Guild Wars Economy: Who's to Blame?

To add to the Req 8 15>50 Crystalline debate going on here. I have seen for sale since virtually the beginning of Guild Wars only 5. I am sure there are more but I cannot see there being that many more. A while back I was given the figure by a well known trader of around 20-30 I think it was. Leprekaun (sp) gave a figure which I am sure is close to the mark. There is no way to be 100% sure of how many there are as people dont always post on guru, or never told many people etc. People should stop attacking him as I am certain there are not hundreds of Req 8 15>50 Crystalline Swords.

The Guild Wars economy is the best it has ever been in terms of items and materials being cheap. I remember when a Req 13 Gold 14>50 +30Hp Spartha could sell for 300k or ectos were 17k ish each. The people saying gold is hard to make or every rich person who spends 2 million ebays or whatever sadly must fail at life. Gold is not hard to make in Guild Wars if you use your brain which it seems so many are lacking in this game. I have just started playing World Of Warcraft and even though joining it waaay into its existence I have started making a rediculous amount of gold for what level I am and I am confident I should be very rich in WoW too with little effort.

There aren't many people that can afford 1,750 ectos for an item. The ones that don't start out here wind up here by the buyers that LIVE in every damn trade town. A trader oops and allowing monsters to drop an item that is set to only drop in one place is completely different. I will leave it at you win since there is no talking to some people.

I doubt there are hundreds either, but the truth is, there may be and without the figures from the actual character files, nobody knows. There may well be people who have 3 of them and never visit the forums. As far as "most of them" ending up on the high-end sell forums, I don't see how that could happen when there are 3 million copies of GW sold and just over 110k registered users on Guru as of this post. Seems that that leaves a few MILLION players who don't visit this forum...

The economy is doign fine right now. Materials are cheap, anyone can get a good max weapon for minumal investment. The rare skins are vanity items, not unbalancing but nice to have, so give people with a lot of money something to spend it on. At all levels, from bvery rich to very poor, gold is still valuable and there are things to buy. I think that ANET has done a good job of controlling inflation and keeping basic utility items reasonbly priced, while still leaving value in rare skinned weapons and armor.

The programmers are to blame. Supply goes up infinitely, and demand never changes, except for new items. If they did the economy like they did alliance faction (percent degrade over time), the economy in GW wouldn't completely suck.

I agree with this statement.

Nothings wrong with the economy, stick to PvP or go PvE and actually find out what the economy is like, shard.

I tend to disagree with the statement here even though you went on to make some good points. Econ 101 is basically a semester of macroeconomics and a semester of microeconomics in your freshman year. The dynamics of GW economy is not really covered in any of those two courses even though the basics hold true , But this stuff is a little more complex than your supply demand curve and the GDP/GNP of GW.

I do believe the psychology of the players have more to do with the economy than the economic laws and principles in a online environment.

You have the haves and the have nots who have totally different play styles

Haves could be:
Adventurers ---who just want to beat every Challenge in the game, the type of guy who does FoW/UW Elite mission quests every night and after 3 or 4 months has a huge stack of loot he hasn't been paying any attention to because he was just having fun the gold was not the object for him just a side effect.
Farmers -- These guys just want a hustle, they got one of every profession ready to go, for the next big thing, UW monk he's there, Shiro'kin run he's there, troll cave, latest solo boss build no probelm the fun for this guy is the Items and the loot.
Superfarmer/Exploiter --- This guy can smell an exploit a mile away, he's the guy still in UW solo farming or that monk running in and out of DoA solo who always seem to have the gem you need when you pm him. He has an unwritten pact with Anet he wont post his build if they leave him alone. The fun for this guy is hidden knowlege.
Merchanter/Wheeler Dealer---Buys low sells high knows every price in the game or has it at his fingertips. His fun is to methodically get more wealth than everyone else.

Have nots could be:

Explorer---not a GMC type , but they may be very causal player and spend a day hiking out to some area taking screen shots. The fun for them is to marvel at the detail and beauty of the game.
Socializer -- The fun for him is seeing who’s on and hanging with guildies just being helpful
Newbie—Just doesn’t know what is going on yet and handicapped financially
People who just follow storyline--- you have those who just want to finish the game, but that will not generate any loot for them.

I just throw those out there to show that, people are all playing and having fun so GW is not broken,but, ultamitely some peoples behavior is gonna net them more gold than others. There is a segment of the population who insist that the economy is broken., but its all in their head. The true problem here is not economic, but social psychological. The number one issue being class envy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_envy

I don't think there is anything wrong with the economy tbh. Of course, crystallines/dwarven are going to be cheaper as the game has been around longer so there are more in circulation. They're still very expensive though so I don't see a problem.

With collectors/greens, its fairly easy for all players to get max items in pve. So you are paying strictly for looks. And lets face it Looks = Fashion.

Things from tyria/cantha will be dropping in price like mad now because Elonian fashion is in, but elonian stuff will drop for chap 4. face it, accept it, and don't be too upset that your elemental sword isn't going to be quite so uber later on.

When all is said and done, the economy is driven by buyers. If the buyers don't like what you're selling it won't sell. If they can get it cheaper somewhere else it won't sell either.

During the double gold chest weekend, I got my req 9 dead sword. Surprisingly enough I wasn't the only one and the 100k + 40ecto price tag from guru baseline, dropped to around 100k + 20e. That to me sounds like a working economy.

You don't seem to get just how rare gold crystallines are. I made it to rank10 with NEVER seeing one crystalline come out of that damn chest much less a perfect one. I am not the only one with that experience from hoh. As to how they wind up here ... I repeat there are full time buyers in every trade town. A limited number of people that can actually afford 1,750 ectos means you have to advertise where they might see it .. hence here. Sure there will of course be a few and I mean FEW as in single digits that never passed through guru but the bulk did. Then again you are the person that didn't even know where they came from but you are still debating their value and numbers.

Its all supply and demand... Heres a good example:

The first night the snowball fights came out, I sold a pack of 10 cc shards for 50k... Why, you ask? ...Because they were 'new' and no one had access to them yet. Now your lucky to get 200g per shard...

Is that so?

More like the death of your penis size. I do not even have a Wamoh, I am sure there are a lot others like me.

I do not even care if Anet adds a quest that can be done in 5 minutes which gives a crystaline sword as a reward, a quest that is only available for a limited time. It is totally worthless to me.

Good thing your opinion is worth exactly squat to Anet. I do not find it amusing to spend 100K on a staff + perfect mods each time I have to rerole to something.

It is very obvious that all the losers complaining about the so called economy are just people who wants a free WoW; players who find the game "boring" or have "nothing to do" because "things are too easy to get". You like to spend a lot of time getting a worthless item? Go play WoW.

I love being judged by people that don't even know me. I am not the type to run around ctrl clicking my weapon sets. Like it or not there has to be items that people strive for .. even if you do not. If you really did not care I doubt your post would have ever been made.

You are perfectly correct, though this is perfectly explained by "economic laws and principles." As I stated above, one of the bedrock principles of a market economy (of which Guild Wars is, at least in part, given the ability to trade goods and services at mutually agreed upon prices) is that things only have that value which members of the market ascribe to them.

It seems that the biggest complaint people have about the "economy" is actually the complaint that other GW players value certain in-game items (rare skins, greens, or the quasi-mythic Crystallines) in a way that the complainant doesn't particularly like. Our complainants don't like the fact that some people buy and sell Crystallines for 100K + ectos, or whatever. Great, don't buy/sell at that price. Feel free to argue why its a bad price.

However, ultimately, different people have different value systems. And while we generally talk about "value systems" when thinking about more abstract notions (politics, religion, ideology, etc.), the same theory applies here, too. As long as there is a heterogenous population on the GW servers, you will, inevitably, encounter persons who are executing a transaction the terms of which you disagree with. Yet, as long as that transaction is not one banned by the Terms of Service (e.g. selling in-game currency for "real-world" currency), the system is functioning the way that ANet intends.

Thus, the economy is, by definition, not "broken" and know blame need be assessed. QED.




That being said, if you believe that the fundamental economic structures of Guild Wars are inappropriate, faulty, flawed, or just generally could be changed or improved, then of course you can assign blame. However, again, the blame should not lie with the player community generally. Rather, the blame is with the programmers, developers, producers, owners, and the "makers" of the game, as they and they alone have control over the underlying mechanisms.

One day, some Ph.D candidate is going to win tenure and Guru better damn well be in the footnotes somewhere!


[EDIT to correct a problem with the quote]

as one of the oldest power traders. I think the market is just doing fine right now. Me and many traders i know still making enough for what we wanna buy. Sure it is not big number we used to make back in the old days anymore. But we are still doing pretty well. We can pretty much buy w/e we want any time anywhere. The market right now is good for both casualisty and hardcores imao.

Bold mine, that's exactly it. There has to be some kind of reward for playing a game, and for some people that ultra rare item is the reward. Striving for months and months, or even years considering the rarity, and finally obtaining the item would be a huge success for those that play that way. Heck, even for those that don't, just getting it as a random ultra lucky drop would make your month!

The only crystaline I've seen was the Longsword in Pre Searing. There's a lot of items like that for me, since I hate farming in general. But, gotta respect what others take value in.

As for the economy, I think it's in a state of mild flux since the Inscriptions hit, but that's far from a bad thing. Besides, lower cost goods are easier to sell since more people can buy them.

What about 15^50 Crystalline Swords with req 11 or better the prices are always outrageous. I think to have some really expensive stuff is good. It increases the challenge. The game could monitor it by having certain items limited by the number of total accounts. i.e. 1 Crystalline sword for each 200,000 accounts period. It could then even track the number that get customized (therefor out of circulation) and add 1 or 2 for every 10 customized. Thus rarity could be controled and the prices for those items would be interesting to watch. If the population as a whole got richer the prices would actually go up. Supply of ectos per person vs. supply of Crystalline swords per person.

I'm to blame. Shoot me.

DUH you didn't give your address.

QFT.

Crystalline Sword = Tulips in Holland (those who don't understand my analogy should google it for some interesting history).