Does the Armbrace market matter, really?

I don't care in the least. Coz I know for curtain that I cant afford an armbrace even if I tried to save up the bagillion gold for one to buy one off some dude. Nor do I have the time, or the want, to farm endless for the 60 gems for it. Plus didn't I read somewhere around here that Mallyx is impossible to beat now? Yeh.. Fantastic.

You know what? In fact, i'd be more happy if the market were saturated with high-end weapons, and items. Prices would drop, and i'd be happy to have such nice stuff for my heros, and main toons. But in the end, not going to happen.

QFT; I spend comparatively little time in PvE-land, yet what time I have spent there I've used efficiently. Certainly the collections of Enko, Herbalizer and others dwarf my collection of q8 Tyrians and q9 inscribables, but it's not like I had to spend oodles of time farming or trading to get the stuff I have. I spend far, far more time whaling on other people in PvP than I ever will spend killing monsters or farming noobs (as trading is sometimes sarcastically called).

It's just not that hard to make money in this game. A former guild leader of mine made something on the order of 8 million in July alone reselling items farmed in the Deep and speculating on Diamonds. You just need some focus, an understanding of market mechanics and in-game item values, and some playskill.

I wouldn't be surprised to hear that most of the serious traders in this game pull down that kind of in-game cash on a monthly basis; in my experience trading is about as effective as the most abusive forms of farming players have found in this game to date.

Granted, it takes a significant number of hours in-game to accomplish such things, but if an addicted player can make 8 million per month investing, say, 160 hours per month, a casual player investing 5 hours per week (20 hours/month) could easily clear a million gold each month given focused efforts. That'd buy you just about everything you could possibly need or want (or one top end Asian minipet) inside of a year of play.

The main reason so many people perceive the wealthiest players as "elitist" in their comments on these forums is, in my opinion, because the majority of the player base doesn't realize how easy it really is to have a positive cashflow if you husband your nest egg while it grows. A little bit of bankroll management goes a long way.

Once you have the seed money, making money trading isn't terribly difficult if you manage it right.

Herbalizer's collection is much better. I just collect Armors, Greens, and Mini Pets.

The loot changes and Hard Mode demolished my money making methods but just to give an idea of how much comes in now, it's still roughly 50k an hour and I can play on my main account while I trade on a couple of others. Used to make 300-400k a day and that was only a couple hours of trading a day. Actually what hurt me the most trading wise? The change that we couldn't use local to trade anymore. The little quote bubble showing above the head actually helped me more than people think.

160 a month = addicted . .. what does that make me?

I just hit my one year mark last month and my collection of minis currently stands at: all first year minis, all second years except for 1 gold and Gwen, and all of the rares except for Vizu, Ghostly, Zhed, and Grawl. It was indeed possible to make enough to buy the limited mini pets but with the recent explosion of armbraces, I'm not too sure if the prices for those will ever drop down into the manageable area again (0-1750 ectos) unless Anet releases another source (which was hinted at).

Most people don't separate their needs from their wants. Do they want a Collossal Scimitar now? Yes. Do they need one right now? No. Spend money on essentials (such as runes and insignias) and get vanity stuff when you can afford it and still have enough to rebuild your money.

You clearly win then; just goes to show how effective a player can be given sufficient focus on generating wealth. Herbalizer must be sitting on quite the stack of loot.

160/month = 1920/year; you're not THAT far above that. I'd still classify it at the addicition level.

I can see that; I've got multiple comps but only one is really serviceable for GW. Up-arrow spamming two towns while farming on a third comp would definitely up one's cash flow.

Yup, this is the main secret. Set aside enough of a chunk of cash to keep your trading account active and spend only the proceeds. 80% of the dedicated player base doesn't have the willpower for this, and the remaining 19.9% just doesn't have the acquisitive desire. After all, you can play this game with no titles, high req 15^50 inscribables and ugly 1.5k armor and it performs just fine.

I have to 100% agree with that... I do however have sets of 15k and I have minipets that I recieved for my characters birthday. I have collector weapons and despite the fact that I have been playing for a very long time I have never had more than 200k in storage at one time. At the moment I have 40k and I am happy.

In the end I really don't care about things such as armbraces and other "uber rare" items that a lot of people end up getting with ebay gold anyway.