"Rare" should mean "rare"

80-90% of my ‘rare’ gold drops are merchant fodder, I’ve had precious blue drops worth more at the merchant!

Last night, Gold Req 8 Fellblade. When identified – no damage mod, +19% pruning.

Really think this needs looking at. Maybe as suggested, reduce gold drop rates but those that do drop have a minimum ‘standard of quality’

Seriously, I think people who are complaining about the poor quality of "rares" should take a look at capitalist's The Haves and the Have Nots... thread.

Just because it's a rare, it doesn't necessarily mean that it is automatically "perfect". Besides, one man's perfection is another man's junk, or vice versa, or however the saying goes, but you get the point.

You mean there are people out there who WANT a raven staff or a forbidden staff with crappy mods?

The only thing i'm complaining about 'not having' is a reason to be excited when I get a gold drop. My warrior is SO tired of watching wands, staves and foci spring from a chest. Give her a shield, sword, or axe for heavens sake!

Well, that's the exact reason why trading exists in this game. If you can't make use of the drop, you can always sell it, and purchase what you actually need from another player. It may take a little more work, but personally, I like it this way, because that's how it works in real life.

Except in real life, there are ways to facilitate trading between peoples. Back before the days of Christ there were merchants; some owned shops, others owned large stores and Inn-type establishments where people would come to rest and drink. Others had ships and would peddle their wares in far away lands.

There's none of that in Guild Wars. In fact, if the only way people could trade goods back in the Roman era was by shouting "PURPLE DYE FOR SALE!!! 500G" then humanity would be in a lot of trouble right now. Nobody would be able to reliably acquire the goods they wanted.

The trade system in Guild Wars is the most pathetic excuse for trading I have ever seen in a game. Ideally, towns and cities would be five times larger in scale and there would be an area where players could set up shops for some cost. They'd be able to put up there wares for sale, and could even sell such wares when not logged in. Each player would, of course, need to be limited in number of shops owned.

But NO ONE can make any use of 99% of the so called "rare" drops as it is now. Even the trader and merchant NPC's frown when they see them, then you have to beg them to buy the crap.

Hmm, not sure if I'm understanding this. Just because an item isn't "perfect", doesn't make it useless. It would be kind of weird, in my opinion, if every single "rare" drop turned out to be 15>50 or dual-modded with perfect mods. That would actually turn me away from playing the game, because it takes out the fun factor for me. Personally, I enjoy that search for that "perfect" item, that's basically all I do after beating the game, aside from PvP.

I'm not asking for "perfect" drops but usefull ones, no more +1 fire, +1 communig on the same staff and such useless drops, they have nothing rare about them they are worse than getting a "white" drop.

Rare is a word used to denote low numbers of abundance.

That is a rare drop, the drops with no dmg. mod or dual modded double proffesions should be purple.
If a-net uses the word "rare" atleast use it according to it's meaning, don't put your own interpitation on a word.
Let them drop more "rare" materials or just modds or key's but plz do away with the obviously useless crap.
14^50 or 13^50 is still usefull (perhaps not in PvP but in Pve) but a Celestial sword with no dmg mod is salvage crap.

But, if the gold rating has no bearing on value, why bother making it stand out from the other unidentifieds? The vast majoirty of the drops I got wouldn't even sell for enough to buy another key. Another poster mentioned a purple 14^50 followed by a gold with no damage mod. If this can happen, why bother putting colors on the drops at all? You might as well just have identified and unidentified and do away with these color classes.

Exactly! The chest system was meant to be a gold sink, and as expected, it's doing the job it was designed to do. Personally, I don't see ANet changing this anytime soon.

It's not just the chest system though - its all gold drops.

Either the fix the gold items OR they need to make merchants pay us a bit more for these crappy gold items.

And in regards of SOME might wanting these crappy items, how do you find those 5 out of millions? I am not wasting inventory slot just to sell this item to someONE who needs it for 500gp and he/she might even low ball me because he/she knows how crappy it is. No thanks, that excuse is sound but not valid for me.

And what killed me the most:

Diamond Aegis: Armor 16, req 9 Str, +1 Illusion 19% chance...WTF?
Platinum Blade: 15-22, Req 10, Zealous 1/-1, +7 vs Elemental, NO damage mod. I guess I am customizing this one just to have that 20%...