GW1 economic disruption coming due to GW2

I'm fairly certain that the people with sufficient means to distort the economy have already done so. The HoM has been around for literally years, and GW2 news has been coming steadily enough that everyone basically knew that it'd be out in the next year or so. In other words: I doubt we'll see much change now, even with the beta announcement.

Further down the road they will....think of the 1st year hats and such. They have no value other than cosmetic....everyone back then had them now tons want them

With the lod fix rubies and sapphires have seen an increased supply

Well if you're still an active player it's not strange to have it after over 6 years. But the majority of guild wars players doesn't have it. I think at best 1:20 GW2 players will have one.

To keep people from being misled, let me single out a particularly terrible set of assertions from a very wrongheaded post:

First of all, rubies and sapphires are a very poor way to keep currency. They suffer from the same problem as black dye: they are very difficult to resell in quantity. They are neither a common currency item, nor needed in large quantities by players. This means that you either have to spend a lot of time (which is valuable) to exit a position, or you have to eat the rare material trader's discount. The more intelligent traders understand these problems, and will not accept them as payment at their "face" value.

Second, their value is as susceptible to supply side shocks as any other item, but there isn't the demand side present to insulate you from those shocks. If either becomes easier to acquire through gameplay, more of them will get tradered and the price will go down. You won't be able to exit the position quickly due to the difficulty in reselling them, and you will get burned badly. This does offer the potential to make significant sums of money if updates make them become harder to acquire through gameplay, although as noted it's hard to realize those changes quickly due to the lack of a market.

By contrast, ectos tend to remain fairly constant in price due to the sheer number of players trading in them. Price fluctuations can and do happen, but they tend to be more gentle due to the difficulty in moving such a large market. If there is a strong supply side shock (eg: Shadow Form changes), then the resulting panic will get very ugly. But at least you know in advance that's the devil you're dealing with, and can react accordingly.

In short, calling rubies and sapphires "safe" or "low risk" is pretty much dead wrong when compared to your other options.

Finally, rubies and sapphires are not in "short demand". The premium on Vabbian armor if you pay the trader price is pretty minimal, and players only need a small quantity one time for the Hall of Monuments.

This is one of those cases where a little bit of knowledge truly is a very dangerous thing.

Seriously? You would hold off starting GW2 with better stuff, using only default starter gear, while waiting for a better deal in GW1?

I seriously doubt most people care to do so if they have already decided to move on from this 6-7 year old game into GW2.

Just ditch your GW1 gold and move on already.

Yup I think the prices of items like the diessa chalices/rin relics/destroyer cores/superb charr carvings etc. would drop. Those weapons of purity from WoC that can't be used for your HoM would drop their prices too.

Rare skins prices would also drop, especially those that are not HoM related.

Yeah no, never said that I would hold off on GW2. My HoM already has all the gear pieces kitted out - the rest is just getting to the end for the pretty titles or mini pets, not something I particularly care about. I'll have the gear in GW2 because as I said I have my HoM already built up past the gear stages, so no...I won't be starting with default starter gear...where do you get that idea?

I am quite prepared to leave the inconsequential titles from the last parts of the HoM that don't mean much to me until they drop in price in GW1 because it's not the end of the world if I don't have them immediately. In fact, the title I like the most and plan to use is one I've already unlocked so that's got me covered for kit and title in GW2.

I actually also predict seeing people trade across game currencies so you may not need GW1 cash to buy your minipets etc for your HoM - because they've already said you can keep filling the HoM after the game has come out, I think many new GW2 players that want a HoM filled will attempt to trade GW2 cash for GW1 items.

I don't really mean you as in you personally. I meant people who have not completed their HoM and are still working towards 30/50. I believe if they really intend to migrate to GW2, they would just use all their GW1 gold to buy the best experience in GW2 from the gecko rather than switching back and forth waiting for the best deals in GW1. This is why those prices would rise close to GW2 release because everything in GW1 (including GW1 gold/ectos) would have lost value to these people who want the best GW2 stuff that they can get now, rather than later.

Minipets are actually pretty cheap now. The most expensive hurdle, in terms of gold, is the obby armor, the rest are quite affordable comparatively.

Yeah that's a fair call I guess.

The only aesthetic I ever really enjoyed was my dervish disco ball but that was old hat after a few weeks and my Derv now gathers dust.In saying that involved no game time to get.

Personally if the rewards are a hat, emote or title I'll probably never fill my HoM.It will be interesting to see if any of the rewards are surpassed by merely buying a Collectors Edition.

If it's a cool piece of gear my thoughts may change.

You're ignoring quite a few things here.

- As others have pointed out, most serious players that wanted 50/50 have it by now.
- Current prices reflect players' existing beliefs about the speculative component of the item's price. If enough players believe that an item will continue to increase in price, they will themselves drive the price up.
- Lots of time has passed since the HoM announcement, so the speculative effects have had time to sort themselves out.
- GW1 will still have players that want to collect things after GW2's release, and the prices of those things will continue to be denominated in the existing currency.

It's just as likely that there will be a reverse panic right before GW2 comes out where there are, say, many sellers of minis hoping to cash in and not enough buyers. Think about the number of dead/inactive accounts that other players have access to, and the sheer number of white, purple, gold and green minis that could come out of the woodwork if the price were right.

They do not, selling sets of 16+16 is usually very quick and easy. And the volume needed by each individual customer is usually much higher then Black Dye. So this is in no way a good comparison.

Feel free to check what happens when Canthan new year comes. What drops the fastest and hardest.

Fair point, but we're talking about a quite significant event here. And seeing what happens around the special weekends I can only imagine what will happen when multiple players decide to dump out their stocks of ectos in favor of other things they need or want. Im sitting on close to two stacks ATM myself, and easily sellable items worth more then that. I may also decide to salvage my armorsets to give items away to friends.

So if anything, you should diversify you're investments. If you're current monetary value is 500 ecto, you should keep maybe 175 of them, buy 100 consets, 200 BU's and, 150 shards, some diamonds, 32 sapphires and rubies. That way you're a lot better prepared. Because unlike ectos all of these things are more likely to remain the same or spike then drop drastically.

Which becomes a problem when you have literally thousands of ecto in value that you need to move. Rubies and sapphires may be more liquid than black dye, but they're also not suitable for storing the kind of wealth that you need to have before market fluctuations become something to worry about.

Fortunately, we have two perfectly good options that are readily accepted as payment by players: ectos and armbraces. I would agree that you should diversify across those as a hedge against the risk of developer updates. Anything more than that is overkill, at least as long as we're talking about currency risk.

No, this is stupid because you will miss trading opportunities that you could have taken advantage of, had you kept your wealth in items that are actually negotiable. The cost of the foregone opportunities will badly outweigh any risk you take on by not diversifying.

If you got thousands of ectos you couldnt turn them in to cash even if you wanted to because of the credit cap. If you got 250 this week, you could turn them in to cash for 12e\100k now. Wait a couple of weeks for the Canthan new year, and rebuy at 16\100k. Given that you have two accounts to store money, you would make around 70-90e doing that.

So now that we've established that you need two accounts for market fluctuations to be relevant for a single stack of ectos you're saying I need how many for it to be relevant with thousands of them?

Paper value, there is no way to move large amounts of armbraces in a short amount of time other then selling to other people using it as a currency or dumping prices.

I've never had any problems in negotiating using any of the alternative currencies listed or quickly converting them to credits or ecto.

things required for hom will stay the same or INCREASE in price

things not required for hom will stay the same or DECREASE in price(exceptions for one of a kind items)

First of all, you're dreaming if you think ecto is going to crash that hard. It hasn't had that kind of proportional shift in a very, very long time even for Nine Rings. So what makes you think it's going to happen this time?

Second, people use plat? Substitute currencies evolved because plat is unworkable for anything except pocket change transactions at this point.

Dumping is what you're going to have to do if something happens that seriously disrupts currency markets and you're holding the wrong thing. And it's been the case for years that you can move large volumes of wealth into or out of armbraces very quickly, if you take about a 15-20% hit to do it. But if something goes seriously haywire, you're better off doing that than riding the wave all the way to the bottom.

Also, it's all paper value unless you're engaging in RMT. Doesn't matter whether we denominate it in ecto, armbraces or plat. It's still wampum that is convertible to other wampum through barter, with no ability to "realize" the profit.

Differing definitions of the word "quickly" is the problem here. When someone posts an item for sale for 500 ecto that you know you can easily turn for 550e in a matter of minutes, you have literally seconds to snap up that transaction before someone else does. Spreading your wealth out will cause someone with 500e to get that deal instead of you, every single time.

Like I have said, I don't think most players that wanted 50/50 have it by now. I personally don't have 50/50 yet and I know quite a few players who are still working on their HoM towards 50/50. Furthermore, from my random sampling of players in gtob, people are still working on their HoM with many who don't even have an obby armor yet.

I admit this point is still debatable, but I hold the view that the players here are more hardcore than the typical players in the game.

Precisely after the HoM announcement, prices of HoM related items spiked then they stablized because nobody really knows when GW2 is going to come out. If GW2 is going to come out in the mid of this year (speculating based on open beta in April), then things are going to move faster than they have been.

I am staying out of predicting the economy in GW1 AFTER GW2 is released. But my guess would be that MOST GW1 players would have been tired of this 7 year old game and moved on to GW2 or alternatives by then.

Maybe, but I don't think people are going to care about bargaining prices all that much as long as they can afford it since GW1 gold would be almost useless for those migrating to GW2 for good. Some may even give away gold for free once they have reached 50/50.

It happens several times a year.

To the tune of a 25% decline in the value of the ecto? No, it does not do so with such speed these days.

Borrowed from this thead:
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/e...t10493481.html

http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/3917/ectoprice.jpg

It hasn't had that kind of volatility in some time. Granted, the most recent data in that graph is pretty poor (not enough data points), but the graph is representative of what was happening. There haven't been huge swings since the summer of '09, just slow incremental movements.

Thar chart shows trader values. If trader sells for 7,5k it buys for 5,5 (or 6, cant recall atm). Which means you can get them on the P2P market for 6,25 aka 16:100k. Even seen people fill orders at 17:100k in the last year.

Did the price go from 16:100 to 12:100 in the span of a week? No, it did not. So my question still stands: why do you think it's going to crash that hard when it didn't during the last CNY?

I said "most serious players", not "most players".

Sure, Joe Average with 20k in his storage box may want to buy things for HoM, but will he have the capacity to pay? Moving the demand side requires both ability and willingness, and there will be lots of prospective items conferring HoM points on the supply side competing for Joe Average's money.

You're making a dangerously unwarranted assumption about why prices stabilized here. What are you basing this conclusion on?

Their actions matter to prices in GW1 before GW2 releases, so you can't just write those players off. If you do, you will come to incorrect conclusions.

See above. Joe Average will want to get as many points for his money as he can, and the people that stay behind will all be competing for his business.

cool discussion

has anet said anything about banning for trading currency across games?

Yes it did, despite what you're inaccurate chart says. I know, cause I made tons on it.

Even if it crashed to 1k for a whole week you're chart wouldnt pick up on it if it measured the price a week later.

Funny, I was around too and I seem to remember it creeping from 14 to 13 to 12 over weeks myself. So perhaps the chart represents a better data source than our fallible memories, despite its limitations?

As in every game, there are a lot more Joe Averages than there are hardcore players so the total combined Joe Averages would impact the economy a lot more. That said, I think the value of gold itself would drop and some people would even give theirs away as they quit GW1.

It is a logical implication. You can't keep prices high forever, waiting on a future game that may or may not be released and for a long time nobody knows when it would ever be ready. Their prices have to stabilize after some time.

There can't be any 'economic' anything in GW because without a global trading system, there is not a real game economy, unlike in the real world.
The current 'ecomoney' perceived by the few that bother to trade is like a thin layer of milk skin on a cup of hot milk, compared to the amount of trades that would be with an actual trading system.

In a game economy that leaves out those that do not have time spare for spamming in outposts or create accounts in several external auction sites and keeping tabs on them, only a few are affected by major changes, since the rest of the people either either give up on getting the stuff or get it it by themselves, trading very sporadically, if ever.

What will happen if many people leaves for GW2? The traders will get their prices increased because of the lack of re-stocking (maybe to the point that ArenaNet has to modify the maximum prices they can have in the trader for sale, and the minimum price traders pay for the items, so players bother to salvage and sell them more often), and most people will just go on getting stuff by themselves without trading like they do now, and some auction sites may close because of the lack of activity.

That isn't really a problem, it's just a natural development.


I can see how many may think that exchanges between the games may turn into a problem.
GW2 will have an actual game economy thanks to the marketplace, and so mingling GW1's 'ecomoney' with it will only bring a bit of GW1's problems to GW2, so exchanges between the two games should not be allowed.
They are separate games, and unless they prepare for that in some way (like giving an actual economy to GW1 by adding a marketplace too and having some kind of limited inter-game conversion), they should not share trades.
Exchanges between the two games would look just like wealth being 'given away' separately in each game, and so that would probably raise some flag for RMT or hackers, unless the accounts are linked to GW2 accounts and they can track that, in which case it's even easier to find out the problem and punish the culprits.


They should warn players just in case.

I'm thinking that as soon as the GW2 release date is known, some things might go up for a bit and when GW2 hits the shelves GW1 will be a ghost town. I suspect there will be a small group of people still playing and I expect to log in from time to time still, but when GW2 is out, most of us would be there I would think.

I had a thread about that last year

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/t...tml?t=10466022

but we didn't hear anything about it from Anet, we just speculated a bit.

I would most certainly hold on to my ecto (or most of it, I could buy myself like 6 Zaishen Ranks with it by now) just in case. I wouldn't be surprised to see people sell things in GW2 for ecto in GW1 because they want to get obby armor or something. It could turn out pretty cool tbh.

One of the things mentioned in that trading scheme is the fact you can get scammed easily. Even if a third party is involved there is still too much risk. The third party can't be completely trusted by either person depending on who supplied the intermediary and then the third party can run off with it. Its akin to trading Runescape gold for GWs gold.

Pretty sure that's the main reason the 8 hero system was implemented.

So like trading Runescape for GW gold would trading GW1 for GW2 items be considered against the terms of service? Or would it be only an incredibly risky move?

I'll let the avid traders duke out all the fine points, but the basic premise of the thread is obvious to anyone who's done any serious trading over the last couple years. Any time extra content, or something HoM related was released, prices went crazy for a bit and power traders abused and took advantage of this(not saying it's a bad thing).

When GW2 comes out, anyone who hasn't met their HoM goals will help drive prices up a bit, and after the dust has settled it will probably return to what most of us consider to be normal.

I think Anet will foresee this and Put it into the terms and conditions. (hopefully)
and maybe actively police it.

Otherwise whats stopping me selling off all my items for "forum credits" and then waiting too buy items in GW2 with said "forum credits". Stuff HoM i got real shiz! chuck in my diablo 2 stash... hey presto im rich b****h!

I'm not sure how (legally) they get away with it but you can already trade a certain websites "forum credits" for: GW1, diablo2, diablo3 beta... (WTH?!), runescape, WoW the list goes on and on.

I don't trade for forum credits, it just seems an equivalent to cheating and would ruin the game very fast for me.( the game2game part that is)

On Topic : I think any "economic" disruption would be minimal at best and then we would just see a slow reduction in prices. But surely the power is in Anets hands, and if it gets "bad" they can tweek.

It's not hard to imagine a summation sequence where the behavior of a few on the supply side outweighs the behavior of the masses on the demand side. The CDO market in 2008 is a great real life example - a few individuals made a killing taking all of the counterparty bets on the winning side, propping up that market for a year or so in the process. If you treat election outcomes as a market (as commodities exchanges are starting to), that's another well-documented example of where the few can outweigh the many.

Your story is appealing because it is intuitive, but that doesn't necessarily make it true. If your assumption about substantial gold giveaways in the second sentence is correct, your story becomes more likely. I wouldn't bet on giveaways substantial enough to move the market myself; the wealthy in GW didn't get there by having strong charitable impulses.

No, it isn't a logical implication. I'll grant that market uncertainty often leads to price stabilization, but it does not logically follow that it caused stabilization in this instance. Here's a simple, alternative hypothesis: prices stabilized once the relatively few buyers with both means and high value on HoM made their purchases and exited the market, and once sellers recognized this and quit investing time chasing the now non-existent surplus.

All you need for an economy is two people, two goods and a means of communication and exchange. A proper trading system might keep transaction costs down, but it's certainly not a necessary condition to have an economy.

Sure - this represents a shock to the system followed by players chasing prospective surplus. It doesn't follow that prices on HoM items will rise when the GW2 release nears. The important difference is that players have had time to prepare. The story that prices will rise as release nears may be true; it also may be true that speculators have already artificially driven up the prices on those items, and will be forced to dramatically cut prices to clear inventory when release nears.

Great GW examples: the price bumps in rubies and sapphires prior to the Factions and Nightfall releases, as well as the price bump in Onyx and Diamonds prior to EotN. In every case, speculators got burned.

I wrote "game economy".
"Game economy" isn't the same as just "economy".

Games are supposed to be fun. If trading hinders fun for many people, then it's not "game economy".

the GW economy has been fcuked ever since the user base started dying down, things that were expensive may have become even more so while things that were common became rarer as people actually have tow work for it instead of being like "so im sitting here selling r9 jazz"...

Right, "game economy" is a subset of "economy". If we can identify conditions that define an "economy", then anything which meets the aforementioned conditions in a game is therefore a "game economy".

It is not a subset.

An actual economy develops in a certain environment, and a game economy develops inside another environment.

Since ANet does not allow RMT, then they do not touch in any way, and are just similar concepts but different things.

To put it in another way, it's not like plants and animals evolving from what once was the same kind of unicellular organism, but like the living beings in earth evolving with DNA and RNA, and another organism evolving in another planet under different conditions and in different ways.

There will be similarities, since the universe has universal laws, but it will not be the same. It will be separate. Both are 'life', and that will be mostly what they have in common.
There are similarities in real and game economy since both are created by human behavior, but the conditions are so different, that they are really nothing alike.

The main differences are that in the actual economy, there's limited access tor resources, and many are limited in availability too, once the last diamond and the last nugget of gold it's mined, there's no more. if you want something, only some will have it. In a game, most if not all resources are unlimited, and most people if not everyone has access to them, if you want something, EVERYONE could have it.
And in real economy, people is specialized. While you wait for resources, you can't do anything else. You can't bake without flour. You can't just go and hunt. Your job is baking. You need the flour, if you don't have the flour, you'll go find some.
In a game economy, there's ALWAYS something else to do other than waiting for a transaction to complete. That is usually playing the game.

In the same way we breath oxygen and another lifeform may breath sulphur or methane you can't use the same rules for both.

Game economy is too different to real economy. Their environment and conditions are too different. And can't be treated the same way.