supply would push prices up somewhat, obviously. Given that the market is a huge, global market — which means supply is going to be huge — you would need some kind of measure like this to deliberately reduce supply.

I think the other main driver of lower prices in the TP is the lack of currency. While it’s true that some players will buy gold via gems in the future (and perhaps some are even doing so now), the reality is that the way gold sinks work in this game, relatively few players are high rollers cash-wise. In most MMOs, once a player gets past a certain level, cash becomes a non-issue because it is so easy to obtain and amounts tend to snowball. This drives TP/AH prices up, obviously, as there is more cash floating around, in an inflationary sense. That really isn’t happening to a substantial degree here, because Gold is harder to acquire in general and there are significant uses for it both big (e.g., Order gear) and small that add up (scaled WP costs, scaled repair costs), and if you factor in people using the TP to either level crafts and/or obtain items to use in crafting endgame exotic gear, the total endgame gold sink is currently substantial. That depresses pricing. Once more players have their endgame gear sorted in a month or two, that will ease the gold crunch a bit, but also there will be less demand overall as a result, and so I am not sure that this will result in a more robust pricing environment in the market.

In general, it seems to me that the market in GW2 isn’t really designed to function as a money-making exercise, in general. Opportunities exist if you scour the market and find disparities that can support a decent arbitrage profit, but in general this is a market designed to source items at a lowish value due to the overall strong anti-inflationary measures that keep average currency levels low, as well as the global nature of the market creating a constant oversupply environment.

mulch.2586:

There ARE items that sell well above their trader value.

Iron and soft wood don’t. But Small Scale, Vial of Weak Blood, and similar blue items used at the same level as iron and soft-wood do sell at a price substantially higher than the vendor price-floor. The price on those things is going up because the drop rate’s gone down with the flood of butter and chocolate.

So… if you want to farm something and sell it for good $$, make it the expensive stuff.

Think of why the market works the way it does — we’ll always be adding loads of metal and wood because it’s easy to get and we get xp/achieves for gathering it, as part of the daily achievement. There’ll always be lots of surplus armor and weapons cuz of drops and cuz each crafter has to make way more items than they can use just to level up.

To make money, try trading the stuff that’s in demand.

This is very true as well.

I think the fact that it is global makes this a bit harder to execute here (more expensive) — even items that are in lower supply are costly to buy up and become, effectively, the price-setting “market maker” for, given the very large number that are posted on the market even in these cases. Still, there are some opportunities there. Just not as many as there would be in smaller, server-sized markets where a few high rollers can become dominant market makers more easily.

At first I was surprised to hear two writers call for regional protectionism. How is there regional disparity in a video game?

Then, I realized that the servers are grouped in real-world regions.

Since there is a real world monetary influx, it means that those in countries like the US have more disposable income to throw at their gaming problems, which in turn means more wealth to buy out of the market as needed.

This would make it more of a seller’s market, then, which it’s not.

So, right now, I’m going to go with this being a product of US protectionist brainwashing more than economic common sense.

I think the reason for that is that not very many people have purchased gold with gems via RMT … at least not yet … so it isn’t having a pricing inflationary impact at this time. That could change over time.

mulch.2586:

Still, there are some opportunities there. Just not as many as there would be in smaller, server-sized markets where a few high rollers can become dominant market makers more easily.

Thank you!
This is exactly it. Protectionism is, from what I experience, about greed.

Personally, I’d rather be a whale in the ocean over a sturgeon in the river.

I think its just people not getting how to make money using the AH.

Most people just want to make something from what they made even if it results in a loss.

knightblaster.8027:

I think the reason for that is that not very many people have purchased gold with gems via RMT … at least not yet … so it isn’t having a pricing inflationary impact at this time. That could change over time.

The exchange rate on Gems to Gold going down implies that there have been a large number of people purchasing gold with real money through ArenaNET, though.

Each time the the trading post came back to life, the rate would slide down at an alarming rate. Then, when the BLTC crashed, it would slowly climb back up or stay flat.

Now that trading has been functioning regularly (for the most part), the rate has slide. There isn’t a huge demand to scoop up inventory anymore as people are seeing the prices of items get pulled down by the sell side risk.

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

knightblaster.8027:

I think the reason for that is that not very many people have purchased gold with gems via RMT … at least not yet … so it isn’t having a pricing inflationary impact at this time. That could change over time.

The exchange rate on Gems to Gold going down implies that there have been a large number of people purchasing gold with real money through ArenaNET, though.

Each time the the trading post came back to life, the rate would slide down at an alarming rate. Then, when the BLTC crashed, it would slowly climb back up or stay flat.

Now that trading has been functioning regularly (for the most part), the rate has slide. There isn’t a huge demand to scoop up inventory anymore as people are seeing the prices of items get pulled down by the sell side risk.

Where is that gold being spent? It can’t all be for waypoints and repairs, and not much of it seems to be pushing TP prices up, which would normally be the case if there were a lot of RMT happening currently. I suppose people could all be buying Gold to purchase Order gear or something like that.

People need to stop posting their crap gear on the trading post. Nobody wants it. Salvage or vendor it, like you’re supposed to.

Just think of all the gear you’ve seen drop. That much gear is dropping for everyone else, too There is far more dropping than can possible by needed, and most of it completely useless.

If you go to put something on the trading post, look at the price of the match lowest price, subtract 15% (cost of using the tp), and compare to what you’d get if you vendored it. If it’s lower, don’t even think about putting it up- you’re going to lose money. Even if it’s higher, consider that’s the HIGHEST amount of profit you can make on the item. If you want to have a better chance of it selling, you’ll need to list it even lower than the current lowest cost.

The fact is, only really rare things and crafting mats have any chance to make you any money on the trading post. Quit wasting your time and money listing things that aren’t those.

I use the trade post the same way I use ebay. I’ll undercut everybody just to guarantee I sell my item right now if I need to. I don’t care about raking in hundreds of gold, I simply want to offload all the stuff I don’t want. Do I care if it affects those of you who want to play the market and get rich? Nope, I don’t care in the slightest.

2words, perfect competition. Due to the market encompassing all servers, the market is much more efficient where the prices is harder for an individual/guild to manipulate. Also due to the large amount of participants, market actually stabilize faster, reaching the equilibrium state where the selling price is the cost price. There is nothing wrong with the system.

To those familiar with playing the market of other games, the same trick that works in other maket no longer works here… Or that it actually takes effort and understanding to make money in GW2 market. If you find yourself in a system that you are no longer master, you can either cry about it or learn to master it. For those that loses money from the hidden transaction cost on a sale…you have only yourself to blame…why do you think that items that sells at similar prices have similar spread? Especially if it is actively traded? You obviously have no understanding of economics or investment… You can again take it as a lesson, or cry about it.

I have no patience for people like op. if he were to ask for advice, I’ll gladly share my experience without the criticism. But op seems to be crying about something that he can’t understand and demand changes to be made to suit his level of capabilities.

Add to the fact that everyone is able to loot something or harvest a node, most people are still at their early levels, or just started crafting, it comes as no surprise that supply of magic items are hire than demand, and that low tier mets cost more. It you did study the market, you would have noticed that higher tier meta are getting more expansive as well.

Smackjack.5071:

Ravnodaus.5130:

Personally, I would rather sell an item to a person than vendor it. Even if I take a very small loss.

That would only make a sliver of sense if you would have said “Give a item to a person rather then vendor it”

You cannot put items on the TP any lower then the vendors price so they may as well buy them from a vendor and in turn the market economy would not be on itskitten because of your misguided reasoning.

I have yet to find a vendor selling me small claws, venom sacs, etc. I need these the most to raise my crafting and yes I go try to farm them but the game hates me. Kill 30 mobs that drop small claws and I end up with like 5.

Well I hate to give away my secret, but it may help to stop all of the complaining a little bit. Here you go: buy the competitors stuff and re-list it. If I have an item listed for 6 silver, and someone under-cuts me and sells the same thing for 5s, I buy theirs and re-list it. Re-listing at my price means I have profited 89 copper on the item. Or I re-list for a few copper higher than my original price to profit an even silver.

The result of doing that is you have cost your competitor money since, with TP taxes included, they were selling under vendor price. You have profited off of their loss (a small profit, but one none the less). You have removed a competitive item from the shop, improved your original items position, and if you list the newly acquired item at a different price than your original then you have at least the top two listings for the thing you are selling.

A player could honestly go in to the market with just a few copper in their pocket, buy the lowest priced listing of an in demand item, sell it a few copper above the next lowest price listing and be rolling in the silver within a few hours.

The longer the game goes on the more alts people make that need crafting materials and gear. The market will tighten up and prices will stabilize. So while you have the chance, why don’t you take advantage of the people that haven’t figured it out and make make a fortune instead of sitting around complaining like akittenabout someone trying to snipe your sales?

Bradach.4913:

I hate that people are selling items for so cheap on TP. I can hardly make any money there thanks to low-ballers. They could sell their items for the same price at a shop but go to the TP. That just does not make any sense to me. Is there any chance that the minimum amount to sell items for goes up? Or am I stuck with getting next to nothing for most of the items I sell?

Sell things that are in demand then. The market is entirely player-driven. I really don’t understand your complaint at all. Did you expect to make a fortune out of your fellow players?

I’m making money out of the Trading Post. I sell things that make money. Things that don’t make money, I vendor or salvage. What’s the big deal? You seem to be asking Anet to manipulate the market. Why on earth should they? things that are in demand sell, and sell well. Things that don’t are worthless trash. Just like real life, really!

AcidicVision.5498:

Well I hate to give away my secret, but it may help to stop all of the complaining a little bit. Here you go: buy the competitors stuff and re-list it. If I have an item listed for 6 silver, and someone under-cuts me and sells the same thing for 5s, I buy theirs and re-list it. Re-listing at my price means I have profited 89 copper on the item. Or I re-list for a few copper higher than my original price to profit an even silver.

The result of doing that is you have cost your competitor money since, with TP taxes included, they were selling under vendor price. You have profited off of their loss (a small profit, but one none the less). You have removed a competitive item from the shop, improved your original items position, and if you list the newly acquired item at a different price than your original then you have at least the top two listings for the thing you are selling.

A player could honestly go in to the market with just a few copper in their pocket, buy the lowest priced listing of an in demand item, sell it a few copper above the next lowest price listing and be rolling in the silver within a few hours.

The longer the game goes on the more alts people make that need crafting materials and gear. The market will tighten up and prices will stabilize. So while you have the chance, why don’t you take advantage of the people that haven’t figured it out and make make a fortune instead of sitting around complaining like akittenabout someone trying to snipe your sales?

Let me check my silver….ummm, I don’t think I’m going to be able to buy 4500383 orders of leather…..hmmm.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

Let me check my silver….ummm, I don’t think I’m going to be able to buy 4500383 orders of leather…..hmmm.

That’s a common crafting material. If I’m not mistaken the OP was talking about actual crafted goods.

Green and up weapons, armor and accessories. Even things like boxes and bags. Rarer crafting materials or sigils. Usually those things have 1-6 units at the obviously under-cut price. And unless you are just starting out, its a trivial thing to buy 6 10-slot bags at the lowest asking price, mark them up and repost them.

Common crafting goods…merch what you don’t need or put them in the guild vault. Unless you care about that 1 or 2 copper more per unit than the merchant offers and are willing to wait for it…

mulch.2586:

There ARE items that sell well above their trader value.

Iron and soft wood don’t…

To make money, try trading the stuff that’s in demand.

Exactly. I actually expect to see the the price of T2 materials rise. At the moment, the money is in T1 resources because lots of people are still trying to level above 75. And Fine materials (i.e. totems, fangs, claws, etc) are the major bar to crafting advancement, so naturally they are rather more expensive. Supply & demand. It’s quite straightforward.

Once enough players get impatient about levelling through higher crafting tiers, the prices of lower resources will fall, and those of higher tiers will rise, as will the relevant Fine’s. Personally, I think Anet’s market set up is perfect – it’s all down to the players, it involves the entire player base, and even the fact that players in some countries may have more disposable income to purchase gems (and, therefore, in-game gold) is simply not going to distort things. The global market is far too big for that.

I think it is working as intended. In the beginning T1 crafting materials were DIRT cheap. Now they are more than T2 by double or more!

Why? Because everyone blew through the early levels and didn’t craft, now there are a bunch of high level chars looking to take up crafting and they are seeing have painful it is to farm fine mats and things.

Bag drops off of mobs drop crafting materials for your level so even if I go to a low level zone, my bag drops are still giving me chocolate bars and sticks of butter, thick leather etc etc. Those bags are essential in collecting fine crafting materials. the only way to get them now is to farm low level mobs or use the TP.

Expect to see T2 and T3 prices sky rocket soon.

Ok I just noticed it now doesn’t seem to limit you to selling your item above vendor price. I just tried selling Walnuts and they are 3c ea to a vendor. Lowest price was 3c and the UI let me put it at 2 or 1 if I wanted to without telling me it had to be above vendor price. So it seems they’ve removed that restriction from the TP?
Now people will be selling 20c items for 5c… lol

EDIT: it was actually only the walnuts, which is strange. Other items still had the restriction. I wonder if walnuts were one of the items that used to be karma vendor item so when they made it drop now they didn’t link up the vendor value correctly?

AdamLiborio.8436:

Ok I just noticed it now doesn’t seem to limit you to selling your item above vendor price. I just tried selling Walnuts and they are 3c ea to a vendor. Lowest price was 3c and the UI let me put it at 2 or 1 if I wanted to without telling me it had to be above vendor price. So it seems they’ve removed that restriction from the TP?
Now people will be selling 20c items for 5c… lol

EDIT: it was actually only the walnuts, which is strange. Other items still had the restriction. I wonder if walnuts were one of the items that used to be karma vendor item so when they made it drop now they didn’t link up the vendor value correctly?

That would be a good guess, I think.

AcidicVision.5498:

Well I hate to give away my secret, but it may help to stop all of the complaining a little bit. Here you go: buy the competitors stuff and re-list it. If I have an item listed for 6 silver, and someone under-cuts me and sells the same thing for 5s, I buy theirs and re-list it. Re-listing at my price means I have profited 89 copper on the item. Or I re-list for a few copper higher than my original price to profit an even silver.

Yes, you follow the same logic as the short sell method I mentioned above. Smart.

The big problem is the vendors price is an artifical floor price. They need to get rid of that now that the TP is working.

There seems to be one major factor that people are forgetting when they put stuff up on the TP. You only get money for it when someone actually wants to buy it. If 3000 other people have listed the same item for 1c above vendor prices, it’s probably because nobody is interested in it, and it likely won’t sell for years. Just sit there on the TP and rot, while you get no money for it. If you’ve put up 100 items that you would have gotten 50c each for from a vendor, that’s half a gold that’s not in your pocket.

The items that do sell will eventually find a happy medium based on need. Crafted items of blue or green quality will likely only ever be made to level your craft, as a money sink. You won’t make money on those items, and have to accept that. The real money from crafting will come from the higher quality items that you have to go out of your way and put some effort into making.

Bradach.4913:

I hate that people are selling items for so cheap on TP. I can hardly make any money there thanks to low-ballers. They could sell their items for the same price at a shop but go to the TP. That just does not make any sense to me. Is there any chance that the minimum amount to sell items for goes up? Or am I stuck with getting next to nothing for most of the items I sell?

If you’re looking to make a bunch of money right now, you’re doing it wrong. I’m spending most of my money buying various underpriced items, to resell once the market stabilizes. It’s so saturated right now, that attempting to make a profit on margins is just about useless. For instance, I bought lots of gems at just over their vendor value a while back. I’m not sure what their price is right now (haven’t played in a few days due to lightning one-shotting my computer), but I’ve put a bet on the price going up in the future. It may not be tomorrow or next week, but they should turn a good profit eventually. The only thing I’ve sold so far was a pretty darn good 2hand sword, and that was just to get some seed money to start buying.

TLDR – Now is not the time to be profiting. Now is the time to be buying in anticipation of profit later.

Ravnodaus.5130:

But I’m prfectly fine with the fact that by offering goods at minimum prices it’ll strong arm others into also selling on the cheap.

That’s not what that does in this case. Ignoramuses (Ignoramii?) throw stuff on the TP without setting a price and the default sell price is 1 copper more than the NPC vendor will pay for it. Said seller loses money due to the listing fee.

Because of this, crafting is a money-sink and personally, I gave up on it. I like crafting my own stuff to use and selling some for a reasonable profit for my effort but this just prevents that from happening at all rather than facilitating healthy competition.

Having said that, I am assumed this would happen at any MMO launch due to many wanting to just level their crafting and not worry about self-sustaining fiscal feasibility.

At some point, when the numbers allow, the capitalists will buy the altruists’ wares and resell them for a profit, eventually making crafting viable again.

100% agree.

ps.
Buy up the cheap Thick Leather Section!!

Interesting how some would prefer some sort of regulation to “stabilize” market prices. Financially, a thing is only worth what someone else is willing to pay for it. I don’t think that regulation would benefit more than a small percentage of sellers, and would artificially inflate prices.

Crafters may not be making a large profit, but they are gaining levels while crafting, enabling them access to rarer recipes. These recipes can be used for items in shorter supply, so can support a larger profit margin.

I like that the market is world-wide. It keeps the servers all on the same footing and helps prevent gouging.

Bogartan.2756:

Crafters may not be making a large profit, but they are gaining levels while crafting, enabling them access to rarer recipes. These recipes can be used for items in shorter supply, so can support a larger profit margin.

I find this probelmatic as a tailorer, because 18 bags cost me 2+ gold to make and 20 bag 10+ gold, because of vendor prices. And right now there are only very few peopel who need these bags let aloen afford it.

The main factor here is the lack of:
1) The need for food
2) The need for water
3) The need for shelter
4) Some other unmentionables

If I can buy all the materials for crafting an item for 3 gold, why not sell it at 3 gold? Why not do that and have the next guy undercut me to 2 gold? Who cares anyway? Why are you trying to make a profit? Do you need a profit to kill more monsters? WoW had the false illusion that you could get better gear than what you have now, and yet every time they’d throw out a new patch to invalidate what you grinded forever for. And when you thought of a single cool item, you’d go to the AH and realize you’d have to grind for days just to make the gold for that component.

ArenaNet is about fun. Is it fun going to the AH and finding the item you need listed with a ridiculous price? No. It’s fun to be able to go to the AH and find whatever you need for a ‘good’ price. There are 10,000 others trying to sell the same item as you, and you are expecting a 10% profit?

I tell you what, research the rare stuff, the hard to get stuff, the stuff that takes weeks to get. Sell that. Sell that for what weeks of your time is worth. And I’m guessing it will sell. You will have the gold, and the other guy will have the item he didn’t have to spend weeks to get. Just like in real life, where time = money, it’s the same here. And it takes 2c of my time to gather wood, or even craft an item, so it’s worth the 2c to sell it on the AH.

I agree with the OP, I hate to use another MMO in my example, but one way of making a decent coin in other MMO’s with an auction house or trading center was by selling gear that wasn’t needed (or available at a merchant/vendor). I find that there really isn’t a huge demand for gear, and the prices that are listed on the Trading Post are actually the same (if not a cut with the trading post’s cut) as what it would be to sell to a merchant, and it may take days to sell if at all. I’m not talking about typical “merchant trash”, but some blue/green gear or weapons, etc. A positive example in GW2 is the crafting materials. IMO they’re selling for a higher (yet fair) price, due to demand. But the items that these materials are used to craft sell for a loss, not a profit…making it not as worth-while to craft.

In most other games, crafting is a money sink as well where you craft trash stuffs that no one wants…at least maybe until the higher level. Here, item drops are so much, and you can buy items with karma merchant… So there’s a lot of other options to get the items and that’s what driving the price down.

It’s also been stated by the developer somewhere that crafting is mainly for your own use, and not to expect to make tons of money through it.

What I think though, is that reducing the drop rate of gears from mob should help reduce the supply. Remember that anyone that strikes a mob have a chance to generate a loot… As oppose to other games where only 1 person gets to keep the generated loot….so in an event with 20 people, the same amount of mobs will be dropping 20 times more loot in total into the game world.

This will self correct.

I was one of those people who sold at minimum price at the Trading Post. Why? Because it is convenient, and I don’t actually lose money so much as make less money since objects fall from monsters by magic without my spending a dime to get them.

However, my run of the mill stuff is not selling. So now I vendor.

Others will figure this out and follow suit sooner or later.

I am personally not having any issues making money off the TP.

I look at what is currently in demand for a high price, then supply it, it is really all that simple

Yup…it just takes more effort and understanding on how a market works to make money trading.

I think mostly you guys are talking about blues and greens equippable gear, i.e. vendor trash.

Try selling things that are actually desired.