guild wars economy?

hi guys> i have heard so many times how the guildwars economy is in the tank, but my question is how? i usually hear this when people talk about uwsc's causing the cost of ecto to drop. or the red resign days dropping zkeys to 4kand under. but isnt this actually the opposite of a bad economy? when your guild wars gold can buy you more that makes the economy good right?

i mean when i go to the store and i can buy 2 loaves of bread for a dollar i dont complain and say man this economy is crap that my dollar gets me 2 loaves of bread i should only be able to get one.

if your gw gold gets you more isnt the economy good? eventually when they nerf uwsc's ectos will go back up and obby armor will cost more to attain again. and ectos will be hoarded again.

is it i'm wondering if its the people who hoarded ectos and zkeys from when they were 5k plus and thought the price would only go up who now think the economy is bad? but that does not reflect the economy, that is what you call a bad investment. dont invest in things that generate themselves and you will be able to retain your gold better. things like the kunavang are great investments as they will not be released again so there is a limited number of them and even a more limited number of them that are undedicated. just my thoughts of the day> converse peoples

no. more noobs buy more bread. bread now is in a shortage when it shouldnt be. bread is needed for life. no bread=death. bad econ.

It's all relative. In the case of the loaves of bread, the economy is good for you because you get two loaves of bread for 1 dollar, but it's not good for the baker who used to get 1 dollar for each loaf. In the real world, that might mean that bakers would go bankrupt, stores would close and unemployment would rise.
In GW, it's all fantasy gold in a fantasy world, so there are no real consequences. However, with ecto, for example, getting an ecto as a drop during "normal" game play would not be as much of a big deal when farmers get them easily and sell them cheap. Also, things that require ectos, such as FoW armor, lose their status because they become so much easier to get. So, for those non-farmer players, who were counting on getting the occasional rare ecto drop to help pay for things, the economy has gone bad. And, to some extent, the very essence of the game (as an RPG), has been lost.

Its gone bad because things we spent hours getting can now be obtained by pressing 1-2-3.

i think the economy is good atm and is high in gw cost of ectos are up 18-20 for 100k arm braces 50e+ and many other going way higher

Wait until SF get's nerfed, that'll be fun.

Man, when that nerf finally does come, I may have to stop playing GW2 to see how the old game fares.

This made me laugh

An economy in a GAME is also an important REWARDING TOOL - a good strong economy ensures that players are properely rewarded for their play. It's getting BAD when it's the opposite, examples:

-Loot scaling greatly limits pure cash entering the economy but it doesn't limit Gold items - ridiculous overfarm in Hard Mode is possible (15+ golds per hour) while there's not enough gold in the economy to pay for all those -> golds and mods from them are close to worthless. It's BAD because it killed the value of drops players that don't do extreme farming get, especially from CHESTS, which have keys/lockpicks costs not changed upon introduction of loot scaling (effectively costing about 2x as much) but value of their drops is far far smaller.

-A player with many accounts could get a TON of Z-KEYS per month from XTH for doing practically nothing, the gains were comparable to what an active PvP player made in a whole month of playing. They were getting the same rewards but it hurts the player who had to 'work' for them because they were worth significantly less.

Cheap items like golds or Z-Keys don't make the economy good, it's exactly the opposite - cheap or too cheap stuff makes the game LESS REWARDING for those who actually play it (as opposed to abusing it) - this makes a BAD game economy.

Whatever damage you seem to think happened to the reserve side of GW took place in 2007 and occasionally we get a hiccup. It's easier now than ever before to amass wealth so instead of being prudent (or patient) you have even more fast money flooding the marketplace in a system with unlimited resources. The hustlers get richer and the workers blow their savings on shiny crap they don't need.

It's called "deflation" friend.....and it sucks.

Exactly! The same way all the manufacturers of digital watches, calculators, and other consumer electronics all went bankrupt when the prices of those things started to fall. Now you can get a cheap digital watch for a couple of bucks and a really nice one for under $100, rather than the crappy LED watches that few could afford when they first came out as they cost around $500. So now nobody makes consumer electronics and all the people who worked for those manufacturers are unemployed and all the stores are closed.

There is absolutely no chance that a baker could not only survive but get wealthy and hire more people if his profit per loaf was cut in half while his sales tripled. He would have absolutely no incentive, with bread flying off the shelves, to borrow capital and modernize his plant to decrease production costs. Poor baker!

Oh, wait ...

I think Quaker pretty much sums it up in one sentence... It's all about status.

The baker buys the things he needs to make bread, pays rent/utilities and any other costs for running a business so there is a need to earn a certain income so when Wal-Mart opens up a bakery and starts charging less, it hurts the baker because the demand is lowered and the supply is increased. But that's business.

Fortunately in GW there is an unlimited supply of ecto and zkeys. The only thing that can influence the sale value is the demand. But what has happened is that using the tools given to us, players have found a more efficient way to farm these items and have kept up with demand.

The problem lies mainly with those who farm(ed) these items (in the spirit in which the game intended) and have a stockpile. Much like stocks, nobody wants to buy high and sell low. And I can understand their aggravation.

But 4 years into the game... the demand will never be what it once was. Nerfing speed clears etc. isn't going to increase the demand. Once the farmers rage quit, we may even see a drop in demand. (for ecto mainly)

I think the most telling clue as to my theory is that there aren't many complaints about speed-booking, dungeon-running, group speed-clears etc... It's the ecto farmers that everyone is complaining about. To me... The righteous indignation is pathetically transparent.

So yeah... it's all about status. I mean honestly... when was the last time you went shopping irl and complained that prices were too low?!?!?!

I don't know if the other posts touched on this, but you can't compare GW economy to RL economy because:

a. When I need milk, I don't go to my cow, but to the store i.e. I don't add more milk to the circulation. With ectos, I just use them for high-end trades, but if I needed them for FoW armor, I would jump on my permasin and farm them.

b. Oil was at a record high just before the global bubble burst because oil is the world's gold. The economy seemed like it was doing fine, but September 2008 rolled along, and people were like shit oil has been overvalued because the Americans have flooded the market with the USD. GW's bubble is UWSC, and when the UWSC bubble bursts expect gold's value to drop. (Gold has been stagnant, and the commodities related to the SC have dropped in value. When ectos stop flooding the market people will rush to the rare material trader and buy loads of ectos at 4k, and they themselves will push the value of the ecto up.)

Well, let me be the first person to complain to you about speed-booking, etc.

And, then, let me say that anyone has the "right" to play GW anyway they want.

But, then, consider this. Guild Wars (PvE-wise) was originally thought of as an RPG. That's "Role Playing Game" for those who forgot. That means that the PvE part of the game was based around the common ideas of developing your character, progressing through the game, questing, exploring, opening chests, etc. - all the classic RPG/D&D gameplay features. (Just compare the journey through Prophecies as compared to later chapters.)
RPGs are meant to be enjoyed for the game itself - it's not the destination, but the journey, that matters.

What GW has become is a "game" in which people no longer want to actually "do" any quests or dungeons - they just want to run through the content as fast as possible to get ..... (I dunno what?). I wouldn't be surprised if ANet started selling the Unlock Everything Pack in the store. The UEP would start you off with the map all cleared, all titles maxed, your choice of max FoW/elite armors, a VS, CC, and BDS, all skills, 1 of each max weapon mod, and some new emotes. It would sell like hotcakes - but not to me.

GW is dead. R.I.P.

Which is what we are seeing now. All it took was a twitter comment and ectos/shards have risen considerably.

You can obviously tell by the way that the market has been flooded with golds that there is deflation. A perfect sword mod no longer costs 15-20k. But, what's happening now because of RR day, and it may actually be a good thing, is inflation. Just look at the price of black dye that has risen to a cap of 11k in only a few days. It's sad that we need inflation to drive prices up, because giving people more gold to spend doesn't really solve the problem. What we need is more gold sinks. If merchants start selling ZKeys, I guarantee the economy will begin to stabilize.

The main difference between guild wars and real life, as many have said is the infinite resources. Add more people to a real life economy, and demand goes up, but supply stays the same, and prices go up. Add more people the the guild wars economy (more people buying the game), and supply goes up, but demand doesn't, and prices go down. But of course the main problem is not that more people buy the game, it's that more people try to milk as much as they can out of the game. It's the people that overfarm, and use bots that drive prices down. Because of these people, there is WAY too much supply, and prices have tanked. What we really need is some kind of "farming limit" (where only X amount of a certain item can drop for a player in a given amount of time), as controversial as that may be.

I agree completely. It is no longer about playing and experiencing the game. I think the whole "GW2 means you need to max all your titles asap" mentality has done this to us. That's basically the whole reason everyone is trying to get rich as fast as possible.

There is actually plenty of people who play the game for what it is, its just most of us old heads don't notice...we are probably in the district of an outpost just long enough to decide our h/h setup. What went wrong was not swiftly stopping some excessively lucrative farms, buffing Shadow Form in the first place, making what could have been goal-oriented acquisitions(Effen Dwarven Axes and Elemental Swords being given away essentially) shortening the games lifespan as a whole. Then, there are holiday gold sinks that could have been models for newer, more fun gold sinks(Imagine if Costume Brawls let teams wager...)that were never realized. All im saying is there never seemed to be a speciffic direction Anet wanted to go in after they found PvP not to be the end all be all of the game, but instead of letting PvE endgame focus on better challenges and rarer items, Dumb ass easy mode instruments ala Consets and PvE skills opened up the possiblity to abuse farming to the point where most items were so sufficiently attainable that
A:You were going to find it within a few hundred 30 minute speed runs or
B:You will get flooded with enough money to buy it from someone else.

hero!

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I'm posting on this thread just to say how much this post made me laugh.

Maybe the community should stop worshipping the ecto?

Yeah ive been playing a couple weeks now and ive never seen this economy they talk of.

Eve does have one you can see what prices are in certain areas and so on this game ive not ever seen anything

Searched wiki and it says something about Gold sinks, more like they alter the prices sucking figures out of there thumbs no real economy

That's going to be difficult considering that it is required for trades over 100k and storage of wealth over 1000k. There aren't many alternatives once you've maxed out your gold storage, and ectos are probably the easiest for most people to acquire. What would you suggest instead?

An economy is not something you can see. Where there is a market, a demand, and a supply, there is an economy.

I played GW for over a year before I started getting into this kind of stuff, so you may find yourself overwhelmed if you try to start now.

+12 internets to you, sir.

Still so many don't wanna realise gw is dead, there is no need for a fix to make the economy better or worse.

The most off us all are just waiting for GW2!

I playing in the beginning days of GW and I'm still here, and so what that ecto's (or item x) cost +15k in the beginning and dropped to 4-5k now.

To many peeps are complaining just because the feel they had to work more to get certain benefits (let me rephrase the last word: looks).
lol it are just pixels even most obby armor skins suck imo but that is just personnal flavor.

Stop whining about your so called leetness and how its now so much easier to attain. Like you in your black armor are so called way better then player z in his red-purple combo. If a.net would have put in gold dye and made it 10 times more rare, you would see so all de black armors disappear and seeing gold armors in its place, I lol at you all simple sheep following the pack.

We've gotten 2 more campaigns along the way and an expansion, I'm happy I could enjoy those and a.net got my money for it. Real life money, not some virtual cash that is worth nadda!

It all fits into my prophesized belief that the economy is (broken) where anet wants it to be to ensure we all move on to bigger and better things (purchases) upon wg2 release!

Serpent, this is a practical analysis of the economy, not a rant about prices or anything. While some people are only interested in complaining, some of us actually like to sit down and look at how the economy works, and parallels that of a "real" economy. That's all it is; an analysis.

Ok lets back up a second and look at the actual question.

"if your gw gold gets you more isnt the economy good?" is the original question posed by TTM.

Yes it is good...if you collect..GOLD.

Most people do not collect gold as your ability to hold infinite gold is not a reality in GW. If the game was the same as say, Mafia Wars, then your statement would be true. However, people are "banking" on ectos and shards and keys to maintain a certain value like say GEOI Stocks (GeoResources, Inc. (Public, NASDAQ:GEOI).

So, your chest can only carry 1,000,000 gold and your characters only can carry 100,000 gold. If you wanted to buy a 100 ectos of Obsidian Armor you would need 400,000 gold at 4K. However you can only carry 100,000 gold so you would need to trade 4 times for the ectos. this makes perfect sense.

If the cost of the ectos was say 4600 gold then you would need to throw in another 600,000 gold raising the price for which you are going to USE the ectos to purchase an item. This IS the way the game was intended to be played.

But lets say that you are saving up for the Obseeeeeen armor at a whopping cost of 1,000,000 gold and you just started to play and have just reached your cap of 100,000 gold on your player.

You could "Bank" the 100K in your chest or you could go and buy ectos. Lets say you buy them at 4.2K. So you start farming. lets say you are a monk and only need 4 pieces of armor to get your set of Obsidian armor cause its cheaper than war.

You go and get yourself 90 Ectos and the price is up to 4.6 ectos. You could sell your ectos for 378K and hope that the price went down to 3.8k making 36K and getting 9 free SHARDS cause you need shards for your armor as well.

This is good but this is also bad and why you hear so many people complain about the cost of ectos going down and then propping up the price.

People that Farm the ectos and have stacks of ectos have a very real concern about the loss of wealth. Just like President Obama adding 1 Trillion Dollars to the National Dept every year for 10 years with this new heath care bill in the US. The Heath Care will not be implemented for 5 years but taxes will be gathered to pay for the bill NOE so that in the following 5 years of taxs they have collected to pay for the next 5 years so that in 10 years time there will be 1/2 the amount of taxes gathered to pay for the bill.

These funds are going to be used to reconstitute Medicaid and Medicare that are causing 2.2 Trillion in deficit every year to the bill. In Feb when the almost 800 Billion dollar stimulus passed they changed the amount that the National debt could increase to 15 Trillion so they can pass health care reform cause the cost of health care reform will Far Exceed the previous legal amount of the dept. (didn't know there was a limit to the amount of debt constituted by the US law did you??? No?? Cuase people do not read the bill!!)

So, if you have gathered 10 stacks of ectos or 2,500 of them and then the price drops from 4.2K to 4K your net worth has dropped 500,000 just because of a 200 gold drop. So you have to farm another 115 ectos to regain your wealth. This is a deflation of your wealth.

The reverse also holds true. If the price goes up you make more gold. You can sell your ectos for the inflated price and then wait for a decrease in price and by more ectos.

This works just like stocks. Lets take GEOI stock. (this is actual stock traded on the market today)

If you look at the starting price of the stock and waited until 9:30 ish and purchased that stock for 11.85/share yesterday and set the stock to sell for 11.95 (it hit that at 11:20) then you would have made 10 cents per share. Being a day trader - to hold stocks over night - takes 25K in shares. I bought 2100 shares and in 2 hours I made 210 bucks.

I was in and out of the market in just under 2 hours and I made more money than most people make in 2 days. I do this regularly only my profits are mixed because if the cost of the shares goes up, I make less money cause I can buy less stock to make my dime or 15 cents. So the stock closed at 12.00 and this morning at 9.30 it fell (like it always does at 9:30 for some reason) to 11.94. It took me only 30 minutes to make my dime. But today I only made 209.00 so I lost out on 10 shares.

So as you can see I have been doing this for a long time but I NEVER hold stock past noon. Cause its volatile.

there are others that will buy ectos from the trader to stabilize its fall and thus influence the cost of the ectos maintaining their wealth and stabilizing the market.

Right now the US gov is making money to buy back money to try and keep the US dollar from Plummeting any further. The result of the Treasury's action has cause OIL to increase to over 75 bucks a barrel and it will continue to rise as the dollar falls.

This is a catch 22 cause as the dollar falls the dept increases but we print more money which causes inflation and oil goes up. So this is what is called the Spiral effect and the only recourse for the fed is to increase interest rates.

Watch and see the rates go up if Timothy Geithner has the nuts to do it.

Does this make sense or is this just a game?

For the analysis part I can understand it, and will apologies if I came over ranting, its not ment as such.
But please read all replies and you will notice not all are just putting an analysis on the OP's question.

Ingame way to many peeps take gw economic way way way too serious. So what if ecto go 2k within another year. Will this make you have less fun playing the game?

So plz see my replies as a reflection about gw's economics compared to what gw fun you can / can't have.

hahhaha good post

The one real good plus about the massive deflation that has occurred and the incrediably influx of weapon mods (vaettirs, raptor farms) and tradable good into the economy (z-keys from RR, XTH, travellers) is that it basically kills the gold seller/botter problem. Gold seller companies have been abadoning GW in mass. In part because there aren't as many customers who need their services. In part because many of the best farms require too many games to buy (which makes real money trading unprofitable).

But mostly, the deflation in the market has made gold seller bots completely unprofitable as they can't make enough money fast enough to offset the costs. One sign an economy of a popular game is really good (like Eve where the market is too big for these companies to control it) or really bad (like GW with its deflation) is when the people who make a living in RL exploiting that economy leave the game. Ironically, gold sellers, who everybody HATES, are actually good measuring sticks for when a game is in trouble.