Unheralded Professions (Gaile, good read)

We see them everywhere. Buying, selling, running missions, running from one town to the other, procuring common and rare materials, gathering (farming) rare weapons and offering their sword for a few gold to people doing missions. We also see players in Ascalon, Chahbek Village and Shing Jea giving away weapons and guiding new players into our world. As much as we'd like to deny it and even if it's not recognized by Arena Net, these professions exist and is vital to the economy and population of GuildWars. My question is, why not give US (Yes, I'm one of them) some recognition by giving us titles and/or recognize that these are legitimate professions?

Merchant / Legendary Merchant

To get this title, you must buy and sell 1 million times (2 million for Legendary) from an NPC merchant.

Scout(Tracker) / Legendary Scout(Tracker)

To get this title, you must turn in 100k (500k for Legendary) scout contracts to a NPC Scout(Tracker) Guildlord. Mission contracts can be purchased/obtained by players from an NPC (money sink).

Mercenary /Legendary Mercenary

To get this title, you must turn in 100k (500k for Legendary) mission contracts to a NPC Mercenary Guildlord. Mission contracts can be purchased/obtained by players from an NPC (money sink).

Farmer

To get this title, you must salvage 100k of each common materials from item drops.

Procurer /Arms Magnate /Lord of War

10,000 green weapons /100,000 green weapons /200,000 green weapons obtained from bosses.

Philanthropist

Complete a trade with 10,000 unique new players. To determine whether the person is new, account age comes into play. If Account age is less than 15 days (debatable), 1 point goes towards the Philantropist title. Trading with multiple characters from a single account counts as 1 point.

Sage

Help 1,000 new players finish the first 5 mission. To determine whether the person is new, account age comes into play. If Account age is less than 15 days (debatable), 1 point goes towards the Sage title.




It is time that we recognize these player-made professions. Any thoughts?

Patron Deity: Kormir
You gotta admit, Kormir represents "at least" 50% non-combat being the god of knowledge.





Vladimir Drakken
Merchant Guild

Sounds like a title for sitting on your ass spamming "WTS".

Hell....why don't we add a title for "Marketing Agent/Legendary Marketing Agent". Spam "WTS" 1,000,000 times in local chat for level one, and 2,000,000 times for for level 2.....

NOT!

Lame idea. really.

To get this title, you must buy and sell 1 million times (2 million for Legendary) from an NPC merchant.


Nuff 'said.

idk some titles dont make sense like the farming ones.. titles should be worn if your proud of something you do.. and i wouldnt like to be known as a chinese farmer..some seem easy to get or fake...

I doubt your going to get much support here on the boards - many people look down on farming/selling/etc. - but for what it's worth I think your idea is a decent one. Your titles recognize achievments in the meta-game that is a part of the overall Guild Wars experience. The thresholds you've set would be challenging to achieve without being completely unreasonable. My only concern would be your last two proposed titles, Philanthropist and Sage. Though the ideas are solid, it would be difficult to track statistics on these.

You have a nice idea here. Unforunately you're going to have to be satisfied with that, since I doubt there's any realistic chance of these titles ever being implemented. It's a pity, too, because to some degree they might encourage more PC-to-PC interaction (something this game could use).

It's a good idea, but it'll only work in theory. As these titles (like many others) will lose their meaning as many people would ceaselessly farm them.

Naw...

The farming would just encourage.. well.. farming.

The merchant could easily be done with a macro that buy 1 item and sell it back to the NPC over and over again. (and 1million is too much)

I also question there will be 1,000 new player. also that would just be a hard number to track.



A title I do want to see would be one where you pay 100k gold to a NPC to buy a "Sucker" title. More for the super and legendary and wonderous sucker titles.

There aren't um... professions.... and I thought we're talking about new professions here. There are just title suggestions, and somewhat boring ones.

First, some of them don't require effort to do. You're basically rewarding the commonplace act of interacting with the NPC merchant and trading. That totally cheapens the People Know Me track.

Second, some of them reward farmers. Anet don't like to encourage hardcore farming.

Third, the rest are money sinks. I think we have more than enough of those.

Some of your title names are a bit off too. A "Farmer" title for a salvager, yet no "farmer" for the real farmer...

I do believe this game is ment to focus on the competative and cooperative gameplay and overcome the neccessity for econimic and progression interaction.

That is why much of the neccessary resources in the game are available through trading, and why the level progression is so short. In recent chapters, most of the content is end game for sheer challenge.

Adding titles for features not appreciated by the game and the goal of the developers is rather silly, like congratulating someone for chosing the path you tried to lead them away from....

Only if they are retroactive.

I mean, since start, how many items did people sell already? Not to mention farmers and bots. How long does it take to fill the inventory?

Unfortunately, too many titles are already grind based. If GW is to keep up its skill over time principle, then skill based titles should be favored.

Saying that titles are just the end-game content is a cop-out. Just like other games add 10 more levels since they can't do anything else, adding grinding titles doesn't add content. If everything else is worthless and unapealing, titles, especially grind based, become the emphasis of gameplay.

All grind titles get abused into meaninglesness. Survivor, lightbringer, sunspear, drunkard, all tainted. Treasure hunter and seeker titles are completely time-based.

Granted, people have different interests, but still, as the game ages, the apeal of these titles is limited only to very few. It's always better to think about content related titles, rather than just adding time sinks.

It's funny how the title includes 'Gaile, good read'.

No on the money sink stuff. Less money sinks.

In my opinion titles should be something you cannot directly attain with money, otherwise they are not worth the check box you put in them.