Guild Wars 2

linuxotaku.4731:

Specifically, the argument I would make for it is that we can model a market which will never reach an equilibrium (== efficient market) price without participants who make underbids with steps larger than the minimum bid difference (either because they choose to or because they’re forced to). I don’t think that’s particularly subjective.

The counter would be that all markets will reach an equilibrium, given enough time. You’re identifying specific, slow moving markets (due to their high price points) and suggesting that they should be treated differently for subjective reasons (“they take too long”).

I’m not saying you’re right/wrong, I’m just saying your position is based on your personal opinion which isn’t the same as the personal opinion of others which is why you are getting a lot of pushback here.

linuxotaku.4731:

mtpelion.4562:

linuxotaku.4731:

You say it’s cheaper; I assert that the difference is too small to matter in an economics sense. I know you don’t agree with my perspective, but your second argument makes no sense given that I don’t think the price is effectively different.

I’m not trying to punish the player who lists cheaper since I don’t agree that it’s actually cheaper. I want to reward either: (1) the player who either lists first (FIFO) or (2) lists as a price which is lower (in a meaningful way).

I just want to point out a fact:
20,000,000 <> 19,999,999
(“<>” is the “DOES NOT EQUAL” sign in text format, just to clarify)

Philosophically, you or other people may consider the difference to be insignificant, but the fact is that they are two different numbers and thus two different prices.

I prefer systems that rely upon objective facts (like 20,000,000 = 20,000,000) rather than subjective opinions (like 20,000,000 = 19,999,999).

0.5% is an objective measure of difference; I use that as an example, but have always proposed an objective measure.

It is an objective measure of difference enforced for subjective reasons.

linuxotaku.4731:

You say it’s cheaper; I assert that the difference is too small to matter in an economics sense. I know you don’t agree with my perspective, but your second argument makes no sense given that I don’t think the price is effectively different.

I’m not trying to punish the player who lists cheaper since I don’t agree that it’s actually cheaper. I want to reward either: (1) the player who either lists first (FIFO) or (2) lists as a price which is lower (in a meaningful way).

I just want to point out a fact:
20,000,000 <> 19,999,999
(“<>” is the “DOES NOT EQUAL” sign in text format, just to clarify)

Philosophically, you or other people may consider the difference to be insignificant, but the fact is that they are two different numbers and thus two different prices.

I prefer systems that rely upon objective facts (like 20,000,000 = 20,000,000) rather than subjective opinions (like 20,000,000 = 19,999,999).

If TP prices go up, then new players can sell their items for the higher prices. Seems fine to me.

Marndeis.7815:

I am thinking about buying the watch-work sprocket node for my “home instance” …. is this Soul bound (i.e. only on the char who buys it) or Account bound (so if I log into all my chars I can mine it once per day).

Thanks!

It can only be mined once per day in total. If you have 8 characters, any one of them can mine it in any home instance, but after they mine it no other characters of yours will be able to mine it again until after reset.

That said, totally worth it.

silvermember.8941:

That is where are you wrong. If you have been following f2p like games for a while you will realize this one truth, they companies don’t need everybody to spend the money, they only need a very few to spend to make a profit. Less than 15% or .15%. Not sure yet. I dont have access to the data now.

So no, they don’t have to make a balance or attempt to make players happy. the truth is some players will never be happy and there is no reason to attempt to make them happy.

What you are suggesting only brings short term profit gain but overrall will cost them more in the long run.

^This.

With a microtransaction model, you’ve got three main types of players:
1. Those who frequently buy things.
2. Those who buy things from specials.
3. Those who never/rarely buy things.

You need to keep only group 1 happy in order to be profitable. Group 2 will buy whenever you have a special, so you don’t need to keep them happy, just keep specials rolling out. Group 3 is interested in playing for free (due to budget or philosophical reasons) and thus only need to be kept “not so unhappy that they won’t log in”. Groups 2 and 3 make up the VAST majority of the entire playerbase.

NCSoft will release gem store content that appeals to group 1 and occasionally group 2. They will not release things that make group 3 happy if those things will in any way reduce the number of transactions made by group 1 & 2 unless group 3 has just about reached the “unhappy enough to quit logging in” stage.

Full Disclosure: I’m typically group 3. I enjoy playing this game for no extra money and thank groups 1 & 2 for supporting the servers I play on for free.

I do think that they need to have their CD on the bomb planting set to 30 seconds. Two of them can chain you to death if your stability is on CD.

phys.7689:

no they didnt.
At some point they revealed that the gem to gold system is ruled by an algorithm that determines the value based on some values, and that they can alter those values if they feel like it.
its not a fort knox system its an equation

the system will never no matter what run out of gems. the system will never no matter what run out of gold. It will create it as it sees fit, and try to use the equations for the value to make the output at acceptable levels.

I was breaking it down via an allegory. Of course everything is moving around as bits of 1s and 0s in an algorithm. There is no fort knox because there is no physical coin or gem. The “bank” is a purely conceptual one that exists within the margins set forth by the formula.

The functionality that we have experience with works as described above.

Though I do wonder what would happen if the “bank” ran out of one or the other. You’d have the potential for a very fast paced gold faucet or sink (depending on which way it went) which I’d imagine has some sort of failsafe to prevent.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

mtpelion.4562:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

mtpelion.4562:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Beldin.5498:

Draknar.5748:

That aside, considering gems are purchasable which can be instantly converted to gold, the whole premise of “newly generated money” via dungeons being a bad thing is rendered completely moot. In half a minute I can spend $10.00 at the gemstore and convert that to ~70g.

Totally wrong .. the gold is not generated out of thin air, you just get the gold that some other people pay to buy gems, and even there a part of that gold is removed from the economy.

You have it backwards.

Beldin is most likely 100% correct (I caveat as we don’t know the full coding/operation of the system but can infer it based on ArenaNet explanations and the historical movement of the exchange rate). All gem to gold conversions utilize gold that was created by players in the past and traded in for gems in the past. The only thing that is created out of thin air as part of the transaction is gems (when real money is used to acquire them). Once you have gems, you can trade them for a portion of the pool of gold that other players had previously traded for gems.

I was pretty sure I saw the BLTC forum frequenters say that the gems being bought for gold were gems provided by the people who converted gems to gold, and that the more people who use RL money for gold the lower the gold to gem rate becomes.

I do not know for sure but I did think they did.

All gold is created by the players when they do things that reward gold.
All gems are created by ArenaNet when players buy them with cash.
All gold to gem conversions take existing gold out of the player’s bank and put it on the exchange and remove some number of gems from the exchange and add them to the player’s bank.
All gem to gold conversions take existing gems out of the player’s bank and put them on the exchange and remove some number of gold from the exchange and add it to the player’s bank.

I believe that is what Beldin was referring to. Using your credit card does not create any coins. It creates gems which can be traded for coins.

See if your 2 top points are true, no one could initiate the gem to gold gold to gem first.

That is correct. ArenaNet seeded the exchange with some gold and gems back at launch. Since then it’s been run by the rules above.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

mtpelion.4562:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Beldin.5498:

Draknar.5748:

That aside, considering gems are purchasable which can be instantly converted to gold, the whole premise of “newly generated money” via dungeons being a bad thing is rendered completely moot. In half a minute I can spend $10.00 at the gemstore and convert that to ~70g.

Totally wrong .. the gold is not generated out of thin air, you just get the gold that some other people pay to buy gems, and even there a part of that gold is removed from the economy.

You have it backwards.

Beldin is most likely 100% correct (I caveat as we don’t know the full coding/operation of the system but can infer it based on ArenaNet explanations and the historical movement of the exchange rate). All gem to gold conversions utilize gold that was created by players in the past and traded in for gems in the past. The only thing that is created out of thin air as part of the transaction is gems (when real money is used to acquire them). Once you have gems, you can trade them for a portion of the pool of gold that other players had previously traded for gems.

I was pretty sure I saw the BLTC forum frequenters say that the gems being bought for gold were gems provided by the people who converted gems to gold, and that the more people who use RL money for gold the lower the gold to gem rate becomes.

I do not know for sure but I did think they did.

All gold is created by the players when they do things that reward gold.
All gems are created by ArenaNet when players buy them with cash.
All gold to gem conversions take existing gold out of the player’s bank and put it on the exchange and remove some number of gems from the exchange and add them to the player’s bank.
All gem to gold conversions take existing gems out of the player’s bank and put them on the exchange and remove some number of gold from the exchange and add it to the player’s bank.

I believe that is what Beldin was referring to. Using your credit card does not create any coins. It creates gems which can be traded for coins.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Beldin.5498:

Draknar.5748:

That aside, considering gems are purchasable which can be instantly converted to gold, the whole premise of “newly generated money” via dungeons being a bad thing is rendered completely moot. In half a minute I can spend $10.00 at the gemstore and convert that to ~70g.

Totally wrong .. the gold is not generated out of thin air, you just get the gold that some other people pay to buy gems, and even there a part of that gold is removed from the economy.

You have it backwards.

Beldin is most likely 100% correct (I caveat as we don’t know the full coding/operation of the system but can infer it based on ArenaNet explanations and the historical movement of the exchange rate). All gem to gold conversions utilize gold that was created by players in the past and traded in for gems in the past. The only thing that is created out of thin air as part of the transaction is gems (when real money is used to acquire them). Once you have gems, you can trade them for a portion of the pool of gold that other players had previously traded for gems.

On Topic: I do think that dungeon runs are probably close to being the number one source of generated coin at this point, if not in total than at least for individuals. That means that dungeon rewards are probably pretty high on the list of places that will receive a nerf should the economy warrant a reduction in gold faucets. I’m not leveling an opine as to whether the effort to payout ratio is “fair”, nor whether any changes to gold generation are needed.

KOPPER.1458:

There is nothing legendary about buying it from the TP…I realize we are talking about precursors here but more or less the same thing. The goal of this game to get these rewards is to earn gold. Not kill a boss, not kill anything. If you have the stamina and mental fortitude to grind out the gold or have a big wallet you can own these “legendary” items. Seems wrong.

There is nothing exotic about orange name text either… what’s your point?

Trice.4598:

The fact that this is not a rich people controlling the market doesn’t change the fact that something is wrong, it’s been over a year since we’ve been promise precursor crafting and right we need more than ever.

I know you guys monitor the market and can’t control how much people are selling/buying them for, but you have to admit something must be done.

Most people don’t want to gamble, they want a safe alternative. ( I am not one to complain I have gotten over 12 precursor in Mystic forge for an average of 200 gold )

I fail to see how a rare luxury item being a rare luxury item is “something wrong”.

There are three ways to get a precursor:
1. Gamble on the Forge
2. Maximize your Kills Per Hour with buffed Magic Find to gamble on drops
3. Buy it on the Trading Post

We already have a “safe” non-gambling way to acquire a precursor. That safety comes with a high price tag though.

cainejw.7142:

mtpelion.4562:

cainejw.7142:

Gold sinks. Why do you think you now have to pay to start an event? Because Anet has no idea how to creatively handle gold in the economy other than “Pay me to access this content!”

This statement is blatantly false.

So, how have they creatively handled gold in the economy other than paying said gold to access content? If you know a statement is false, please provide examples showing it is false. I really would be interested to know how Anet has created a gold sink that is not “Receive content for gold.”

The false statement is that you have to spend gold to start the event.

And the primary gold sink in this game, by a huge margin, is trading post fees.

cainejw.7142:

Gold sinks. Why do you think you now have to pay to start an event? Because Anet has no idea how to creatively handle gold in the economy other than “Pay me to access this content!”

This statement is blatantly false.

Whoops… my bad.

Yeah, those aren’t worth doing other than for the achieves.

jazzllanna.1278:

Really is this a joke? I just spent about 30-45 minutes in the gauntlet trying to get the boxes there. You know what I ended up with? A little over 100 of the festival tokens. I am sorry but what is the point of this? The drop rate on the rare rewards is way too low and we don’t even get a tiny bit of silver while we are there. This event is a joke- You want people to use gems for gold and have cut out every possible way to make it in the game. You know I don’t even need gold- I just want something fun to do with my time and you have not delivered in this event what-so-ever. The whole thing stinks of money grab. What happened to the game I loved so much?

It sounds like your instance wasn’t doing the event correctly then. It is profitable to farm the Pavilion if it is done the correct way.

phys.7689:

anyhow precursor/legendaries are becoming more and more of a rich mans game only. and even through all the nerfs to gold that have happened recently, the prices continue to rise.

With the recent change to the wardrobe system, the wealthy should have legendary saturation soon and will have no interest in acquiring multiple copies of legendaries. When this happens, the prices should fall to match the offers made by those who still want a legendary.

Check the turret’s level. If it is higher than 80 then you have too many people nearby scaling the event up and it will take you the better part of an hour.

Boom Boom is best done by a small group so that the turret can be bursted down as soon as is spawns.

If you are intent upon doing the fights wrong (i.e. zerging them in some order and guaranteeing a lack of loot), do Boom Boom first.

Ken DeBoer.9268:

Here is my per usual market manipulation ploy – Butter, lots of Butter will be needed for cooking 500. BUYITNAOWPLOX! KTHXBAI!

Thanks to my ongoing and extensive bag drop rate research, I’ve managed to acquire an excessive amount of butter. I honestly hope you are right because I can’t keep this butter on ice forever!

LordByron.8369:

Doesn t matter if the manipulatin have success or not, it still manages to waste gold from players and increase precursor price.

Also, as said, john is quite used to throw random sentences that can be interpreted but are extremely misleading.

If you open a thread saying “there are manipulation attempt with the precurosr” and he answers “i have data that cannot show…. that proves there were several users buying precurosr”

That doesn t prove the manipulation wrong at all.
But push you thinking tthere were no manipulation while infact some players could have just agreed to try together to manipulate the market.

And since they have so much gold they don t really care and they can do lot in a short time span, the damage is unclear to many players.

So even if you attempt a manipulation for the lulz you still damage economy…and the game itself

You can’t raise prices unless the BUYERS are willing to pay those prices. If the buyers are willing to pay you, then the PRICE IS FAIR!

My experience so far is that people have responded exceptionally well to instructions. The only exception being people ignoring the turret on Boom Boom, most likely because they have tunnel vision during the fight.

This has lead to Boom Boom being the last to die, which make the fight take very long. Out of all the bosses, if you have a small guild group I suggest you tackle Boom Boom and let the rest of the map deal with the other bosses.

Also, I’ve found that being polite and helpful causes the mob of zergers to listen to you… they want rewards too, they just don’t know how to get them.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

i’m not sure how this is a failure. It looks like the guy bought 2-3 dusks at around 1000g. He relisted at least one at 2000g. The price then fell back down but seems to have stabilized at 200g higher for buy orders and 600g higher for sell orders. Assuming he isn’t dumb he relisted the 2000g dusk and sold the other 2 dusks at around 1500g each making an overall profit of 4500g*.85-3000g-100g (listing fee from first list) = 725g profit in less than 24hrs…

seems like a spectacular success in manipulation to me.

On the flip side, if the market supports sales at 1500g, then 1500g is the RIGHT price for Dusk.

Mystic.5934:

you sound like Butters describing his kissing company to the banker lady. It might have differences and similarities to certain things, but you should call it what it is: a “loan”. “loan shark” just means someone who gives out loans with high interest and physical repercussions for not paying it back. You’re unable to do the 2nd part, so I wouldn’t call this being a “loan shark”, but this is much closer to being a lending company than pawn shop. I’ve never even heard of pawn shops giving people loans.
You’re going to have some difficulties in doing this:
biggest difficulty would be getting a name for yourself as someone who is trustworthy and won’t scam the borrowers
after that, you’re going to have a big problem with people scamming you.
as a third-biggest problem, I would say collateral. meaning that someone looking to borrow 100g wouldn’t have 100g worth of stuff for you to hold onto. If they did, they would just sell it and then have 85g (the difference from 100g is probably close to the interest you would charge?)
but as far as if you are allowed to do this, I would say that you certainly could, as long as you don’t accept repayments outside of the game, for example. (or you would be a gold seller)

I just wanted to point out the bold part and respond to that: making loans is the primary business function of pawn shops. They take your valuable item as collateral for the loan and sell it only if you fail to meet the repayment terms.

Sure, they also outright buy things too, but making loans is where they make their money.

It’s Tyrian global warming. The Priory suggests that you stop crafting so much.

The person running the pawn shop would have a very low chance of being scammed because he wouldn’t send any gold until after he had the item and he would send the item until after he had the gold.

The customers on the other hand…

1. Go to a map that is level-appropriate.
2. Scrape the edges to kill out of the way things.
3. Kill anything with a yellow name tag.

Not only will your booster increase your kill EXP, but by doing the above you’ll also get HUGE amounts of bonus EXP that will dwarf the boosted kill EXP.

Bonus EXP is added if the thing you just killed hasn’t been killed in a while. If you keep killing the same things over and over, or are killing things as they spawn you won’t get Bonus EXP. Most people skip those rams and deer, but now you know better. Kill them. Kill them all.

To be safe, do the following:

1. Run a virus/malware scan on ALL computers that you use to access the game or these forums.
2. Change your EMAIL password.
3. Change your GW2 password.
4. If not already enabled, turn on Email or 2-Factor Authentication.
5. Purge all allowed IPs from your Account Security page and re-authenticate.

If you are getting password reset emails, one thing is for certain: someone has your email address.

Just pointing this out: Manifestos are written by gamers. Games are published by corporate suit-wearers in tall buildings.

When the question “do we follow the manifesto or make the profitable call?” arises who do you think gets to answer that question?

wingofbenu.4316:

mtpelion.4562:

CrazyDuck.4610:

Just buff the end loot when finished killing all the bosses, there everyone’s happy.

The loot is already pretty good if you do the event correctly. Buffing the loot is not the answer, doing the event the right way is.

Good luck with that given how on my server at least, the pavillion is now a ghost town.

That should make the events easier, actually.

Fortunately for you, the zergers will be out of there as soon as they have their achievements. For many people, it is easier to stop trying and get nothing than it is to put a modicum of effort into learning the mechanics.

CrazyDuck.4610:

Just buff the end loot when finished killing all the bosses, there everyone’s happy.

The loot is already pretty good if you do the event correctly. Buffing the loot is not the answer, doing the event the right way is.

phys.7689:

the problem with your perspective, is you have already decided its uneccesary. What people are saying is they do think its necessary.

While i dont think the answer is black and white, this is a question anet has to ask themselves now with every content update, and if people dont like the answers they come up with, people may feel alienated.

I’m not the one who decided it was unnecessary. I’m just pointing out that it was decided that it was unnecessary.

Aberrant.6749:

MatthewMedina.5419:

mtpelion is correct. There are only the two events that were cut this time around, and two of the events from that original chain that were reworked. The two events that were cut were unfortunate, but due to the nature of this release’s development cycle, we just didn’t have the resources to go through and overhaul all of the events.

The level drop on the map from 80 to 15 was definitely done so as to not throw our new players from China into the “deep end of the pool” just a few days after the game opened to all on 5/15.

I find it very hard to believe that setting the level of creatures for the US version to 80 and the chinese version to 15 would take that much time… but I could be wrong I guess?

It would require two separate instances, which would require twice as much work to make changes to (for bugs/updates/etc.).

From a programming perspective, you want to prevent unnecessary data segregation.

I like the changes. It rewards you quite appropriately for doing the fights correctly and appropriately denies rewards if you attempt to ignore the correct method of tackling the event.

The only problem is that it is not clearly telegraphed that zerging will prevent success. Perhaps a return of the “only the X players with the Y buff can hurt the boss” concept would help?

Rouven.7409:

I’m not sure what you are on about with separate instances, as far as I am aware we are totally separate from the chinese players in the first place. I will never interact in any way with anyone playing on a chinese server. As such there are no different instances necessary. The only thing would be NOT to make the change that HAS been done on the EU/NA server and only apply that change to the chinese server.

Other than that I would recommend kickstarter, seems like that is used for these things nowadays.

ArenaNet creates the instance. For EU/NA they then simply make that instance live on their servers. For China they send that instance to the company that runs the game there.

So yes, we are totally separate once live, but the content must still be designed by ArenaNet and they are not going to spend any more time than is necessary designing separate instances.

Rouven.7409:

It seems scary that you are not able to make such a minor change especially as an exception for the start. By that I mean having differently scaled events in the different territories.

Why? Because metrics will dictate that if the majority of china liked something, whereas EU/NA didn’t, we will still see that type of content going forward because you are not able to provide both experiences. This starts with aesthetics and goes all the way up to … content design (for a lack of a better term, meaning events, how things are achieved etc).

Well, if you are willing to give them about $1,000,000 a year to support the payroll needed to hire enough designers to unnecessarily duplicate work so that the servers can have separate instances, I’m sure they’ll take you up on that.

I think the content of the two areas also plays a role in the decision to upscale one and downscale the other.

The Pavilion is about group fights, so you as an individual don’t necessarily need all of your traits in order to contribute and survive.

The Cliffs are mostly about solo play, so having some vicious level 80 monsters show up and wipe out the few upscaled players who happened to be standing there would be a bad experience for them.

20 minutes in Orr can get you more Silk than a full day of riding the QD champ train could.

@Celtic Lady: Reduced supply is causing those materials to rise in price, not inflation.

phys.7689:

as i said before, there is a much larger difference in level 80 and level 16 monsters than there used to be, and players from 1-66 are likely to have a lot less tools and options than they used to have. So actually we will see more of this in the future, with group events, they will either have to make them for level 80s, or make them for low levels. Essentially, thats probably why queens guantlet is 80 and this one is 16, so you can choose one or the other depending on how you want it.

maybe with more dev time, they can make multiple instances with different level caps since megaserver can put people where they need to be.

I don’t see downleveling being common after the next 2 patches or so. They only did it this time (and possibly the next 2 times or so) because the game just dropped in China so the percent of level 80 characters is low. Over the next 2 months there will be a substantial increase in level 80 percentage in China which will remove the need to downlevel areas like this.

GuzziHero.2467:

I didn’t see ANY of these pop and I was there for over an hour today!

Then pop them yourself?

Cakemeister.5792:

Before the patch, copper ore was selling for about 30 copper. (It has exploded in price since, speculators rejoice!).

The current buy price for iron ingots (many of them used for ascended crafting) is about 2.5 silver (sell price about 3 silver).

500 copper ore will refine to 250 bronze ingots, costing 30 copper * 500 plus 8 copper (lumps of tin) * 50 = 1g 54s.

250 bronze ingots + 1 iron ingot + T2 dust + 1 skill point = some number of iron ingots. The average number of iron ingots is not known, but I think it’s about 80.

Reglecting the cost of the 1 iron ingot + dust, you will get about 2g 40 s – 15% = 2g 4s money back.

2g 4s-1g 54s = 50 silver per skill point. A nice 30% profit but it’s not 4 gold.

Is jute to wool more profitable?

Fabrics and Wood are both trading higher than metals (leather is typically a poor choice, though there are tiers where it is profitable).
Don’t forget about promoting T1->T2 Fine and Rare materials either.

If you can sell a product for 3-4 times what you paid for it, it would be imprudent not to sell now. If it goes up further, that isn’t really a loss, you still made a FORTUNE by taking the safe route.

GuzziHero.2467:

Defeat the chaos creature (80)
Defeat the corrupted ogre (80)
Defeat the ice elemental (80)
Defeat the morphing ooze (80)
Defeat the rampaging fire imp (80)

^These events are still there

Deliver supplies to Zephyr Sanctum for Trader Owens (80)
Subdue bar fight instigators to stop the brawl (80)

^These events have been modified into new events involving the same places/people.

Protect the merchants and their supplies from krait slavers (80)
Stop the pirates from stealing kite shipments from Zephyr Sanctum (80)

I didn’t see these events pop, so you may be right here.

Beldin.5498:

I think from the NPC Vendor at the Bazar for Festival Tokens. I bought at least the Quartz for my home instance there

You can buy all of the home node sprockets that originally came from achievements down at the docks in the Cliffs.

Ayrilana.1396:

Even better. Just spend a few minutes and try to split people evenly and then kill all of them at once (or close to that) so the added skills won’t matter.

Yeah, that’s probably the intended method for dealing with them. Let’s see if the players can do it correctly.

Skins are too “feast or famine” for my taste.

Chadramar.8156:

The people for whom it WAS all about getting loot as easily as possible by steamrolling starter zones and vomiting abuse at anyone “disrupting” their “train” or asking questions? Yeah, no sympathy there and good riddance. Making money IS a big pain in this game, but starter zones should not be the place for that either way, and there’s just no excuse for hideous behavior, especially towards newbies. (Bragging about griefing the “train” is cruddy too, IMO. Don’t do it. If someone in the “train” is an abusive pusbag, report, but don’t sink to their level.)

Just for the record, if you were running the Queensdale Champ Train for money, you were doing it wrong. The Champ Train was a good way to farm Skill Points, Karma, Exp, basic crafting materials like mithril, and daily/monthly achievements. For any other purpose, it was a net loss to spend any time there.

I really wish they would drop patches on Friday evenings. I never get to participate in the flurry of financial fun during the middle of the work day on a Tuesday.

Vol.7601:

I’ve been hoarding gold ore/silver ore hoping for that jewelcrafting 500 patch one day. Sadly I bought both at 1s/35c respectively, so I have lost gold on it. Someday, it’ll go back up…

Those are unrealized losses, so you haven’t actually lost anything yet. It’s a theoretical loss if you were to sell today.