About farming, the economy, and the gameplay involved with these.

Please excuse me for any errors, English is not my native language.

What does ANet expect from us players?

It’s always been said that farming is discouraged, and possibly even unwanted behaviour in guildwars. Other then farming however, there aren’t means to make decent amounts of money.

Now I’m confused about this. I can see that farming may have some undesirable effects that ‘could’ ‘destroy’ the economy, but there are ways to prevent that.

But first something else. For casual players only interested in PvE; farming is one of the few things left to do after you’ve finished the story. Sure, you can play through it again, but that does get old pretty fast. Farming is offcourse about money, but let’s not forget that it’s also fun for a lot of players.
Why would you prevent something that is fun, after all that’s what a game is about. You shouldn’t be restricted in farming because that is the way you want to play the game.

Now if farming is such a bad thing, why are there so many expensive items in guildwars? Especially with the recent updates such as inscriptions and stuff, armor is more expensive then ever. Like 1,5k armor for example, now in factions you had the ideal system, you could combine different pieces of armor, while still maintaining a unified look. Now we have these insignia’s; effectively 1,5k armor is now more expensive, you now get a piece of armor with no bonuses, and you have to separately buy an insignia per piece to make it just as good as armor from previous chapters. 15k armor is now more out of reach then ever!

Off course those insignia’s aren’t just buyable at some trader, but it’s dependant from players selling them to the rune trader. So basically they have a low availability and the potential of becoming really expensive due to demand. I’ve already seen players trying to sell insignia’s for 5k! And off course they’re not going to sell them to the trader, because the longer they keep them for themselves the more expensive they get. Now that doesn’t seem like a good thing to me…

Back to farming. Farming seems the only solution to this increase in costs, however it’s apparently unwanted. How are you supposed to make money for these items then, even normal armor is expensive now, and with less options then ever to earn money, it just seems near impossible to get basic gear.
Even weapons with no mods are now 5k compared to previous chapters. We can’t rely on quests to give us money, because we still have the rewards (which feel more like punishments) of astounding amounts like 200 gold! That’s not even enough money to buy basic things like an identification kit.

Just playing through the game in the ‘apparently’ wanted way. With parties of 8 people, you will never make enough money to even buy one piece of 15k armor, and you’ll have trouble getting 1,5k armor plus insignia’s to make it decent. Off course there’s always the exceptions in players, but 99% of players are not finding all kinds of ‘ 1337’ equipment and gold and stuff. And there’s the group of players that’ve been around since the beginning of guildwars when farming wasn’t yet so nerferd who are now sitting on millions of gold, so off course they’re not complaining.

Then there’s the npc merchants. They give 35 gold for so called rare green weapons. How is that an honest price. Well, you could off course try to sell it to real players. So you’ve stand in a town yelling WTS for 4 hours straight. Where’s the fun in that!?


There are loads of ways to at least give us other ways to make money and still have no farming if you really insist on making that impossible. How about for starters making npc merchants give decent money for stuff you find.

What about fighting for money instead of faction? I’d much rather fight for money then faction. After all, at some point you’ve unlocked all the skills you want and then what’s the point in pvp’ing, especially if you’re more into PvE to begin with.

Repeatable quests with actual worthwhile rewards. What about set prices for items so you can have farming without ruining the economy.

Maybe the insignia system should be PvP only. What was wrong with the factions system of just having multiple pieces of armor for sale with different stats?

So my question is, what do you expect from us ANet? How are we supposed to play the game then? How are we supposed to make these obscene amounts of money for even basic 1.5k armor and 5k normal weapons when we can’t farm and quest rewards just plain ‘suck’.

Now, don’t get me wrong. This is not the umpteenth rant about how farming was nerfed, I’ve never really been that much into farming anyways. I’m more concerned that all that seems to happen are changes that make it more difficult to make money, and that make even basic gear more expensive, and we’re not getting any new ways to negate/ go along with these changes.

Please if any Anet employee’s are reading this, please give us something to improve this situation.

what is your native language?

if you can write english this well, your native language must be extremely good.

anyway, the thing with farming is that it will slowly drive prices up, so things will be worth more and more. this is undesirable, because new players will be at a serious disadvantage.

currently the prices are high. that's because NF just came out, with many people purchasing these stuff at high amounts. give it a week or two, and things will calm down.

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reetkever, have you ever done a Droknar's run? If you had, you would know that a mob of melee monsters bodyblocking you is the least of your worries when running.

Prices have been going down for months now. The release of Nightfall spiked prices on a few things, and certainly the rarest weapons will remain 100k + ectos for a while, but they too will eventually follow the likes of zodiac bows and drop in price.

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it has already happened

My native language is dutch.

Anyways, I also except prices to go down eventually, but my main concern is still that things just cost a lot of money. Like the skills example mentioned. Without farming there's no way you can make the money to buy all skills for your profession.
And I don't see ANet stopping to nerf farming anytime soon, but they're not adding alternate ways to make money.
I would've no problem doing repeatable quests if they would give some decent rewards, like 1k per run. At least then you would still have means to make money. Or like the fighting for money instead of faction like a mentioned.

I think things like that would be fun, and would not immediately force grinding.

Overall the prices for equipment is just unbalanced. Either they should give us new means to make money, or lower the prices; preferably the first so getting 15k armor for example would still be quite the achievement.

@4ssassin

Though i find it hard to believe that you made that much money just playing normally I suppose it could be possible. However I believe that only a few players have that kind of luck. Things like finding good deals; if you're talking about buying low and selling high, that just doesn't work for most players, and like I mentioned before it takes loads of time. I'm not very fond of yelling WTS for 4 hours straight just to make money, I'd rather actually play the game.

The fact that armors no longer come with bonuses is (to me) utter bullshit. Other than that, i was never really in favor of that solo farming thing. Sure, it completely defines the economy, but it's almost impossible to build up money as a newb, especially w/o the advent of skill quests now. I had 100k around a month ago, and spent it ALL in about 2 weeks just buying necessary things and upgrades I needed to keep my character somewhat useful. Farming could be said to have both dropped and raised prices, but since the demand grows exponentially as does the player base (up 1 million people or so since last december I think 0.o) some people will decide to "reap the benefits" and go cheapo on everybody else. FoW and 15k are supposed to be an extreme accomplishment. With botters, ebay, and these crazy cookie-cutter farming builds, you're instantly a 15k hit after maybe a month of playing. My friend had just gotten prophecies, was sick for a week, beat the game, and was already griffon farming w/ some FoW pieces while I was still struggling w/ THK. I don't even think he did half the missions. That's not how the game is supposed to be played, IMHO. Yes, farming can be fun, but there are other things to occupy your done-with-the-game-time now, like titles and other characters and AB, which is insanely fun for Factions owners (for me, anyway).


edited for truly, horrible, atrocious grammar xD

T_T no one read my post it seems. and there is a way to fight for money(kinda) you can Alliance Battle for faction, and exchange that for amber or jade, which in turn can be sold.

BTW sidra, the GW player base is over 2 million now. and i know the feeling. a girl i helped lose her noob stats had FoW armor on all 3 of her chars during her 3 month of playtime, which means she made over 1.5million gp per month as a still new player. thats pretty wrong.

I stand my my statement, and 100% support the anti farming nerf. now bring on some anti-wammo farming patches and we are set Anet.


Proudly the most hated player on Guild Wars.

Playing through Elona so far (I'm now at mission 15) gave me a spectacular 7K and some gold coins (well maybe a little more, because i bought some ID kits). I've had not a single gold drop, and only 1 purple (which was from an Istani Chest). If my Dervish gets on the mainland, and I have to buy max armor for her, all the gold I've obtained is nearly gone again.

Players who aren't very lucky, and don't get all the good drops, don't get rich by just simply playing the game. We already gain some gold by questing, but does that mean we all have to do every single quest to gain 250 gold extra?

I can't see the whole farming problem. One the one side, Anet nerfs farming to promote teamplaying, and on the other side, they improve the henchmen's AI, so we can pick them instead of real players. Also, they make heroes which we can give their own builds and skills, and even weapons. As well as the ability to lightly control them. Is there any need to go through the pain of searching a team anymore?

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