Guild Wars 2

Laserbolt.6731:

Last time they had “solo Queue” it really wasn’t.

Team queue got such a huge wait time that they started coming to SoloQ and synchronizing their “join” using Teamspeak so they had a good chance of landing on the same side in a match.

Stop spreading lies. That never worked. Even if you got into the same game you wouldn’t be on the same team because your friends would all be highly ranked.

Solo queue was fine before they removed it.

The problem was team queue, queue times were 20-40 minutes if you were in the top 200 or so and you fought the same teams 3 times in a row.

So why does the other team get 2 higher division groups?

There is no universal definition of exactly what “hardcore” or “casual” is, but I think if we had a poll, most people would agree that spending 1+ hours just waiting to play, then wiping for 20+ hours a week to beat 1 boss nowhere near the realm of casual.

It doesn’t matter how unskilled you are or how committed you are to winning. You obviously cared enough to even use sharpening stones, let alone food.

You also had a full guild roster of people who do teq every day. How many casuals even have 10 people they play with every day?

It also doesn’t matter how serious you are. I’ve been in groups with people that raid every day and they joke about screwups.

It seems to me that you are a hardcore player in denial.

Astralporing.1957:

IllegalChocolate.6938:

And you are aware that 5 hours of wiping on your first clear is actually super fast right? People literally spent weeks on their first Vale Guard kill, 5 hours is GODLIKE on first kills.

…then it is not casual friendly. People willing to spend weeks failing a specific content just to learn how to do it are not casual players.

This.

I think it is funny that you keep trying argue with me and only end up weakening your own position. Also, I have already killed VG 5 times, and everyone else in that group said they already cleared it at least once.

Sykper.6583:

Gewd.8125:

It is pretty much universally agreed that Wildstar failed because of overfocus on hardcore content. If you think otherwise you are in some fantasy world by your own. They spent a huge amount of resources on their raids and the rest of the game suffered as a result.

The rest of your post is literally role bias, Wildstar had by its design massive issues with its hardcore content.

For instance, instances only gave rewards when the full group did all the encounters at a gold rating, yes, runs were literally graded on performance. A lot of the progression loot was gated behind players playing 100% all the time, which is garbage in any sense. You could have a flawless run, mess up on the final boss for the last few %, get a silver rating and not get anything worthwhile. Doesn’t take a genius to see what that causes, it was just poor reward design.

The second issue, interesting enough was that it wasn’t promoted enough, there were nearly zero advertisements for the game while WoW at the same point was releasing an expansion. That never ends well, so the launch got delayed in tune. Gross, so the appeal was already downhill from the start.

There were also the usual bugs that came with any new MMO, but although the difficulty of content was there, the means behind keeping players around were done poorly.

Uh what? Did you even play Wildstar?

You were never meant to farm a full set of purple gear from dungeons before you started raiding. They were meant as a rare bonus. Raids were balanced around blue gear, not purple gear. Raids were being cleared with people wearing blues. Raid bosses rewarded purple gear…. And in 1.5 months of release they made it possible to get superbs on bronze and silver.

And getting gold in dungeons appeals to the same type of hardcore player that raids. This was not casual content.

Traditional advertising wouldn’t have done anything. There was already massive amount of hype around the game on Twitch and gaming websites billing it as the WoW killer. Servers had 4 hour queue times on release. There were more than enough players. They all just left after they realized half the effort was spent on raids that they would never be able to clear.

I’ve joined quite a few pugs and I can tell you are either lying, or just managed to finish it by luck after 5 hours of wiping.

I would not consider this as having enough slack.

IllegalChocolate.6938:

You
Got
Carried
Through
Raids
Gewd

That’s why it wasn’t hard for you, because you slacked while others had to pick up after you. You didn’t take a leadership position neither did you deal with high administrative stuff to ensure everything was logistically clean for your guild. Now we have content where you have to pull your weight and that’s why its hard for you, because you can’t get others to do your job for you.

Gewd.8125:

It is too hard for most players. This is an observable fact.

I joined a pug yesterday with a few people that supposedly already beat VG.

The tank was pulling too slow and spawning the green circle in aoe fields, and not enough people got on the green circle. And this kept happening for over an hour even though everyone was told after every wipe what they needed to do. And for some reason, they couldn’t do it.

Your expecting people to adapt perfectly within the hour? are you serious? and I thought Nike and the rest of DnT were elitists.

Not even mythic raiders in WoW expect that and that environment can get more toxic fast.

Ok and how does that counter anything I said? I have been arguing that raids should have enough slack so you can carry friends that aren’t very good or being able to use pugs.

There is not much reason for having raids be extremely taxing for everyone in the group, other than for no-lifers to flaunt their raid clears. I also play the game to play an actual game, not to fight the roster boss.

1 hour is quite a bit of time for people who have already done VG. At an average of 5 minutes per attempt, this is 12 attempts….

It is pretty much universally agreed that Wildstar failed because of overfocus on hardcore content. If you think otherwise you are in some fantasy world by your own. They spent a huge amount of resources on their raids and the rest of the game suffered as a result.

I’m not sure why tanks and healers have a hard time understanding why most people hate them.

In every single MMO there is a shortage of tanks and healers even though you require 2-3x the dps. Does this not tell you that the vast majority of players absolutely hate tanking and healing?

It doesn’t matter how easy it is to get tanking and healing gear, I prefer not to tank or heal even if the equipment cost 0 gold or you try to dress it up to make it sound more interesting than it is. Why is it so interesting to have the boss focus on 1 guy that does no damage while 20 other dps characters beat on it? It is a really stupid concept.

And as a result I have seen in countless games, people waiting the entire day for a single tank or healer. And those spoiled tanks and healers demanding preferential treatment in terms of loot, when everyone else should play, and having people they don’t like kicked.

Gw2 is (or at least was) about content for the majority, not for everyone. And having tanks and healers blocks the fun for the majority.

It is too hard for most players. This is an observable fact.

I joined a pug yesterday with a few people that supposedly already beat VG.

The tank was pulling too slow and spawning the green circle in aoe fields, and not enough people got on the green circle. And this kept happening for over an hour even though everyone was told after every wipe what they needed to do. And for some reason, they couldn’t do it.

Sykper.6583:

Gewd.8125:

IllegalChocolate.6938:

Gewd.8125:

It has been a long time, but I don’t remember it ever being as hard. And you are comparing the 1st wing of the GW2 raid to the 6th wing of vanilla wow.

And yes farming equipment was very grindy but at least it wasn’t hard.

and whats so hard about farming gear in GW2? you don’t even need to kill a 40 man boss for it to even be allowed to do other content . You can literally chop trees and mine nodes your way to BiS stats in GW2.

I
Don’t
Understand.
At
ALL

The first couple bosses in Molten Core still required a significant amount of time to learn in comparison to anything spirit vale.

I never said farming ascended gear was hard. I was disproving your claim that vanilla WoW raiding was hard because it took forever to farm equipment for the next wing.

And no, molten core was easy. I remembered that I barely needed to worry about anything, with the tank and healer doing most of the work while I dpsed the boss while watching TV. There might have been one mechanic per boss that everyone had to worry about, but they were easy compared to VG where there are as many as 6 different mechanics sometimes happening at the same time, and needing to coordinate CCs.

For example, Baron Geddon, the only thing I remember about the fight was having 10 entire seconds to move when you became the bomb. Every other mechanic was easily healed or dispelled by 1 person.

Oh…you were that player in Vanilla. That explains it.

It was a 40-man, but there were quite a few difficult roles to be filled out by a select batch of folks, the rest didn’t really have to do much as you said. In other words, it was probably yourself and a dozen others just doing the dps rotation, the rest really worked on the hard stuff.

It’s sort of why BC went to 25 man raids, to get rid of the filler.

I could’ve handled the harder roles if it came down to it.

But guess what? I don’t like to be the meatshield occasionally moving the boss or the healer staring at health bars the entire time. And the people at arena.net realized that most people don’t either.

That is why I left for Guild Wars 1, and then Guild Wars 2 where there would be no trinity that allowed tanks and healers to become spoiled brats, being able to demand special treatment and make 39 other people wait for you all day. I’m not sure why anet changed their minds. It seems to me they are randomly trying things to see what will make them more money now even if it goes against their original manifesto.

I also don’t think there’s anything wrong with having easier roles in the raid. I had fun playing with my guild, and we could take our friends that sucked at the game instead of ditching them.

The hardcore mentality that started with BC has led raids down a dark road. At least Blizzard was smart enough to try to alleviate the issue with raid finder and multiple difficulties.

Honestly I don’t think spending this much manpower making content for 1% of the players is sustainable for any MMO except for WoW at its peak. Look at Wildstar for a good example.

IllegalChocolate.6938:

Gewd.8125:

It has been a long time, but I don’t remember it ever being as hard. And you are comparing the 1st wing of the GW2 raid to the 6th wing of vanilla wow.

And yes farming equipment was very grindy but at least it wasn’t hard.

and whats so hard about farming gear in GW2? you don’t even need to kill a 40 man boss for it to even be allowed to do other content . You can literally chop trees and mine nodes your way to BiS stats in GW2.

I
Don’t
Understand.
At
ALL

The first couple bosses in Molten Core still required a significant amount of time to learn in comparison to anything spirit vale.

I never said farming ascended gear was hard. I was disproving your claim that vanilla WoW raiding was hard because it took forever to farm equipment for the next wing.

And no, molten core was easy. I remembered that I barely needed to worry about anything, with the tank and healer doing most of the work while I dpsed the boss while watching TV. There might have been one mechanic per boss that everyone had to worry about, but they were easy compared to VG where there are as many as 6 different mechanics sometimes happening at the same time, and needing to coordinate CCs.

For example, Baron Geddon, the only thing I remember about the fight was having 10 entire seconds to move when you became the bomb. Every other mechanic was easily healed or dispelled by 1 person.

It has been a long time, but I don’t remember it ever being as hard. And you are comparing the 1st wing of the GW2 raid to the 6th wing of vanilla wow.

And yes farming equipment was very grindy but at least it wasn’t hard.

Let me preface this by saying I have the eternal title.

Having said that, I have to disagree with almost everything you’ve said.

Gw2 raids are not casual friendly. Simply being able to post an LFG does not make it simple. From my experience, you would have to wait at least an hour before you could fill 9 spots and you will probably have people leaving while you are adding people from LFG. Then you will have more leavers after constant wipes. Anyone who has the time and patience for this, I would not classify as casual.

I also find it strange that raids are now supposed to be as hard as possible. Up until WoW: TBC, raids were all about having fun in a large party, with a few skilled players being able to carry the entire group.

And for some strange reason the definition of raids has changed into the hardest content possible where you wait dozens of hours for your dumbest teammate to learn the mechanics and then feel elated when they stop screwing up and generally never feel like doing it again.

Beating VG isn’t that hard, and you can farm magnetite shards by failing over and over.

Ghostly infusion having a 1/30 drop rate and being worth 1000g and dropping makes it a very ineffective farm.

spoj.3175:

If people know whats best for them they wont sell the slots. And just sell the ghostly infusions to them instead.

And if they do sell the bosses then it needs to be at least 300g per slot. Probably a lot lot higher for the near future.

You can’t make a profit off ghostly infusions. They are time-gated and only drop off gorseval.

I’ve done gorseval weekly 3 times already and I’ve only seen it drop for 1 person. 1000g split over 10 people for 3 runs is pathetic.

And the price has dropped from 2k to 1k already.

Hawke.1094:

Gewd.8125:

The problem is that raids call for specific classes and builds that you might not have ready.

For example, condi warrior wasn’t even a thing until now. And now in order to get an ascended condi war you have to do 20 hours worth of living story achievements and spend 1000+g on the armor and weapons not to mention the vision crystals.

Who knows what other oddball classes that future raids will require?

Or…you can change the stats of your ascended gear in 5 min with only a couple of gold? I’m pretty sure you can do that.

You mean trash my current power set that has 90g worth of runes and waste spirit shards
every time I want to switch? And possibly seeing condi warrior becoming irrelevant in later raids?

Sounds like a good plan.

For the moderator: this is not a discussion for the “purchase, sale or trade of game accounts, items, gold or other real-money transactions” This is a discussion for trade of in-game services for in-game gold.

So simply the title. We all know that selling raids is going to be a thing as it was for Arah and Fractals 50. It is just a matter of time.

How much to charge for VG, Gorseval, and Sabetha?

The problem is that raids call for specific classes and builds that you might not have ready.

For example, condi warrior wasn’t even a thing until now. And now in order to get an ascended condi war you have to do 20 hours worth of living story achievements and spend 1000+g on the armor and weapons not to mention the vision crystals.

Who knows what other oddball classes that future raids will require?

Can you make one for people porting through the Lost Precipe guild hall to skip the living story?

Can you make one for people porting through the lost precipice guild hall to skip the living story?

I’ve noticed that there are a lot of cooldowns on LFG.

There is a time limit where your lfg gets automatically deleted. And there is a time period where you are not allowed to repost any lfgs.

Anyone know what these time limits are? It is really annoying hitting them.

Gotten him to 5% multiple times.

I can do PS or Cond warrior.

Does one exist? If not, would you use one if it existed?

What back-piece am I supposed to get for raids? Is it either rampagers or carrion since we can’t get sinister or vipers?

Title. Also which classes are required and is ascended needed?

People panicked and thought anet was going to bring them back in a raffle like they did last year. Only 100 were given out supposedly.

There is some deflation but not really enough to cause a 50% drop.

I think it will go back up. Supply has already dropped by 4 today.

What guild is that?

I’ve seen another guild ask for your gw2 api key so this isn’t a gw2 efficiency thing, it is a gw2 api v2 thing.

The problem you are seeing is that all the focused players use the LFG to get into the same maps. And there is a short windows of time before they all fill up.

For example, Dragon Stand resets every 2 hours, and if you miss this window by 5-10 minutes, you will not be able to find a decent map.

I recommend using this webpage to be aware of when these events are starting. Some maps you may need to join before they start such as Chak Gerent or Octovine.

https://jsfiddle.net/fffam/tukuz9x1/embedded/result/

You guys who just say that you will max out one day aren’t getting the point.

It is very unfun to try to get somewhere just to figure out through exhaustive searching 1 hour later that you do not have the required mastery to do it.

Now that I’ve rushed the content blocking masteries, the game is 10x more fun. They could’ve just done away with content blocking masteries, or at least put the worst offenders in the last map.

I would like to finish this meta event, are there any organized groups out there doing it like for tequatl and wurm?

How do you farm machetes? Even if I can find 30 pods per DS, I only get 12 machetes per DS.

Has HOT made mesmer any better at aoe tagging or is GS shatter still the best you can get?

I can’t put my ascended rings in the mystic forge to upgrade with agonized essences. They don’t show up in the mystic forge.

When will this be fixed?

Never mind I found it, it was 22.

Does anyone know which one is golden badge #16 on this jumping puzzle?

It is the last one I need and I can’t find it. They seem to be numbered differently.

http://dulfy.net/2014/12/04/gw2-go-for-the-gold-golden-badges-achievement-guide/

You don’t think it is ridiculous that you have to grind the same 5 events for several hours just to get gliding and jump mushrooms?

What a hilariously arrogant post. You think you have more life experience than everyone complaining?

You are right, it is about the journey, not the destination.

But when the journey takes 10 hours to move 1 inch, the journey itself is not fun.

90% of the JOURNEY is doing the same 5 events over and over again for multiple hours and trying to get somewhere just to find out it is locked by a mastery I don’t have.

Andred.1087:

Gewd.8125:

The pacing is way too slow for me. It takes hours just to get 1 mastery doing the same events over and over again.

It is a hassle to get anywhere, and you have to spend quite a bit of time just to figure out if it requires a mastery you don’t have yet.

What the hell do you want then? To finish all of it in a couple of weeks? So you can come on here and whine about being bored?

Everyone wants content to last forever.

But if you only have enough content for a month and you try to stretch it for a year, people
are going to stop playing way sooner than a month.

I am trying to get my updraft mastery but I am already getting really bored.

I’m already seeing the same 3-4 events being cycled on Verdant Brink over and over again.

There aren’t very many players in Auric Basin, and I cannot figure out how to get to the next trigger for my living story. Maybe I am missing another mastery again?

The events in Auric Basin aren’t that different from Verdant Brink. It is just a re-skinned escort, kill, defend or harvest event.

Shaogin.2679:

You guys are the reason they dumbed down the new player experience. There is a scout right at the start. Mousing over icons tell you what they are. The Masteries have a nice little tutorial, the characters in the story even explain stuff to you. I mean, I feel like you guys aren’t even trying. ; P

There’s only 1 person here who complained about it being confusing.

The pacing is way too slow for me. It takes hours just to get 1 mastery doing the same events over and over again.

It is a hassle to get anywhere, and you have to spend quite a bit of time just to figure out if it requires a mastery you don’t have yet.

I spend most of my time trying to figure out how to get somewhere than actually having fun.

75% of the time the path is blocked by a mastery I don’t have yet.

I’ve already spent several hours doing events and I am only level 2. Anyone feel this is way too slow?

wayneericgouin.9371:

I’m referring to anets stance on the originally proposed idea that everyone can fill every role, which in my opinion causes the game to be somewhat homogenized with no clearly defined difference between professions in pve. I do realize that it has to do with the way pve is designed. Sidenote: why is everyone against a trinity anyway? I’ve been playing mmo’s since EQ pc launch and the trinity was my favorite part of the genre.

All of the problems I just explained right above you.

If you have been playing mmo since Everquest you should know first hand the difficulties getting a tank and healer. Unless you play one yourself that is.

The only mmo that doesn’t have this issue is WoW due to the sheer number of players they have, and even then I heard people complain about top guilds poaching tanks and healers and having no one to replace them with because the replacements were several equipment tiers behind.

I really don’t see the appeal behind trinity unless you are one of the people playing tank or healer and love the special treatment you get over everyone else. Tank and spank is not any better than what we have now. And mechanics that extend beyond tank and spank is not something that only trinity systems can have.

The trinity is an outdated concept and I hope it never comes to gw2.

Go ahead and play any mmo outside of WoW and see how many hours you need to wait to do anything because there is no tank or healer and some of them only play them for the shorter queues and burn out quickly. Even in Wildstar (prior to the population imploding) where every class can either support or tank, you have shortages because the vast majority of players absolutely hate tanking or healing.

Really the only people I see arguing for the trinity are people who like healing and tanking (which are the vast minority) and being pandered to. They demand gold, equipment, everyone to play on their schedules, and to kick anyone they don’t like… simply because they are in demand from stupid game design.

Are gw2 dungeons a bit boring? Sure, but putting trinity in the game is a big mistake. Anet can make dungeons more interesting without using the trinity crutch.

I really don’t see anything challenging about tank and spank. And when you have mechanics in WoW that is more than tank and spank, that’s not really something that requires a trinity is it?

Behellagh.1468:

But their interference in the market is infrequent and indirect. They don’t fix prices. They don’t flood the marker with items as another “seller”. While they control the faucets of the world’s economy, the equilibrium of where the prices settle at is entirely our domain.

They don’t have to flood the market as another seller to have a major impact on the prices because every seller gets their items from Anet.

Whether they control the market with method X or method Y does not change the fact that the vast majority of the price change was caused by Anet.

Wanze.8410:

Gewd.8125:

Wanze I don’t think you know what a monopoly is even though it has been explained over and over to you.

A monopoly does not mean only one entity is allowed to sell a commodity ever, and sets the exact price for every transaction.

Let me explain it to you in terms of a real life situation so you cannot just keep arguing that players can put in a wide range of numbers on the TP so it is not a monopoly.

Take the De Beers diamond monopoly, a favorite econ 101 example. They set a minimum price by selling most of the world’s diamonds to a few companies. These companies are then free to set whatever price they want on top of that.

Does this mean that De Beers is not a monopoly because the wholesalers are allowed to add whatever they want over the price? The answer is a resounding no. If you disagree with this statement then I really cannot help you.

Let’s review GW2 in comparison.

• Does Anet set a price floor? Yes, you cannot sell below vendor.
• Does Anet control the supply of items? Yes, they control the drop rate.
• Does Anet sell items? Yes. If it is not for gold, it is sold for playing time. Just because it is a different currency of exchange does not exclude it from being a monopoly.

I never disputed what a monopoly is and if Anet has one on tradeable goods because JS gave the answer to that.
All i did was stating that players set the price for all tradeable items on the TP.

A mayor difference between de beers and anet is that de beers holds ownership over the ressources it mines and then sells, Anet does not.

I just explained why that is and you ignored most of it as usual.

Anet holds ownership over the resources, and “sells” them to players in exchange for playing time. No one else can provide additional ectos outside of Anet’s rules governing ecto creation rates.

The reason John Smith says no is because monopolies refer to companies and governments, not to entities that control the entire universe.

So I went back to see what you are originally arguing about since you claim differently.

Wanze.8410:

Gewd.8125:

They stopped ectos from dropping below 20s and caused permanent hair contracts to drop from 4000g to 1500g.

No. Anet, as a company, didnt list a single ecto or contract on the tp. It was players that stopped that from happening.

Where did I say that Anet listed a single ecto or contract on the TP?

Any rational person would admit that Anet was the base cause for these price changes. It makes no difference that players are able to fiddle with the final number on an individual basis.

If players try to list under the price Anet is nudging the market towards, they will run out of supply. If they list over it, then they will never sell.

I don’t know how you can argue otherwise and if you cannot admit this, then there is no more rational discussion to be had here.

Wanze I don’t think you know what a monopoly is even though it has been explained over and over to you.

A monopoly does not mean only one entity is allowed to sell a commodity ever, and sets the exact price for every transaction.

Let me explain it to you in terms of a real life situation so you cannot just keep arguing that players can put in a wide range of numbers on the TP so it is not a monopoly.

Take the De Beers diamond monopoly, a favorite econ 101 example. They set a minimum price by selling most of the world’s diamonds to a few companies. These companies are then free to set whatever price they want on top of that.

Does this mean that De Beers is not a monopoly because the wholesalers are allowed to add whatever they want over the price? The answer is a resounding no. If you disagree with this statement then I really cannot help you.

Let’s review GW2 in comparison.

• Does Anet set a price floor? Yes, you cannot sell below vendor.
• Does Anet control the supply of items? Yes, they control the drop rate.
• Does Anet sell items? Yes. If it is not for gold, it is sold for playing time. Just because it is a different currency of exchange does not exclude it from being a monopoly.

Ensign.2189:

ANet tweaks production functions. This is unrelated to competitive vs monopolistic market structures. Tweaks to production functions can and will have an impact on prices, but this doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not a market is monopolized.

I get that people think that ANet tweaking production functions is bad in some way, but calling it a monopoly, and continuing to call it a monopoly, is just ensuring whatever point you’re trying to make remains unintelligible.

I don’t know how many times I have to repeat this.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/monopoly

exclusive control of a commodity or service in a particular market, or a control that makes possible the manipulation of prices.

It doesn’t matter if Anet is not selling the items directly for gold. They are pricing the items in terms of playing time.

They have absolute control over every item in the game.

How much they choose to exert this control is not what the original thread was about and the price certainly isn’t 100% controlled by players.

Wanze.8410:

If a monopoly exists, consumers cant decide the price by refusing to buy.

If Anet decides to set the price of ectos to 9000g, which they have the ability to do so, you can refuse to buy it all you want and it will still be 9000g. No one else has this power, and thus they do have a “monopoly”.

Again, this term was never meant to apply to a game where someone has complete control over the entire “universe” but it fits all the other defining characteristics.

Wanze.8410:

Gewd.8125:

The price players set is almost entirely influenced by Arena.net.

Just because Arena.net doesn’t sell ectos for gold doesn’t mean they are being given away for free.

They are being sold for playing time, aka labor at a rate which they can control on a whim.

The players still decide which amount of payment for their labour they seem fit, so they ultimatively set the price.

Anet could decide to make ectos not drop anymore from salvages, making them unattainable in the future, this would presumably make their value go up.
But at the same time, the player base could decide that they dont want ectos anymore, making ectos available on the tp at 1c over vendor value.

Players set the price.

You are missing the point. If Anet wanted to, they could make it so ectos could only be sold in the gemstore and there would be nothing you could do about it.

There’s a difference between having a monopoly, and exploiting as much as possible.

Anet does not take full control of the market but manipulating the drop rate to cause prices to inflate or deflate by 200% with a few keystrokes is still a considerable use of the monopoly.

Players can have some control over the price, but it pales in comparison to anet’s ability to set the drop rate.

The minimum cost of labor is governed by farming DR (controlled by Anet), how fun the game is (mostly controlled by Anet), electricity and computer operation costs (hardly controllable by the player), value of ecto relative to gold (largely controlled by Anet).

The price players set is almost entirely influenced by Arena.net.

Just because Arena.net doesn’t sell ectos for gold doesn’t mean they are being given away for free.

They are being sold for playing time, aka labor at a rate which they can control on a whim.

Behellagh.1468:

All that ANet did was reintroduced the permanent hair contracts and provided another use for ectos, generating T6 dust. Which in turn helped forging more T6 mats from T5 mats.

Wanze.8410:

I never said players control faucets but they are 100% responsible for prices of items. Even if ectos wont drop anymore, players still set the prices.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/monopoly

exclusive control of a commodity or service in a particular market, or a control that makes possible the manipulation of prices.

If players do not control the faucets then they are not 100% responsible for the price of items.

Anet has the ability to lower the price of an item to 0 or raise it by decreasing drop rates or making it more useful. No one else can introduce new permanent hair contracts.

It does not matter if the monopolizer distributes the goods to a 3rd party (the players) instead of selling the items themselves.

But as I said, this is not really a useful discussion since every game is like this. The question is whether or not players are satisfied with how the artificial economy is run.