IRL there’s a big economic crisis, and in GW2 people complain about people playing the market. In fact, I have the idea that people are copying something they only heard recently about but which existed for ages. In Vanilla WoW the pristine hide of the Beast was the most expensive thing for over 1000g. Usually only 1 or 2 on the AH. People played the AH and it was considered legitimate, no one complained.
In GW1 there were a lot of powertraders, I was one of them for a while. The profit margins were huge because no one had a clue, there was no central price point such as the TP. I could easily buy stuff and sell it for triple the price some time later. On the other hand, most stuff was dirt cheap, most regular players would never notice the powertrading.
The GW2 TP is even more healthy than the WoW AH because of the bigger pool of players, and because of that, playing the market is far less profitable. Most buy and sell orders are within a few copper and due to the vast volumes, controlling a market is nigh impossible for any item a regular player would be interested in. Actually, a lot of prices see deflation instead of inflation, especially crafting materials are prone to this.
So I wonder. GW2 economy is clearly more healthy than WoW. The inflation rates are under control, most important stuff is dirt cheap. Furthermore, the value of gold is pegged to real currency which further curbs inflation as it is in the best interest of a.net. Complaining about the economy is like complaining a Kanaxai costs stacks of armbraces in GW1. That’s not relevant of 99.9% of the playerbase.
The only reason I can imagine why people complain about the economy, is because stupid bankers made the RL economy go awry. People read words they don’t understand in popular magazines and take that misinformation into the games they play. Suddenly, every powertrader is a bad person.
tl;dr: GW2 economy is very healthy. Don’t let the RL scaremongering get to you ingame.
