Curse

makosi · Nov 13, 2007, 10:49 PM // 22:49

Update: Current offer is 100k+1250e+panda+dedicated Ghostly+Vizu+Gold Mini Pig+100 armbraces.

Coridan · Nov 13, 2007, 10:51 PM // 22:51

Gold Minipig is the deal maker

Savio · Nov 13, 2007, 10:55 PM // 22:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by makosi

It's just like the Kellogs executive men in grey suits don't farm grains but still profit from it.

If Kellogg's starts making less money, do the executives become significantly poorer?

I suppose I should say that loot scaling didn't have a big impact on rich players - they're still richer than other players and will still have money one way or another.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Coridan

Gold Minipig is the deal maker

Only if it's undedicated.

Malice Black · Nov 13, 2007, 10:56 PM // 22:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by I MP I

Why do I have the feeling some (if not all) of these people will retract their bids??? lol Anyway, pretty sure some of the people who duped are still running around unbanned. Anet isn't perfect you know.

Bingo!

Most those bids are fake. A lot of people in High End bid, but they don't have the cash to back it up.

Money is easy to make in GW. Everything depends on who you know, and what you know.

There is also little groups of trade "buddies" that artifically inflate the price of their friends items with fake bids. One of the main reason guildies can not bid on each others items in High End.

Welcome to the trade world.

fowlero · Nov 13, 2007, 11:00 PM // 23:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by makosi

Update: Current offer is 100k+1250e+panda+dedicated Ghostly+Vizu+Gold Mini Pig+100 armbraces.

how do they expect that all to fit onto one trade bar o.O

unless they plan on doing 2 seperate trades, but i sure as shit wouldnt do that myself.

mannnn i wish i had one of them weps lol

Dante the Warlord · Nov 13, 2007, 11:01 PM // 23:01

Dude im going to have to agree that the eternal blade is ridiculously overpriced. Im positive that 1500e plus xx braces is somewhat possible, but when you go in to three digits i really don't get how one person can get that many armbraces. there are what 365 days in a year? so even if you had no job and played gw ALL day you couldn't possibly get 16 gemsets every three or four days. Maybe it is possible with no job lol...

Ebaying doesn't even seem viable since all those armbraces cost 100k+40e or so each. That would be hundreds spent on the money required to get the ectos and armbraces if not more.

gremlin · Nov 13, 2007, 11:06 PM // 23:06

Every game I have been involved with that uses money has always had the same problem.
You start with not enough money then you end up with too much, so the developer edits the game to limit the cash available to players.
So far so good.
Problem is they limit it based on their perception as to how rich some people are.
Now in any game there will be players who just have a knack for making money, sometimes by exploiting weaknesses in the game or taking advantage of other players ignorance.
Other times its just the hours they play and their skill in that area, whatever the reason when you limit the ability for players to gain in game money globally you screw up the rest of us talentless casual players.

I don't really see what the game writers can do about it, their options are limited.
1 Leave the economy alone and if some players gain almost unlimited wealth so what.
The rich players may get bored and go away or they may buy up items to increase prices and become wealthier still.

2 Make it harder and harder to find an easy way to gain wealth.
This affects most people but does little to curb the rich players that are already rich, just slows down the rise of the neuvo rich.

3 the hard one in fact is there another option, since taking away players money isnt really an option.
Crashing the ecto market probably did some damage and beginning again with GW 2 with hopefully a better system might prevent it happening again.

One thing seems certain anet displeased a whole load of players and pleased none with their actions "not that they had much choice".
Giving a present usually pleases taking one away always displeases.

makosi · Nov 13, 2007, 11:06 PM // 23:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Savio

If Kellogg's starts making less money, do the executives become significantly poorer?

If they're on a profit sharing scheme or if shares are allocated to them personally then, theoretically, they would be at a loss compared to past figures. I shouldn't have cast up an analogy because economics is never that simple.

The fact is that a rich player's wealth (be it gold, ectos or items) is always sourced from other players and most items can be traced back to a monster/chest drop. Mini-pets are an exception but the ectos and gold that pay for said pet can be traced.

Skuld · Nov 13, 2007, 11:07 PM // 23:07

You go on about duped stuff, but has ANet not gone through their logs and banned all the dupers? It isn't word of mouth, its hard evidence of unusual reconnect/trade sequences.

That amount of gold isn't unreasonable to obtain, really, if you, like, try.

edit: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...0&postcount=42

w00t! · Nov 13, 2007, 11:32 PM // 23:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crom The Pale

Just a quick little update, I just checked on the Eternal Blade in high end.

Current bid is for 100K +1250ecto + Mini Vizu + 200 Ambraces.

Now I have Chaos Gloves and full FoW armor and a nice set of weapons over 100K, but no way will I EVER earn that much cash/items.

I know a few wealthy players, one that is about 100 times richer than me(not that I count myself as rich) and he will admit that some levels of wealth are never obtainable out side of Ebay/Dupping or Bot farming.

Yeah, I'm in the same boat after 2 years play. Not a high-end power seller (though my rating in auctions > 300), so I guess I can't complain

It'd be an interesting exercise to see if the GW economy even generates the amount of money in question, outside of duping and Chinese farmers.

Take all of the legitimate players in the game, collect their gross and net monthly GW income, combine it all together, and see if that is enough to generate the several thousand armbraces that have been known to exist.

Especially troubling considering the fact that Armbraces have been in the economy for only about a year.

Martin Alvito · Nov 13, 2007, 11:33 PM // 23:33

The OP is perhaps correct to be concerned about the ever-spiraling prices in the market for super rare items. However, he has missed the mark somewhat by assuming that massive quantities of cash changing hands = duping. I'll make rather detailed arguments for and against in an effort to evaluate the competing claims of the player base.

It's called HARD WORK, STUPID

Originally, there was an upper limit on what a Kanaxai/Panda/Beetle/Ghostly/etc. would sell for. That limit was dictated by income constraints. If the wealthiest players in the game only have a few thousand ecto, the item can't possibly sell for more than that. Those items could still get sold due to the income constraint, though; no one could possibly have inferred that a Kanaxai would be worth 100 times what it was selling for then on the open market.

Enter stackable Armbraces. As the community started to accumulate them in sufficient numbers, they took on the role of supplementary currency to permit traders to get around the technical barrier of 1750 ectos/trade without involving a trustworthy 3rd party. Suddenly it becomes much more feasible to trade huge amounts of money for the minipets, and players began offering those huge amounts (by historical standards) in order to shake the minipets loose from their longtime owners (who paid far, far less).

Were those ectos/armbraces duped? No one can say for certain. There are valid arguments on both sides of the ledger. On the one hand, it's completely possible to make huge amounts of money in very short periods of time. I concur with Professor Black that you can make ridiculous amounts of money trading if you have sufficient capital to invest (in order to acquire the highest-margin items), are willing to risk it and have the connections to move your merchandise once acquired.

Even without power trading, there have been some pretty abusive farms since Hard Mode came out. People made instant fortunes on the following:
1) Colossal Scimitar farming
2) Urgoz Hard Mode (that one was good for 50-60k/hr before you all found out about it a few weeks after I got down there)
3) Elemental Sword farming, pre-nerf
4) Duncan (again, while this one was up it was 60k/hr, perhaps more)

I'm sure I'm missing some (Tome farming right after HM, for instance), but those are the most prominent super-broken farms that I can recall since HM was introduced.

If you are aware of these sorts of farms, it's only rational to take advantage of them before the devs find out about it and smack it with the nerf bat. So you'll see very dedicated players hitting these farms 8-10-12 hours per day when they are available; that comes out to something on the order of 500k/day.

It would not have been hard to have amassed a 20-50 million gold fortune in the last few months, if you played a lot more than I do and you were truly committed to having a big bankroll. 50 million translates to 142 armbraces, which probably would get you a Panda legitimately with plenty left over.

Now imagine if you were REALLY hardcore and you'd been a farming/trading nut since release. Particularly with power trading, it used to be quite possible to make huge profits very quickly (because the high-end market was poorly defined).

Upshot: I don't think that 500 armbraces is at all unrealistic for someone to have acquired.

The high-end market is DIRTY, CORRUPT and TAINTED BY DUPES

OK, so perhaps that's not a great title for this segment. A lot of folks that will tell you that most fortunes in the game are legitimate will also tell you that the above heading is also true. However, I think that the section title sums up the attitude of most of the players that rail against the present system.

Argument runs something like this: ANet may have hammered the dupers, but they didn't get rid of the dupes. Also, since duping was theoretically possible for about nine months before anyone was caught, it is extremely probably that the dupers that got caught weren't the first dupers. Essentially, the world found out about the dupe because a couple of inexperienced criminals were dumb; the presumption is that smart criminals generally find out about these things before the dumb ones do, and that therefore someone was certainly out there creating counterfeit ectos/armbraces/god only knows what else. Perhaps for months.

ANet's data logs run back about two weeks. If duping started prior to that, any data on item creation would be tainted by existing dupers. Therefore, any statement that ANet makes that indicates that the dupe problem was minimal is not credible; they may sincerely believe this to be the case and be dead wrong because the data they used to support the conclusion are bad.

Tons of armbraces were dumped on the market the day after the dupe became public at ridiculously low prices. This happened because players were afraid that they would get hit with the ban hammer for accepting (presumably) duped armbraces in unbalanced trades the day before.

In this argument, the wealth (ectos/armbraces) in the system was largely created by duping, not by legitimate play. Honest players therefore are permanently shafted, because it is impossible for honest players to acquire the kind of wealth necessary to purchase one of the game's rarest items.

Evaluation of competing claims

The believers in duping have some valid points, but it is impossible (for the community) to falsify whether or not duping is currently taking place. And, of course, ANet has a strong interest in not investigating too carefully; why make trouble? Logically, this is a point in favor of the farming theory of wealth creation. Wealth is coming from somewhere, we don't know if it's coming from dupes, we do know it's possible for it to come from farming, therefore we should assume it comes from farming unless additional data suggests otherwise.

The one piece of evidence that backs up the claims of those that believe duping is going on is the sudden, massive availability of Vizu. I have seen high end posts where the pet has been offered (as a single item or in pairs) in extremely high-end trades by three, four or even five different people. That's suspicious, since there are only supposed to be 50 or so of the things running around. Additionally, compare their rate of resale on High End to that of less rare but more desirable minipets such as Panda and Beetle. The implication is that there are a LOT more Vizus running around than there should be, according to the records of how many have been released.

Of course, this begs the question - why dupe Vizu if you can dupe ectos, since you can sell the ectos a lot more rapidly? I suppose there may be some attraction to one mouse click as opposed to 1000, even if the item takes a while to sell. However, duping Vizu doesn't seem like the most sensible way to proceed with a mass dupe.

In the end, I'd say you have to take the claims of the enraged portion of the player base with a grain of salt. It seems that people forget that millions of people play this game; of them, a small proportion is certain to be incredibly dedicated to the point of insanity. The more functional members of that group should be expected to be capable of making massive quantities of gold; after all, how hard and time consuming is it next to, say, grinding 60,000 fame? Making 100,000,000 gold seems like a sensible and attainable goal by contrast; there are lots of ways to go about making money quickly in this game, and one's bankroll is merely a function of time invested making money and the rate at which one earns it.

Malice Black · Nov 13, 2007, 11:36 PM // 23:36

Apparently according to some low life in a High End thread I duped my wealth also...

That new bid is a bit extreme for a sword. He'll pull out, always does.

Martin - Vizu = fairly common (for a high end pet) they gave away a load for competition prizes. This is why there is loads up for sell, and why the price took a nose dive. They also gave away Pandas which explains why there is a lot of newbies trying to sell them.

Johnny_Chang · Nov 13, 2007, 11:39 PM // 23:39

I think an answer to this issue has been indirectly addressed in the post regarding the hours people have spent playing so far. The concept of people having millions of gold through legitimate means is not far fetched considering the fact that there are those who spent a lot of hours on the game...

Martin Alvito · Nov 13, 2007, 11:41 PM // 23:41

From the wiki:

Japan netcafe promotion lucky draw (20 prizes): [1]
Taiwan GW official blog lucky draw (9 prizes): [2]
Europe: Ultra-rare miniature found in magazines across Europe. (10 prizes)
North America: Ultra-rare minature found in Mini Madness promotion
2nd prize in the Wintersday 2007 Art Contest.

Clearly the wiki is in error if what you say is true; what competition that went undocumented that isn't posted? I count 39 + the five that haven't hit the street yet.

As for the Pandas, I'm aware of the ones released for the Halloween contest. That's a drop in the bucket, though (5 out of 140-ish?) - that'll create a short-run spike, but I'm not suggesting that Panda was duped.

Malice Black · Nov 13, 2007, 11:45 PM // 23:45

Wiki fails

They gave away Vizus in the Halloween contest also I believe.

makosi · Nov 13, 2007, 11:49 PM // 23:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

I suppose there may be some attraction to one mouse click as opposed to 1000, even if the item takes a while to sell. However, duping Vizu doesn't seem like the most sensible way to proceed with a mass dupe.
.

Off topic: I always assumed that stacks could be duplicated. E.g. if you have 1 ecto, you can turn it in to 2, then turn 2 in to 4 then 4 in to 8. but who knows?

The alleged Vizu duplicating was probably just for the sake of it.

Capt. Krompdown · Nov 13, 2007, 11:54 PM // 23:54

The silly thing is that there are already more req 9 eternal swords out there. I saw one in Kamadan being sold for 1750 ectos 2 nights ago.

Martin Alvito · Nov 13, 2007, 11:56 PM // 23:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Malice Black

Wiki fails

QFT

That said, the numbers just don't add up unless there was a LARGE undocumented giveaway in the not too distant past.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Makosi

Off topic: I always assumed that stacks could be duplicated. E.g. if you have 1 ecto, you can turn it in to 2, then turn 2 in to 4 then 4 in to 8. but who knows?

The alleged Vizu duplicating was probably just for the sake of it.

Presumably they could dupe stacks; I was engaging in a bit of hyperbole there.

Possible that Vizu was selected by someone as a "they'll never find these dupes" rainy day stash by some duper(s); settling on Vizu still remains...odd.

That would lend credence to the notion that the dupe was a short-term phenomenon; you'd think that the preferred target would have been Panda given sufficient time. They're extremely valuable; there's a bunch of them so dupes would be somewhat less noticeable.

w00t! · Nov 13, 2007, 11:57 PM // 23:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mordakai

Problem is, that wouldn't be a money sink, just another way for millions of gold to change hands between players.

End result: someone still has millions of gold.

These Legendary weapons and armors would have to be crafted by an NPC to truly remove gold out of Guild Wars. But then, desire for them could cause a rise in ebaying gold, and in more inflation...

Bottom line: As long as there are rare items, there will always be greed. It's not necessarily bad, but it will exist.

QFT.

The solution to the economy is, and always has been, gold sinks. Introducing a new weapon drop in UW will only move money around, not remove it from the economy. So it has no effect on the economy as a whole.

Gold sinks do the exact opposite. They remove money from the economy, and in no way change the game balance.

Martin Alvito · Nov 13, 2007, 11:59 PM // 23:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Capt. Krompdown

The silly thing is that there are already more req 9 eternal swords out there. I saw one in Kamadan being sold for 1750 ectos 2 nights ago.

The first dude that buys/bought an Eternal Blade is like the guy that just HAS to have the hot new TV/stereo/what have you. Odds are, in a short period of time there will be much better ones available cheaper.

If I were to get one, I'd instant-sell it regardless of how much I wanted it. Prices on something like that are only going down; may as well get out while the getting's good and buy one back later.