Why was LA the trade hub before factions ?

Just 'cause.

post ++

Anyhow I also found Droknars Forge to be more the trade capital, before Factions came out. Seems now that Kamadan d1 on Euro is very hot. Ascalon and Droks on Int are some how Asian trade channels now......

LA in Europe is not half as good to sell in as American.. Much less spam.. So I want a new account just for beeing in American LA since I've used all my swithces, and already wrote a mail to Anet..
Btw, I remember the Asian ppl in drok, they seem to be mostly gone now..

Before u do that cud I hav ur ecto shop?

It wasnt. Droknar's forge was the main trade hub.

I remember seeing a lot of random trade spam in LA, but Droks was always my destination for buying and selling weapons. Most of the people there had at least a moderate amount of experience and money.

LA is also widely spaced and has all the merchants+traders and storage close to eachother which makes trading (and also lucky trades) and quick price check more convenient.
HoD is skipped a lot and (except for back then the +energy weapons) theres no real reason to ever go there.
Drok was always a good place mostly for materials as its -the- place for max armor so theres always demand for mats and also because runnees (from beacons) and regular players (coming from the desert) kinda converged there.

Just my 2g

OMG, I was in Droks Int.1 the other day. It was the worse spam I've ever seen! And it was all in Chinese! AND It was all in Local chat.

I was there for 10 minutes and I didn't see a single line of text in Trade! Me and a friend had a totally uninterrupted conversation in Trade chat, whilst All was totally unusable. There's a first for everything...

QFT. To add to that.

Droks int. 1 was where you could get keys for about 450g each for chest runs back in the day. All the bot farmers would sell them for any price.

Good times.

great thread yeah for PROPHS its LA
FACTIONS-KC
NIGHTFALL-Kamadan and 2 months into game scammers at Kodaash BAzaar for trade contracts hard to top that.

Actually in the pre-factions days Droks was the place to be...

In ye good old days the trade posts were basically ranked on item quality:

Ascalon city - Rubbish gold items and non max stuff.

Lions arch - Slightly better golds but full of spam and 13 yr olds acting like idiots.

Droknars forge - Real trading you wanted your 15^50% req 8 gear this was the place to come.

Unfortunatly with the death of droks forge all the major trade towns have now turned into clones of LA with the added spam of minipets.

If you want any 100k + items you basically have to come to the forum and auctions here.

No, I think Ascalon and Droks were the most populated. LA was still a hub yes, but it was more high-end. ToA stayed the way it is from past > now.

I agree with ss, warcamp made me very rich . Despite all the SS Tours, Camp Rankor was pretty empty. Most started from Droks instead (4/5 people at droks got ran there, so why not go to Rankor and look there?)

Ascalon was huge when i first started... (xmas 05)

There is something magical about Lion's Arch. Once you leave pre-searing, the landscape was barren, hostile, and generally hideous. Then the mountains, and they were not terribly appealing. Finally you get through Gates of Kryta and then the big bridge comes down and the NPC says--"Welcome to Lion's Arch!". First time, I was stunned. I felt like I arrived- but the game was just really getting rolling......

It was also where you get your guild hall and the old guild hall used to sit right off the coast. So the easiest city to go to for full traders and such was there.

It is also the first place you can somewhat effectively farm. Fire imps, ettins, undead around bergin hot springs, and mergoyles are all usually the first things one learns to farm (and ettins are still a decent place for to include for crop rotation). Lions Arch is where you normally go to sell you goods - it usually does not take a map move to get to the traders.

It also has one of the most convenient layout for moving about. If I have to expand the map to go to a town for traders, LA is the best choice. Short run to the merchant's quarters from all the spawn points and the Xunlai Agents are close to the traders and merchant - it still takes pretty much the least running of *any* of the major towns.

And, lastly, its what the "old timers" got used too. People from Beta were used to that being a major hub, new players usually did most of their early trading there (for the above reasons), and now it is the town where you go when traveling between chapters. Though I rather suspect the reason it was chosen as the travel town had more to do with it being the major hub in Prophecies.

Simple economics. It was the first place that people had money. Questing around Ascalon was not making anybody rich. I remember making 20k on the trip from Yak's Bend to Lion's Arch. It was awesome! My husband started playing then and I was able to give him 5k to equip his ele with armour and weapons on arrival in post-searing.

Simply because its easier and faster to get to then Droks.

Its also the first major city you reached, so alot of players instantly assume its the main one and became familiar with it.

LA was/is reachable by anyone as low as lvl10 so you can basically create a new character, leave pre-ascalon and run to LA and start trading straight away.

You cant do that with Droks, because its 3/4 way through the game and in a high end area.

So it has a higher % of players in it at all times, where as Droks is mostly full of lvl20 players.

Simple logic really.

But before Factions was relased, Droks was usually just as busy as LA. It was considered the trading area for more experienced players.

Its only since factions was released that less players use Droks, because travellers from other continents automatically go to LA.

That was cool! I had same kind of experience, finally of the cold mountains and barren ascalon (shudder)

I think the sunny and happy atmosphere in LA makes it nice place to spam sell your stuff. Agreed that drogs have for somereason got the material trading place status. ss1986v2 sum it up nicely.

For the first 7-8 months of playing (started June 05) LA was the trade capitol of Tyria(euro eng districts). Then over the course of about 2 weeks all the trade switched to Droks for no real reason that I could see.
Droks used to be ok for selling/buying materials but LA was the first main trade centre of GW.