Your opinion on XTH?

Keys technically add money because you can sell the stuff you get out of the chest. Its a small amount though, so the bigger problem is the one I mentioned earlier.

Because there is a massive influx of them and it is through Anet's pseudo real money trading system.

That doesn't answer how minipets do anything.

Change the rate at which they are acquired, then?

Mini pets don't. But people can hoard loads of accounts to increase the number of mini pets too.

Books is obvious - you trade in and there comes gold.

Zkeys - open the chest get a drop that can have or not sale value.

But that is besides the point.

The only aberration on GW "economy" are "limited things" like promotional mini pets. Not a serious one as it has no impact on the game.


The "economy" for the average player is much better now - all the armors are cheaper to get, no 100k+ superior absorptions or sup vigors, etc.

About the influx of zkeys making rare items more expensive - that is crap.

If Zkeys are used they can't be used to trade.
If Zkeys generates a rare skin it makes every other of the same skin become slightly less rare and so less expensive.
If Zkeys generates something else either is 0 gold or marginal value (top items are like 400g?). If every key generates a 300g item, 100k still needs 334 keys.
If Zkeys is traded for something it will follow one of the previous steps, this one included, generating no gold till is used and an item with gold value is created.
If Zkeys drops (or suffer big variations) in value due to huge influx (as it is happening now) they wont be used as currency and so either they will be used, where at most an item is created with top value of around 400g or just sit somewhere.

The more Zkeys enter the system the less impact they will have, since the most money one can generate is around 400g from a gold item dropped by the chest.

So in the end we will have a game with more accessible skins, inscriptions and mods.

I see no problem in that. It sure beats superior vigor/absorptions at over 100k.

Isn't that just the equivalent of a gold seller raising their price?

I think you are looking at it from a players perspective - "getting an in-game advantage for spending more money is wrong." This is not why Anet dislikes gold selling aka RMT.

You need to look at it from a company perspective to make sense - RMT is fueled by botting, which stresses servers with accounts not really playing the game, and many of the accounts are obtained through stealing rather than buying, giving us customer service headaches and decreasing confidence in a mere password protecting your account. Botting also introduces more gold into the economy, which causes inflation and makes it harder for average players to buy market items, and just makes there be even more demand for RMT and hence supports more bots.

Xunlai house accounts don't create significant inflation and more importantly, don't require bots that are logged on constantly and using up server resources. Although I have to wonder about them encouraging more account stealing.

Several people have expressed a problem with this Xunlai setup on good grounds, but it's not for the same reasons Anet opposes RMT. It wouldn't surprise me if "pay for advantages" (not necessarilly in GvG) AKA microtransactions becomes part of their GW2 model since they won't be living on standalone campaigns.

Disk space is still resource.

They still have to take care of "THX account" like every other (for example periodic backups, updates ...)

Yes, I'm talking about the limited ones. Even the ones made available in relatively large numbers, like Destroyers and Ceratadons are moving up very fast. The more rare ones have been gaining hundreds of ectos/keys in price over the last month or so. The Grawl in particular has skyrocketed. I bought some for favorable double figure key amounts and they've been bumped well into triple figure price ranges where the first digit isn't even a '1'.

That's the reason behind the argument that XTH should be removed. Millions of the things are being dumped into the system on a monthly basis by XTH, and this is vastly more than are created by regular play.

@ moriz: You still just don't get it. Your argument boils down to: money that is not directly exchangeable for something of value is worthless. This is just wrong. It doesn't matter whether you can directly exchange currency for something of value, so long as everyone agrees that the currency is valuable. You would have been in the camp that argued that the U.S. dollar's value would implode when Nixon took the U.S. off the gold standard (ie: made it impossible to exchange dollars for U.S. gold reserves). This didn't happen, disproving the antiquated economic theory you adhere to.

Note that this does not even require arguing the intrinsic value of the title track points of a zkey, which you are improperly assuming away (but explains why everyone can agree that a zkey is valuable).

Seriously, people need to get past the 'Action X doesn't add gold to the economy so it doesn't affect the economy' spiel.

It's a myopic outlook. Gold isn't the only currency.

Let me try to explain the effect of XTH through arguing by analogy. I am going to take a game that you are all familiar with, tweak the rules in the same way that XTH has changed GW, and see what happens.

Consider Monopoly. Basic rules, so no money on Free Parking. Suppose I bring a bunch of new $500 bills to the table and put them in the bank. They are identical to the existing supply, but are colored differently. Nothing happens.

Now suppose that I increase the amount of money earned for passing Go from $200 to $700. What happens to this game?

1) Players stop letting properties go to auction. People have the money to buy properties, and they are more valuable because you need lots of rents to chew through $700 per turn per player and force bankruptcy.

2) The properties on the far end of the board after Free Parking become more valuable, because players can afford to build on them.

3) Players demand more money in exchange for properties when trading, because all players have much more money at their disposal.

4) The winner is the player that can get monopolies quickly and force an early building shortage.

5) You wouldn't want to play this game, because it would take forever to resolve.

This change in the rules does not affect the odds of winning the game, since all players get an extra $500 every trip around.


I suspect that many of you think that XTH works this way. It doesn't. XTH doles out rewards by the number of accounts owned. The rules change with XTH looks like this: For every $10 you pay me as the banker, I will let you have an additional $100 every time you pass Go.

This is a radically different rule change. Now, the player that is likely to win the Monopoly game is clearly the one most willing to spend real money for play money. The value of properties still increases under these rules, but only the players that paid the banker for extra money every trip around the board can afford to gobble them all up.

You would never agree to play Monopoly under these rules if the neighborhood had a rich kid with money to burn. Why are you doing the same thing by ignoring the long term effects of XTH? If you've never paid anything but gold for an item, and never intend to, I can see why you would not care. The price of Elemental Swords and Stygian Reavers is not going to go up as a result of XTH.

However, if you've ever bought anything worth over 100k, or you want to, XTH is already beginning to get in the way of doing that. It's going to get worse as the months go by.

Let's get rid of the broken system.

XTH is here to stay dude. No sane developer will say no to getting free cash, just as no player will say no to participating in XTH, getting rewards for free.
Yes the inflation sucks and so on, lots of stuff are already WAY away from the reach of a huge portion of the population - I wouldnt mind having an Oni chasing my character around or something like that, but chances are I cant afford it, especially undedicated .

So yea, you have valid , well defended arguments . But nothing will change on Anet's side. The keys value will just come crashing down at some point - possibly quite a bit into the future

and here's what most of the people in your camp failed to realize: gw does not have a "real" economy. it is a basic economy, with nothing more than a currency and goods. the real-life economy, as well as monopoly, has the notion of "debt" and "credit". indeed, it can be said that the real-life economy is now more about credit (or the lack thereof, given the credit crisis) than anything of real tangible value (if you don't believe me, try buying a house with no credit. i dare you. heck, try buying an airline ticket, or even renting a car with no credit). GW's economy does not have debt, and most certainly does not have credit (you can certainly try to have them, but there's no system in place to maintain and enforce it). as such, you cannot directly compare GW's economy with that of a real one.

given that GW follows a very basic economy, here's the long term forecast of your "pricing crisis":

-zkeys will continue to deflate in value (it was overinflated to begin with). it will settle back to around 2.5k-3k after april, the last month in which a unique tonic is handed out
-the people who made money are going to spend it in some way (this includes letting it set in storage. if it is not being actively traded, it is not part of the economy). either way, those people will eventually buy whatever they want and leave the market. demand drops as a result
-prices will readjust themselves (aka come down) as there are less demand for those items

the take-home message is this: the basic economy in GW is set up as a dynamic equilibrium. prices for individual items can and will fluctuate, often doubling/tripling in value, but the equilibrium will always maintain itself, purely because the basic economic pressures will always force it to be this way.

XTH existed before the Zaishen title. It existed when zkeys were worth 2k-3k each. Why is it a crisis that zkey are falling back to the original price there were before the zaishen title and monthly tonics started. And it happening when the monthly tonics are almost ready to repeat themselves.
Remember Zaishen keys are a title item. When people get as far on the title as they want, they quit using the items, so prices drop. Should I be QQ'ing to Anet that unided golds are 650g each now when they used to sell over 1k each 2 years ago. Or maybe that titan gems are now 5-6k each when they used to be over 100k+xxe at release. You may argue that zkey are a form of currency, but who decided that, they players not Anet, so why should they protect it when their only acknowledged gold and ecto being currency.

And that, in a nutshell, is the core of the problem.

If I had the money (and lack of life) to purchase 50 GW accounts I'd make a crapload of in-game money each month regardless of the price of the ZKey. If the value comes down I'd take a hit, sure, but because of the sheer number of accounts playing for me each month the hit would hardly be noticeable. I could log in once a month, collect my keys, sell a couple, use the other halve and then sell the items dropped from the chest as well (creme, firewater, tonics, tomes). That's quite a handy income for doing absolutely NOTHING ingame the rest of the month lol...

ANet needs some way to ensure that this part of the system cannot be exploited. Someone mentioned character /age in an earlier post but character XP will be a far better measurement. Apart from this multi-account exploit there isn't that much wrong with the XTH idea tbh.

Monopoly is a game where you "fight" other players.

PvE is a game where you fight the monsters.

If I was Anet I would just give a pack to every player with one of each limited mini pet and not allowing them to be traded between accounts, in the April patch.

Or did I lose last month "GW Forbes PvE rank of players based on gold/items"?

Just because you don't care about certain aspects of the game doesn't mean they don't exist and rate highly to some other players.

Guild Wars has a 'strive for prestige' part to it that's clearly apparent in the design. You can dismiss it, but you'd be plain wrong. It's not even a matter of opinion, because prestige items and the challenges of obtaining them is easy to recognize. You're confusing your own preferences and disinterests with fact about what the game is supposed to be.

Playing and excelling at that part of the game is just as valid a way of finding entertainment as excelling at the more obvious ways, like killing monsters, finishing missions, or pitting yourself against other players.

Of course zkeys add money to the economy...they are free and give items that for the most part get merchanted. Some items are used instead of sold to a trader/merchant but the vast majority of them are junk.

Money paid to other players does not count, it's still in the economy.

It is interesting you talk about game design, because the max amount of gold you can store and use in a trade is capped.

Zaishen keys exist for a long time and so does the xunlai house.

Only once there was a title did the zaishen keys went up in price. As it went in price more people became interested in the xunlai house, making the keys go down in price.

Those are facts.

Title increased the value of the zaishen key. More people betting decreases it maintaining its value stable.

As it decreases in value, less gold is possible to obtain from selling/trading the keys. So less profit will be available to people with more accounts.

And having more because of spending more gold isn't new in gws - if you bought 10 factions collector editions you have 10 kuunavangs that will keep going in price. The same goes for some of the promotional mini pets that could only be obtained by magazines or in tournaments not everyone had access to it in the first place.

The only thing wrong in "gw economy" is limited items that will just continue to rise in value, while everything else will eventually drop.

But anyway, the point was that zkeys introduce loads of money in the system and they don't.

If every key generates one item with an average merchant value of 300g you need 334 to achieve 100k. The max keys you can get per account is 50 (?). So you need 7 accounts if you get all your predictions correct to get 100k per month.

You can say 100k times millions is loads. That is true, but loads split by millions isn't that much. People being 100k richer (or even 200k/300k/400k) won't make much impact in items priced in the millions range.

The side effect of introducing a few ultra rare skins every month will dilute that and make a few more people happy as they got a skin they like but the chances of getting it as a drop would be slim, or getting an ultra rare skin they don't like but can be traded for the skins they like.

So pissing a few people to make happy a big number of them, in a thing that is a "game" and involving things that have no real life worth and not even any game play effect seems a good call.

Yes, you are right. But currencies need to have stable values.

Zkeys is a bad currency since it doesn't have a stable value.

The true currency in this game is the gold and the platinum.

People need additional currency because the trade is fixed at 100k + 7 slots.

Lockpicks are perfect for this role as they have a fix price - 750g to sell to the merchant. Actually their price is a bit higher because the cheapest it can be bought for is 1200g.

That will increase the value of the trade from 100k to 100k+1750 lockpicks or 1412500g (for 750g per lockpick), 2200000g (for 1200g per lockpick) or max of 2725000 (for 1500g per lockpick).

Any stuff used that exceeds its merchant value is used at risk of devaluation since the community perception changes.

For some reason Anet capped the money allowed in a transaction and didn't introduced another currency.

I don't quite follow how the gold cap in trades makes my mention of game design interesting.

They are facts beside the issue, much like how the fact that grass is green is beside the issue.

I don't see anything wrong with limited items per se, as long as the original means of obtaining them makes sense in the context of the game. Lotteries and arbitrary giveaways aren't a good way in my opinion.

And here's where you're wrong. Z-keys are money. They're a token to facilitate trade, they can be used to measure the worth of other items, and they represent both an inherent and an opportunity value. They're a different currency, coexisting with gold. Adding keys adds money. You can spend it at the Zaishen merchant (the one strangely shaped as some kind of chest) or you can use them to make purchases off other players. They are money.

Who cares about gold? Minor shifts in the gold flow are irrelevant. You're babbling about dollars while people are printing euros. Some of the things now priced in the millions range were not priced at a third of their current price hardly more than a month ago. That's not a natural progression of value for limited items, we're talking revolution here, not evolution. And it's happening because there are suddenly quite a few players able to bully their way into the market by throwing insane amounts of Z-keys at anything that strikes their fancy. (Or ectoplasm, which is what many of them trade their keys for first, 'laundering' them.) I had a grawl minipet out yesterday night. Someone kept pestering me about buying it. I told him it wasn't for sale. He went as high as 480 Z-keys. I bought it for 85 not long ago.

All of this is making the rich richer, and turning many have-nots into will-never-haves. Sure, most of the latter don't give a damn of course because they don't play to 'have'. But the ones that do are screwed if they want to compete in the market against people who print themselves insane amounts of Z-money every month. The monopoly example should tell you why.

The irony of it all, it's my distinct impression that the rich are the ones complaining about it. Most players apparently rejoice at the opportunity to buy another armor set, and I can relate to that. Good for them. It's just a shame it's happening at the expense of the integrity of the prestige game.

It means Anet didn't want any particular item to go over the roof it terms of price.

Although their position is a bit dodgy when allowing items like armbraces to stack.

Buying a magazine that doesn't even has circulation in some countries seems a bit arbitrary.


Zkeys are exactly like lockpicks and any other item that stacks.


And I have a couple because I bought a magazine and bought 2 others for 50k each long time ago.

You bought that grawl at 425k (which was the value of the zkeys not long ago). My GF bought one for 300k like 3 months ago.

That guys was offering you close to 2 million (at current 4k price if it is still that high, when it was 5k it would be close to 2.5 million) and you still didn't sell it. That is why limited items like grawls will keep going in price, regardless of zkeys value.




See where you went wrong?
Both you and he trade in Zkeys. Why didn't he offer 6 armbraces?
You are dealing with a product that has been appreciated over its real value.

Zkeys are worthless. There are tons of them and they have no value whatsoever other than to be used to open the chest, get 5 points in title and have a chance at some item.


They have no value. There is no npc trader that buys zkeys.

As we have seen, opening the zchest in hopes (or gamble) of getting a drop wouldn't make anyone buy zkeys over 2k. It was the title that increased its perceived value.

They will "keep printing" currency and they will need to print more and more and more to achieve the same amounts since zkeys will lose value. The more they print the less each zkey will be worth.

100 zkeys was 500k some time ago. Now its under 400k. In a few months will be less and less. When that happens it will stop to be a currency and return to be a zkey.

The true irony is that removing the XTH at this moment would increase the value of zkeys, making anyone that has them hoarded richer and allowing only the rich or the PvP players able to attain the zaishen title.

If Anet intention was to create another PvP title they should have made sure the keys couldn't be traded.