Flabbergasted

I've spent probably a good 20-30min looking through the "High End" auction area and I am astounded that there are items (let alone people bidding on said items) going for 10,000 ectos or roughly that amount.

How does one accrue that amount of ecto? Seems crazy to me but maybe I am missing something.

Your thoughts?

powertrading/luck

Exactly how I felt after returning from my extended hiatus...

Unfortunately the game's economy seems to have become twisted in such a way that it's simply the nature of the beast...

Meta farming, dungeon-running, and powertrading seem to be the only real way to even approach that level of wealth, with the latter being the most lucrative...

That said, it still seems like another world to me though since I've yet to even have 4ØØK at any given time. :-/
Will always want an unded Vizu, but will never get it. :-(

You're missing something. A skill called Shadow Form allowed certain members of the playerbase to use it in conjunction with other skills to kill enemies for their drops. By doing this these players, often on Assassins, were able to obtain many rare crafting materials such as Ectos, as well as rare skinned items such as Bone Dragon Staves and Eternal Blades.

Not to mention that other players were able to stand in towns making profit off of the other players, such as the Assassins, who used the skill Shadow Form. They would do this by buying items for cheaper than their accepted value, and selling them for more. The money obtained from this added up over time allowing some members of the community to obtain tens of thousands of ectos.

In addition certain aspects of the game, such as GvG mAT's bring in large amounts of reward points which have the ability to be traded for Z Keys, recognizing their worth players who won mAT's often used the Z Keys to purchase other items in the game, such as rare Miniature pets and rare weapons.

Wasn't that before the Spring of 2010 in-game economic collapse? More commonly known as The Searing II. People were trading 2 ecto for 1 zkey. Refugees flooded onto The Battle Isles. The multitudes couldn't be sustained. Bot flies and script throat ravaged the arenas. Thousands and thousands fell to the wayside further compounding the sense of hopelessness and fatalism. The elite stood atop their ivory towers screaming, "Nerf! Nerf!" to the peasant masses below. But they too soon fell, crumbling, much like the ruins we see today. So children, always remember and hold this one moral dear to your hearts... If you figure out a way to make money easily, DON'T tell anybody!

... I totally saved that picture....

But most people get that way by powerselling all day.... (Buying low selling high)
If not that then they most likely got a super rare in some way or another, or they just did a lot of UWSC.

Never owned a single ecto.


10,000 ectos being thrown around makes me tear up.

*Cough* Dupes *Cough*

Naah, whilst a large percentage of the richest people in GW did abuse certain dupes/exploits to gain their current amount of ectos. (Upwards of 100/200 stacks), you can get a fair deal through powertrading.

Though powertrading requires ALOT of time and luck (not to be underestimated), because if you can't cut any good deals, you won't make any money.

So if you're "hoping" to ever buy these items, it would be best if you gave up those dreams. (Srry for being so crude)

This late in the game, and with no apparent dupes/exploits being available, the chances of ever becoming rich are next to nothing, despite how hard you will try. To many people did/are trying to do the same thing, and are likely to obliverate you in competition. It's also really unlikely these days you'll find insanely good deals, because most items are worthless, and those which aren't are in the hands of people that know their value.

So how DID those people get such amounts of mad money? Either powertrading Pre-NF (Give or take a few months) or duping. And let me tell you, not much of them did powertrading...

It's all a matter of time.

If you have the free time to spend countless hours a day sitting in Kam or Running farm spots, you'll amass a ton of money.

It's that simple.

Don't quote my statements out of context, or take one rather ambigious sentence and apply it as a way to negate my intire post.

I never said you couldn't get rich through hard work (In terms of a game) or luck, as a matter of fact, I said the complete opposite.

I also said only a SMALL percentage of the "richest" people didn't use exploits/ dupes.



By the way, I don't PvE no more. I couldn't care less about how much money someone else has, or how much I have. As a matter of fact: I gave 2 everlastings away to friends, and just 1 week ago, I gave a friend 3 stacks of zkeys. (Which I accumulated in PvP)

The truth is the truth, nothing more, nothing less. And I have alot more knowledge and insight on the "dark side" of Guild Wars than most people posting here, so don't be thinking I have no clue what I'm talking about.


Lastly: Everything you said, besides directly replying to me, is true. Not spending cash will obviously build up your pile. So will getting lucky with updates and/or events. (People selling cheap) But every example pretty much prooved my point:

Indeed, 3 years ago. When parchment was still worth something, and you had a margine for profit, and there was a high demand for it. (As in, people still played the game, and bought new armor)

Again, as you admit it yourself, you just got lucky. Relying on Anet skyrocketing an item you possess (in mass) isn't a way of getting rich, and therefore has no value in this thread. On top of that, in order to get a large amount of those "pets", you needed a lot of cash BEFORE said update, hence this one doesn't even count.

Cash makes cash, that's the way it works in rl, that's how it works in GW.

Valid way, agreed. But we're talking about viable ways here. XTH relies largely on luck/anticipation and multi-acounting. Wintersday AT's are peanuts compared to what we're talking about AND is a time-limited event. It also relies having 7 other people willing to play it AND be good at it too.

And in no way should multi-acounting ever get promoted as a way of "improving" at a game.


I gues I don't know exactly how much money you have, and I gues it's a fair amount, but we're talking about 100-500 (or even more) stacks. And those amounts can NOT be accumulated by the mere use of in-game tools, unless again you managed to no life farm ecto's with the first wave of 55's. Managed to accumulate such a large amount, you could invest large amounts of money in the first greens/minipets so you could watch them skyrocket over time, aswell as have the intital cash to powertrade with.

And those people, as I've said before, I can count on one hand.

I ran dungeons from pretty much the start of eotn till the latest update....during this time I compiled a decent amount...but nothing in comparison to 100s of stacks of ectos. I am also flabbergasted how some have so much. Once saw 7 stacks of arms......I don't really see any other way to get that much besides duping. Just my opinion.

I dont PvE so this whole conversation is lost on me, but on most games it has to do with amount of accounts owned. Maybe they are multi clienting 2-3 accounts at one time and doing the run and getting multiple rewards? I could see it happening, but if thats impossible for what the case is then I apologize.

On a side note besides the lol picture because I think deakon has won in most threads I've looked at:
The shit your seeing is just a fraction of the playerbase e-peening, and for all you know it could be the same people that posted the item to sell and the same person that posted that their buying it for soso much. Some people do have that large of an inferior complex that videogames, let alone Guild Wars fail PvE, does make a large difference in their self esteem. And I'm pretty sure it must if they have amassed that much.

Receiving a rare mini form a magazine or some contest also helps a lot to increase your virtual wealth. People who now own a Kanaxai can name their price if they ever wanted to sell the mini, because they are that rare.

i never thought i'd say this but, i agree with everything borat says. and the longer i play this game, the more i find myself agreeing with him.

the people that are super rich in this game didn't play the game the same way as everyone else, otherwise they wouldn't be set so far apart from the norm.

you have to change your mindset from "playing" the game to always thinking of how to make the most profit with your resources. over time this mindset adds up to stacks and stacks of ectos. in this mindset, exploits, creative thinking and abusing the system are the norm. these guys don't go out and pvx farm for months on end, they make way more than that.

-the legendary trader reset price = stacks of ectos
-there used to be a chest that required no key, that give gold drops, when golds were worth 100k+
-buying rare minis when they were only 100s of ectos which are now 'worth' 1000s of ectos. kanaxai was under 1000e at one time. now its priceless. jinkies up there, made more ectos than any sin during SF's glory days and he didn't have to lift a finger. as more and more ectos were farmed, people bid higher and higher on minipets, which he has a lot of.
-XTH with many, many accounts (20 accounts with 20 keys per cycle is 400 keys a month. not bad)
-high-end services e.g. champ point farming (100s of ectos a night), legendary survivor service during VoD days (100k for entering a guild battle and setting ur alt account to afk), i wish i knew more
-preparing for festival events and getting retard amounts out of them. tanniz made 10000+ ectos winning those zippys, which bring's me to my next point
-botting and not getting caught. who knows how much bots have made, probably more than the entire 'normal' player base combined
-high end scams (scamming accounts, 1000s of ectos etc.) a lot of fame farmers just scam your account if it suits them.
-buying gold online. $2000 can net you ~20000 ectos. some people have lots of money and spend it on what they enjoy, which happens to be guild wars. what if you made $2000 a week, and instead of grinding this game for years on end, you just bought ectos with one week's salary?
-etc. etc.

Ive maybe had about 50 ectos thoughout my time playing and sold them.

But I got them using my Elly and without Shadowform. Elly UW farm is easy as well.

Think of it this way, people with ecto stacks can't go out in pure sunlight, they need factor 10000 sunblock. They probably don't even know what the sun is!

Whats the sun? I swear i dont know what it is?
Yeah im just kidding never used SF only made ectos with the rit and 600/smite which wasnt often only got 30 atm cba with farming since its kinda tedious.

I hope SF will never see the sun ever again.

This is the closest answer to the truth. While I'm sure there are people out there who used dupes or bots to amass wealth, most of the very wealthy got there by playing a lot.
If you are someone who has school, work, parents, kids, and/or a social life, you can probably only play a few hours a day (or less). The "economy" in some ways is geared towards those people - that is, the rate at which you earn gold is such that those people who game a "normal" amount can still afford to get a least some of the more expensive gear.
This means, though, that those who have a lot of spare time, can amass large amounts of money simply by playing the game and selling good drops. If you add farming and power trading on top of that, huge amounts of gold are possible.
For example, I had lots of time to work on my Legendary Vanquisher title. While I was vanquishing, I also opened every chest I found. This gave me lots and lots of stuff to merch, and lots of stuff to sell through Guru Auctions.
In my case, I wasn't interested in simply accumulating fantasy wealth, so I spent it as I went along on things like FoW armor (for at least 5 characters).
These days, I'm relatively poor - I only have about 700k and no ectos - but I could use my Rit to go ecto farming if I wanted to.

That is a logical explanation in my opinion. I agree that in the 5 years that GW has been out. If you were solely farming and had no "real life" out side of GW then I could see amassing a substantial wealth.

And made incredibly easy with a certain skill.