FF#61 - farming

I couldn't find a thread about this, so here goes:

http://www.guildwars.com/community/f...-friday61.html

Discuss, but keep it flame free.
Personally, I found this a very nice fansite friday. This new format of deepening out one topic is thumbs up from me.

I agree with most if not all the devs wrote in that letter. Bot users and people selling or buying in game items for real world money should get hit with the ban stick real quick and real hard.

Whether their stance regarding regular farming or not is something I can agree with largely depends on how the devs define "extreme farming". I have a lot more then 20 plat in my bank - but I don't really think I am extreme. For example, I used to farm Griffons until the devs nerfed them to hell. Personally I think the measure was too extreme for my taste. I haven't seen Griffons drop ANY nice item since ever then...

Nerfing of farming spots will always leave a bad taste in the mouth of players.
I have farmed UW with the invinci monk in the past. One could see it as 'honest farming', but I think that the sheer number of players doing it ruined it. The amount of money pumped in the economy was driving up prices and making things for new players harder. The same may have applied to the Griffon run.
Like said before: if you have a great farming spot, just keep your mouth shut. Else you may become victum of your own succes.

just my 2 cents,

Makkert

i am all for farming, heck i usually farm 90% of the time i am playing, i dont think i drive prices up though, since most of my gold is spent on new armor, or dyes for my armor and weapons,

i am well over the 20 plat mark though, ive got 200 plat in my stash and over 200 plat in bids in my latest auction on here, my newest goal is to get my stash full of gold, but i dont really see it happening any time soon, maybe before the expansion

Well, I suggest you don't buy from Mo/W koreans who dont even speak simple english. I think more than 70% of them are botters and they usually sell UN-ID Items

If they are so strict against bots, how come the same "GW gold" company keeps spamming their gold over and over and over even in presearing and Tombs since almost 2 weeks already, annoying everyone to hell? Of course, they keep changing the character names, but it shouldn't be hard to find the account(s) they belong to and ban them ... if they kept banning the accounts, how long would it be still financially profitable for the botters to buy new accounts?

Why has nothing been done about all the chinese farmers who used to camp Ember Light Camp, and have recently moved to Augury international districts? Of course it could be all real people working in sweatshops and playing those accounts, but it's more likely that there is also botting involved (the amount of gold items they are selling ... knowing how bad the drops are...).

So far it seems to me that ANet has been mainly nerfing the enjoyment of farming for the "normal" players like they call us. The bots will get their gold, at a slower pace, even if certain mobs just drop wings and nothing else ... it's the NORMAL players that are punished, because they they lose ways to acquire cash for their armor/dyes/etc.

That is so sad ...

This made me lol. Since when is playing video games out of the home
all day considered 'Sweatshop-like conditions?' Some people play around
the clock regardless if they're being paid to or not.

I conditionally support this. I fully agree with the crackdown on bot's
and botters. It exists in every MMO, and it's (IMO) a bigger problem in
itself than invincimonk farming ever could be. Because the invincimonk
can DIE. Most bot programs have a script that can enable the character
to heal nearly any amount of damage, which enables it to continue farming.

That's what I support. Now the counterpoints:

And if Anet is defending 'the common player' as they claim to be, why did
the cost of obtaining skills spike through the roof? Sure it's great early on,
when they only cost 40-60 gold, but your skill points are limited early on,
and you have to be quite choosy, and might be denied some of the skills
you wanted to have. Sure you can buy them later on. once you've gained
a level or a skill point or two, but it's usually at an increased cost. Which
means you have to go out and kill more monsters and loot more chests,
which may raise your level even higher. Raising the cost more yet again.
Anet may have created their own 'vicious cycle' for 'the common player'
without even knowing it.

The next item on my agenda: Items for cash/'Keeping the economy in
check.' Firstly, I support items for cash. And frankly, I don't see why
Anet is going after it like they are. A cursory glance of every other MMO
out there shows that the same situation exists. Items for Ragnarok, EQ,
hell, even Diablo (pun fully intended) are constantly for sale online. It
enables people to acquire the items/gold they want without paying far
more for it in game currency. 400k for 40 ecto or 5 bucks on Ebay?
Duh. And if they're going to prattle on about how they 'constantly monitor
the in-game economy,' they might want to have a little more to show for
it. All I've seen thus far is mop-up work. Like when Black Dye spiked to over
30k a vial. That went on for days before Anet finally reset it. I realize this
may have been intentional to allow 'the common player' to make some extra
money by selling the black dye he got by luck a couple days back, but
on the same token it encourages more of the same farming that they are
trying to discourage/prevent. Just another vicious cycle.

Some items will always be out of reach of 'the common player.'
But to offer another perspective; just how badly does 'the common player'
NEED that perfect sundering hilt or FoW armor? If they're just a casual
gamer (or 12), they might not have the same level of use for an item that
a dedicated gamer would. Rare items are, just that. Rare items. Players are
more than justified to charge the amounts they do for what they have. They
had to find the item, get lucky enough to have it ID as perfect, and get
DOUBLY lucky to get the item off of a salvage. *An increasingly difficult
feat as time goes on it seems* The high price reflects the quality of the
item and helps to cut down on people trying to lowball for a good item.

You wouldn't go into a Prada store and whip out the Food Stamp card
and expect to get anywhere. Don't just play casually for a few hours a
week and expect to be an u83r 1337 h4xx0r with g0d1y 5hi7.

It won't happen. And it shouldn't.

There. I got everything I wanted to say down and I didn't rant.

Regards,
Sister Rosette.

or 12? from my experience the people wandering around with black FoW armor and a sundering Crystalline sword of pruning act as if they are 12. the young children are MORE capable of over farming. adults have to work. 12 year olds bearly get homework. the people who think about what they are doing and have some idea of manners tend to use unimpressive items. they prefer to impress with skills.

and the sweatshop thing. i'm sure that farming the same place going the ame route witht the same skills the same way for hours a day, days a week and weeks a month. i'm sure you will get tired of it in under a week.

I haven't farmed much in a while. I only did it to unlock runes. Now that faction is good, I don't see the need for it.

Here's an article about game sweatshops from 1UP.

The common player plays the quests. The quests give almost all the non-elite skills for FREE. The only part of the skill cost increase I disagree with is the Signet of Capture. That should still be cheaper because it would provide the option to do some extra work to get even a non-elite skill for a lower price.

The reason buying things on Ebay sucks isn't because of the economy. It's because it kills the feeling of accomplishment from acquiring an item. It really sucks for players to finally get the fissure armor or perfect crystalline sword or whatever only to find $5 on Ebay would have gotten them it in ten minutes. Why bother playing the game then?

I don't think they ever mentioned that some items shouldn't be rare, nor that players shouldn't be able to charge whatever they want. But there's a difference between selling an item for 100k, which any dedicated player could conceivably acquire in a reasonable amount of time, and selling it for 10,000k that only an extreme farmer/exploiter could get if things were allowed to get out of hand. It isn't that the rare items shouldn't be rare, but they need to appear reachable to that average player, so he has motivation to continue.


Quote from the FF:
My guess is they think it will be more effective to close a huge number of accounts at once rather than nailing them one at a time. Or they might be taking advantage of them being there now to analyze their activity to figure out how to identify them quickly before they start cracking down.

Good points, and I offer this little rebuttal before I nod off:

Then they would cease to be 'the common player,' and take a step up
to being more committed.

When's the last time you ever heard of anyone managing to sell anything
at that price? The highest bids/prices I've ever seen have actually been
on this site. Not GW itself.

Precisely. The point is that it looks acheivable to them.

Exactly, and Arenanet is saying that the reason they step in and change things now and then is to keep it that way.

You average couple of hours an evening player doesn't:

A) Win the HoH for sigils
B) Farm areas over and over
C) Spend hours spamming in LA or Droknors selling drops
D) Buy and sell items as commodities from traders

Those four actions, on average, are the ways players become uber rich. Casual players don't engage in those activities. They go through the game and spend whatever cash they manage to aquire on armor upgrades, dyes, runes, etc.

GW has over 1 million players, and obviously the vast majority of them are the "average" player that doesn't worry about cash. Yesterday I was with a PUG going from Copperhammer Mines to Granite Citadel, and along the way I common Wingblade sword (not even blue, a straight white item, no mods) dropped. I picked it up intending to sell it at a trader for it's 20gp (waste not want not) and one of the players asked if they could have it. I said, "Why, it's basically worthless" but he still wanted it anyway. I shruged my shoulders, and dropped it on the ground. One of the other members of my party thought it was a hugely generous action on my part.

There are plenty of people that simply play the game without considerations of getting fissure armor, or 15K armor, or sundering fellblades of genocide. How is that sad? What is more sad - people that don't have a ton of cash, or the idiots paying 500K for a sword that is little different than one you can get from a collector, damage-wise? Or that people have that much cash in a game that doesn't require huge bank accounts to play? A collector's ascalon bow gotten from Mineral Springs is just as effective as any other bow in the game. Is it's worth tied simply to looks? Isn't that stupid? Honestly?

"Not fun" to be able to buy any item in the game from NPC traders rather than have to spam endlessly in order to acquire it?

Incorrect.

Putting every item in the game on NPC vendors would make Guild Wars be infinitely more fun.

Of course they don't really need "every" variant, just the non-crap variants, of which there are not that many.

Or, simply sell the "variants" themselves from NPC vendors and let the player stick them on what he wants.

And it would also help a lot at reducing the bot problem.

What really is not fun, is having to use the horrible trade system to try and buy or sell anything to other players. For this reason, participating in the "player-driven economy" is not fun. It's a headache.

I agree with everything said in this FF.

I know most of the farmers cant get over it when they tone down the areas, but that is their problem.

They seemed to have "un-nerfed" the underworld though.

lol that article makes me think 2 things....

if they are so against it (selling items etc) when i look on ebay and see 99 pages of matches for guildwars items i think either "liars" or "terrible job".

there are no rare items on guild wars becasue everyone has them or access to them.

While it's been improved somewhat, getting what you want has been an endless series of dice rolls. Bad news is, the dices are loaded against you so either require a lot of patience, a lot of luck, or deep pockets.

First problem is getting something of max quality to drop in the first place, then you need the attribute type to match up with what you run, then there's the mods being something you actually want.

This is further complicated by another random factor of salvaging upgrade components. It'd be one thing if it was only easier to get good components off of bad weapons, but that's not always the case. Because components are a pain to get, Collector's gear is good, but still needs work to make up to snuff.

This crap shoot factor when it comes to outfitting yourself in PvE does encourage a player based economy. But given the nature of player based economies, it's hard for players to get what they want for a stable price. So in a way, the random nature of obtaining gear also encourages players to buy Gold from eBay.

At least, that's my theory. If the game fails at delivering content to average players, then average players will turn to abnormal players. Making it harder to farm doesn't hurt the farms as much as give them more customers.

The problem is, exclusive items encourage the secondary market (IE: Gold Sellers/Buyers), but removing exclusive items will further piss off the people who thought Guild Wars was going to support their need for overpriced trinkets and baubles.

Anet is, unfortunately, in a pretty crappy situation right now.

In my experience farming is overrated, or maybe I just have terrible luck?

I have easily, EASILY, killed over a thousand Trolls outside Droks, with just 3 characters, Alesia, Lina, and my N/W. This includes the named ones and the occasional Avicara, reward?

3 Crappy golds....(I don't keep track of purples or anything else, if it's purple or less, and the mod isn't good, it's vendor fodder). Some keys and about 98679869869689 Raven staves and Troll tusks. Off of all this work (about a week of non stop farming) I made enough money to get 2 of my characters 1.5k armor, this was combined with selling a few things I had already that I did not attain by farming.

Also, I have farmed the ever loving hell out of Grenths footprint, 5 characters, just the henchies and I. I kept count of how many times I killed each one of the Bosses..here goes.....

Flint Fleshcleaver: 36 times = 0 Greens
Thorgall Bludgeon Hammer: 29 times = 0 Greens
Wroth Yakslapper: 32 times = 0 Greens
Gargash Thornbeard: 35 times = 0 Greens
Gorrel Rockmolder: 29 times = 0 Greens
MORGRIFF SHADESTONE: 50 times = ZERO GREENS! ( I went out of my way to look for him since I wanted his crap for my Necro.)

How many Greens have I gotten in the 6 PuG farm groups I've been in?
1
Selling all the crap I got from this netted me my 15k armor for my Ele (I made Geomancer armor so the materials aren't all that expensive), but that's only because I got lucky as hell with chests and got a + 30 bow grip and a + 20% longer staff grip.

That's another thing, chests, I think out of the around 50 or so chests I've opened between CD,SP,RoF I've gotten 1 good item and two items with good mods, the rest were crap or purple.

So over about 150 hours or more of farming in two very high level zones, killing mobs from 24-28 and thats all I've gotten? Including chests?
All I can say is WTF, I must be cursed, or am doing something wrong, or farming is not as bad as people think it is.

And I also hate people who sell something that is "perfect" for 200-500k, wtf is this? I have something that is 2% off from perfect but now it loses like 200k from the price tag? If I can even sell it at all? And collectors items are sometimes as good or better than golds/greens people sell, so why the hell buy these outrageously priced items? Because its gold/green? /laugh at the morons who do =/

This is just sheer greed and stupidity, because in real world economics, if the market is flooded with an item....its price drops. If there is too much money in the system, inflation kicks in and a loaf of bread costs 30 bucks. In GW we have both going on at the same time.

There have been several expose' articles written about MMORPG bot-shops, mostly based out of southeast Asia. These shops run multiple PC bot clients which farm endlessly, and the people watching/maintaining their full time operation are paid pennies a day. The conditions truely are sweat-shop, with the sewing machines being replaced by PC's. They sell their virtual goods on e-bay at roughly 100plat for $5.00 USD.

Make no mistake -- the bot workers are not kids at home being paid to play. They are desparate individuals trying to make a living in any way possible but are being exploited by their employers.

sounds you're whining because people have better items than you, which devalues the dime-a-dozen garbage that you would be trying to sell for 200k, if you could. at the same time, you're a hypocrite because people are "morons" for buying "outrageously overpriced" items that are no better than collectors items, while you're paying 10x more to buy 15k armor, which is no better than droknar's armor.

the difference is, they HAVE the money to buy "outrageously overpriced" items, and to them, it's not overpriced. they can afford it. a bentley isn't any better functionally at driving on roads than a ford focus, but if you have so much money that you don't even know what do with it anymore, why the hell would you buy a ford focus? it's not like this is the real world where you need to invest and manage your budget. you can blow it all in one place, on one thing if you want, that's part of the fun of it being a game.

you should have learned by now how this economy works. the PURCHASERS have the money. the purchasers have the buying power. their budget decides the "value" of items. sellers don't choose to sell their perfect items for 200-500k, other people OFFER that much.

there are countless thousands upon thousands of 12%/13%/14% swords/axes/hammers/bows. they aren't rare... they aren't desirable, they aren't worth anything. there are more in the game than there are people who want them. when you've got 500k, or 2 million, why would you buy some 13% weapon for 2k?

Now that's not true. Those weapons are just fine and worth something (2k?) to the common player. Anyone with any amount of skill can and will use one of those weapons or offhands and do better than most people who must have a popular sprite.

Now that's true. If you have mega-bucks and you want to own the 'Sprite of the Day' then you have the economic muscle to do so and why not? Nothing else to spend cash on really, so that's just fine.

There should be a definite difference clarified between having a max item/mod with the rarest type of skin and the fact that 1 or 2% off of that max is just fine and will work great. Think of the idiots in 1.5k armour with the uber weapons who can't put a skill set together to save themselves. Skills, not items really make this game.

No actually that is good. It means people have a life and not spending all their time on GW.

Actually, their numbers as presented here are highly inaccurate. I fall in that 25% category which has more than 20 plat in their storage (currently at 80ish plat, down from 150 plat back when I traded materials).
Before I sold the sup vigor rune I got in halls it was 30 plat. Would I not have sold that rune and had I given away 30 plat, I suddenly would be in the 50% catergory that has less than 10 plat.
That is misrepresenting my actual "wealth". I also have 9 ectos in my storage; worth, I believe, another 70 plat or so. I'm not even counting my dye collection.

You don't have to have 1 million in the bank to be a millionaire, is what i'm trying to say.

Only have to comment on the REAL structure of the game. Notice you only got an install disc? The only thing that is stored on your computer is maps. Once you sign in you are in ANET's hands. Game is completely server side. Anything you do they will know.

When I played this game in June 04' I loved Anets strategy to pull this great game off for free. I liked more it was server side and would be streamed with updates. Being server side would be harder to hack. If you do they will know..lol.

I am completely against selling or buying in-game merchandise from stores. After reading about the underground market of MMO in-game "shops." Not playing a game for some guy to get super rich in real life while slowly killing the game I really enjoy. Unfortunatly it will never go away. Real life money will always drive people. Happy that Anet is ready for them.

i am against people buying in game stuff on ebay, and i think they should be banned for it, however, i think it is kind of silly to call them "sweat shops", that term usually refers to dangerous work, so unless they are beating them while they are playing their computers, then i dont really think it applies, also they arent making much less than people with other jobs in those areas,

the biggest joke is saying they are making "pennies on the dollar" of what the company brings in, ok, the restaurant i work at got about $30,000 in sales today, in 8 hours i made $68.00, so i am not getting anywhere close to ONE penny for every dollar they made, i must be in a sweatshop too!

all in all, people buying GW stuff on ebay is not fair, i dont like it, and i wouldnt waste my money on it, but the kids have jobs like anyone else over there does, so its not like they are working them selves to death for nothing

I've said it before, I'll say it once more:
Don't hate the player, hate the game.

If you believe that you NEED the perfect weapon, I guess Guild Wars really isn't suitable for you.
If you believe that you WANT the perfect weapon, pay the price buddy, cos if you don't, someone else will.

That's not what they are saying. They aren't talking about wealth, they were talking about gold. It was a general statement as to how much gold the general population has, not how much all of the items they are carrying is worth.

Well, all I can say is that I'm pretty tired of farming and of the trade system. I've been playing the game since it began and I've never had more than $50k at any one time. I'm still trying to save for that sup absorption rune for my warrior but quite frankly, 100k seem sooo far off. I've played in FoW and UW, I've played the new areas, I've had very little luck w drops. So it's getting pretty frustrating. The economic model just isn't working for me.

You dont NEED max everything to win in the arenas. Your skills will make 100x more difference than taking 1 less damage per hit.

you are wrong period.

i am glad you live in such a nice fuzzy world that you dont even know what a sweatshop is.....happy for you.

being at a sewing machine sewing for pennies per 16 hour day is not dangerous so i guess all the yelling about sweatshop clothes is phoney......right?

being at a pc for a 16+ hour shift is not playing a game when it is your only way to get enough food to survive..........but it is not dangerous except for carpel tunnel but what the heck


it all depends on what you can get with that money.

did you spend all of it on food and still be hungry?

or did you have extra to spend on yourself?

think that's what's wrong with most of the people who post about this is they want a cookie cutter laid out for them (and I'm also not sure if aol can access google).. for example- if your going to do trolls in the cave you'll notice all those raven staffs and bows drop alot.. those salvage with a normal kit sometimes 10 wood a pop- wood is sold in drokars easy.. or you could take it to the mat trader outside fort ranik and make it into parchment for even more profit- so you end up cheating yourself over double the money.. same with any farming spot- if you don't find out what's profitable your just wasting time

also find a spot you can solo.. hate to say it as it contradicts alot of these posts but money is easy to make in gw.. it's really about how fast you can make it not that you can't

Yep, I've been playing WAY less than the guy you quoted, not past ascention yet, and am not really a very skilled player and I've got about 35k in the bank. It'll be about the fourth time I've hit that mark - the other three times I started a new character and bought it armor and dyes dropping me to below 20, about four times I've done the same at 20k dropping me to 10k. I've made, at least, 100k since I started I just spend like mad on dyes and other crap I don't need (such as full armor/runs for a character I delete in a few hours). But I have more moeny than I need and enjoy doing that.

I have one or two areas I "farm" when I feel like making money or am bored with other things - I make one run when I start and one run when I quit. Theyre not particularly high level areas (notice the no char ascended part - got several in the desert and the henchies aren't making the missions too easy and I refuse to be ran further than I can get to by myself). I use a monk that aggros a bunch of mobs, has mending and a constant healing breeze (watch my energy and recast when I need too), then casts Balthazaurs aura and symbol of wrath and hope it kills everything before they kill me (it usually does, just have to be careful how many mobs I aggro). I get anywhere from 2k-4k on each run, about 10 minutes per run if I'm watching TV at the same time. Sometimes I get lucky with an major rune of something that sells good or a dye. The use of a single henchie DRASTICALLY drops the amount of money I make, down to well below 1k per run. Heck, I'm better off solo farming the stone things around sardalec sanitarium than making runs in the kryta region with my monk and one henchie.

To me, that's the whole problem with the farming thing. It should be around as effective to farm with henchmen or other players as it is to go solo. If it was, all the complaints about the latest solo build that mows through area X or the latest monster that has absurdly good drops for some reason wouldn't be all that important, because any random player could grab some henchmen and do reasonably well. Plus, it's just not fun to fight lower level monsters. I used to run through some of the areas in Kryta now and then to get some runes and weapon upgrades but it just got boring mowing through parties of undead with only a couple spells. Nowadays I run through Sorrow's Furnace or Hell's Precipice but it's frustrating because in order to get the challenge that makes it fun for me to kill monsters for an hour I have to sacrifice a whole lot of loot.

I've bought one thing and one thing only off ebay, and that was a shield. Didn't even need to do that, but it was more for experimental purposes than anything else. I'll never buy anything else off there.

I have 500k in savings. I earned every last gold coin myself. I don't need the money, but I enjoy farming because it's a good way to test mix and match skills and just pass away a few hours if I have nothing else to do. Farming is far from dead. I can go to spots and make 20k a day consistently if I feel like it. The majority of rares I find, I either give them to guildies or sell to merchant. A guildie needed a superior Smiting rune the other day. I told her here, you can have this sup. Protection I just found and maybe trade it with somebody. That blew her mind, but for me it was only taking up space anyway. I almost never use the trade channel. I've been to UW twice ever, and FoW once. Didn't care for either, and haven't been back since. I have 1.5k Droknar's armor and I'm happy with it. I have no "perfect" weapon except for the Bludgeoner I bought for 10k at War Camp. I have over 180 dyes in storage, 11 of them black. Got a black dye today from the low-level undead in Gates of Kryta, and I've even gotten one from Charr before. I used to solo Talus Chute some, but as already noted, over 50% of all drops there are Raven Staves, so it's a total waste of time. There are much better places to make money than that.

I farm to kill time and keep my mind off things. It's easy for me to lose myself for a few hours doing so. I just happened to get rich in the process. I don't need ebay gold or anything. The game gives you all the skills you need to make money. Your only challenges are to find good spots and figure out a build that lets you solo for the loot.

no, i do know what a sweatshop is, a little child using a sewing machine IS dangerous, a little child using a computer IS NOT, if you would actually read one of the reports about it that is not biased against it, maybe you would have some sort of idea what you are talking about

some links
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/inter...436411,00.html

http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager....=1&cId=3141815

a quote from the end of 2nd link

"They get paid dirt. But dirt is good where they live."

These farming threads are quite interesting to me. I have found myself many times wanting badly to solo farm and have finally leveled out a monk for that purpose. However, my long time character is a ranger, and contrary to what others have said about farming with henchies not being profitable, since I started playing (around July) I have acquired around 500-600k from just that. Granted, a substantial portion of it was from uber green drops that were in high demand at the time, but it can happen. Now my only problem is that I need to stop buying and actually save some.

Thanks for the FF; it is much appreciated!

William Auric
Knights of the Alliance
http://www.allianceknights.net

right.

so what you are saying is multiply the existing drops by the number of people in the party?

i had to laugh when you stoop to choose the guardian as a source.

i am sure they actually checked the conditions described so sunnily.

maybe you should google some of the chinese or other country articles on the subject.

and why would a bunch of articles showing how bad it really is be the biased ones?

you seem to be saying it isnt really bad and i have a guardian article to prove it so any other point of view has to be biased.

after all we KNOW the guardian is completely without bias on its staff......

Ok let me start off by saying, the tone of the last part of my post was bordering on idiocy because I was highly pissed off that I could not sell a 3% from perfect sword, while others charge 500k for something 3% better and sell stuff all the time. (the 3% wasn't all on one stat, it was spread out, making it a bit better imho)
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Now...
"sounds you're whining because people have better items than you, which devalues the dime-a-dozen garbage that you would be trying to sell for 200k"
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I admit, I was angry so I lost my cool and sounded stupid instead of putting things more maturely. No I don't care if people have better items than me, I just think its illogical for anyone other than the super rich to spend such huge amounts of money on 3 % or 2%.

And I wasn't trying to sell it for 200k, thanks for making that assumption. I sold a +30 hp bow grip for 20k, when I see them go for 50k all the time, because I don't like feeling like a rip off.
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"at the same time, you're a hypocrite because people are "morons" for buying "outrageously overpriced" items that are no better than collectors items, while you're paying 10x more to buy 15k armor, which is no better than droknar's armor."
--------------------------------
Lets look at the defenition of the word hypocrisy, shall we?

hy·poc·ri·sy ( P ) Pronunciation Key (h-pkr-s)
n. pl. hy·poc·ri·sies
The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess; falseness.
An act or instance of such falseness.

So based on the defenition of the word, how was I a hypocrite? I was BUYING 15k armor from a NPC vendor (not to mention at the time, I did not know that it's stats were not any better, which you could not have known, I never had droks armor, so I didnt know the stats were the same). Now if I was selling items for insane prices, that were not much better, THEN I would be a hypocrite. But as things stand I wasn't charging insane prices for a few %, I was buying an item from an NPC for MYSELF, and I didn't know any better.
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"the difference is, they HAVE the money to buy "outrageously overpriced" items, and to them, it's not overpriced. they can afford it. a bentley isn't any better functionally at driving on roads than a ford focus, but if you have so much money that you don't even know what do with it anymore, why the hell would you buy a ford focus? it's not like this is the real world where you need to invest and manage your budget. you can blow it all in one place, on one thing if you want, that's part of the fun of it being a game."
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Just because you have the money to buy an item doesn't mean it's not overpriced, it just means you have the money to buy the overpriced item. Overpriced as in, charging more then the item should LOGICALLY be worth (thats what pisses me off about all this, not who can buy what, it's the fact that from a logical standpoint 2% better performance is not enough to justify paying 10x the amount for an item, IMHO.) Why would I buy the Ford focus? Because I care about function not glamour.

Your argument is based on the premise that I care what the super rich minority of GW do with their money. Mine is based on the fact that UNLESS you are super rich, 2% is not worth 480k more, if the super rich want to buy super overpriced crap, because they can afford the to pay for the 2%, woot for them. I just think it's stupid, and I would never do it. Thats the whole point of what I said, It's my opinion, I'm not trying to make people lose money or telling them what to do with their money, I'm stating MY opinion about what they do with their money. And what I WOULD NOT do. OPINION.

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"there are countless thousands upon thousands of 12%/13%/14% swords/axes/hammers/bows. they aren't rare... they aren't desirable, they aren't worth anything. there are more in the game than there are people who want them. when you've got 500k, or 2 million, why would you buy some 13% weapon for 2k?"
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I'm not talking about what the super rich do or don't do, I'm saying that 2% better is in my opininon not worth 380k more. This is ESPECIALLY TRUE with GREEN ITEMS. I don't mean a "perfect" sword, I mean cheifly Green items. Most of the Shiverpeaks and even some of the Crystal Desert collectors items are statistically better than most of the Green items. So what are people paying for? A Graphic, which to me is illogical. BUT if you have the money whatever.

And as Fyre Brand said, saying there are thousands upon thousands of lesser items that are worth "nothing" is sophistical or just plain untrue. You're saying a weapon that is perfect in every way but is 14% dmg hp> 50% and 29 hp is worthless crap? Ok buddy if you say so! Not only that but I was TOLD, that these "perfect" weapons do not actually even drop, or most of the time, people MAKE them. Let's see....Max dmg sword with 15 > 50 how much would this be worth? 100k? Hp + 30 pommel, what 100k? Sundering 10/10, , about 65k? So some of these people make items that cost them 265k and then sell em for 500k? Gotta make a profit but jesus, its misleading and a rip off.

I didn't make it clear that I'm angry because it's illogical, it sounded like I was just bitching mindlessly. But that doesn't excuse ad hominem and sophistry, I'm sorry if you don't agree with my opinion.