How much wealth does the average player have?

Been in the game six years, I know I'm probably richer than average but way, way poorer than a lot of people. I've got enough to get me to 50/50 (done already), my brother to 50/50 and a mate of ours to 30/50 (also done) and still have some spare stuff to think about doing my 2nd and 3rd account up to 30/50. That's enough for me.

Quest rewards have gotten outrageous compared to what they were in '05/'06. WoC alone if done completely on a single character will easily break 100k. The average player today would be considered well off by the game's original standards so it's all relative.

It's really hard to tell for spenders, I don't like hoarding money so as soon as I have enough for a new armor I want I spend on that, I open almost all chests so a lot goes on that as well, plus some weapons, runes tomes and stuff...I end up always having around 20k per char in inventory but could never estimate how much I gained in those years. If you also count all the things you gift/trash instead of selling...even harder.
On average though, I think zaishens helped a lot to increase the game's wealth. Not many do SCs and farms, but everybody (even a lvl 6 in proph now with embark beach) can do zaishens while normally playing through campaigns, and that's a lot of extra cash, I'd say.

80 months/10.5k hours

4000 ecto
1000 ecto in misc. items
6 Obsidian Sets
8 Chaos Gloves
GWaMM
Rank 10 Zaishen

Not trying to brag and yes all of this was earned mainly doing 4xAccount farming.

All of this and I feel poor when I see people bidding 400-1000 armbraces on the uber high end mini's.

To answer this thread 150k cash+500k in misc items/armor would be the "average" player. However, the definition is quite arbitrary and no parameters have been set to define the term "average".

on hand....not enough to buy a full set of elite armor ...however, I do have lots of stacks of : plague idols, margonite masks, seeds, jaws, etc etc etc...which could add up (packrat ya'know)...most of my characters have more than one set of elite armor, WITHOUT a sup vigor (only had about 4 drop for me in the years I have played).....dont have ectos (and no fow armor--its ugly)....only a few rubies/sapphires (treasure drops mostly). And NO gwamm character (do have a few over with over 15 titles--and never bought ANY party/sweet/alcohol points--only used what dropped or nic gave me).

If I were to sell off everything ('cept the green weapons as the value is only 35g) I would have quite a lot--but no cash on hand (or ectos, not a single armbrace....) to speak of.

My money really depends on the time of the year.
Since i don't SC (no stacks of ectos/armbraces for me) it all ends up on seasonal events. On christmas or halloween i can easily break the xunlai + my chars limits and then just spend it in whatever i want (minis and zkeys mostly).

Counting everything i have from 6 years of gameplay (~6k hours) should be around 1-2M adding perhaps another 2-3M if i count what i wouldn't/couldn't ever sell. Still i think i would be way bellow the average since there's players that completely tip of the scales.

~1200 Hours/31 Months

(Before recently getting Obby)
160 ecto
~100 zKeys
~500k in Storage
~50 Champ Strongboxes (sell 5k-1e each)
~50 Glad Strongboxes (5k each)

I feel pretty average; 500k is a solid amount to spend in any situation and even with my recent dip in funds with my brand new obby (I'm broke atm), I still can PvP all my funds back up...

i would think after 3 years for the avg player u wud at least have accumulated 1000k including all the items, weapons, armors, titles uv spent gold on

although i cnt recall what i had 3 years into playing..

I have ~2yrs on my main account:

~850k in storage
~50k across char's - cash
~65ectos /cry
~0 armbraces /cry
a few elite armors
7 hero elite armors + runes/insigs
a few "farming" gear sets + runes/insigs
a few dest/oppy weapons

I would consider myself at or around average. I sure do feel hella poor compared to all the WTB/WTS I see in Kama....400+e for a mini makes my heart sad.

I can go do a solo UW run and in an hour or so have 4-6 ecto with a value of 20-30k...

How can the avg player playing for 3+ years have less than I can make in 2 hours?

I know my 5mil est. seems terribly high to most...but I keep thinking that even afking festivals one can net 30-50k for each(4 per year...3yrs so 12)...drops in one mish 2-5k (13 cantha,25 tyria,20 elona so 58)...10 free z keys, 12 free minis (4 toons 3yrs), quest/mish rewards 500g-2.5k, etc etc...it all adds up. Going by the 3yrs of play, including moneys spent on titles, amors, minis, etc....I think a lot of ppl are low-balling it.

I don't think it's feasible to try and estimate the wealth of the "Average" player on a game forum. Most people who post here actually care more about their account than the average player, do more farming, and are usually willing to buy the higher end items and will generally have "more."

That being said, gold spent V.S. gold saved, is a hard thing to keep track of, unless you still have all your items. Like how many times did you spend 1k at a skill trainer? Or how many times have you re-dyed an armor piece, stuff like that factors in, but I don't think anyone keeps track of that.

I'd say, if I have to guess, around 75-100k in gold at least, and who knows how many mats/dye/anything else.

I'm thinking the average would be 500k-2mil. Its a bit of a range, but so would what we can call an average player. tbh, I think the 2mil might be kinda low these days. Anyone sitting with 100k or less, just look at all the runes, armor, weapons, titles you have spent money on.

If we look at the most recent content, Winds of Change, you get 50k pure gold + lockpicks, gems, and various other items making up for over 100k. I believe the average player is going to complete all content atleast one time (in nm), so the average should easily hit 100k+.

The average is only going up with how easy it is to make gold these days, the lack of new items to spend on, and the casual players are really starting to diminish in this game.

..maybe im wrong... and i often am... but i feel a lot of people are lowballing it purely because they want to feel they've done more than the average player... i'll admit after 3 years i was NOWHERE near where i am now as monetary issues are addressed but... I know even though i probably played maybe 20 hours a week, i still know at TODAY's games rate... 5-10 million is easily obtainable to the casual gamer so long as they don't sit around asking "omfg how do people get monies" and take advantage of the wiki resources...

I actually doubt that people are lowballing it, but it depends on how you define average. If you chop off the 1000 lowest, 1000 highest and then do a simple "total game money/assets" / number of accounts, it's probably about 10k per account, largely because of the massive number of abandoned accounts.

If you did the same thing on the active playerbase (say regularly 15 hours or more a week), it's probably more like a million, all in.

Also, the belief that the average player would have completed WoC, WiK or HoTN is just plain flawed. Who can be bothered with that difficult shit, seriously? WiK bounties, Nick's gifts and some event farming are about all I can be bothered with, and I speak for 8 accounts, since I'm the only one who plays them anymore.

6 year player
I have never done a speed clear
I do an average of 1 elite area run per 2 weeks.
I do not farm at all except for items Nicholas the Traveler is collecting, and I only farm what I need
565k in storage
each of my 8 characters is holding at least 15k, one is holding 50k
about 700k has been spent on the elite armors for my characters.

So In six years, I've equated about 1.5mil gold without doing anything above just barely getting by to acquire it.
And I spent 4 of those years with less than 150k total wealth to my name.

Don't take personally what i'll say but i don't think those amounts of money are for regular/casual players, more like elite farmers and power traders (if you meant those values in short term i mean).
Not everyone likes doing SCs even if that meant making money at ridiculous speed (or is that just me?).
I actually prefer to watch series/movies while farming feathers/raptors or going through the campaign with another char. After SCing both lux and kurz titles my patience and attention span for high end farm just went down to zero. (faction farm isn't high end but we made a lot of competitions between guilds in the alliance back then which would end at several hours in a row of repetitive play)
But then again i'm already 50/50 playing around with the extended HoM just waiting for the release of gw2 and that might influence my judgment while comparing to the new guys in the community.

Regarding the average, and not counting the people who left, i would put it at the lowest possible value around 10-20M.
Some of those who haven't left have an incredible amount of wealth surpassing by far 10-100x that value by just having some ultra-rare minis.
There's also a hand full of high end farming guilds that keep a steady flow of ectos and armbraces. The same for pvp with their exclusive rewards. (I don't have much knowledge in this area so dunno if the term high end pvp still applies)

Anyway in the end it will be impossible to assess the real average because the game is still evolving and there aren't enough gold sinkers to balance the increasing amounts of gold entering the game. Even if my estimate was correct at the beginning of my reply it could i fact be much higher when i finally click the submit button.

That's a very good point. I think just buying all skills once is worth millions, but you usually do it slowly in time so you don't notice much, who counts that? Just by doing elite skill hunter I remember how fast money went away, and had to stop everytime cause I was out of money to buy signets (and it happened a lot).

* Because they spend it as soon as they have enough for another item in their HoM, like another armor, another weapon, another hero armor or another miniature, or just more sweets, booze and party paraphernalia.
* Because the automated survey they made probably didn't count materials, just storage gold, so it wouldn't matter how many globs of ectoplasm they had in their storage.
* Because the average player doesn't spend that much time getting to know UW. They are busy getting actual titles like Vanquisher, Carthographer and Guardian. You can't farm ectos to buy those. Some ask sometimes about farming UW, but that's usually when they are going for the Obsidian armor, and many only go in balanced or full something-way teams, or as some extra profession that doesn't matter much what they are as long as they stay behind and add some damage.

Been playing over 5 years but consistently 3/4 times a week over the past 2 years and I have 4 ectos and 300plat. Don't see how you lot do it!

edit:1014hours racked up!

Reading some of these posts makes me flabbergasted at how much some of you have I've been playing for 65months and have accumulated 4200hrs (something of which I'm not exactly proud :P) and may have a couple million gold in "stuff". I have an elite set of armor on all my characters, vabbian armor on half of them, one set of obsidian armor, two tormented weapons, and I still feel fricken poor. Granted, I don't farm and what I make is pretty much what I earn from just questing and playing PVP in the form of Fort Aspenwood (Z-Keys mostly).

Also, I never hoard gold so my storage is never over 100k. Still saving up for a second obsidian armor but I'm not sure if that's ever going to happen.

I've probably accumulated about 3 mil over the course of 78 months and 3k hours. Got a set of obby, random rag tag assortment of weps, and whatnot. Everytime I've come back from a break though, it seems as if it is easier and easier to make money. I primarily got my Obby in a month of ToPK farm in August 2010 since I was never a fan of UW. Currently sitting on about 150k in the bank after spending nice chunks on finishing party title. Still have a lot more to grind out though which shouldn't be too bad, WoC seems like a gold mine.

That's why you feel poor. FA and JQ are good way to make some money but its not serious farming. People who are insanely rich hoard their money without ever really spending any and most people who are that rich have 10k+ hours logged, most of it from farming. I wouldn't feel bad though, its only a game.

I don't get it. People complain about being poor yet if you set your mind to it, in a couple of hours a day for a week you could easily make 100k

Think of zaishen trap farming, FA and fowsc...none of these things require skills and pay off in the long run

I've played nearly 5 years.. (Started in faction). Had a couple of long breaks.
So you can take it as a 3- years hardcore. xD

Consider myself as a casual player.

Think my wealth all together should be somewhere around 20.000.000.
My HoM is nearly full, and got 1 gwamm.
sitting on around ~1.000.000 gold + materials which iam donating and supporting guild events/Fellow guildies who needs armor/weapons for their HoM.

over 9000....

raptor farming, vaettir farming, even just a 7 hero fow nm group if you don't like speed clears (which the heros can and will do all the work and should in about an hour or hour and a half.) will get you about 10k in drops and such... nick gifts (pre and post) those don't either and can be very lucrative again if someone sets their mind to not wanting to be broke but can still only play 10-15 hours a week, just gotta optimize their available time.

That only if you like farming/doing scs. Many prefer playing the game normally, that's why poor. Honestly I'd rather be poor than doing any of those things (or heroing an elite area for that matter).

I don't like farming either. I kinda enjoyed the old E/Me Glint's Challenge farm (the first wave only), but apart of that, i find it too repetitive, mindless and tedious.
However, trading ftw!
You can start making money in Kamadan with as much as 15k in your pocket, and you don't really have to pay attention to what is happening all the time. Read a book, do your homework or watch something in the meantime. Sure, you do need to get some info first, get accustomed with the market, know some prices by heart; devote some time first, but then it really really pays off, both in terms of money and saved time. Of course, to get the best deals out there you need to be a bit lucky, but it's surprising how many deals netting a ~5k profit you can do daily, with virtually no investment after a while, still being able to devote your attention to something else.
And i'm not talking about high-end power-trading which sometimes do require your full consciousness, or may be risky at times. I'm talking about making 30-50k a day simply making 2-3k on an elite skill tome, semi-afking in Kamadan. Then you can get into more interesting stuff, like EL tonics, HoM weapons and minipets, which is kinda stable and reliable, with low risks and fast pay-offs if you know what you're doing.


All of the above said, i love how the OP asks about average player's wealth and every now and then someone strengthens their epeen by stating how many millions their stuff is worth, or how many stacks of ectos they have/had. Threads like this one perceived from a wider perspective can actually pin-point out theoretical speculators, friendly advise-givers, and bragging brats.

And to, speculatively, answer the OP - it's impossible to determine an 'average player', yet alone their wealth. However, if someone played for a long time now, and was aware of all the nice rewards that were added over the last two years, and casually farmed the most rewarding events, and/or got a bit lucky on the way, it shouldn't be too hard to sit on 50/50+GWAMM after six years of casual playing, without major breaks. Then again, what do we understand as "casual"?...

This is the heart of the problem. Unless we precisely define the play habits of the 'average' player, we aren't all going to come up with the same answer. We would need to agree on the time investment of the 'average player' and how that time is spent. Some activities are more renumerative than others, and in most cases wealth disparity is less attributable to how much time was invested than to how time was spent.

For instance, raptor farming pays terribly during ordinary circumstances and pays pretty well during event weekends. So if you have the flexibility to play those weekends heavily and ignore GW otherwise, you're going to fare better than a player that plays for an hour or two on most days.

Yes it isnt enough to just take all GW accounts and calculate the sum of valuables on them and divide by the number. Banned accounts with duped armbrace stacks and pandas must be removed from the equation. What with accounts of people who got inactive long ago. And what with the elite of powertraders/people who were there at the right time and made millions? They can´t be called average either.

And then there is the question of counting spent money. Money spent on titles and money spent on purchasing stuff like VS or other rare weapons that can be sold again. (assuming uncustomised).

Below is pure speculation, since its nearly impossible to do any proper calculation:

Definition #1: Player is defined by actively playing person which is defined by having been logged on to GW for more than 5h in the last month. For persons having more than one accounts adding all their accounts together. Actual fighting not required, it is sufficient to have been sitting in GH chatting with friends. This excludes all inactive or banned accounts.

Definition #2a: Wealth is the sum of: 1. Cash. 2. The value of ectos and other goods (like obsi shards, z keys, lockpicks, other materials, consumables) that can be easily traded or merched. 3. Value of any posessions that can be sold, like various rare or semi rare weapons, minis, tonics etc

Definition #2b: Sum of #2a plus sum of all the cash spent, ie for lockpicks, capture signets, festival tickets, booze, armor crafting, value loss from dedicating minis etc

I have this guess for definition 2a: The average player here has between 100k and 200k.
These are divided in 3 groups, again guesstimating: Group 1: 40-50% have less than 100k, these are either new players who havent yet learned to make any significant money AND the eternal spenders who buys something as soon as they have a little.
Group 2: also 40-50% who are neither rich nor poor having 100-500k. Group 3 is the rich people, less than 10%, divided in 2 subgroups: Moderately rich 500k to 10million and the real rich real few people having more than 10mil. The rich are so few that they wont rise the average much over the large poor masses. (Im personally on the border between these last 2 subgroups)
My guess is that the average wealth of these 3 groups is between 100k and 200k cash by these definitions.

Regarding my definition #2b it is even harder to estimate, all I dare say say is that I beleive average would be 1m+. Yes YOU have earned more than 1million during your playtime if you are average, but also spent almost all of it.

I bet if push came to shove and a player had to sit in Kamadan and liquidate every single asset they had, that their net worth would be more than they would think.

At least for me I know I have a lot of money tied up in hero runes (I play a TON of toons).

I'd say 20-30k of money an average player can have 'on hand' sounds about right. I agree with the others that people who read this forum are a lot more hardcore than the average GW player. Similarly, players who you see "all the time" in Kamadan etc are also hardcore players.

Anecdotal data: I have around 50e and 20k to my name currently after getting 30/50 in my HOM (as someone who's been playing off and on since launch... mostly off). Most of my guildies (also launch vets) have less than 20k, and are sitting on 1st-6th unopened birthday presents on all of their characters. They've completed each campaign once and occasionally log in for events -- no need to farm any more $ for that, really. Or I should say, there wasn't before the entire GW2 HOM thing came along.

I find 30k to be underestimated, on average. It depends not only on "averageness" of players, but also their playstyle - do they pick everything up and identify before selling? Do they waste money for pretty armours they don't really need? Do they buy lockpicks or just ignore those chests? Are they aware of top worth mods and inscriptions and try to sell them separately? Do they identify gold items or sell them as unids?

So, in short, take only casual players, who have never farmed, never spent more than 2-3h daily etc.
If they buy lockpicks, don't pay attention to mods they get on weapons and just outright merch them, identify their golds just to see 'some' progress in a title they never max out - well, they may sit at less than 20k.
However, if someone, while not farming for money, does not waste it, as well as tries to make some cash by selling their occassional drops (or mods), and they don't buy a new armour set as soon as they can afford it, they can easily get close to 100k in a very short time.

This thread makes me feel filthy rich having I believe 880k and enough ectos to go over 1 mil and I haven't played seriously since '08 :X

if u ask 3-4 years ago, i'll say 100k total wealth + a few sets of elite armor + 20e
now.......i think 100z + more

We certainly don't need to mention the official stats saying 10k or 20-30k per average account - these statistics come from 2005/2006 back when the great majority of players really had close to nothing - regular play produced very little amounts and early expenses ate all of that. Millions of players were NOT doing solo farming, it was solo farming that generated
Also, these statistics never included the worth of items, including valuable materials (ectos, etc.), which made much much greater part of wealth of players than gold itself.
Average players these days are easily in the hundreds of plat, even if they never hold so much at once, they produced that much wealth and spent on developing their characters (or wasted). But that's about average players who are stil active.

It is very important to know that we, the somewhat active community, are a very little minority when it comes to the millions who bought the game. We know very little about the players who may be making as many as over 90% of all accounts.
You should know that a great majority of players spent very little time in the game before they quit. They tried a few characters or got one to level 20 and through one campagin or got stuck in the middle. Many didn't quit completely and log in very rarely to spend some time occassionally, or only during holidays/events. Their play styles vary greatly from how we play. Most of them has never seen a sum greater than 50k at once.
I think the hardest and the most important thing to estimate would be how much *time* have the average player spent in the game. The average wealth will be of course proportional to the time spent by the average player.

Collecting data from active guru members won't bring us anywhere. We're such a little minority in the sea of thousands accounts that are activated every week even in 2011/2012 and go into inactivity not long after that our data is meaningless.

That's why considering the "average player" may not be a good idea at all - why would we care about the wealth (or lack of) rotting on millions of inactive accounts?

And if we care only about the active - those who create the game's economy, it's not easy to measure wealth. There isn't just one way to do it.
We could measure for example a players' wealth as the gold value of liquidating everything that can be liquidated from his account(s). But that would require doing things like salvaging armor and merching customized weapons - it's the wealth as an account robber would see it.
But to a player himself the more important is sort of his "net worth". It's much harder to measure that and a lot to consider - how would you count a FoW armor? Or a complete collection of elite skills? Or money titles? Or most importantly the great amount of time that went into making an account as great as it is?

That's a lot to think about (for those who may care about it).

500k Average per player I bet. In available or semi available (easily liquidable assets). I know I can make about 250k in a week just from playing the game. Albeit a lot.. still. Just playing through the game and selling the occasional good drop. 250k in a week is pretty easy.

So I imagine that the average player plays a lot less than me, and probably spends a lot of their cash on the odd thing here and there... So 500k liquidable assets. Ready to go.

At least 2Mill in Assets/investments (HoM/Armor/etc.)

If not more... It's still very easy to make some cash in this game.

1 Armbrace at 22e nets you about 185k or something now adays... So even for the average person getting a handful armbraces a month (btw a handful is 5. obviously) is close to a mill.

Well, about 30 months active, my monk is worth about 1000k in armors and weapons
But many players have gloves worth more than this

on mules...
60-70 stacks of each sc stuff (cupcake and +1 stuff)
5500k in gold
6-7 stacks ecto
spend the polar from last year to get more fow armor to my 3 main acc.
and 5-6 bds..for the fun of it.

hmm..I might be abel to pull out 45000k in gold
..and I still pick up the crap and salv it

25% of the player got 50k and up
25% of the player got 100k and up
12%...500k and up
5% 2000k and up
2%..up up up