Why is it important to be 'rich' in a game?

its not important, unless you want some rare item or some buyish title. or for stuff just to fill the hom.

personaly 100k~ is a reasonable amount to have, should be able to equip a character very well and the heros too for that.

personaly i dont even really like the hom that much, nice idea but bad implimentation.

rare skins or minis, thats about it

1 reason.

Titles.

That is all.

For a feeling of progression, Guild Wars doesn't have the gear grind so getting items with low reqs, expensive armor, and the rarest minis helps fill that gap of progression. Also titles and 50/50 HoM which I'm currently working on.

It's something to do with one's time, and it can be hard to quit a game after devoting thousands of hours to it.

Having gold gives you more options. It's always better to have more options. Simple as that.

Getting 50/50 takes a fair bit of money. I understand why people like to make it. I don't really get why they hoard it.

Can I get an Amen?

Amen. I can actually relate to this, isn't it really hard to do so?

because i want a crystalline sword and they are EXPENSIVE

It is important to amass large fortunes in virtual worlds for many people largely due to their failures in real life. Everyone wants to feel good, many choose to become wealthy in games because they have no women or money in reality.

And some people make up reasons for other people deriving enjoyment out of something because they themselves think their hobbies are more important. Derp.

@dasmitchies typical terribad answer. becasue your hiding your RL in a game. Take a step back and look at people that like / enjoy the game.

People want money to max titles, Commonly:
Party Animal
Sweet Tooth
Drunkard
Survivor

Less commonly:
Legendary Vanquisher
Legendary Skill Hunter
Legendary Guardian

Lets break these down.

Consumable Titles: These titles CAN be maxed during Events alone. However a player that can't spend 5+ hours daily during the event farming will be hard pressed to max it just on the event. People don't want to sit at 29 titles for 8 months waiting for an event, so they pay x amount to buy the title. AS the game is so old they might max it on various characters for 2x+ GWAMM. SO the amount of Party farming can get too tedious so instead peope would rather farm other things and buy the items.

Survivor: With the recent survivor fix everyone can add +1 title to their title character at any time. Some classes such as Warrior/Paragon/Necro dont have a "Safe" farm that gets quick exp.
and by safe i mean in my opinion. Some people dont like the idea of farming the exp on the chance they could die. Some people dont do Killroys. After 10 times? I was bored. SO people can buy Survivor Title using Kath Hammers / Geletanious Material. 3-6k each 5-7.5k exp per its only 4-500k with a 300k return.

Ok moving on to Skill capper. Elite Tomes. I've done LSH twice now and quite frankly I tomed the paragon elites for my monk 15 for like 60k? QUick and easy and meant I could play the game the way I wanted to.
Its A LOT more expensive but I could farm UW / FOW a few times and have fun and buy 2-3 elite tomes per run depending on the drops. having fun in uw OR spending a few hours capping a skill that the boss isnt spawning for in Tyria.. HMMM Lots more fun to farm the areas..

Legendary Vanquisher. I say this in 2 ways. People offer VQ services on this very site. So thats option a) they want someone to VQ for them while they are AFK. Again. They want to play the game their way. If others are willing to play for them for a price when they are afk then so be it.
Consumables(Ill come back to these) People amass loads of consumables for guess what? Easy Vanquishes. I could spend an hour doing a Vanquish, or i could pop cons and spend 30 mins. 8k to save 30 mins of my gaming time.. hmmm..Touched on Legendary guardian and same rule applies. AS with thevanquish title the Guardian Title can be run.

OK now we move on to HoM. People are lazy. They want to play the game their way. HOWEVER The game is dying. Less people playing less teams. Look at the Deep / Urgoz / DoA even. It can be a nightmare getting teams that know what they are doing. SO again people on this very site offer to run all 3 areas for a price. (Infact the same with Dungeons) You can have 15~ of the 18 Dungeons run for a fee. The others are too easy to run or solo.

Ok NOW to SPeedclears. People have Ego on Speedclears they want to look pro, they want to have the best weapons and armor.
^Ok so thats the people idc for.
There are people that actually want the right gear and the right req/atrributes and are incredibly anal about it.
+45 not +44 on a shield < Things like that cost money.

Then there are cons that cost 8-9k each<Needed for speed clears and people like having multiple sets. So that when runs fail people can just scroll in and pop again.

Record guilds. Record setting guilds NEED a lot of gold.
If you look at the amount of cons popped per record run and Attempts it probabl EASILY adds up to 100k per hour~

Pcons^As above cost a boat load. and the amount people burn through is rediculous. But people want them and it makes price go up. THat doesnt defer people buying it just makes them have to have more money to buy.

ok CaSH :] some people hoard and power trade. They like having lots of stuff and money It allows you to do anything you like. It doesnt make you a good player which is what people assume it does.


I guess my point of this is. IF you say rich people have no life. Then thats silly. your playing the same game they are
IF your saying playing this game is an escapism for people. Yes it is for some people. But you can't critisize that.
If people want to be able to do stuff on the game thats at the END GAME runs. (I guess GWs version of instances) FoWSc/UWSC/DoASc/UrgozSc/Deepsc- THen yes you need some money

Why is it important to be "rich" in life?

That's just a question I'm constantly pondering, especially in a life like ours where you can pretty much get max and elite clothes just by moving through life. People put so much effort into amassing i money, I have to wonder if they pursue GW money with as much effort in their spare time.

What's your reason for acquiring large amounts of cash and what purpose does it serve?

Just a question...

^ and the answer is still it's not.

It's not, the only use for any kind of wealth is to buy stuff from other players.

If you are just playing the game there is nothing to spend the money on, the only thing I spent a lot of plat on is the nine-rings mini-game.

Apparently, amassing vast amounts of in-game gold can provide extra revenue and development funds for flagging national economies, if it's sold....
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13012041

This is kind of a philosophical question. It is not important to be rich - it is important to be satisfied. If having all of the expensive stuff is a way to make you satisfied in the game, fine. Usually, especially in real life, one is not satisfied with money alone.

This is definitely true, i've done everything I want to in Guild Wars and really don't think there's anything else I can get out of it after ~4,000 hours. But I still login and just sit in Kamadan doing nothing. I can't quit.

If this article is even remotely accurate, then ArenaNet should open up a store where they sell gold and in-game items for cash themselves. Then the money would at least be funded back into the game company. Then in turn, you'd be helping the American economy and not China (who gets plenty of money from America already), and the money could also be used to improve the game or develop new and better projects.

Getting 50/50 does not take money. The only money I spent on my titles were the Signets of Capture I used for Skill Hunter. I did not buy a single mini pet, and while I still need 23 or so, if I decide to go for them, I still will not buy them. But, other than that, I agree. Making money is a security thing, but hoarding it is rather weird. Only times i have more than 50k or so at any given time is when I am saving to buy something nice for someone's birthday or something.

It's not.
------------

The more money I inject into my e-peen, the bigger it GRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

You can't obtain 50 different mini's on a single account. 8 characters * 5 birthdays = 40 mini's. Plus some event ones (canthan new year), will get you to 46 including the black moa chick.

If you are one of the few lucky ones to get the rare ones and get a ghostly hero/dhuum/polar bear/WiK mini's/etc, well, you might get close to the 50 mini's. But that's assuming every present is different and you have astronomical luck in obtaining mini's.

Then, we go into elite armors, of which you need quite a few sets of.. beside materials, that's 60k apiece..

Well, there's a significant chunk of change. Yay! We've determined you need money for a 50/50 HoM. That's generally why people want money, unless you are a collector or a hardcore PvP'er wanting a r8/r7 weapon.

Its not that important, but I always thought the Scrying Pool is filled with the tears of the poor.

1) just to help other people/guildmates out.

2)when making a new toon or rerolling to skip a few steps.

3) other have listed above...

In Guild Wars, where there are slightly Communistic undertones, it's not really important unless you are trying to get 50/50 in your HOM.

In games like Runescape and WoW, you need to be rich to get the best stuff.

And the sweat of the others.

Ironically, this would also stop the bots dead probably, since that's why they exist (selling gold).

I don't think it would. The RMTs would just match or ask for a lower price than arenanet. If arenanet goes too low of a price, the 'economy' will go to hell. If arenanet places too many restrictions on gold/item purchases, people would go to the RMTs instead. It's a no win situation for arenanet.

Not to mention it would be offering straight in game advantages to people in the form of micro transactions. The merc heroes are debatable but in game gold in the in game store? plain as day

The reason why i like being rich is that i can do the last things i enjoy with ease.

I don't know if it's important to me to be "rich" in this game (or any other). I mean, I'll need a certain amount of cash to finish filling my HoM, so that I can buy my armors, for example... but that's still way down the road for me, since I'm only very slowly building up the materials I'll need along with the gold.

Mostly, I like having gold because I like opening presents... doesn't matter if its birthday, royal gifts, Nick gifts, or even things like ToT bags and Lunar Fortunes. For me, the anticipation of "what's this one going to be" is fun - even when I know "this" can only be some consumables like in ToT bags.

So plenty of gold means plenty of opportunity to buy those gifts when someone is in Spamadan selling them.

Add to that, I like being able to help equip my husband or my best friend or the couple of other friends I've made in-game when they need it. We all tend to share our resources with each other, and I like being able to participate in that.

I've yet to have more than about 160k at any one time... and the most ectos I've ever had at once was 20. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure I'll be able to eventually single-handedly provide all the party, alcohol & sweet points any of us will need to max our titles. I've got one hell of a stash building. LOL

Being rich is rather meaningless except for vanity, and there is a definite law of diminishing returns (much like real life) but I find as a semi-casual player I do struggle to buy all the skills I want and my income fluctuates between 5 and 40k pretty much constantly. The fact I generally play all my characters quite evenly and only recently started to favour one hurts my bank balance too.

I find I earn around enough money to pay my way with normal play, and I never farm ior powertrade because it seems utterly tedious to me.

I find 'getting by' to be the most comfortable financial position for me, and I generally have a few unwanted minipets/upgrades/weapons/errata that I can pawn should I desperately need cash.

Being rich is not all that important... but when you combine rich with experienced ... it does give you a status in this game making people more inclined to listen and comply with what you have to say..... other than that.... OOOO SHINEY!!!!

To me being rich means I can afford to buy if I suddenly desire something or see something expensive for sale below the usual price. It also means I don't have to waste 30 minutes every so often selling all these weps that might be worth 5-10-20k or not. They go straight to merchant or given away to newbs in Ascalon. Then I can go out splatting more stuff and have fun instead of spending time shouting WTS in Spamadan or making posts here with things for sale. I find it boring and annoying to try to find buyers, so I avoid it when I can.

Time to bring Maslow's "hierarchy of needs" up to date and include gaming needs.

It's a theology/spirituality thing. See, they're actually members of a cult (which I will not name here, to foil the search engines. conspiracy!!). This cult believes that when you die, well, to put it in layman's terms, your soul goes into your favorite game. Like Tron. Kinda.

So, they work super hard ingame, just in case that anyurism or heart attack happens sooner rather than later. Having epic gear and phat lewts isn't a bad way to spend one's afterlife.

1) I want to look good. This includes armor and matching weapon sets. I've spent a ton of money trying out different combinations (especially for my female ranger, for some reason) over the years.
2) I want all my pve characters to be pvp ready. This means getting multiple armor sets, headpieces, all possible weapon set configurations, shield sets, and of course all the necessary skills. This is rather unnecessary since I don't pvp anymore, but I like to be prepared for anything.
3) I like to collect things, namely weapons and minis. Some of these are expensive.
4) Titles and HoM.
5) Personal cons. High-end pve eats them up rapidly, especially when you are going for records.

It just happens if you play high end PvP.

I always liked to get money before i did that though, just so whenever i decided to make a new character or on the offchance there'd be a new skin out or whatever i randomly decided i wanted, i'd just be able to get it rather than have to work for it.

Whilst you could say i'd already "worked for it", i never played to get money if i didn't enjoy it.