The Haves and the Have Nots...

I do recall you entered the line of debate by mentioning that you believe the event to be a bad idea, hence my opinion was built that that was the driving force behind this line of threading.

Any post is opinion and open to debate when posted. As for the eBay issue... my only real issue with them is the fact that people are stupid enough to spend real money on virtual items... things that don't exist. It really doesn't present a flattering view of our species.

And yes, we were all noobs when we started... the real question is who will still be noobs when they finish.

What? GW is a free market at its purest.

I stopped reading after this sentence as it states everything that is wrong with Guild Wars.

No, people have instituted a free market style out of habit in a game that is designed to support a more balanced economy.

You're right, this is a game. However, keep in mind that this game was not developed in a vaccuum outside the real world. Players also come to this game with preconceived notions from real life about how things should work in-game.

It's true that balance should take precedence, but I fail to see how equality in terms of wealth should also take precedence. How good of a player you are should not and does not depend on how rich you are in-game. A good player with collector items and 1.5k armor can easily beat a bad player with "perfect" items and Fissure armor.

The concepts are not so different. Most concepts in-game are derived from real world concepts. Plus as I mentioned before, people come to this game with preconceived notions from their experiences in real life.

Well, that is essentially what new players (or the "have-nots") are asking. If everyone had "perfect" items, then the price of "perfect" items would plummet, thus hurting the original owners of such "perfect" items.

Just as an example, for me personally, I lost over 1 mil when ANet released Factions and the update that significantly increased drop quality. I think it's a misconception to think that what benefits one group of people won't adversely affect another group.

I was thinking one day and I realised something. An EQUAL form of government or economy will NEVER work as long as there is money. Someone will always end up with more.


That gives me an idea.

If they wanted GW to be equal, why would they have included money in the game? If nothing cost anything, and nothing could be sold for anything, then all people would be forever equal (in a sense).

Do you really want it so that everyone can just walk up to a merchant and get 250 ectos for nothing? Do you want there to be no money? If not, stop talking about equality, because it will never happen while money still exists.

to be honest this event does not apply in any way to the redistribution of wealth so nobody loses.

many people will have a chance to get the item they could not possibly afford to buy so sellers are not losing sales to those who could not buy anyway.

since it is a weekend event the market price of those items will not be affected much if any as the number of items grabbed over one weekend is tiny compared to the normal supply/demand of those items.

the sup absorbs crashed in price due to a permanent supply increase and would not have moved a hair at a single weekend event

Not so much wealth... wealth is, believe it or not, irrelevant to GW. Things are what I'm talking about. Say I find a perfect Jade axe, for example, and it has the same stats as your perfect zodiac. That's the equality I'm talking about, which events like this weekends will promote.

Moreso different in GW than in other games, such as WoW. In WoW, wealth directly affects how powerful you are (so I hear...never played it...). In GW, it doesn't/shouldn't

No, no you didn't. You lost nothing. The 1 mil never existed. If you gave away all your virtual 'wealth', save for the items you enjoy the best for playing the game, your gameplay would not be adversely affected whatsoever. Having ten perfect uber-leet items doesn't help you when you can only equip one. (Yes, I know that some people change weapons per situation... that's different.)

Point is, this game is designed such that wealth is irrelevant. It's the players that artificially add relevance to wealth, and thus wind up the most miserable when events occur that tend to benefit everyone equally.

I agree, because I wasn't talking about the weekend event, and neither was capitalist (please correct me capitalist, if I'm wrong)

We were talking about it in general terms

Everybody is equal here. Money is easily gained, if you know how to count and pick up stuff while you kill stuff. I don't have a farm build whatsoever and still I have some good stuff un my storage as well as at least 100K gold.
I don't care about FoW armour and things like that. I'll just buy max armour, a good stuff and black dye for the armour. That is all. I call myself rich, though many here prolly smirk when I tell what I have.

I don't spam WTS either.

Money is a habit, and it required. I wouldn't complain, though, if the merchants had infinite supply and items had a max 100 gold per unit cost. Or if merchants sold items back to the community for a 10% mark-up over what they pay.

I don't see how releasing a game and saying "go nuts" is designing it for a balanced economy.

QFT

There are plenty of other threads about the weekend. This is about the game as a whole.

It's designed for a balanced economy because it's designed for balanced play. There are things to spend on, sure, like obsidian armors. But these are nothing more than gold sinks, to remove wealth from the economy. You gain no benefit over 1.5K armor. Same as 'rare' skins... same stats, same benefits. They took into account that there will be some wealth and made it irrelevant.

Hey i just got a kick butt purple...

14>50. Added the sundering and fortitude mods I been saving and now its the cats meow.

People who don't go for goldsinks might as well be ignoring the economy completely; having alternate methods for getting what you want doesn't take away from the fact that the economy that does exist is a free market system.

It's true that wealth does not affect gameplay in Guild Wars as much as it does in other games, but that doesn't make it irrelevent. Getting "perfect" items is the end-game content for many people, myself included. The reason why ANet introduced rare skins into the game at all is so that, in my opinion, hardcore PvE players would have something to do after they have beat the game for the umpteenth time.

Again, I wasn't talking about the event, I personally like these events very much.

Heh, that's another misconception, in my opinion

Take paper money for instance. Is it worth anything by itself? Not really, they would serve as nice bookmarks, but that's about it. It's the value vested in them by the federal government that makes it valuable. It's the promise that when you present a $10 bill at a fast food restaurant, you can get a hamburger, that really matters. By the same token, if I were to sell my items before Factions, I could have gotten over 1 mil (in fact, I spent over 1 mil to acquire them); but after Factions, I could barely get 200k for them.

Take another example, stocks. You buy stocks for their perceived value. If the stock market crashes, you do indeed lose money, as evident in the fact that people do in fact do stupid things, like jumping out of a building, when this happens. Certainly, it's not as serious as that in-game, but the concept still applies.

For the casual player, you're probably right. They have access to green/collector items, and they couldn't care less about the gold "perfect" items. However, it is my opinion that, if you want something "nice", you have to work to obtain it. There is no free lunch, in real life or in game.

OK, no argument here.

However, $10 bills, hamburgers and the stock market exist. If ANet turned off thier servers tonight and went home, you've lost nothing in real life.

Aside from the health effects caused by stress I suppose... but we'd all be in that boat...

And my mind wanders to the PvP character generation...

Heh, everything's electronic now, like your bank balance, the stock market, etc., etc. If your bank accidentally deleted your account on their computer, you'd have lost everything in real life.

Yes, that's true, PvP is another option that people have after beating PvE. However, not everyone will sign on to PvP as readily as some people. This is probably the reason why ANet decided to make Nightfall more PvE oriented.

C'mon, really guys. When playing, all you see is your character's head and your Guild's cape. Who really cares what your weapons look like, and I can honestly say that I have no idea what any of my Guildies were weilding last night while we went through the last few missions.

I'll bet my req8 15^50 Wingblade does just as much damage as your req8 15^50 Felblade.

There will always be the haves and the have nots. Some players have eight hours a day to play, while others are lucky to get in four solid hours a week. Others get very lucky with drops while others are consistantly cursed with average drops..(I'd been playing for over 10 months before I got a drop worth more then 100k, and before that, my biggest, and pretty much only sale worth mentioning, was a mere 45k).

That's just the way of things...simple as that.