Guild Wars Economy tracker

I've been missing this for quite some time now: a Guild Wars economy tracker. A website that shows the prices of commonly traded items in a timely perspective, with graphs similar to the real worlds stock charts.

I'm already maintaining another site and because my time is limited I don't have the resources to set up something like this myself, so I'll leave this idea for anyone who might be interested in setting up something like this. Maybe in the form of manually updated graphs made with Excep or so, or a more advanced approach where every visitor can update the prices in the database.

Here are a few items that would be interesting to see the prices of in a historical perspective:

• Rare crafting materials like Rubies, Diamonds, Sapphires, Ecto's and Amber.
• Dyes
• Runes, especially vigor runes
• Domain of Anguish gemstones
• Hero armor
• Maybe some greens or so
• Minipets
• Other expensive items

A source for the prices could be the ingame trader prices for things like crafting materials and guru prices for other items like minipets.

I would love to see something like this on the official Guild Wars website, one of the many Guild Wars fansites or a separate site for this project.

Edit: Here are some charts I found at the ingamers forum. This is an example of how a chart could look like:
http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forum...7&postcount=33
http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forum...0&postcount=34

Isnt that the point of the "Auctions" tab at the top right!

You cant really keeptrack of fluctuating market prices by just observing and watching, because you could see one person ask for a low price, while another asks for a higher price.

The best way is use the auction, because it shows what people are willing to pay and anyone can just search for an item and get a rough idea.

But people have to appreciate that it is just a "rough estimate" on how much its worth. Just because one person is willing to pay a given amount, doesnt dictate its actually worth that value.

A poorer player wont be willing or able to pay that, so it means the rich players dictate higher prices.

Even objects like materials can fluctuate that much its not realistic to run a website to track them.

But even the auction isnt perfect, because not everyone uses it and its only a small % of the gaming community who set the prices on there. Again its probably the richer players or expert traders who use it.

You cant keep an accurate, real-time tracker of all ingame prices. They can jump up and down for frequently that its pointless. And one persons price doesnt always reflect what everyone else is willing to pay.

We shouldnt have set market prices on non-merchant gear, because an item should just sell for what ever the buyer is willing to pay.

I don't see any graphs there with historical prices of an item until now.

Correct. That's why I suggest to use ingame merchant prices (Like the dye trader, rune trader and rare material trader) and guru prices (see price check forum) as source data of these graphs.

I don't see any reason to use the auction as a source of prices. The auction is just a replacement for the WTB/WTS trade chat in game. Imo the best sources are the guru prices and the ingame trader NPC prices.

The only way GW has to set prices for items that drop with variable values is Traders.

For the item that do not have traders, but they could, there are already suggestions.

For the items that can't hav traders, such as green items, you'll have to track the community.

Remember to avoid forum lists and auction houses, since prices are waaaaay increased there, and usually outdated.

Here are some charts I found at the ingamers forum. This is an example of how a chart could look like:
http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forum...7&postcount=33
http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forum...0&postcount=34

You completely missed my point I think.

I was saying that simply sitting in a town and observing prices that people sell and buy at isnt an accurate way to judge prices.

As I said... the price of an item is determined by what a person is willing to pay, or whether it can be traded for an item with a set price!

You cant just sit in a town, and see that one week a certain item sells for 5k, then run off and record it in a chart.

Come the next day, or the next 2 hours someone else could sell it for 10k or 2k! You cant chart price changes, when prices arent set in stone.

The prices at merchants you maybe could, but not non-merchant items. The prices are too eratic to record!

You can still record general market prices in charts. If the market changes a lot you will see it in the charts, just like you can see all the fluctuations in real-life economy charts. If you can chart market movements in real life you can cart them in a virtual economy in the same way. Except from the products and the currency there is no difference. It's all controlled by supply and demand.

would be a nice idea, save for the fact that someone has to do this observation and maintain a site with graphical representations, .....oh and have a life outside of that AND play GW.

I like the idea and the theory ,but unless Anet decide to let us in to the servers to propagate a database full of ongoing data and market fluctuations, then i don't think the practical side of this would work.....unless of course if i am wrong about my understanding of the theory?.... if i have got it correct...

then
/Not signed, (im afraid...sorry)

You cant really compare real world markets to guild wars.

In the real world most items have a set price that very rarely fluctuates, but its still a set price.

You go the shops and it has a set price on the item that you pay. Even if you go to a market, an item will have a set price which you can barter around if you choose.

But in guild wars, non-merchant items dont have set prices.

Their not set in stone, and an items value is what ever a person is willing to pay. As I tried to explain, you could enter one town and see a person buy Ragos staff for 60k and then enter another and see someone pay 100k, while someone else in another town pays 40k.

Would you average that price out? or go with the lowest or highest price that a person was willing to pay?

That then means, you have the power to decide the price of that item according to your website. Does that then mean people all rush to your website and use your prices as gosbel?

I can see this kind of working on merchant prices, but why bother when you can just visit the merchant yourself!

Whats the actual aim of these charts and data?

You couldnt use it as a way to find out item prices, because your website would be out of date within a few hours or days. Trying to keep track of ingame prices isnt easy and it would never be accurate.

One side effect is also, that people would start saying "well this guy on his website said its worth 80k, so stop offering me noob prices!!", when in actual fact it might only be a fraction of that price.

But you got the impression is was worth 80k, because you observed ONE person buying it at the price.

I'm not sure if you're mixing merchants and traders in your post above... but you certainly could track prices of items that get sold by a trader the same way you could track a stock price. Just record the price at the trader (actually the average of the buy and sell prices would be best) at the same time every day and make a graph. You could see price trends and use candlestick charting to predict the next ecto crash

A fair number of the items Hyper.nl mentioned in his first post are things a trader sells (some weren't and these would pose problems). Hyper.nl is just looking for a site with history on how prices have changed, you can know current prices in the game but you can't see this history. I'm too lazy to do it but it would be kind of cool to see.

I'm talking about the real-life stock market. If you ever followed these markets, you'll see fluctuations that are similar to the fluctuations we see in the GW economy.

That's exactly where the use of a graph comes clear. You see an item, like a glob of ectoplasm for like 6k. Then it can help the purchase decision if you know what the price history of the object is.

That's how it is, and should be. I don't want to change this. I just would like to have an extra means of getting information of the general price history of an item.

I would go with the Guru prices as they are maintained and updated in the price check forums here. This is for the items that are not traded via the ingame traders. While not always correct, the GWGuru prices are generally believed to be the most trusted source of price information.

Hm, I don't know the word 'gosbel' nor my dictionary explains it. But sure I guess such a website may be used by many traders. Just like the guru price check forums are now.

Because the merchants do not give you a historical perspective on the current price.

The aim is to provide a general historical perspective of the current price. It's not about every tiny change, more about the headlines. In the ideal implementation, registered users can update the database with the current price to have more updates. But even without daily updates, it can be nice to see how much an item was generally worth one week, one month or one year ago.

Well, this already happens with guru prices also. Remember that it's always the buying and selling parties who make the price. A price check forum or a price graph can help making a starting price from which to negotiate.