there is this big concern that you can buy "power" with real money.
people think it works like this:
1.) buy (with real money ) gems
2.) trade them (with a player) for Ingame-Gold
3.) go to a vendor who sells Influence for Gold .
technically this is very possible BUT is it worth the effort?
you have to consider some important things, take a look at this:
let's say you want to buy "power" for WvW, in this case +40 Vitality:
-) first of all, the +40 Vitality is not for you and your friends alone, it improves the Vitality for ALL of your allies near your fort.
-) this "power" needs to be researched, you don't get it instantly. In this case the research-time is 1 day.
-) ...it costs 200
-) according to the ingame vendor (at 1:49) this equals 2 .
from wiki:
These upgrades take time to be constructed, ranging from hours to weeks, and only one can be constructed at a time, though it is possible to purchase an upgrade that allows two constructions at a time.
so a guild which want's to take a fort for themself and buy this upgrade only needs to accumulate 2 gold in one day. It is very likely that you REALLY don't have to use real money for that. You will earn gold in WvW from ingame activities. Players drop loot too.
I say: no need to worry!
Furthermore: a very important currency in WvW is "Supply". Yes, you can buy blueprints (for upgrades to your fort, siege-golems, etc.) for a small amount of ingame-gold, BUT you actually need "Supply" in order to build those. You gain supply for ingame-activities and most of the time you build something it is a group effort (you have a supply cap of 10).
PS:
take a look how fast influence is gained WITHOUT gems (no gems in the last beta event)
a very important thing we need not forget:
after all this effort you put into buying all this upgrades, the upgrades which change your power (+power, +precision,...) are ONLY active in the proximity of your fort.
Originally Posted by GW2 WikiSo go somewhere else on the map and you lose your influence-bonus. It's very likely that players are on the move most of the time, the power you buy only helps to defend a single fort. Take a look at how many forts there are on the WvW-map: