Power Traders: Scum of Society?

When I came back, a year and a half had past. my stack of ectos meant nothing anymore. Now there were titles to be bought, super rare minis, ecto gloves, everlasting tonics, award winning skins to be had. I was on a quest to get rich again.

Not being a pve expert, I decided not to get too much into pve farming. So I looked into power trading since everyone here said it was the best way to get rich. So after a while I've been looking around Spamadan and Lion's Arch seeing the same couple of people hawk their wares all day every single day.

One of these so called power trader tells me that he is trying to sell his obsidian edge that he bought from a "noob" for 20k, and now he is selling it at 100k70e. He says once he sells this, he is going to look for another noob to buy from. This seems to be the common story among the power traders I've talked to. Does this seem horrible to anyone?

I've tried this buying low, selling high thing for about a month, and it was quite fruitless. I never had the luck to find a "noob" that would sell a high priced item for cheap like the countless power sellers I've met.

It seemed that anyone selling or buying non-merchant crap was a power trader himself and/or looked through guildwarsguru and demanded similar prices, even though no one made bids because the prices were too high.

I was making maybe 5 ecto profit each day for spamming about 6 hours. If this was the way to get rich, then I would've been fine with that. But there are countless stories of people with thousands of ecto, and I've seen people on here bidding with thousands of armbraces after the big ban. I just know that this wasn't how they got rich.

Yet I see these same people selling the same item all day for a small profit, and I even see them in the High End section of the forum buying high end items, and then trying to sell them in spamadan for 40 more ecto. The next day I see them drop the price down to 5 ecto because everyone else knows about guildwarsguru or their prices are way too high.


After thinking about all of this, I've decided to stop powertrading. It doesn't seem to work as well as people here say it does, and it just seems wrong ripping off noobs.


My question to you is, do you think power traders are the scum of society? They drive up prices for all the high end items just so they can make a profit.

And also, how do people get so rich that they still have thousands of armbraces?

1. Yes buying from unaware people is good way to make money (although fairly immoral but then again who is on the internet)
2. It's luck, you arent going to find a newb selling a panda for 3k.
3. They are dupers that escaped the ban or know a duper. SImple as that. Some people deny it but there is no other real way that someone has 1000s of armbraces.

Ah this topic again. After reading your post, I've already gathered you've made your mind up.

No. Power traders are not scrum, it's a legit way of playing in a MMO. Everyone has the same access to information as said power traders, if people choose not to inform themselves before selling, they are to blame.

Knowledge is the key to wealth, the quicker people realize this the better. Any idiot can knock out a 55, but it takes true knowledge of people and the game before you can into my league.

Power traders. Dont care much about them and it aint a fun way for me to make gold.

As for being rich i have an almost full GH with more then 100k in storage so when i need a weapon mod or some rune/insignia i dont have to farm 2k to get it.

How i make money? I do a lot of missions/quest/vanquishing with friends and allies and i farm the snowman for crappy stuff and monk tomes.

When i get bored of the game enough to power trade, i'll play SIM Stock Market instead.

Just my humble opinion.

scum of the earth? it's just a game! do i think they're scum? no, and certainly not "scum of the earth." and the reason is because they're just selling vanity items that do work the same as collector items. the great thing about guildwars is that money is not all around that important. sure, you need some for skills and armor, but that's about it. everything else is just vanity.

what i find interesting is that you said you make 5 ecto every 6 hours. at current exchange rates, that's only about 25-30k. you might as well hfff in lutgardis conservatory since you'd be making slightly more gold doing that.

Well what if you wanted to buy an obsidian edge right now? I can tell you with a great bit of confidence that the majority of the ones being sold in kamadan are from power traders that have probably bought them from the Guildwars Guru auction.

Doesn't it bother you that they've basically bought out all the stock and are artificially driving prices up?

The world of an RPG is much like the real world, people need to make profits in sales in order for a business to stay alive.

except for the fact that you don't pay taxes on those sales, you can't pay your mortage with gw gold, your characters don't need to eat, etc.

My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair.

not really because those swords don't work any differently from other swords.

well I power traded in other games before and to sum it up i have to say this

was it fun: no
Did i feel good about doing it: no
did it make me money: yes

luckily in GW i seems to make money just fine by vanquishing and exploring and just playing the game that i love and don't feel the need to power trade as i did in those other games

1. I'm pretty sure Malice wouldn't have a problem with that
2. there isn't a set number of any item in the game, and I doubt all the power traders secretly meet to fix prices

Well somones on the high horse. True though tbh

Power trading really sucks now, the Z-chest ect gives out 593732754.86 of the "rare" items per second and the stuff that was acctually rare (non-insc) is uncared for because the people are either soo rich that the can have anything (like malice) or dont care (me).

But overall incription weapons killed off power trading so you can be happy with the fact you won

Exactly, power traders can not control the ENTIRE market and new items are being introduced the entire time.

Malice had more money in this game than you could ever dream of.

The pity is that he wiped his acct.

OT:

Powertraders are like real life. JP Morgan is going to make a killing buying Bear Stearns for so cheap, I assure you.

Well of course they don't secretly fix prices. What they do is they just set their prices based on all the ones being sold in the forum. And they keep raising the prices as much as they can so they can make a profit when they bought it here a week ago.

Even though there are new items being introduced every day, the number of obsidian edges are quite limited, and I'd say 1 or 2 new ones end up on sale each day.

So all the hungry power traders snap it up and raise the price, before the normal player logs on (because he doesn't spend all day looking for trades). Now do you see how power traders are ruining the market?

Why do people assume that you have to take advantage of an ignorant person to do this?

Selling stuff cheap = less time standing around, more time to go out and make money doing other stuff. If I see somethin being sold super cheap and no one's taken it yet, I might just buy it to resell. It could be a simple case of a person that hates selling and decides to put low prices on their stuff.

When you're actually telling a person that a "rare" item is actually not rare as an attempt to make them sell it cheaper, that's a whole different thing....

No, it doesn't ruin the market. If a power trader snatches up a rare weapon before its general knowledge, and sells it for a big profit, good for him.
I worked at Target over the Christmas break for college money and heard a lot of customers complain about not finding Wii's. We made the dates we would have them in fairly known, and specifically told customers to be there when we opened if they wanted to get one. Despite this people still complained about not getting Wii's and their only option being to buy one from someone else for a much larger price. Whose fault is this? Theirs; if they would have had the initiative to get to Target when we said we would have Wii's, like the price gougers did, their kids would have had one under their tree.
If you choose not to be aware, its your own fault.

Because they all know about guildwarsguru. Every time people try to buy below the standard guildwarsguru price and everytime they sell, they always try to sell way above. So the only way you would make money is if you can reverse this trend, which would only work on people who don't try to make a better trade than the ones going on here.



You must be the first person I've heard who advocates price fixing. I don't think anyone else here would enjoy having to wake up at 1 in the morning and wait in line for a day outside to get a wii.

I think someone is just bitterly calling power sellers "scum" after numerous failed attempts at this "scummy" behavior. I'm not going to judge you (or anyone else) for doing what you can to get rich quick, but I found this funny.

I really dont care about powertrading

Today I finally got enough to BARELY scrape up a everlasting phantasmal. Now, I only got it for ~99e. I could resell it RIGHT NOW and at least make a 30 ecto profit.

I care more about the item than the prospect of potentially greater wealth. Some ppl care more about the wealth. I don't judge as long as I get whatever the hell I want

Yes its ironic I know. But whats sad is that I don't think other people are being successful at it either, and they are still doing it. I still see them selling the same items for days, and they still mess up the economy by keeping the prices of items high.

If someone puts forth the effort to make more money than everybody else, or have something that not everybody has, then they should get what they worked for.

ps- I enjoyed camping out overnight to get my Wii pre-order, life's what you make of it

And yet, it was just a bunch of bits in a database somewhere in Seattle. In a game where the best equipment is free.

So empty a boast, such minuscule a colossus.

Please enlighten us why Guild Wars needs power traders.

Its not like they reinvest in companies to make more products in the real world.

All they seem to do is encourage ebay gold buying by raising the prices.

The farmers get less money for their goods in comparison, while the power traders getting richer sit on their stack of ectos, not inclined to help enrich the economy by making stuff.

Generally, yes. They mislead others in order to take their gold. No matter how you dress it up, that's just "scummy," period.

Now, to their credit, there are some self-described "power traders" who don't try to mislead people about market values, but rather sell the time they save people in finding a buyer/seller.

You're confusing power traders with traders. It's a common mistake made by most people though.

Power traders have a goal of sorts, and it isn't generally hoarding money. Most will have an on going collection of rare stuff, and to fund this they buy/sell expensive items.

Hey that sounds like a fun way to play a game.

I did that thing for a while. No, the profits weren't ridiculous - I didn't pick up crystallines for 10k, but I would make 150-200% on an item. Buy for 50k, sell for 80... around those lines. Did that long enough only to get one set of FoW armor, then decided to drop it. Spamming trade chat is not my thing.

(This was about 6 months after prophecies release)

I enjoyed powertrading in WoW, though. There it takes the form of playing the auction house. You can buyout items that are listed under the average and resell them. On certain things you can "corner the market" for a short time, since WoW servers have isolated iconomies and each server is much smaller than all of GW, which has a shared economy. You could also buy certain items, disenchant them and sell the enchanting components for more.

Basically, no trade spam involved and spending about 5% of my playtime in AH made me enough money to get an epic flier before I hit 70.

Power traders don't spam. Anyone with half a braincell will have formed a network of like minded people in which they traded with. With such a network in place, you can have an item sold within an hour of purchase. No time lost on your part.

Esan - You seem to have an issue with me. So, either say your piece, or keep it shut.

Ignorance does not make the knowledgable scum. Being good at a game does not make you an elitist. Being smart does not mean you're necessarily arrogant. Assuming does two things that I'm sure the average Guru user is familiar with... I wouldn't recommend it.

Power trading is an essential aspect of any Capitalist society, whether it be a nation or an artificial game environment. The price of the items that are power traded in Guild Wars is not set by the state (i.e. programmers) and therefore gamers are going to do what they can to make money from their spoils... and other's.

In my experienced opinion, the original super-rich class of Guild Wars players were legitimate power traders who made their money buying and selling in a virgin market that either didn't know any better, or didn't care. The newer class of even more (in quantity of players with such wealth and also quantity of wealth attained) super-rich players is much harder to explain away, considering the massive numbers of Armbraces being offered per trade. Personally, I would say that duping is the source of the ruined economy we're all stuck with now.

power trading now a days has just gotten too inefficient in terms of profit per/hour or profit per/day etc.

even if you have a huge bank roll to start power trading now, the money you'll make is peanuts compared to what you could of made back in the "good ole days". it's just not worth it.

presently, if you want to make large amounts of money consistently over long periods of time, you're best bet is to start some type of reliable service. because the game has been around for 3 years, there are a quite a few people with lots of money that just don't want to grind new characters through certain aspects of the game.

there's your market. now you just have to figure out which services to offer.

If you think powertraders are scum then don't powertrade. I personally could never powertrade it's just a huge boring waste of time but some people like to and so they will who cares?

I care, and other people should too because everything is more expensive.

And only power traders can afford the best stuff because they got rich off everyone else.

Now I'm going to stop ranting for the night.

You know, if it's too expensive you don't HAVE to buy it. I still don't see how powertraders run prices up. When I want to sell something I sell it a bit under the standard price to save time and I'm sure some powertraders do the same to save time.

Do what?

Everything is cheaper now compared to 3 years ago.

There is no such thing as "the best stuff" in GW. A white customized sword will do as much damage as mr joe scrubs non-customized tormented sword.

If GW was gear based then being rich would actually have an effect on gaming experiance, but as it is, people choose to power trade as it's something to do besides button mashing.

They're just like used car salesmen, buying on the low end of the price range and selling on the high end. They offer a valuable for the portion of the community who does not care to find a buyer or hunt around for a commodity.

you'd be surprised how much money you can make when you just save your gold and don't buy on impulse everytime you see something you want.

that, and a.net gives out free gold in the form of zkeys every month, just predict monthly winners. it's really not that hard to make a decent amount of gold in this game. you don't need to powertrade or anything.


p.s.
just to be difficult

the white customized sword will actually do 20% more damage as opposed to mr joe scrubs uncustomized torment sword, which will only do 15% more damage(assuming his health is above 50% and he hasn't modded it since he bought it)

Ok I couldn't resist coming back 1 more time

So what happened to titles, everlasting tonics, and other expensive stuff? Did Arena Net spend days modeling rare skins and effects just so only power traders and ebayers could afford them?

Except in this case you actually need a large parking space and repair services. Its not like people are having trouble selling their mini pandas and such.

I think a more accurate analogy for power traders would be the diamond company De Beers, who buys on the high end, and are selling on the higher end, because they are one of the few people who can afford to buy diamond mines.

Wait a sec......

We have threads here about hackers....dupers....and scammers.

And you're calling the power traders the scum of the earth????