Guild Wars Special Events / Festivals: Fun or Profit?

Honestly, I wanna have fun. Let's be honest, profit in this context isn't going to improve my life. On the other hand, I want goodies too.

I guess, I don't so much try for profit, as profit might find me. Might.

I kinda wonder if I should have sold more tokens myself; I ended up with over 700 by the end of things. Traded them all in over Friday night and Sat morning trying to get a pig for my hubby. Which he got anyway by being in a good district, so...

I personally play for fun, and I don't see the harm in some profit. The impact as I see it is two things. One, players trying to go out of their way to get lots of stuff just to make money have the potential to make it harder for other people to get stuff. That wasn't so much an issue here, but picture it in some of the present grabs around Wintersday. Two, sometimes these events bring out people's inner scammer. Who didn't see someone today trying to sell a mini-pig for 25k, when we all knew full well we'd have a good chance every 3 hours? :P

So I think the impact is small when it's the honest players who are just looking for ways to make money (selling tokens is a great honest way to make money, and people know how to get them, some of them are just looking for a quicker way to get the items). It's those not so nice people that worry me.

I usually first have fun, exploring everything and stuff, and afterwards, I am PLANNING to get lots of items to sell for later, but never sold 1 event item (Except some Peppermint Candy Canes for 1K each).

I'm now more of a collector of the event items, I have everything, from Squash Serum to Fireworks, stored on my ritualist ^^

I can get profits every day. I use these events as a break from the same old stuff. They're a nice way to play and enjoy new stuff.

Nothing wrong with "capitalistic" players. It's just the ones that are disruptive that are irritating.

The first few hours of the event I was running characters through trying to get a mini-pig - you needed 10 glittering dust for one quest. Not something I - or obviously many others - keep in storage. I noticed their price jumped up into the 250g per 10, if I had some I would have sold them off. Any way, I've got enough plat in storage so it's no big deal to buy most things I want so I just purchased them. About an hour after they went up they suddenly disappeared and did so as fast as you could sell them into the trader (much as many runes do right after the release of a new chapter) and in several districts one would notice 5-10 people with the same guild tag hanging around the trader (and one or two spamming local with outrageous prices for dust) - I assume they were trying to dry up the market. It seemed to go on for about an hour or two, the people left, and the trader was suddenly full of them. I guess dust just drops too much for any group to corner the market on it, my guess is that they lost quite a bit of gold as prices only went down from that point on and it doesn't bother me one bit.

The same thing happens for a while on runes after a release - I've even been whispered in anger about "ruining" a good thing by selling to the trader or at what the traders prices would have been.

But then, that isn't "capitalistic" nor any other economic system - that is pure disruption and gaming a system. But, I know of no online game where this doesn't happen and I know of no real way to stop it without really potentially really damaging the economy - significantly under priced is as disruptive as massive inflation.

Fun, mostly. Though I did rake in some serious cash.

However, I'm not nearly evil enough to be one of those people hanging around before the pig comes trying to sell smoking remains and guardian moss for 50k-100k.

You forgot to mention to pick up the quest from Ludo on the way out fro a few extra coins and a monestary credit .....

I like to have fun and make some in game money for new armors and what not. But my prices when I do sell event items tend to be really low so I make money and other save alot of gold also. ex. 250 Wintergreen Candy Canes for 50k or less.

The fun of events should come from profit. But since the event items aren't worth enough, it doesn't. It's better to farm Ectos the for the whole event as opposed to worry about getting event items, which if needed be can be bought at a much higher rate via Ecto sales revenue than they would be acquired via personal collecting.

What I'm saying is: the events should start offering more profitable items, or at least items that can make the characters attending significantly better off after the event. That would be fun.

I persnally play events for fun then sell what I don't need/want after.

I do know I had 1250 dust before the event and now I dont have it anymore. Furthermore, somehow I ended up with 100 red dyes.

GW material market works the same as a stock market :P

Oh, I opened about 300 fortunes, NO pig at all. So I stopped believing in fortune and started writing my own destiny.


Anyway: capitalism is all about risks and oppurtunities, balance them out rightly ull earn money. Otherwise it more likely costs u money. For example the people buying pigs in the hope they will be valuable in the future. Or the people that didnt want to sell the pigs on saturday yet and found out on sunday everyone got a personal pigfarm.

I just recently saw someone in the top 100 of Rollerbeetle racing charging 50k for services and tips in getting into the top 100.

This happens with alot of events. you always have the right to choose whether you want to enjoy it, or spend your time profiting off of it. Both have different oucomes.

I went for fun. I gave away ingredients. Kept explaining to people that it was a group effort; that no one person needed everything. Had a great time. Ended up with 6 pigs; three for myself and guildmates and three to give away.

Profit, well I sold 3k worth of spiked eggnog when someone spammed for it. And was going to give away 2 Tonics to someone who wanted to join the Elf line dance, but he insisted on paying 200g for them. Farming for truffles and archaic kappa shell netted me about 7k also with drops.

Had a great time overall, made money without trying for it.

I love the special events for two main reasons: (1) They are a lot of fun (especially for people like me that are mainly PvE players); (2) The event items are cool (especially hats and things like mini pigs) because I like to collect them as "souvenirs" to remind me of all the hours I spent during each event.

I will always end up selling/trading a few things to help my gold situation... but that's not because I end up with 1000k in the bank... it's more because I end up with 0k in the bank towards the end of every event and need to sell off some stuff to help out with my usual gaming time.

I've enjoyed all the special events a lot! Thanks ANET!

Fun>>>>>>>>>>
Profit>

I don't see why it has to be an either-or thing. I spent most of the event beetle racing for essentially no reward, just because it was fun. I also spent about an hour farming the quests for tokens to the tune of about 40k. Part of the fun in these events is the unique moneymaking opportunity they present, but it's not like you can't enjoy the event itself at the same time.

It is all about the fun.

Fun first, profit second. I used to being poor, so i really just have fun, I loved it when I got my pig, since I just went roller beetle racing for fun the rest of the day.

I had loads of fun and earned almost 150k

so go Special Events

This event was FAR funner than most of ANets previous events, simply because we as a guild chose to go farm everything for the feast many times over. We had a great time getting ingrdients and by the midnight pst showing last night had folks chanting about putting up statues in our honor... lol (a bit much if you ask me). We picked the same district (AD88) each time and a lot of folks kept coming back, but many non-pig-owners came also. Everyone left with pigs every time. That alone made the day for us more fun.