Are you enjoying the endgame?

[Remilia]

Those game mechanics are typically not "free" in other MMOs. Nor are they included in the sub fee.

To quote myself:

"In the end it just takes time to get gold to get item(s) & upgrades. Does it matter if I am paying 100g to Paris Pilton in Shattrah [sp? whatever] or the Black Lion NPC?"

The difference is real life money vs in game money. If you buy gems via gold, someone is paying real life money for you to get your stuff. If you just use gold to purchase the same thing, you are paying it yourself. That's what I've been saying the whole time. Someone is paying it, it isn't 'free'. As opposed to in game gold which is just poking at how much you want to farm.

[Fencers]

The difference is real life money vs in game money. If you buy gems via gold, someone is paying real life money for you to get your stuff. If you just use gold to purchase the same thing, you are paying it yourself. That's what I've been saying the whole time. Someone is paying it, it isn't 'free'. As opposed to in game gold which is just poking at how much you want to farm.

What does it matter though?

The process of farming the thousands of plat I need to fully load out my bank in Rift was the same as in GW2. I farmed some events/dungeon and walked over to an NPC and bought the extra slots.

If I had bought gems to sell for gold to get gear- all I did was save myself some farming time. Convenience, paid.

The interface of buying a bank slot is the only difference of merit to an end user.

[Remilia]

What does it matter though?

The process of farming the thousands of plat I need to fully load out my bank in Rift was the same as in GW2. I farmed some events/dungeon and walked over to an NPC and bought the extra slots.

If I had bought gems to sell for gold to get gear- all I did was save myself some farming time. Convenience, paid.

The interface of buying a bank slot is the only difference of merit to an end user.

If no one buys gems to sell, no matter what you do, you can not obtain said upgrades.

It
is
real
money.

The emphasis on real.
No matter what method you are to obtain it, someone is paying it for you. That is the whole point.
It's not 'free'. It's costing something, in this case real money.
ANet is receiving money from someone, not just receiving bandwidth bills.

People keep thinking, 'oh, you can get it for just gold', but it cost someone money to sell it to you. It isn't free.

Gem selling gives the buyers the illusion that it's free, which in reality it isn't.

[Fencers]

If no one buys gems to sell, no matter what you do, you can not obtain said upgrades.

Very unlikely the gem supply will ever dry up. Very.

Gem selling gives the buyers the illusion that it's free, which in reality it isn't.

But it is free to the gold payer. To the gem seller, they are getting the gold & time saved. It obviously works both ways.

The difference means nothing to the most players.

Yes, and that's my point. You can't exactly give them credit for "removing the grind" when they just removed the content.

Umh. Wouldn't exactly say I am giving Anet credit for removing grind. I will say the Guild Wars games to date have little required or mandatory grind. The series also does not have a bimodal endgame, or any endgame actually.

Those things weren't really in the series to begin with.

Still aren't to a degree. I'm thinking of GWAMM, Oby and Armageddon/legendary gear.

[Remilia]

Very unlikely the gem supply will ever dry up. Very.

But it is free to the gold payer. To the gem seller, they are getting the gold & time saved. It obviously works both ways.

The difference means nothing to the most players.

I stated 'if' for a reason. Just to outline that if no one does the precedent, you won't get any of the goodies that comes with it.
At a certain point the gem supply will dry up at some point.
Either the population of people who buy and sell gems is leaving. If people that were buying gems and selling them no longer need gold. If gold inflation occurs much quicker that you don't need to even bother selling gems.
The amount of people that sell gems is vastly lower than the people that are buying gems. Why a lot of people keep saying and talk about how GW2 is B2P.

To the gem seller they're also losing money in their pocket, to them they're losing money that they earned in real life. Just cause there's a positive doesn't mean the negative is null.

[Fencers]

Again, very unlikely. Convenience is a powerful motivator for laying down real dollars.

[Riavan]

Again, very unlikely. Convenience is a powerful motivator for laying down real dollars.

Yeah, except they've built the game around huge goldsinks, and making ways to get gear/upgrades or purchase things a real grind, making sure people can't farm for too long etc, making sure the value of gold is kept high, so people will waste more rl money on buying gems and > gw2 gold.

Don't stick up for arenanet too much, it's not just convience, its most of the end-game gameplay.

It's truely the 1 thing I hate in guild wars 2, I'd much rather be paying a subscription than having gameplay kicked in the face so arenanet can make money with their cash shop.

[Awe]

People are not talking about the same thing here. No one is criticizing the fact that everyone has access to everything. That is fantastic and absolutely necessary for a cash shop of this magnitude to be tolerated by western costumers. The exact same identical cash shop has been in many FTP asian MMO's like PWI/Jade Dynasty for many years and it works great. No one is arguing that.

The issue is not the cash shop itself, it is the conversion of real dollars into gold and visa versa. In GW2 gold=dollars, there is no arguing that.

Now that would not be a big issue in a game like WoW where gold will not get you very far at all, however in GW2 you can do nearly everything relying purely on gold. That does not sit well with some people, no arguing that either.

It does not sit well with some people either that some others get instantly what they farm weeks and weeks for.


Now, the person above me said that the cash shop is optional in GW2. That is false. Gold=dollars in GW2. The moment you have gold in your bags, you have cash shop currency in your bags. It is the exact same thing. Whether you use it to shop in the cash shop or not, all the gold you generate is part of the economy.

WoW does have a cash shop, but it is very much separated from the in-game economy. You can have a cool sparkly pony to ride on if that makes your boat float with real cash, or you can farm ashes of alar with real effort if that is what you like. You have the freedom to choose between the two, but in no way can you get ashes with cash, or a pony with gold.

On top of that, gold in WoW does not even get you remotely close to BiS gear, contrary to GW2.


GW2 is a fantastic beautiful game, but the D3-esque economy certainly takes it's toll on it's quality.

One MMO which I think has the best economy out of all MMO-s I have experienced is EVE Online. And relating to your post, in EVE also ISK (game's currency) = real money. Officially sanctioned. In EVE you can buy a PLEX which serves as a game card. You buy PLEX for real money and you get an item which you can use in game to extend your account. It basically works like a game time card. The trick however is that you can also sell/transfer/trade this PLEX to other players and thanks to this you get a real money value applied to virtual currency. If you are wealthy enough and can earn ingame money fast enough, you can just keep buying those and never spend a penny on subs fee. If you need a quick ingame cash boost, just buy some PLEX and sell it in game. Furthermore, as in EVE you can permanently loose stuff when someone ganks you, there were incidents where players lost a thousand dollar worth PLEX stacks and those things are not refundable. Yet all this still does not prevent EVE to have an awesome economy which for many is a main attractor to this game. Just pointing this out to show that gold=dollars economy does not have to always mean the game's failure.

[Deleted]

In GW2 gold=dollars, there is no arguing that. [...] Gold=dollars in GW2. [...] On top of that, gold in WoW does not even get you remotely close to BiS gear, contrary to GW2. [...] GW2 is a fantastic beautiful game, but the D3-esque economy certainly takes it's toll on it's quality.

It would appear to me that you are somewhat confused here.

Dollars, also known as real-life money, is a currency used in the living world. It is not an in-game currency.
Gold is a currency used for purchasing certain things from vendors in GW2. It is an in-game currency.
Gems are a currency used for purchasing certain things from the gem store in GW2. It is an in-game currency.

Now that we have those three facts stated, let's look at how they can be converted.

Gold can be converted into gems.
Gems can be converted into gold.
Dollars can be converted into gems.

These are the only conversion options available. As we can see, dollars can be converted into gems, and by extension into gold. However, another thing we notice is that gems and gold can not be converted into dollars. This means the conversion of dollars into gems is a one-way transfer.

Thus, gold does not equal dollars, because no matter how much gold you have, you cannot extract dollars from it. Comparing it to D3's economy (as you did) is far from accurate considering D3 has a two-way conversion between dollars and gold in the form of the "RMAH", or Real Money Auction House, where you may sell your virtual items for real money and get it deposited into your bank account.

Finally, regarding your comment that gold doesn't get you anywhere near BiS gear in WoW, I would remind you of the numerous actual BiS items that have dropped as BoE in raids and sold on the AH - for gold. As a very quick example, the Sash of Relentless Truth from Dragon Soul.

[Deleted]

gold can not be converted into dollars

Actually i can! Goldsellers make money from doing it! I've sold gold for money in GW2 and all gold i buy are from goldsellers. So that proves my point!

[Deleted]

Actually i can! Goldsellers make money from doing it! I've sold gold for money in GW2 and all gold i buy are from goldsellers. So that proves my point!

I'm not even going to dignify that with a proper response.

[Thelxi]

What does it matter though?

It does not matter to you, but that doesn't mean it doesn't matter to everyone else.

Essentially whenever you mine a node, you mine ~0.03$.

[Deleted]

I'm not even going to dignify that with a proper response.

No need since your hypothesis is faulty to begin with. Gold can be converted to dollars inofficially even though it's bannable it's still an conversion

[Deleted]

it's bannable

Oh, so you do realize part of the reason it isn't applicable?

[Deleted]

Oh, so you do realize part of the reason it isn't applicable?

I would agree with you but you don't really get banned for it since they have no way of knowing you did it so it's still applicable in the real world maybe not in theory though.

[Riavan]

Pretty obvious dollars can be converted into gold, I don't think its nessecary to explain every time, it's dollars > gems > gold, seems redundant and we are not all children. The question is whether gold can be converted into dollars - it can't officially, it can into gems, pity the gem store has shit items no one really wants so thus the value of gold stays high, and people have to pay more rl money multiple times for gem>gold conversion to finish anets massive gold sinks that make up the majority of the endgame that is guild wars 2.

I would have much prefered a subscription.

[Thelxi]

Thus, gold does not equal dollars, because no matter how much gold you have, you cannot extract dollars from it.

This is my last attempt at explaining this to the fans, hopeful example:


I can buy the mats to level up Jeweling on my alt for X dollars or I can spend 3 days farming the mats.

• If I spend 3 days farming the mats, I saved X dollars.
  
  
• If I use X dollars to buy the mats, I bought myself 3 days worth of gaming time.

[Deleted]

Pretty obvious dollars can be converted into gold, I don't think its nessecary to explain every time, it's dollars > gems > gold, seems redundant and we are not all children. The question is whether gold can be converted into dollars - it can't officially, it can into gems, pity the gem store has shit items no one really wants so thus the value of gold stays high, and people have to pay more rl money multiple times for gem>gold conversion to finish anets massive gold sinks that make up the majority of the endgame that is guild wars 2.

I would have much prefered a subscription.

I 100% agree with you on this point. The only one rejoicing are the gold sellers because they are the one making a BOMB gold selling! Since gold sellers are so much easier and cheaper to buy gold from there is no reason to buy from Anet

[Deleted]

Links normal mode drop. Implies it's a BiS item. C'mon now.

There is no better belt (in Cata, obviously) better than that for a discipline priest. Or holy. Shadow I didn't have enough experience in to make a proper judgment on. Some might argue that Vestral's Irrepressible Girdle is a teeny tiny bit better, but I, and most priests I chatted with, preferred the Sash. The Cord of the Slain Champion is admittedly better for disc priests, but good luck getting that considering its low drop chance as well as being sought-after by mages, warlocks and shadow priests.

[Deleted]

This is my last attempt at explaining this to the fans, hopeful example:


I can buy the mats to level up Jeweling on my alt for X dollars or I can spend 3 days farming the mats.

• If I spend 3 days farming the mats, I saved X dollars.
  
  
• If I use X dollars to buy the mats, I bought myself 3 days worth of gaming time.

And we knew that since before prepurchase. That's not the problem. The problem is that, as someone here put it, the entire endgame revolves around huge gold sinks, with gold being a pain in the arse to earn.

That's why having dollars=gold is a big problem, because they made it so that you feel it's easier to buy gold with money than actually farm it. Who can blame them though? Their job is to make as much money from the game as possible. If people accept it and don't speak up against it, we'll be seeing more aggressive means of encouraging cash shop usage. Not that I care anymore though; I've given up on the game. The game might be a huge success, but to me it's just another MMO that failed to rise to my expectations, very much like SWTOR. For that reason, it will be "gathering dust" on the same shelf as SWTOR.