Guild Wars Depression - Solutions?

You can't just take a big word from the news and apply it to Guild Wars.. its different.

If people start playing GW as a game and stop trying to live the game, the economy will right it self.

and people will leave greed and pride behind them and live in [peace and harmony] forever.

Would fair be splitting up everything everyone has and dividing it equally amongst all players? I'm sure you'd appreciate that, right? Now that would really be fair - everyone would have the same amount of wealth, no poor no super rich (or just rich, for that matter). While we're at it, lets make it so every rare item drops from any mob at any level - wouldn't want the lower level players feeling left out, would we? Pretty soon there will be so many of whatever it is you don't have it won't have any value at all. Perfect!

In every economy you will have it all - poor, middle class, rich and then the 1% or so that is amazingly rich. You're just rich, so what? I say quit the whining and be happy with what you have.

Agreed. But actually that is the best post here:


To the economist guys. Wanna have a "healthy economy"? Make supply of money limited as is in rl. Farming produces items only. They will be worth something only if your will be able to sell them. Merchants have starting amount of money. When they sell stuff they get money when they buy they lose.... This will make as in rl rich even more rich and poor even more poor. Why spoil such a nice game to cater the needs of farmers and such huh? It is really good as it is and there is no need to "fix" it.

If you do not know what you can do with all your money buy sup vigor for all heroes on an all your characters on all your accounts. It is not a good way to show off but at least effectiveness of your H/H gameplay will improve.... It is sad to be in a group with black fow armor/chaos gloves and 7 sets of uber weapons people who do not have even a basic runes on their heroes....

That is not neccessarily true about rich and poor. The scenario you suggested would be perfectly fair. Ever read the book Utopia? Maybe I'm stirring the pot here, but we are "living" in a game where private property wasn't supposed to mean anything, the game was never supposed to be item based outside of a competitive level. Who thinks I'm wrong?

In a game where there is no new content, and masses continually farming, even playing an area, over and over again... there will be a decline in economy. Period. As more stuff is gained thru even normal means let alone farming it floods the market.

Adding new items, skins, masks, or whatever will not help. There is really a simple solution that it seems many have over-looked. Its time to take these items out of the game. And in so doing will help prices climb back up. So the best solution is to make weapons and armour need repairing. And not just repairing as in costing gold. Repairing with added materials as well. The stupid weaponsmiths sell nothing of interest to anyone but the just starting out. Turn them into weapons repairers as well. My eternal blade has 10/100 uses left so it will cost 100k gold and 10 ectos to repair. The weapon mods are gone permanently and need to be replaced. My Kurzick Elite armour is dented and now gives only 50 Armour rating instead of 80 and will cost 25k and 40 amber chunks to fix. And the Rune of Superior Vigor is gone Permanently. If items not repaired reach 0 then item is permanently destroyed and must be bought again.

This is how you can stop an economy from dying. Doubt it can be done now in GW1 but maybe in GW2 the greedy QQers will stop.

Lol people care about the gw economy? wut is the point. everything is so incredibly cheap does it even matter?

I believe the whole point of gw was not that the richest players get the best crap and therefore have a huge advantage over other players. I believe it was something along the lines of everyone gets the same weapons, but the rich players get to show off how rich they are by having the rarer weapons, but no other advantage. So you can open the box and jump into pvp, instead of buying gold on ebay to the the rare sword you need to finish that quest for the armor that'll let you kill the dragon and get the best sword in game, unless the guy next to you steals it.

If Anet adds more NPC like one that will un-customize items for a fee(not a small one either, 10k+) or let you change from a male or a female and vise versa, or anything that will become an incentive for people to spend money should help the gw economy. Since alot of people simply have their golds sitting in their banks, and alot of people get tired of farming because they run out of things to spend money on[so the time spend farming isn't worth the fun that can be "purchased" with the gold].

Dunno, just my thoughts.

I have just returned from a break from GW and was quite suprised to find the prices where they are. It didn't bother me. My ectos that are still sitting in the bank are there incase I ever decide to get FoW armor on any of my characters, so I really don't care what they are worth. I farmed 'em back when proph was the only game just to have incase i ever decided to get FoW.And that's where they will stay unless I decide to start decking my toons out with FoW.

People want different things out of thier game experience.Take my GF for example. I played WoW for a bit with some RL friends, so she decided to try out WoW and GW, and she loved WoW for 1 reason she liked gathering materials and playing the auction house. Buying, selling, trading, hording money(she is an accounting major). Me on the other hand, i couldn't care less as long as I have the cash to have the gear to be competitive in pvp or pve. She never got above 30 in that game and had 10 times the cash I woulda had if I sold everything my 2 70s had together much less what cash they were carrying.

Me, I like GW better because I don't have to try to make money to get things to stay competitive. I just log on and hop into pvp if I want or go back with my ranger and play some HM missions or go back and get NM mision bonuses I missed, maybe play one of my alt characters and get them a little further in one of the campaigns. I always seem to have plenty of cash in the bank when I want to go buy skills or grab some new armor to change things up a bit or whatever. And that's enough for me. So I am glad there is a game like GW where the economy doesn't punish people that don't want to raid and farm ect. to earn enough money to stay competitive.

Well, I'm really effing bored, so I'm going to put my degree in Economics to use!

First off, an explanation of how ecto function as money, why it matters, and how it relates to the real world.

Back in the '30s and prior, gold was used to back the value of currency. Those old fogeys were essentially trading with fractional amounts of an ounce of gold every time they used a unit of currency.

In Guild Wars, ecto are valuable for the high value exchanges (which, if the real world is any guide, account for a surprisingly large amount of the total value exchanged in a given time period, even if they're relatively infrequent when compared to low value exchanges). They're also valued for their use in the creation of various armor sets -- but let's be honest, most folks use them as a unit of exchange and a store of value. Note the similarity with the real world? That gives us access to a few more items of interest from the toolkit of economics.

So why does this matter to the large number of poorer players that do not have daily contact with ecto? Well, for one thing they have a wealth effect (a change in the price of ecto should affect how wealthy a given ecto holding player is, and therefore change their willingness to spend non-ecto currency), and therefore alter even low level spending -- which results in poorer players being rewarded less frequently and with smaller amounts than they would be were ectos more highly valued. Prove it, you say?

Using the relatively simple equation of exchange, we know that a decline in the money supply (resulting from a decline in the price of ecto) should result in the following:

Equation of Exchange: Money Supply * Velocity = Price Level * Expenditures

M = (P*Q)/V

If M declines and V remains constant (which is pretty standard), (P*Q) would have to decrease. So, either the price level or the number of items traded or both would have to decrease if the value of ecto declines.

Let's translate that into Guild Wars terms. As the price of ecto declines, we should see the following effects:

1) Trading should become less frequent, even for commonly used items
2) Prices should decline across the board

Well that sounds nice if you save your money, right? You'll get a better deal in the future, right? Wrong, because of that old standby of economics that everyone and their brother has heard of, supply and demand! (by preference I'd pull out the IS/LM model, but, uh, let's keep this shiz simple, m'kay?)

In the aggregate, everybody knows that as prices decline, the demand should increase and the supply should decrease. So, if everyone is saving more and more of their money, the money supply is declining, exchanges are becoming rarer (eoe, see above), and the prices offered are lower, what do you think should happen to the supply?

Well, obviously the supply of pretty much everything should drop slowly over time. So if you're saving your money in the hopes of getting good deals in the future, know that you might not be able to find what you want nearly so easily as maybe you could a couple months ago. And the more niche an item is (like, say, vampiric hammer mods) the less likely it is that you'll find it. And even worse, it's far likelier than it would have been in a previous time period that someone else will snap it up before you do -- after all, demand is higher!

So that pretty much sucks for everyone, especially new players who won't be able to easily get mods for their weapons or farm for the kewlest, leetest, rarest shiz due to their newness. Fortunately, an elegant solution is at hand.

Increase the price of ecto! Now, here's where the real world comes into play. Back in the 30s, when the world was in the grip of one of the most terrible depressions ever as a result of the return to the gold standard, one bad dude -- known as the POTUS -- took action by unilaterally raising the price of gold every couple of days. He was, in effect, creating inflation and expanding the monetary supply by fiat. Today, most economists consider that raising of the price of gold one of the most significant tools Mr. The POTUS used to fight the Great Depression -- so significant, in fact, that, in the form of open market operations (after the removal of the stupid terrible dunderheaded poopfest known as the gold standard, source of my comment about crucifixion on a cross of ecto upthread), it became our primary method of dealing with recessions.

Anet can fairly easily increase the price of ecto at the traders. Anet can also add some new uses for ecto so as to remove more of them from the game, again increasing their value and hence the money supply. If they implement both, inflation should pick up again and people will start trading again. Huzzah!

Hope that shed some light on things.

Definitions:

Money Supply: In this example, cash and items that can be easily converted to cash (in the real world, M0, M1, M2)

Velocity: The average number of times a unit of currency changes hand over the course of a given time period

Price Level: Basically, a measure of inflation. If inflation is positive, price level increases, and if inflation is negative, P declines

Expenditures: Essentially the real value of the items exchanged over a given time period.

I for one don't like it when people hoard dozens of stacks of ectos even though they barely play the game anymore. Certainly doesn't make the economy better...

Well, you gotta give them credit for not having a life, this is one of their few achievements in life. Everyone has a part in which they shine, and ecto hoarding is what these people are most proud of.

I have no problems with GW economy as long as I can keep selling ugly items to wealthy people.

Hmm, this analysis looks flawed to me (It also ignores the free 10-30 zkeys/month/account profit generated from nil). Remember, money in our real world is really a contractual obligation, or indentured servitude, of 1 servant to another master - thus requiring a 2-way exchange (barter system taken to the next promissory note step).

The money supply in GW is infinitely unbounded and quadratically growing, and requires no debtor - just farm 1 hour and profit 15k. There is no "ecto standard" prerequisite that limits the money supply - as plat can be produced regardless of whether ecto even exist (read: printing press). Nor, is there any plat required to provide/generate revenue (cogs), thus producing eventual profit (a requirement in real-world economic systems - read: GDP/multiplier)... Finally, real-world gold is a limited natural resource; however, ecto can continue to be purchased (or farmed) as long as 5.5k exists to do so. Sure, there are some money sinks, but they are few and far between in use. And, as an economist, you should be well aware of the hyperinflation seen in Germany during the depression, where wheelbarrows full of cash were more valuable as kindling (the situation that should exist in GW, if goods and services were *REQUIRED*)...

FWIW, poor players aren't rewarded by the rich in GW - they're rewarded by farming (15k/hour or 10-30 zkeys/account/month). No exchange WHATSOEVER is required between the rich and poor in this game (or between anyone for that matter).

If you ask me, the low prices are simply a product of a total lack of demand... Really, most don't play this game to buy junk in Spamadin - they play to accomplish some quest or task, and find stuff on their own. Those that do are mostly collectors of the fringes... A lot do save junk, believing it's worthwhile, hoping to sell it to someone, eventually becoming ever more desperate to sell it at any price (never fully realizing that THEY don't even want the crap)... This desperation is fueled as well by the limit on inventory space...

I suggest a 700 billion gold bailout to me in which I will never send back into the market but instead use it to decorate my Guild Hall.

hehe I support this. This should also give you enough cash to take your gw family on 90,000 gold vacations to LA for some sun n fun and maybe a ski trip to the Shiverpeaks.

I think the economy is fine, as long as peoples are buying and selling things. Also peoples have to play the game like it's just a game. Don't go on GW thinking it's the stock market and that you have to trade/sell things to make higher profits.

No one gives a damn because economy was never supposed to be the point of Guild Wars.

Not everyone bothers with the monthlies. And, uh, the rest of what you're saying here is gibberish.

The money supply is neither infinitely growing nor growing at a quadratic rate. Its growth is bounded by time constraints, players leaving the game (and taking their money with them), and expenditures on non-player transactions for stuff like armor (!), consumables, and, to a lesser extent, trader items like mats and runes (I personally get whatever armor mods I need from traders as it is a convenience worth the premium, and I know I'm not alone, but also not in the majority).

More evidence that you're wrong about the money supply in Guild Wars? Rather basic logic -- if the money supply were expanding, and not contracting, prices would be increasing, and not decreasing. That's pretty much definitional based on the mathematical definition of inflation.

Most of the farms that people engage in are intended to grab a high value item or set of items (ectos, rare weapons, tormented gems) of interest to other, wealthier players. Chest runs are based on a similar concept.

Umm, the lack of inventory space should actually be a driver of trade -- players have a finite amount of space, and must either sell to other players or the merchant if they wish to replace a held and unvalued item for a valued item.

Furthermore, the absolute value of the number of traders has little bearing on the prices charged. They should reflect, as I said above, the availability of currency. The more money there is in a given economic system, and the faster the money supply grows, the higher prices get. This is fundamental.

It has nothing to do with profit and everything to do with convenience. If the market system breaks down, it becomes much harder for any individual player to find the items, mods, etc that they want.

Therefore, it is in the interest of every player to have a functioning and efficient market place.

Items costing less gold is good. That means the value of gold is high.

When the value of gold is low, and it costs over 50k for a +30 mod, that is bad.

The most effective way to gain money is to sell to other players. Usually, this is tied to titles. This is good. It keeps money flowing in the system, without creating new money.

If you want items to be worth more, you are in the minority. If you want to earn more cash, buy a handful of accounts, make your monthly predictions, and sell your Zaishen Keys.

Agreed. For example, right now you can easily buy a +30 staff head for less than 3k. Offer 5k and you'll have a chain of people selling you them right now. That is very good.

If you want to increase the values of greens more, have a trader who will trade them for tokens (which can be exchanged for other good stuff, like consumables), weighted by how many have been traded in a certain time frame. I think it would take too much time to implement though.

im notsure the depression in prices is a bad thing, makes stuff avalible to more players which is good, quest/mission rewards are now somewhat better relativly due to price decrease.

sure the gw economy is semi broken, but so are all economies to various extents

As prices decline, fewer transactions occur. Like I said upthread, this decline in prices initially seems like a good thing, but it will eventually result in a total breakdown in trade. We'll eventually get to the point where buyers will be offering about what the merchant does for most items. (edit: This has already happened with most of the greens and rare skins from Prophecies, so it isn't exactly coming out of nowhere.)

At which point, trade will cease, and you'll be unable to get mods or cool skins or anything at all of interest from other players.

Increasing the price of ecto at the traders by a couple of hundred g every month would be the best possible method of preventing that sort of doomsday scenario (in lieu of a bond market, obviously, but we're working with what we have!).

If you figure ecto are going to be worth 1.2 to 2.4k more a year from now, you'll obviously have an incentive to invest in them, meaning you either farm more ecto or farm more other stuff to trade for ecto -- or even just trade more of the mods on the stuff you pick up while playing the game normally, rather than merching them.

Just as obviously, you won't want to keep all those ecto -- after all, you gotta get those stylish weapons and that sexy armor, right? And you're also earning money on those ecto, so you need relatively less ecto (or cash, since it's easily convertible) for you to reach the level of liquid wealth that you feel is sufficient. So you'll trade a few off for cash to get materials for your armor, and maybe a few more for some nicer looking weapons. And all the while, you're increasing the total amount of trade.

But hey, maybe you're not a big money man -- heck, I'm not, I've got maybe half a mil in liquid and maybe a mil including all the armor and runes and minis and weaps I've got on all my chars and heroes, which about adds up to the price of one set of FoW. Maybe you mostly trade in plat and sell weapon mods and such. A regular increase in the price of ecto will expand your customer base -- either directly, as you'll have more ecto holding individuals to sell to, or indirectly, as those ecto holders make more purchases from other players, which allow those other players to make purchases from you. Either way, you'll profit.

I know it sounds crazy that rising prices benefits the little guy the most, but it's one hundred percent true. That's why so many of the big names in economics and fiscal policy are utterly terrified of deflation setting in in America -- it'd rape the earnings of the entire country.

Still, this is easy to fix. All Anet has to do is gradually raise the price of ecto at the trader.

I still think this thread is ridiculous.

Seriously. What depression? Guild Wars is a GAME! There's infinite amount of items.

The economy is a result of the game content. People could argue it's taking a turn for the worse, or is doing good. But the game on the other hand, is not in the best of situations.

It's this simple:

There hasn't been any significant new content added to the game in a long time now. People are looking for a reason to keep playing GW even though there isn't much incentive. GW has already answered this problem, by creating GW2. The only problem is they misjudged how long it was going to take them to develop it. That and by putting all of their efforts into GW2, it has become hard to keep a healthy GW environment going.

To be honest, Anet doesn't really need you to play GW in order to produce and come out with GW2. There's not monthly fee, and they already have the cash in hand to produce their game. The GW2 crowd is going to consist of original GW players, but primarily new gamers, especially younger ones who weren't old enough to experience the GW/WoW boom. They can count on many returning for GW2, but they're going for those that haven't experienced GW yet. Everyone just need to be patient and let Anet's plan unfold. They know what is going on much better than we do, they just haven't fed our hungry mouths because they know we aren't starving....yet.

Agreed.

Some people have mistaken GW for an economy simulator. But I guess it's nice to feel rich (even if it is only a game) at times when IRL billion dollar bailouts aren't doing anything to help and people losing jobs. It's all psychological, IMO.

Standard market rules do not apply here. Supply is driven by the items which are the most expensive and those are farmed (produced). Not really by demand. It is like the supply was based mostly on luxury items. All the rest are random drops people are trying to monetize. So we do not have a real supply here but a supply based solely on the rarity of the given item and its drop rate and player wishing to waste his time trying to sell it. Try to find a decent slayer mod on sale or some of the greens. People perceive them as cheap and even do not bother selling them.

Money supply is unlimited in GW so I am not sure but in my opinion ISLM model breaks. If you think it is not unlimited say hello to bots, dupers and gold sellers....

Nice, rather than give details as to why each of my points is wrong, just go straight for the ad hominem. I really didn't figure I'd get much more from the self-described eco-expert.

You want to go point by point, I'm game. In fact, my analysis of your post lead me to discover the real reason (actually a couple) why there isn't hyperinflation in GW. You want to keep on with the attitude w/o reasoning, then forget it.

For a gentle starter, linear growth is quadratic. Just because I've left GW for a month or two doesn't mean I've "left the market". Consumables require NPC fixed cost farmed mats. Just because a small population of GW elite players do chest farms, doesn't mean that's the most common farm - I'd argue it's the normal H/H 8-man quester, or solo raptor/HM/etc for golds/purples/blues/whites/plat/salvage (some UWecto and gemstone too). The farms you refer to are for fixed-price items (ecto 4.5k, unid golds 700g, gemstones 1/3/5k) - these are NOT the items that are seen with price deflation/depression. In fact, they SHOULD deflate as more are in the economy, assuming rate of farming them is higher than rate of growth of pure plat... You're making assumptions about the GW economy (e.g. that money supply is limited by a "scarce valuable resource" standard, that player-player trade is necessary and a large contributor to GW-GDP) and applying real-world methods to interpret (your inflation commentary - irrelevant if most of GW-GDP is NPC farmed and NPC purchased, and thus NPC price-fixed).

I gave a legitimate reason why item prices are deflated, and you TOTALLY neglected to respond to whether it is right or wrong (other than to say the same old about inflation given the fundamentals, based on incomplete assumptions). I think it pretty much boils down to 3 different but limiting costs:
1. Opportunity cost of auctioning items in Spamadin (200-300g/minute)
2. Value of an inventory slot occupied by an item (say >5k). What this does is box in sellers. There's no reason to really bother trying to sell items in spamadin unless they're worth more than 3-5k. And I'm not talking about FIXED COST items with prices set by NPC vendors.
3. Artificially limited demand (or total lack of it at time delta-T). There is no auction house, so the only buyers are those who happen to be logged in, and who happen to be in Spamadin, and who happen to be reading the spam. Sure some trade on the guru auction site, but too small really to be a significant overall contributor.

On the flipside, let's say ectos all of a sudden inflate to 7k. I hardly think this is going to increase the prices of sought after golds or greens in the sub-10k range. Certainly not to the extent that decent golds/greens should be pulling 3-5k+, but are barely fetching 1-1.5k after trying to sell them for an hour...

No, this right here is literally gibberish.

Completely nonsense. You want to translate it into English, go ahead, I think I've proven that I'm willing to play.

Attitude? Choke on it. Most of the garbage I ignored in your post was A) Incorrect understanding of economics, B) Incorrect understanding of Guild Wars, or C) Just Plain Stupid, like this next quote.

Wrong, by definition. Linear means equations of type y= ax + b, which creates a line and quadratic means, by definition, equations of type y = ax^2 + bx + c, which results, quite obviously, in a curve.

Or how about you read what I actually wrote!

Declaring, ex nihilo, that only a small number of players farm those items is simply ludicrous. Go look at trade chat, or visit any of the outposts that gate these farms -- you'll note that they're the only PvE outposts, outside of trade hubs, with multiple districts. Verifiable. Proof. That these are the common farms and, more importantly, the source of much of the IG wealth.

Could you please for the love of God quit with the run on sentences? There is one full stop in this quote, which makes it nigh on impossible to parse whatever crazed thoughts are running through your obviously muddled head.

Moving on to the lunacy element, you've once again assumed that wealth never leaves the game. Anet, the universe, and the players have indeed created all sorts of mechanisms for the destruction of wealth. First off, as I've said before, armor (in particular) and consumables (over time, as they are regularly purchased and not one time deals like armor) are costly expenditures that wholly exhaust all the resources spent in their acquisition -- money spent on armor is money that cannot be unspent. Secondly, players leave the game, and take with them their assets. Thirdly, players have a limited amount of time with which to play the game and generate wealth. The combination of these three elements ensure that wealth is not infinite. Durr.

I've been playing for three, coming on four years now. My wealth levels have, after an initial period of rapid growth, remained relatively stable for several years now. The same is true of just about every player I know. If wealth were indeed infinitely created, as you seem to think, players like myself would have now earned nauseatingly large sums of money just by playing the game. Most of us haven't, which should have obvious implications for your theory of infinite wealth generation.

Finally, of course player-player trade is both necessary and a major generator of wealth. Where else do you intend to pick up rare skins and weapon mods? Farming ad nauseum until you get lucky and they drop? Durr, have fun with that. And why do you think the richest players in the game are all power traders, and not farmers? Magic?

No, you handwaved away economic theory and then coughed up an utterly ridiculous response. You still haven't managed to explain why prices are falling if the money supply is increasing at an infinite rate (lol!), by the way.

lol at yet another display of mathematical ignorance by you. If basic terms are giving you this much trouble, perhaps you should reconsider arguing about economics with someone who has a degree in the field.

Next, most of the stuff you bring up I either already covered -- for instance, trade will cease if prices deflate below some level. I consider it merchant level, you consider it 5k -- despite the existence of player-player tome trade at prices of 1k. Furthermore, demand isn't "artificially" limited by the presence of time, ffs. Everything in the universe is limited by time, so if your theory of the Guild Wars Economic Failure includes time as one of the elements screwing it all up, you've effing failed. On an epic level.

Increasing the price of ecto to 7k without a guarantee that it will continue rising will result in a mass sell out, driving the price immediately back to its previous equilibrium point. So, no, obviously it won't do anything. Duh. That's why my recommendation was for a gradual increase of a couple hundred g every month and a guarantee that the price will not fall below the level Anet sets. Whatever your ignorance addled mind believes, I've already demonstrated quite clearly what happens when the price of a currency substitute increases in value over time.


I think you're looking at this the wrong way, since your first couple of sentences indicate quite clearly that you believe not that supply/demand no longer functions (after all, farmers are farming the most expensive items, and the price is determined by the intersection of supply and demand; remember the Ogre Slaying Knife?) , but that the goods are transitioning from luxuries to normal goods. I find even that hard to believe, as the vast majority of players are not decked out with the latest fad even at this late date. Since there isn't a glut of these goods, something else must be at work here.

If bots, dupers, and RMTs were able to create an infinite growth in MS, we should be seeing retarded high prices for everything a la Runescape. Instead, prices have fallen regularly, which, based on what both the EoE and the ISLM model predict, indicate a fall in the money supply. Both also indicate that increasing the money supply should increase GW GDP.

Stop with the flaming, please. Thanks.

Why am I not shocked by yet more ad hominem.

Quadratic growth is y=x^a, where a>=1.

Let me just shoot your whole hypothesis dead with the following, seeing as how you've been playing for 3 years. For the past year I've been playing seriously, the ecto has done the following WRT value:

1 year ago - ecto = 3.5-3.8 plat.
9 months ago - ecto = 3.8-4.2 plat
8 months ago - ecto - 4.0-4.5 plat
6 months ago - ecto - 4.3-4.8 plat
past 3 months - ecto - 4.8-5.5 plat.

Ecto has inflated over the past year == you loose. PERIOD.

Uh, I'm sorry, who's been reading what? Why do you TWICE repeat what I've said, without acknowledging I said it first? The money sinks are negligible. It takes less than 1 hour to farm armor - throwing money at elites and consumables barely accounts for a few hours farming.

Yes yes, you are all smart. Now stop it. Keep it related to Guild Wars.

OK just assume I said it was linear growth, and forget the quadratic stuff...