Black Tuesday: Changing the Economic Face of Guild Wars

As Guild Wars ages and more and more players enter the game, we begin to see a steady shift in the state of economic wealth among individual players. Economic inflation has come about, as is apparent by the rising cost of Sigils being sold between players. How the economy has reached such a mark is debatable, but it is widely accepted that the inflation is in fact created by players, both buying and selling items, who have no idea the worth of items they are selling. A player can still be considered “new” at this game even if they have finished the game and ascended- there are players out there who simply don’t know the worth of their items. Traders have given us a way to establish standard costs for items; We can price dyes and certain sigils according to a Trader’s price. An overpriced item will be picked up on by new players because of the ease of discovering an item’s real value.

Unfortunately, with the vast number of weapons and focus items in the game, players have no real scale in order to determine the value of weaponry. Many MMO style games have suffered this plague in the past; its medication is usually experience. Unfortunately, that isn’t doing the trick anymore, as there are so many valued items their true worth is indeterminable.

For those of you that have played Blizzard’s hit game World of Warcraft, an item-sale system was implemented into the game: The “Auction House.” The auction house allowed a player to put an item up for sale, have all players view it, and allowed the seller to set a starting price and buyout price for that item. Thus, items had traceable values; You couldn’t sell a 20 damage staff for an unreasonable price because a comparable item would be next to it at a far cheaper rate. Thus, selling items became a Capitalistic, competitive manner, many people even used tricks such as pricing an item for “3.99” rather than “4.” Prices were competitive and money had a value.

In order to force prices downward and make the economy more practical, we need to discover similar systems. While an Auction House is an acceptable idea, it too has its flaws- a rich player can buy up lower-priced items, then put them back up at a higher rate and make a profit off of them. What we need to do is discover a system that will force players to price their wares competitively; this will lower the price of items. While one player may attempt to sell that sword for 2 Platinum, another may try selling theirs for 1.5 Platinum; thus, the lower price will sell, and players will need to lower their prices.

A possible solution that has been going around is to allow players to set up their own “Shops.” A player-owned shop system will work similar to the merchants. A player will be able to select a “Shop” item in their Menu list- when this is done, they are stuck in place, and a small counter, cart, weapon rack, or some other indicator will appear in front of them, allowing players to see who has items on sale. Once that is done, the “Shop owner” will be stuck in place and unable to move. A window will appear in the corner of his screen; he will be able to drag-and-drop items from his inventory into that window, and assign a price to all his wares. Other players will be able to come up to him, view his sale window, and purchase his items just like you can purchase an item from a merchant.

Unfortunately, player-owned shops are problems in and of themselves. Location will become an issue; more players will prefer to have their shops at town entrances or by traders because their items will sell faster to arriving players or players looking to shop. Towns and Cities will become very crowded; therefore the Shop System would only be made available in special “Shopping Districts.” A Shopping District will be a special district set aside solely for the purpose of sale and purchase of items via the Shop System.


What we need to do is discover more efficient ways of dealing with inflation; this may be most possible via an easier item sale system. Its time to brainstorm- suggest something, but try to think it through. If it has obvious flaws or issues, mention them, or even better, try to fix them before you suggest it. If you make a suggestion and a poster points out an issue with it, don’t brashly beat his face into the concrete; except his criticism and try to modify your idea, if at all possible. You can debate, but don’t kick each other’s asses over anything.

the shop dist thing is a good idea, whenever you go afk, set up your shop.

Well I think this is a great idea for a money sink. You pay more for a better spot intown and which town you will be in. Say you pay 10k to be in the back of the forge place in souther shiverpeaks(im sorry the name is escaping me right this moment). Then if you want to be located right by the entrance or most popular log in place in that area you pay like 90k or even 100k. People can always make that money back by selling items if they have good items. But a simpler solution would be for Anet to set a price guide. They could get some of their Alpha players to kind of scout out the prices and what they think the prices should be and then actually make that price number when you look at the item a true selling price. But the first idea would be the best, because of the possible money sink. Also an idea would be for guilds to have their own stores. Maybe that would be a possiblity.

even simpler would be to have a gold wipe not items or weapons nor armor just gold

the prices would be reasonable again since everybody can't afford 100k for a sigil

Except three days after the wipe, they'd be back to 100k.

This is an AWESOME idea. AFK+shop=rock.

The problem comes from insertion of cash into the system while the cash sink is too small and avoidable most of the time. Players only profit, and that doesn't work in any economic system. The games PVE was flawed to begin with, the easiest thing would've been to concentrate PVE to support PVP until you stabilized PVP. Then work on PVE. Of course, it's Anet's decision with what to do, but it'd be wise if they can figure out how to at least make a decent economic system, less they want to bring back stone of jordans.

Everquest has the player merchant method for dealing with buying and selling among players. Basically when you enter the selling district you can call up a window and enter the item that you are looking for. Once you found the item that you are looking for, just click on the find trader button and you would be directed to face the seller. Eventually, you would be able to find the seller by clicking on the button several times to redirect you as you run toward that trader.
http://www.rpgexpert.com/everquest/bazaar2.jpg
This is a picture of the interface and I think it was a great implementation.

not necessarly- anet nerfed the farming spots, and most of the gold came before they nerfed the drops in major farming zones.

Yeah but there are still farming zones, you may just not know about them. And I'm not about to tell everyone that doesn't know because thent hey will be abused again and those taken away.

and I bet those zones are usually places where nobody bothers to go like the reed bog, or snakedance, or twin lakes, etc?
and it doesn't matter, anet has logs for EVERYTHING- overall zone drops as in how often rares drop, and how many runed salvage items, Xp gains, people in the zpecfic zone, their activities, etc. I'm sure they already know about the "secret farming zones" but they don't bother to nerf them yet, until they finish implementing their changes to the item/rare/rune drop system.

Guys, a Gold Wipe is out of the question. While the economical state of the game is a current issue, it is not in a state so severe as to warrant the elimination of all player funds. Not only that, but the players who got rich in a respectable fashion will gather together and cause quite a stir on forums, fansites, and all other mediums which ANet inspects regularly- and keep in mind those people are ANet's big customers, fans so devoted to the game that they'll buy any expansion without question. ANet doesn't want to loose those customers. Not only that, but ANet would suffer from severe public backlash as a result of such a wipe. Its far too drastic.

If they were to have a gold wipe, the day before the wipe I would buy all the items/materials/weapons/etc. my money could nuy (and blow the rest on ale ), then they wipe the gold, I wait for prices to stabalize, and I am fine
Something like that would be nice


If they truly wanted to increase the value gold, they would charge a tax (daily) for leaving gold (not items) into the storage account. Someone could not have more than 100k without paying taxes on it. That way, poor newbs don't get shafted but all these people with 1000k gold will start to lose some.

I think WoW's Auction House is the best way to facilitate buying and selling.

Realistically, Guild Wars doesn't need something like this. Basically every item in the game can be bought from a Trader, for a relatively fair market price, except for Weapons, Shields, Foci, Upgrade Items, and Collector Items.

Also, I don't really know why people complain so much about high prices. You can get good armor and weapons from collectors, for about 15-30 minutes of grinding each. The only things that can't be found readily and sell for exhorbitant prices are Sigils and Runes. Sigils are easy to buy, with money pooled from your guild. The only runes that aren't cheap are certain Superiors, which don't even offer a large advantage over Majors or Minors. So why are people complaining so much? Without any support from my guild, I already have 35k, after playing for 80 hours, and have every single item that I want or need, with the exception of a good staff head, a good wand, and a Superior Vigor rune. If I looked around, I could probably find the staff head and the wand. The only thing that I want that I can't easily get would be the Superior Vigor Rune, which only adds a small benefit over a Major.

What's the big deal? Why are high prices such a bad thing?

well, as what you said, theclam, is true, but the problem is people wants everything good, and that creates proce gougers, and that creates inflation. it's actually cheaper to buy a sup rune of absorption or vigor through the trader than paying 100k for one.
and guess who the main price gougers are? yep the farmers that farmed a lot before the nerf

When you say Collectors, do you mean Weapon crafters? Those weapons are poor- AT BEST. They aren't even purple weaponry- that doesn't quite fly with me. I'd like to carry a blade a little better than that. And I've sold even MINOR runes for prices so ridiculously inflated it would make you sick...

I just saw a axe get sold for 1,250,000 g and a sup vigor (or something like that)... just ridiculous, something has to be done.

omg I agree. Gold wipe would solve the problem in a big way- or that person just got scammed out of 999 plats and 3 characters worth of 300,000 gold

bleh. gold is worthless. just because it has a lot of zeroes doesn't mean you are paying a lot for something.

do you ever recall a time where you struggled to buy something because you didn't have enough gold? that's what we're talking about

the current new players and nonfamers vs the pure hardcore farmers/ price gougers is all it comes down to right now.

Has anyone encountered any bartering? Actual TRADING? Not buying/selling, but say, trading one weapon for another weapon, or something along those lines?

I tried to trade- took me 2 hours before i gave up- that's the problem and trading gold for a weapon vs weapon for weapon is pretty much the same

The closest thing I've encountered is people trading 100k+7 unid'd rares for a sigil

Why would you want to? Bartering became obsolete when the currency system was established. That's like regressing =P

Well, bartering orignally came about in the early ages in order for two people to both gain what they desired with little or no negative impact on either of them. If I'm a Knight with a staff and you're a Mage with a sword, we can swap and both be happy. Once currency was established, you could sell the sword and then buy the staff, or perhaps if you didn't need the staff, sell the sword anyway and buy food, farming equipment, whatever. But with the economy so inflated, it may become far too expensive to actually BUY weaponry, so we're better off swapping weapons. Works for both of us.

However, that's assuming you find someone who has something u want, and wants something you have with items that are worth roughly the same. Things like that rarely happen, and that's why eventually a currency was developed in DII, because trading by bartering alone was next to impossible.

First off, I must thank TopGun for actually bringing up an issue without blantly bashing ANet or the Guild Wars community. Too many people think that the way to solve anything is by that force, but TopGun has shown the true way of handling a situation. Bravo!

The SHop idea is an amzing idea. For anyone that has played Ragnarok, this is what they do. They have shops that you can just go AFK and people can come by and look at your wares. They see your wares and buy from you and you receive the gold after you come back. Good, good idea for the Guild Wars community. They should probably take out the Trade Channel if they add this and just allow the user to put a single sentence over head, describing their shop.

I don' think a Gold Wipe is the best thing to do. That would bring SOOO many issues up and really give people a bad feeling because they have worked for that gold and to see it all go down the hole because some people are more fortunate would be almost a crime.

Sinks are a good idea. They give us something to really put our money into after we get that really good looking 15k armor (which, I must say, the Warrior's is AMAZING!). It'd probably bring prices down on other items, because some people wouldn't have as much so they'd demand lower prices- for a time. They prices would just continue to rise again though. It'd be just a rotating thing. I would like Guild Banks and Customization of Guild Halls. Also, more things to get for a Guild. I want to PIMP OUT my guild, ya know?

Keep me informed, dudes,
Halios Gasinova

i know a gold wipe would have been extreme, but how can we eliminate the gold that's already IN the economy and it's not flowing out? it's staganting and causing inflation. it's similar to the US mint printing out a billion dollars on paper and distrubuting it without taking out the old worn out dollar bills that's still worth something.

sinks would help, but people have a tendancy to HOARD things. they make excuses like better sinks coming up, etc etc.

I like the shop idea, but the people on dial up can't go afk easily. i think a npc ran sauction house would function better in that regard.

who still has dial-up?

quite a few. I myself had dial up until last month!

And I as well. However, these shouldn't be too taxing if a special district/section of town were dedicated to them (kinda like the Arenas for each city or something). Limit the district sizes to be smaller than a regular district, allow special districts for weapons/foci, runes, etc. (but add a misc. section so that there's not too many of them), give a menu before entering to go to the shop dist. you're wanting (such as for the weapons, etc.), and that should be it.

Actually, no I can't recall a time past about lvl10 when I struggled to buy something. There isn't anything that I can't afford that I need and there are very few things that I can't afford that I want.

Also, shops are such a bad idea. Auction Houses are far superior in every respect. They make it easier for buyers and sellers to find each other, don't require sellers to stick around, and bring prices closer to what they should be.

One negative thing about shops/afk traders is that then you would have a MUCH larger portion of the playerbase tying up bandwidth (however minimal) by remaining connected to the servers while AFK. ANet may not be set up to handle the additional load at first, and there would be heavier lag during critical PVP battles.

I would much rather see an NPC like the Storage NPC that had maybe 10 slots to which you could drag items you wanted to auction. Those items would be listed in a central auction database also accessible from that Auction NPC if you wanted to buy, but your items stayed in auction regardless of your online status. Any money generated from the sale of your auctions would be retrievable from the Auction NPC the next time you logged on. Not sure if this was what people meant by an auction house, but it prevents people from having to remain connected to the game, tying up valuable bandwidth.

Overall, every item sells for precisely as much as some sucker is willing to pay for it. If prices are too high, it's only because people are still willing to buy at those high prices.

i could even live with ac1 one's merchant system where you sold stuff to merch and it was still available to everyone else to buy from that merch.

daoc style consignment merch would be cool IF not everyone had to buy their own.
instead, we buy slots on the merch put items up for sale in those slots. when they sell. we go back to merch to collect money.

hmm, could even make it a variation on the current xunlai agent storage. let us put a price for everything in there. no price means not for sale. if somebody willing to buy at price we set then it sells. the money gets added to the cash we have in storage.

anyone could go to any xunlai agent and do queries for anything on sale. that would probably the easiest to implement.

"instead, we buy slots on the merch put items up for sale in those slots. when they sell. we go back to merch to collect money."

Great idea. I would much rather see this then the current npc merchant system. One thing that still rubs me is AN created the inflation not the player base. This has been said in every thread like this one. When the items stopped falling the prices sky rocketed. Who had the items to sell after the nerf? The farmers that had already made large sums of gold. 100k isn't alot of gold to them and 5k just isnt worth the effort. Those people are STILL farming, just with different methods, and a inflated economy. Now that AN returned some manor of farming the prices are once again coming back down. The same rare things still go for insane amounts but it's no different then the real world. Bill Gates spends 1k on a armani suit where you spend 100 on a clone. Just insert your rare and commen items in for the suits.

What they need is simply a trading only town. atm you have to warp 50times to cover a good advertising spree , that doesnt include changing districts.
often you have some1 in lions arc selling a sigil(ex)or somthing for 10000 then warp to next town& som1 selling same thing for 1k .

of your many valid points the base problem is price fixing & it is possible for the large friendbase/guildbase groups.
the new scrolls for example have started at the trader for 25g, went to nearly 20p & now sitting at 2-3p , need i go into how that happens? <_<

whats needed is a central Trading hub, a place where prices are kept honest by competition.. even tho this itself is manipulated by those that dont even have items to sell..

Perhaps its all just normal for Highly Competitive trading games.

The coin is a Pretty thing , but there are always 2 sides to it.

I should just stay out of this but I can't.

There's nothing wrong with the economy. I think what has happened to prices is what they intended or worked out even better.

The game never had a 'market' like other games. Nobody is a crafter except NPC's. What weapon do you want that you can't find? If you post a where did this drop you can go find it yourself.

The very best weapons in this game are obtainable by everyone, the armor is crafted and price fixed and the best shields and Icons are usually price fixed.

The prices are not inflated because new people don't know what to sell/buy their items for, they're inflated because people are stupid enough to buy items they could easily get for themselves at an outrageous price.

I wouldn't mind at all a trading zone, it could be the one dot exception to my rule of opening the entire map.

I'm not sure what you mean by this, to tell the truth. When you say people are stupid enough to buy items at inflated prices, isn't that the same thing as saying they don't understand their item's worth?

If you mean to say that the general populace is lazy and don't want to go hunt down their weapon, then perhaps there you have a point, but must people pay such skyrocketed prices? Granted, I'm all for Capitalism and I believe that lazy people who would rather sell a lucky drop and buy a weapon with the money, rather than find the weapon themselves, should have to pay a handsome fee for their weaponry; but as of now, prices are so inflated that it takes more work and time to find the money to BUY an item you like than to get it yourself.


Thanks for the compliment.

I agree with theclam.

There is no item, or only a few items in this game that you cannot find relatively quickly if you just go out and look for it, most can be brought via npcs,

what could you possibly want that its 'worth' 100k upwards that you couldn't just go out and look for for free?

To people selling for 100K+ - why? whats the point? what do you want with all that gold? the only plausible reason i can see for wanting massive amounts of gold in guildwars is to re-sell it for RL money on ebay, and isn't that against the Terms and Conditions?

Seriously it doesn't take long to just go out and find stuff, it happens to me as i'm lvling or playing through the story, either that or a friend or guildmate will find something i need and give it me for nothing, i will do the same for them and were not talking the odd bit of crafting material here but Runes, Upgrade compnents, new weapons etc we just pass them along with absolutely no gold at all changing hands.

You wouldn't need an auction house if people weren't so greedy for a currency that is pretty much worthless although I can see how an auction house is a good idea for people not in guilds or with a large circle of guildwars-playing friends, the is an auction house in FFXI which i used to play and it worked pretty well there.

well, i have encountered bartering myself...

[story]

i decided to go and try to find a buyer for the max dmg chaos axe with no mods i had found in fissure a little while earlier. after a while i found someone and told him i was offering it at 2k. he replied that he didnt have enough gold. so he offered me 1k and a few dyes and misc items. i accepted gladly b/c imo chaos axes are pointless.

[/story]

bartering ftw!