Guild Wars 2 Economy

[Duncano]

I always liked/paid attention to this aspect of MMO's. I really enjoyed playing the AH in WoW, it was an important part of that game to me. So now Guild Wars 2 and it's economy. Right now the market is saturated after problems with the Trading Post. Obviously their plan to control the economy has gone wrong, which created even more problems due to high prices for in-game items. Purchasing power is high, but it's limited since they stopped their digital sales which means that the diffusion rate is also high. This of course affects their Gem Shop, but is it what they want? Scarce possibilities to make gold thus a higher need in gem to gold conversion?

What do you think they will do? What kind of consequences can we expect? What would you do yourself to shape up the economy in a healthy way?

[Sketch]

Well to be fair the economy in Guild Wars is still very young. I would give it some more time before making any big judgements.

[Coolit]

I think there will be plenty opportunities to make gold in the future once the market settles. It's just going to take a few weeks before it establishes itself and remember like EVE GW2 has it's own economists so I'm sure they will have designed a viable economy.

[Vexies]

Indeed right now there is going to be a huge influx of supply due to it being functional for such a short period of time. I wouldnt expect the "economy" to be anything less than volatile for next couple of months as player demand and supply push and shove it about. Given time however it will settle out and be a bit more predictable. Being on such a large scale as it is however it will be interesting to see how that plays out as it will be much harder to dominate markets.

[Deleted]

You really can't judge anything based on the first few weeks of a game release - especially when for the first 10 full days there was no TP and therefore every single person who played at release has full bags/banks/collections and wants to shift it fast for moneys.

I don't know as there's even any way to analyse the economy properly for the next month or two. There are still plenty of ways to make gold, even right now, but people are going to have to be pretty flexible to make it as it's going to fluctuate a lot.

[Herecius]

The economy of GW2 is still extremely young. The most expensive materials, as such, are the low level crafting materials. High level materials are very nearly worthless because -nobody- is using them, compared to the number of players gathering them. While there are many higher level characters, for the most part they all have only two professions, which means that while all those high level characters are gathering stuff, all of their materials are dirt cheap.

Even Orichalcrum is cheap compared to what it may very well be in the future.

[parcus]

As I said many times, the market in GW 2 won't have nearly as much scarcity as in WoW, so if people think they will make huge profits with gathering/ crafting low level gear, they are dead wrong. If you haven't been paying attention, if you level 2 character, you will likely get enough mats to lvl 4 proffessions, unless you completely ignore the trees and nodes. In other MMOs, you are stuck with 2 crafting proffessions, cannot gather the mats yourself if you feel they are expansive and even if you gather, you will barely gather enough to get yourself to the max crafting lvl. I'm not saying there won't be room for investments and such, just that gathering will never be even nearly as profitable as we are used to. They designed an economy exactly how I like it, to diminish gains from speculation and mass scarcity, and overall the economy in gw 2 makes sense (with a few exceptions as of now that will probably change as the times goes on and we get less distortions from the TP being opened late).

Only people I see could be unhappy are the people who like to be gold capped in many characters and such, it's pretty much a win to everyone else (less farming, less headaches with gold).

[Cthulhu 2020]

Controlling markets will not be a viable money maker that it was in WoW, seeing as the economy is global and the likelihood of someone else edging in on your market is really high. Learn and adapt. There are plenty of ways to make money.

A lot of players followed guides that described flipping goods by buying raw materials and turning them into something more valuable and desirable. Common ones being the gem market, glyphs, flasks, etc. where you could buy raw materials, turn them into something else via crafting, and sell them at a huge profit, and do this every day for months on end. While there is the potential for doing this in GW2, the profit margin is incredibly small.

GW2 money making will more closely mirror a true stock market, where you invest in things, buying huge amounts of "stock" that you believe will rise in price, hold onto it for awhile, and sell it once it does reach a desired price. This means there is also potential for losses. Where in WoW and other single-server market MMOs, using the control market and flip goods method was a sure fire way to make lots of money, a stock market approach is a lot riskier, but is how its done when you're dealing with goods in such high quantities.

[Duncano]

Ok, time has passed, now we can make observations. Problem persists, it's hard to make gold, I really miss WoW's AH.

[Karizee]

Best way to make gold off the TP is thru selling mats and drops.

Crafting low level gear not so much, everyone is still leveling their crafts. You can do well with crafting high level stuff though.

[carnifex2005]

Ok, time has passed, now we can make observations. Problem persists, it's hard to make gold, I really miss WoW's AH.

What problem? The Trading Post rewards those who are smart, culls people who aren't and let ordinary players make gold slowly through just playing the game and selling mats or high level gear.

I currently have 30 gold after buying 3 bank slots and 1 bag slot after playing normally for about 250 hours on my main. I've also crafted a full set of exotic gear, exotic weapons and a full set of magic finding gear as well. If I wanted to grind out gold I'm sure I could but I don't feel the need to. Making gold for simple things is pretty easy in GW2.

[Lucky_]

What problem? The Trading Post rewards those who are smart, culls people who aren't and let ordinary players make gold slowly through just playing the game and selling mats or high level gear.

Link to a great example of such a player below. Enjoy.
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...e-trading-post

[Deleted]

Ok, time has passed, now we can make observations. Problem persists, it's hard to make gold, I really miss WoW's AH.

I'm finding gold making slow going too, but it IS creeping up slowly. I think I was spoiled in WoW, where it was pretty easy to make gold because I had all maxed profs I suppose! (I'm wishing I could get a direct bank transfer from my WoW bank to my GW2 bank )
I do love the way crafting works in GW2 though - I hated a lot of the grind in WoW. Engi/bs/jc... ugh!! Running back and forth from mailbox to trainer over and over was just so frustrating!!

[KillerBuddah]

im horrible at making money in game, normally only have about 3 gold b/c of my add i guess.

[Lugor]

This game, more so than any I have played, is designed from the ground up around the cash shop. With no subscription, the only revenue stream is the gem shop. While it is not a pay to win design, the game charges you through the nose for convenience. Want extra bank space, 600 gems. An extra bag slot, 400 gems. If you want to craft the largest bag available, that will be 10 gold please. The ability to port 10 feet costs more than the highest level dynamic event reward. ArenaNet will tightly control and aggressively pursue anyone who effects the game economy and their bottom line. If you find a way to gain more currency than ArenaNet deems proper, they will happily ban you knowing you wouldn't have used the gem shop and you might buy another box to play again.

That being said, you can go from 1-80, clear the map, all story modes and your personal story without ever looking at the auction house or needing anything beyond what you get from drops. After that, everything else in the game is a grind, and they will make it go faster for 3 monthly installments of $19.95

[Cobaltius]

Ok, time has passed, now we can make observations. Problem persists, it's hard to make gold, I really miss WoW's AH.

It is way different than WoW's AH, so much saturation I have seen things on there below what a vendor would pay, people ordering things for half or less what the vendor would pay no doubt hoping as many players as possible will screw up and sell it to them, I don't think much forethought went in to making the GW2 AH.

[carnifex2005]

It is way different than WoW's AH, so much saturation I have seen things on there below what a vendor would pay, people ordering things for half or less what the vendor would pay no doubt hoping as many players as possible will screw up and sell it to them, I don't think much forethought went in to making the GW2 AH.

Yeah, I'm guessing you haven't played the game for awhile since buying anything under vendor cost in the TP was stopped about one week into the game live. All those people making bids below vendor cost are just letting their money sit in the TP like idiots. As I've said, the GW2 TP isn't for the stupid.

[Frostea23]

I've been carefully watching and using the TP market to make myself money; often just flipping items that have a large custom bid to sell price differential while also keeping track of those that have high sell rates. Then tabulating my results and using excel to track of everything. I've made roughly 90-100 gold that way so far since launch. Used much of it to buy gems for bank/bag/character slots. Requires a lot of patience, but it is a steady money maker if you watch it carefully and weigh in risk.

However, as the market matures, it is nonetheless becoming increasingly difficult to make a net profit post-15%. To be expected though with so many more players on the market than just a single server. Rather fascinating.

[Rukh]

One of the biggest issues with the GW2 economy is more fundamental to crafting and is not something that just tweaking some nobs is going to fix. because crafting includes XP, that has to be figured in to the profit of crafting. That means that farming or buying maps + labor of construction only has to be less than price of selling item + value of xp earned. If you're just looking at the value of the sold item, it will therefore always be less than the cost of the mats + construction. Because of thise, unless you're getting value from xp gain, crafting is going to be a loss for you on any recipe that is crafted for leveling.

And, because of boneheaded planning, that's pretty much all the main crafting recipes for most professions save artificing.

[Deleted]

DUSK

Y U SO EXPENSIVE

/rage