Guild Wars 2

I’m happy to see repair costs removed (though removing waypoint costs may have been the better choice, and I’d still like to see it regardless). Nerfing ways of getting money to “compensate” for the removal of a gold sink is a really bad idea though, especially the specific sources they’re nerfing.

You want gold sinks because you want your economy to be balanced. Sure, there are always going to be outliers, but you want most people to be able to participate in the game and feel like they’re making progress, or they’re not going to be having fun and they’re going to quit.

The problem is, these particular sources of money were for the more casual players, otherwise known as the people who weren’t outliers to begin with. They’re not just the players who don’t need gold sinks, but taking money from them and not the outliers is only going to make the economy worse.

I’m an extremely casual Guild Wars 2 player. Gold is not a normal currency for me, Silver is (I have gold, but so little that it’s more like a way to simplify my silver than it is another denomination). I hop in every once and awhile, do the new stuff, and that’s pretty much it. The Marionette event cost me more money than it gave me. Removing repair costs will help that… but removing money sources at the same time will still leave me with no money to buy anything with.

The problem ultimately boils down to the fact that, as long as gold is a renewable resource, you can’t make a real economy out of it. Most MMOs don’t seem to realize that, but hop into any one and you’ll see how impenetrable they are if you’re not an established, hardcore player. Gold sinks are a terrible bandage as it is, because the people you really want them to affect (established farmers or traders) are nearly impossible to target specifically, so all they usually do is hurt the new/casual player more and are irrelevant to the people sitting on the piles of money.

It’s the reason so many MMOs nowadays use dungeon and reputation-specific “badges” and stuff for anything meaningful. It’s impossible to keep the main progression fair and balanced when the economy is controlled by a handful of people at the currency cap.

What Guild Wars 2 really needs to do is give up on the idea of gold as a serious currency. Make it easy enough to earn to afford the little things you still use it for (like waypoint costs or something), and then find other ways to gate progression in a way that’s fair both for new players and players who have been playing the whole time and been getting lucky with rare drops and compensation giveaways.