Someone explain it to me,

Ok i kinda know the answer to this but it still doesnt really make sense but...I find it completely ridiculous with power traders...like everytime a rare mini exchanges hands the price skyrockets? like i seen in 2 days...WTB Unded Naga 700e..WTS Unded Naga-800e...then lie the next day...WTB Unded Naga-900e WTS Unded Naga-1000e it doesnt make sense...its crazy and people STILL BUY...wow its dumb

ecto prices increase?

Should be vise-versa

Buy low. Sell high.

Also everytime a high-end minipet is traded... thats an increase in chance that it will get dedicated.

Essentially the rarity of that minipet becomes even rarer.

Should the prices of those minipets go up? Of course. Supply and demand.

Should the go up at the rate and intensity that they do? You would think not.

Welcome to capitalism.

ur nuts but i agree but its stupid because they go up by wayyy to much...but there is like a circle jerk of the high end traders thats just raise the prices cause they can...weaksauce

They don't raise the prices because of some vast conspiracy, they raise it because they can. When you have a relative handful of any one rare miniature ingame, the price is going to be completely up to the seller (to a point). They want to sell at the best price they can, given the market. Because they are such a collectible commodity, the number of people that want to buy them are extremely high, so there's a handful of people out there with thousands of ectos that buy and trade them hoping to make more ectos at the next trade. You can't tell me if someone dropped a mini Naga in your lap, and you were in the mood to sell it, you wouldn't try to bump the price up a bit given that you have that power.

If you actually want to understand the phenomenon, there's some good academic research on behavioral economics out there.

If you want a highly condensed explanation: underlying supply and demand don't always move the market when people don't have complete information. We get nonsensical static periods, booms and busts in item prices because of how people process information, how they use signals to cue them in on the "current market value" of things, and because item markets are strategic interactions where what I should do depends on what you do.

If all you want is to moan about it, I lack sympathy.

Sums it all up right there

Yep. Capitalism sums it up nicely.

I bought an unded naga about 2 months ago for 140e. I sold it the next day or so for 800e. I kind of regret it because yesterday I saw a "wtb unded naga for 1100e" ad. It made me QQ pretty bad. Q_Q

Lrn2economy.

If you have money, you have vast possibilities for increasing the amount of money you have, pretty simple.
If you don't have money, sorry, but that's your own problem, welfare is ridiculous for something like a game economy.

Money money money!
Must be funny
In the rich man's world.

MMOs don't just have "economies", virtual economies are insame in their extremes. It's like buying multimillion football players every month to pump your overinflated e-heart. Rarity sells, so you just need to create it for a money-wormhole to appear. It's a fine balance between keeping these "extreme" players and making a portion of the playerbase angry due to the unattainability of these things.

I mean, come on, I've seen things at over 3000e. Do people realise the real time spent to get there? (yes I know about the dupes...)

EDIT: reminds me of the brilliant BBC show "Million Dollar Trader" they did last year, where a team of 8 "normal" motivated people are given 1 million to go and invest in the London stock exchange. The one I loved what Sam Duby who invested "ethically" and was the best performer, but quit by disgust at the inhumane behaviour of the 2 leading trader guys.

Virtual economies as giant Monopoly games! WTB 1929 crash!

once you have something people nut their pants over and there's only a few in the game of, the price changes not because 'the going rate magically rises herp derp', but because the seller feels like it and because they can.

i'm not too sure why this makes you so mad. powertrading 101

POWA TRADA! nothing new. ta da!

WTB/WTS unded celestial pig 150-200-250-300e. Last 2 weeks

I don't even want to comment on people calling themselves "power traders"

Ectos have no value, plus there needs to be more of those rare minis released back into the game.

Look at it this way: money has diminishing utility. This is true in real life as it is in GW. 100,000k is not 100 times better than 1000k. In fact, a few mill is enough to unlock 99% of HOM content, easily obtained just by doing the campaign and VQs.

Furthermore, let's face it. GW is a dying game. People that care about in game gold at this point are either sorely blind or just addicted. In a few months, GW2 comes out and nothing in GW will matter in the slightest. Even if A.net does come out with specific rewards for specific minipets (which isdubious, considering the amount of different minipets) it won't be trade-able so who cares.

TLDR: If youre really set on emulating real life avarice, just wait for GW2.

lol a couple years maybe, not months at all

Exactly. There are no set prices for anything. I once saw somebody trying to sell z-keys for 6k (instead of the then standard 5k). People started yelling at him calling him a scammer. That is not scamming. That is trying to sell something at a price that is advertised. The 5k price isn't set in stone.

The lack of clear market standards is what makes power selling in this game so profitable. It is also one of the main reasons why this game should have a auction house implemented. When the information costs of trades are lowered, the market value of the good becomes closer to its true value, creating a more economically efficient system.

Funny how people spend hundreds of $ on objects which practically do nothing.

This is absolutely true, and everyone in economics would agree with the assessment. However, information costs aren't the only source of inefficiency in markets. People are imperfect. Most people can't value assets well even given good information, or create efficient algorithms that will do it for them.

Get enough people that don't understand the asset's inherent value chasing a profit, and you get a boom. When that unwinds due to fear, you get a bust.

The nice thing about virtual economies is that they have a lot fewer variables than the real world, and are therefore more predictable.

The not-so-nice thing about them is that time has real value, and people that can find ways to shortcut the time -> virtual money mechanic can expect a large IRL profit. If 40,000 ectos were unattainable, people wouldn't have it. But they didn't get that wealth by farming or other "conventional" means of acquiring in-game money.

I read the OP's post...and it made me mad.

mad about the fact I understood what he was talking about.
-------------

But to answer your question.....

$$$

I would actually expect huge surge in demand for GW1 gold right when GW2 is released ... HOM and related shinnies being the reason, since you can easily fill HoM with bought stuff ...

I guess ebaying 'hom kits' would be hot thing...

when so many people know the "correct" prices of an item, its hard for someone to buy it far below the market value. (so they can resell it and make money obviously) So obviously people are forced to raise the price every day/week so they can make money. its really a vicious cycle and frankly i dont really give a shit and neither should you. its dead game get over it

how do u figure its a dead game? and if its a dead game why are you posting on this board?

It's not a dead game but....


Corpses often twitch.

Guild Wars has an enforced scarcity economy.

That is to say, they could easily make it post-scarcity by making every item readily accessible through the equipment creation menu, but choose instead to limit the quantity, as a means to maintain the interest of people who honestly like grinding and power trading. (Actually, I sort of understand the like of power trading since it is sometimes fun in a way.)

in b4 all of the wanna be economists







owait

I am sure the mini market will crash again. It did it about a year ago, I remember because I picked up a bunch of rare minis and made a killing. As for bringing more of the rare minis into the game I don't think that is right either many of those were prizes or limited offers. Why does everyone think that just because they play a game they should have easy access to everything.

Its been said in multiple posts, supply and demand. If you have something in large demand but short supply the price is going to be high. As the supply decreases (dedicated minis) the price goes up even more. That is what is happening with the rare minis. The reverse is true with rare skinned weapons (EL tonics as well). As more and more are introduced into the market the price drops off. I remember I sold my first R9 Obi edge for well over 200e. not sure what they go for now but I would bet its significantly less then that.

One thing you have to also consider is people selling in GW1 for stuff in GW2 or vice versa but that is talked about in another thread.

The one thing you're leaving out is you don't know whether the mini pet sold or not. You don't even know if the person making the auction even has one or is legit. Too many people take things at face value and believe every little thing they read or hear. Marketing has always been one great big lie. If you don't know that then you must be very young. In a game there are no laws and our working model of economics in the real world does not pertain to a fantasy world as money/credits whathaveyou is generated at alarming rates and thus why things start to cost more. Other fact is these items in the game are not worth anything of value unless you place value on them. Unlike in the real world where you have to eat and sleep these things have REAL value moreso than some silly cartoon mini pet. The other thing in games like these is players want things NOW and they don't want to have to put too much time into getting them. Some of these players will even resort to paying real life dollars to get something stupid in the game. That has to be the most hilarious thing about these games that people put so much value on an intangible, something that doesn't do anything for them other than vanity. But, I suppose those that put so much effort into things in a game have no real life outside of the game. They can't or don't have any prestige in real life and they rely on some silly game content to feed that need. Lookit me I have X and I paid X for it and I'm a god and you're puny. lmao

Much of what you say about marketing is true, but then you come along and say this. The core of economics is a large quantity of mathematical deductive logic. It's a collection of proofs in the following basic form: given A and B, I know C. Those proofs are universal and work across time and space.

People screw up the application of economics to a game world in two ways. Some people don't understand the theories themselves. More often, people don't understand which axioms are valid and which are not, or misunderstand the intensity of different competing effects.

Worse, the fundamental axiom of rationality is violated when lots of people make the same mistake at once. That problem yields the discipline of behavioral economics, which tries to identify the conditions under which many people are likely to violate rationality in the same way at the same time.

In short, if you want to make valid predictions about economic behavior you have to know a lot, and even then you'd better be prepared to fail occasionally and update your beliefs as a consequence. It's not a pointless exercise. It is a deceptively challenging one even in a simple environment like Guild Wars, and it only gets harder when you start talking about the real economy. Disagreements about axioms and intensity are why you see numerous competing predictions that can't all be right.

Ironically, you have identified why these items have RL values. They require time to acquire. Time is valuable. It's a finite resource. If your time is sufficiently valuable and you have the means, you buy what you want rather than invest time to get it. Simple. The only difference between the behavior you cite buying a run with in-game cash is that ANet has decreed IRL cash transactions to be against the EULA. But they're both motivated by the same mechanism - conservation of time at a price.

Long story short, you have understanding but it's colored badly by prejudice and lack of empathy. Those prejudices stand out most here. You're still at that stage where you think your preferences are universally superior to everyone else's. Would I pay IRL money for something in Guild Wars? Of course not. Does that make people that are willing to do so somehow morally inferior? Hardly. I'm sure Bill Gates pays other people to do a lot of things that I do myself, or pays multiple people to do things faster that he could do himself. He's got more resources more demands on his time than I do, so it makes sense for him to do so. Simple.

You're imputing motives to people's behavior that may not be there.

I disagree. If you do all the titles that CAN'T be bought (VQ, missions, etc) you should have more than enough money to max out HOM. But even if what you're saying were true, it doesn't change the fact that GW1 has a very visible and near expiration date.

Why is this thread still open? Motoko already stated the MOST basic economics theory underlying these types of trade.

Yes it does by real life society standards not by ingame standards. They are buying an ingame social badge nothing more. Nothing they buy ingame will ever make them superior in real life nothing. Thus they remain inferior in real life while trying to buy superiority in a silly game. That to me tells me these people have mental and social issues. Even if buying to save time (which btw is a violation of the game policy in the first place thus shows they don't abide by the law of the land) that shows mental and blatant disrespect for authority ingame as well as in life.

You better go format your hard drive for 68th time this year and change your password for 103rd instead of spamming

Unintentional comedy again. There's no logic to this assertion. You're ascribing a universal motive to all people that engage in the behavior, which is preposterous. We can safely infer that time > money for gold buyers from their behavior, but trying to assert why they want the gold is just silly. You've identified one possible motive. Others exist.

Here's where we differ on comparative ethics. You're at that "a law is a law" stage. It's one way to look at the problem, but it's not a unique solution. The intellectual notion that people are free to disobey governments that are bad at their job goes back at least to Locke. American society lionizes people that stood up to unjust governance (Thoreau, Gandhi, King). This should tell you that other people believe that authority is not to be respected at all times.

Whether gold buying fits conditions for disobedience is a matter for comparative ethics. I think gold buying is wrong, but I'm also not willing to argue that people that do so lack moral justification for their behavior. ANet certainly muddied the waters quite a bit with the legalized RMT engine that was (is?) XTH.

There is but one motive for these types to gain and to become superior everything else is moot. Everything else is just a stepping stone to the inevitable nothing more. So, stop with your preposterous analitical bs about Gandhi, Thoreau, King and the rest as it is irrelevant to my point.

No matter what you think or believe the law is the law that is an official standard of life without it we could not and would not exist and surely wouldn't be playing these games or having these discussions. It's people like you who give young people the idea that it is ok to break the law when you or they see fit. When you break the law you are morally incorrect period. You may not always get caught, but, still morally wrong and if you knowingly break it then you are mentally wrong as well.

Queen of death, why is it that you are so enamored with authority? Why do you pretend you are high enough to look down on everyone else who sees authority as less perfect? Is it the teacher's pet syndrome, where if you kiss up enough, you can feel superior to all the rest of us mokes? The notion that law dictates morality is simply incorrect (bolded quote). I don't know how anyone can seriously assert that with a straight face.

Furthermore, RMT was allowed very recently by A.net in the form of XTH. Let's say you used it for 3 months, that's 150e = 600k for just $5. (You've already agreed that buying gold can be used to save time.) There are thus two gaping holes in your chain of logic that anyone should be able to recognize easily. You are not uncovering the morals of the guild wars "rich," and those who aspire, you're simply showing how intellectually and emotionally stunted you are by your eagerness to condemn people you honestly know nothing about, as pathetic losers.

Viz. "There are precious few at ease, with moral ambiguities, so we act as though they don't exist!" That is you to a T when you say something is "morally incorrect, period." Saying so doesn't serve to make you right or or even wrong. It only serves to reassure yourself without bothering to think critically.