Player Gold undervalued on Guild Wars news

"50% of all active accounts have fewer than 10 platinum pieces,75% of all active accounts have fewer than 20 platinum pieces"

Um, are you serious? I get that in a month playing a dozen or so hours a week (more on weekends and vacations)... and without any botting or soloing , just henches in Sorrow's or Fissure/UnderWorld
They must not count the 15K armors, million dollar weapons, or the fact that most of the players are playing only casually since it has no monthly fee (I play casually, just as much as I can, which is often >_>).

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

EDIT:Added comments on other issues.

Comment on the section on bots:"when players use bots to farm gold around the clock...obviously unfair to the vast majority of players who play the game normally. We have no tolerance for bots."

I LOVE THEM NOW, even though I loved them before. Ban the darn botters They screw economy by flooding the market with platinum.

"These companies hire large teams of people, often working in sweatshop-like conditions for very little pay, to play Guild Wars for many hours a day in order to rake in gold and items."

I hate these employers, since it creates unfair gaming since people can Ebay their gold. I hate ebayers.

I have never had more than 30k. As soon as I had that much, I started working on 15k armor and black dye.

I maintain roughly around 10-15k... but I am down to 8k now as I pay most of the money toward my newest character and my girlfriends character's armor, runes, dyes, etc.

I just think it's pretty sad to think that people are paying hard earned cash to buy gold in Guild Wars when it serves almost no purpose. They have nothing better to do with their lives than to make their virtual self look pretty.

I do not trust statistics i didnt fake by myself.

everyone cries about money in online games yet they don't practice proper money management skills.

And btw, most people don't succeed in selling gold or anything else on ebay. Only the most dilligent make the sales.

The only time I had more than 20-30k in gold was when I was saving up for the outrageously expensive Sup Absorption and Sup Vigor. Once that was achieved, I didn't see a need to concentrate on getting rich, as fancy armor wasn't any more effective than Droknar's.

Frankly, I distribute what I make these days between developing other PvE characters and philanthropic pursuits with friends and guildmates. Personally, I'd never pay real $$$ for game gold/items/accounts, but I can see how it has become an industry in and of itself, and how it can mess up the entire in-game economy. The people who produce Eve (another online game) have been very aggressive in shutting down this sort of thing, while Anet has been quietly gathering information/proof for a future cleansing.

In the end, I suppose that Anet has to do something significant about this, but it's regrettable that they are forced into this to preserve the economy. After all, I think we'd all rather have them put all of their energy into the game, not legal pursuits.

Seems like it follows a curve:

I have 100plat in storage, my guildmates have less than 20, and then theres some people that have 1,000plat and then some.

Most I had at one time was 75-80kish.

Then I went and bought 15k armor because I found almost no use for having such a large amount of gold.

You have 100plat like me (or conversely, I have 100 plat like you) and I have been PVPing for the past month and a half. That means all the cash was racked up in a matter of a few months of playing.
I think it is all about saving money instead of buying the "best weapons" and newest thing like green items, I used 60plat to buy 2 sets of 15K and never spent more than 6K for any item from another player. I use collector gear. My warrior doesn't get 15K because 15K Warrior isn't original (considering the only one people don't wear are the ascalon sets).

I Dont trust those statistics, i have made over 400k in 2 months of play.

bought glad armor for my warrior.
Spent about 80k on other items.

Now i have just over 200k.

I PvP rarely, and I haven't spent more than 5plat at any given moment. I think it's more of a matter of how fast you get gold, and if you're trying to save up for something special.

EDIT: Considering ANet has access to the database with all the accounts(at least I assume they do, dunno how else they would go about banning bot accounts etc), I think they're a pretty reliable source on this. Most GW players don't go to forums.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=69788

Another thread on the topic.

Anyhow, I have a pretty fair amount of plat myself as I refuse to pay insane prices for items. 80k for that staff? Keep it. 100k for that widget? I'll find one eventually. All of my characters have droks armor, and that's sufficient for me. I've been playing with dyes lately, but not black or even silver. Just not that important to me, I'd rather save the cash for skills and needed runes. No, I don't need a full set of sup runes for my monk, either.

'course, it also helps joining the game a while after other friends, who donate starter cash.

I think it's sad that other people feel the need to judge whether what people are spending their money on is 'worthy' or a 'waste of time'. Particularly when they often have gross double standards...
And people that waste their lives away playing video games, what the heck are they thinking? Or posting on forums about video games, I mean there's nerdy, and then there is SUPER nerdy.

But that's just my opinion...
</Sarcasm'd FTW>

Anyway, on-topic;
I have about 130k in pure cash, unsure what the items I save are worth.
Occasionally, I buy things for fun, but otherwise, I am a very conservative spender.

This money I gained through Farming. About 20-30k of what I have is through natural play.

For people that don't farm at all, and still like to spend a little on aesthetic items, I can easily see them not having much money. Each character I created before drops were increased, and armors were assured to have certain kinds of runes and mods, before they had a 100% salvage rate, only had ~6k a piece after beating the game.

I completely trust those stats. My main account has less than 20k in it. I've been playing for 4 months. I dont have 15k or fissure armor. I just dont play 24/7 like some people do.

I'd like to know the ages of these people with 100k+ in their accounts. I'd bet the vast majority are kids that dont have a job.

Well to be honest I am 37 and an at home mum. I played this originally as a time waster then got right into the mix of things. My storage ran out of space for gold so then I had to buy another cd key just to store things. Anyhow I would just like to say that they obviously havent taken into account anything apart from gold. For the past 2 months I have been storing ecto, since I cannot store any more money on any of my accounts. The 1.4M gp per account in my view is ludacris but then again many dont need the money to begin with. Im not saying I need all this money i have hoarded, but then again it was all done legit through farming and the likes. Remember it is just a game, money is not a real issue if you dont worry about it, and it seems most of you dont. My 2 cents anyhow

that curve looks strangely familiar....

oh yeah its the curve from the ladder at wc3. and i bet if you looked at the PvP curve from GW it would look exactly the same too. (using W:L ratio).

if you guys dont have any money, just go pvp and win a few hall of hero battles. that chests drops some really good stuff.

sigils sell for about 35k, win a few of those, and whala, you got some gold.

Yes because just anyone can hop into a PUG at Tombs and win the Hall. :P

Well, I think they give us some part of the "truth".

Does this include total sum of gold per character? Or just the current amount of gold on a single character? Does it include storage moolah?

PLEASE SPECIFY. D:


Besides, like gold really matters in this game. If it did anyhow, then an auction house would like, seriously let some gold flow around alot better.

I had 140k recently, but I bought 15k Platemail and a heap of other crap (including a 2nd set of droks armor + full set of monk runes for my Mo/W), and it went down to 20k. Then I did something else which brought it down to 300g, then I found a Sup Vigor in SF, and then I bought some more unid'd stuff, so now I have 25k. My cash fluctuates all the time, I don't really feel the need to save unless I want something.

It sounds like they mean the total amount of gold on all of your characters plus storage (per account--your account includes 4 characters + 1 storage vault). Personally, I have about 45k total across all my characters, and have never seen an etco before in my life. The only reason I have so much money is because I won the hall of heroes on Friday and got a sigil.

Rico

Yeah, I seriously don't trust those statistics. I was just on for about an hour and I made about 14k. I do this on a daily basis. Do 75% of the accounts not play PvE at all?

Well, I've been playing since day one off and on, and I haven't really spent much money. At one point, I was using my bank to hold money from my entire guild for a Sigil, which we never bought. I have about 50 plat right now, and I'm debating whether to buy the top armor or not.

I have 150k in the bank and about 75-100k in items for trade after 216 hours of play. Approximately 140 hours spent on playing through the game and 80 hours of trading. Keep in mind that the only items I ever found worth of value was a black dye and a sup. healing rune (sold for a combined 20k). The rest of my money comes entirely from trading (except for about 30k from running).

When I played through with my first character, I completed all quests in every city and did all missions. By the time I reached Droknar's Forge, I could afford the armor there.

I think most people waste their money into gold sinks and for items they don't need rather than work on making more money, then complain about the fact that they're so poor. In fact, I never keep the best items I have but use ones that are "good enough". I'd rather sell my Grognar's Sword for 65k than use it on my Warrior.
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<sarcasm>I think it's sad that people spend hundreds of hours to get the amount of money that I can buy off eBay for 30 minutes of work. ($60 for 1 million from eBay)</sarcasm>

Everyone has different priorities. If it takes 30 minutes of me working to counteract your hundreds of hours of playing time, how are you to call me sad? Maybe I just like to buy perfect weapons / armor and don't want to spend countless hours farming, trading, or running to achieve that.

For the record, everyone plays GW for different reasons. Ironically, I enjoy the process of hording money rather than the spending of money (which is why I spent 1/3 of my time wheeling and dealing). No, I have not bought GW items with real money but I can empthasize with the individuals who do.
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Regarding the original post, I don't doubt for a second those stats are true. You guys have to realise that the users who visit GW sites and forums such as these are probably a very small percentage of the total GW users (such the skewed image of money since everyone here has so much).

I find it amazing that some hardcore players have difficulties understanding that most people don't spend their entire day every day playing this game.

I think the right answer is, both groups are sad.

Yes, I know one of my friends was on GW for a long time and somehow stayed quite poor until I made him come on some Orozar runs with us. I think he has done 3 or 4 and got a Razorstone, Brohns Rod, and Ragos Flame Staff. A lot of people just play GW casually, or they have too much school work.

I'm not someone who is well off nor would I ever entertain the thought of buying gold. I can almost respect the "Yeh got ta earn yer keep in this game" stance, however, the "hard earned cash" arguement always amuses me.

Not everyone's cash is hard earned not to mention people have had plenty of ways to completely waste their money on things just as intangible and transient as virtual property.

I work full time myself. Often six ten hour days a week. It costs me an hour of work to get what it would take me 100 hours of game time to accomplish. Time is money and spending one hour working is better than spending 100 hours farming blue items that I could only sell to traders for crap prices.

But back when I bought gold the economy in Guild Wars sucked so bad and the devs were doing everything they could to make it worse (or so it certainly seemed to me). Yes, I bought some gold online, because the drop rates were so damn bad at the time that I felt that I had no choice. And I didn't do it for fancy armor, not for over-inflated drop prices, but to buy the runes that I thought I needed at the time.

The whole reason that farming was such a profitable business back then is that AN went around nerfing all the easy places that people were farming. So only the "elite" farmers with the right professions knew how and where to earn a good amount of cash in short order. I had four farming spots completely killed myself. Others have had many more nerfed but do you have any idea how hard it is to find a good farming spot for an elementalist? Or, how hard it was then at least.

So what did I do as I was trying to get a 100k rune and an 80k rune after having my fourth farming spot nerfed? I went out and bought gold instead. I was against the idea to begin with. But I wasted too many hours trying to avoid it and had too many farming spots nerfed. I got pissed at AN for what seemed to me to be a ploy to keep me from ever having more than 10 plat at once.

Anyway, I'll stop ranting I guess. The point is that AN has done a lot to create their own problems with the economy. At first they didn't even have a damn trade channel. Man that was horrible!

It seems to me that they really can't blame anyone but themselves for the economic disasters that have befallen Guild Wars. But that's just my quite jaded opinion on the matter. And I have to admit that the economy has gotten much better since then, especially since Sorrow's Furnace.

But even the possibility that people really are working in "sweatshop-like conditions" for these businesses is enough to keep me, and I hope most people with half a heart, from ever buying gold online ever again. Besides, it’s not really necessary any more. (Unless you are trying to unlock skills for your pve character. )

I honestly have, and usually do have, less than 10 Platinum. To me, these are realistic numbers for a casual player not wealth obsessed.

[QUOTE=LifeInfusion]
"These companies hire large teams of people, often working in sweatshop-like conditions for very little pay, to play Guild Wars for many hours a day in order to rake in gold and items."QUOTE]


Um, what company is this, if u read this hire me please. I will work in the grimiest sweat shop ever if u pay me to play this. Honestly.

<Jetdoc gets on high horse>

I really don't understand either.

1. Gold buyers - why on earth would you want to buy gold with real dollars? Seriously...that collector's sword and shield that you can buy for 5K total is almost as good as that 100K+ sword and shield that you're wasting your money on. This isn't impatience - it is ignorance plain and simple. It's also absurd that someone would pay real dollars to gain the minor additional benefit you get from upgrading your major vigor and absportion to superiors. There's just no reason other than buying yourself peace of mind.

2. Farmers - unless you actually have FUN farming, why on earth do you do this? To get the best stuff in the game so you can farm some more? Play the game to have FUN...not to accumulate, as someone put it, virtual property. Otherwise, it becomes a chore. Try doing areas solo, without groups or henchmen. Once you beat those areas, MOVE ON. Don't go back to them, knowing you can beat them, only to accumulate gold and the like.

THIS is why people get burnt out on the game. They rush through the PvE, get tired of PvP and GvG, and then resort to wealth accumulation. And, frankly, that in and of itself cannot be satisfying.

<Jetdoc gets off high horse>

I believe this statistics. Take in mind number of PvP (mainly GvG) players. Why would they need money ? I have only 5k or so that I spend on casual guest inviting. I have no other purpose for gold.

Maybe that peace of mind is worth the $10 real money they paid for it. Some people play RPGs to achieve that "perfect god-like" status.

This argument is as pointless as getting angry at someone else for spending $100 per person on dinner.

1) It's not your money.
2) People don't have the same value for money.
3) People play GW for different reasons, aka everyone's definition of fun is different.

1) Once again everyone's definition of fun is different. Maybe they just enjoy farming.
2) To achieve "god-like status" they are willing to put in the time and effort (farming). This is no different than a person going to work so they can afford a nice house and car. Farming is merely a means to achieve a goal.
3) There's no rule that you have to play one game forever. Maybe they got their fun's worth out of the game and are finished with it. You will get burnt out from GW eventually.

I make a very good living. The tiny bit it cost me to buy plat saved me quite a bit of time farming/looking for a place to farm that wasn't nerfed to death. However, looking back on it now, it was really quite pointless and I wouldn't bother with it ever again because a few hit points and a -1 damage reduction is NOTHING. Live and learn I guess.

Besides... I wouldn't knowingly support anyone who take advantage of the poor. (That's why I don't buy Nike.)

P.S. I'm not asking you to approve of any of that. Just explaining for the purposes of comprehension as was indicated by the quote where you asked the question "why" which I tried (and obviously failed) to answer prior.

You all realize that the vast majority of players don't read forums, and even a smaller percentage post on them, so there numbers may very well be accurate. The posters here are by and large much more than casual players, that's why the numbers seem low based on your experience.

Personally I have 4 level 20 characters, so though I play only 12-15 hrs a week, I don't consider myself casual, and they have between 3plat and 20 plat on each character with none in storage.

The best thing you can do is NOT buy from players. period... Only buy from NPCs and sell to NPCs. then you do not have these artificial price hikes all the time. but that will never happen... to many people want the easy items instantly. and as long as that is the case you will be screwing the rest of us over by purchasing items from inflators that do nothing but hoard gold for resell in real world.

I have said it before and will continue to state it over and over. there is NOTHING in the game that is worth more then you can hold on character. 100k. NOTHING. Even crystalline swords. Or fell blades or whatever flavor of the month item is ATM. It doesn't matter. Either use it , or give it to a Guild member to use, or Sell it to a NPC. then, ONLY then, will markets come down to fair prices again, and allow the market to function as it used to in the beta. (AS DESIGNED)

Start reporting the botters and resellers. And stop using them. Someone is buying gold from these people, and should be SHOT for it. Or more practically. Banned for it.

Oh and to the silly comment about it not being your money being spent and the game gold is not real... bla bla bla. Arenanet gold is copyrighted material that is being traded for real world money. No matter how you slice it. Its against the RoC to cut Arena net out of the market of their own product. and against international copyright laws to boot. So if Arenanet chooses to make an issue of it they have legal precedence to do so. I would have zero problem with this if it were ArenaNet themselves doing it as a service addition to the game. but it is not. Thus it is not legal. and not a legitimate game play option either.

Arenanet however does not want this to become a legal issue. They do what they must, but have no desire to destroy their franchise over an Idiotic issue, that they solve by banning those players selling and advertising in game gold on their property. Anet is very receptive to reports of this activity. I encourage players to report them as they are found ASAP on the support pages. I have done so twice and both times seen the accounts banned.

They will not tell you this, but I found a way to track it by sticking the offending account on my friends list to watch what happens to it. Eventually it comes up, name (BANNED) in friends list, and I know my efforts were successful.

Still, even if you do make $120 an hour (which I honestly doubt), how is it sad how people enjoy to play the game? We all have our tastes, and although yours may be buying flashy weapons and armour with Ebayed gold, some of us actually PREFER to spend a lot of time "farming".

If i ever felt the need to accumulate huge sums of gold, id rather go on ebay and spend an hours wages and get easy cash than spend hours in the desert farming griffons like a moron with my W/Mo sword warrior called "Dethslayir Shaddiw Doomlerd"

But if having loads of game money makes you feel good then theres no harm in going for that goal.

I'd tend to agree.



37000 GWGuru members. 1,000,000 GW players. Less than 4% of the game population on these boards. Even if every registered member of this forum had 100k in storage, we'd still not represent an unknown 96% of the game's players.

One must also consider that not every member of these boards bought Guild Wars, as odd as that sounds.