The Guild Wars Economy - in fine shape?

I would argue that there is a little bit too much bloat on the upper end of the economy and needs to be a few more money sinks, and it would be nice if a few skins were more attainable, but other than that it isn't too much of a problem.

It's screwed due to the difficulty of selling anything. Golds are so common place now, most are merch food.

However, it does only take one decent drop to net you an easy 200-500k (see that god awful spear every scrub and his dog dyes black)

Play more, earn more.

The main problem I hear about is stupidly priced items not being stupidly priced anymore. Also as there's more and more complaints about the economy being screwed I find I'm getting more and more cash simply by playing through the missions and doing quests.

I think people just like jumping on the "ZOMG TEH ECONOMY IS WEL SCRUWED!" bandwagon.

The only problem I see with the economy is the massive ammount of wealth held by only a small percentage of the population. 15k armor sets, tormented/destroyer weapons, fellblades, storm bows etc aren't really that expensive. A few hundred thousand at most, most players main character is probably worth 300-1000k. All that is normal in my opinion, but the people with stacks of armbraces and 5000+ ecto... that is just not right.

I agree though, other than certain little problems we can't claim that the economy is absolutely ruined. In fact, the people who say that are probably just pissed that their ecto's/armbraces are dropping in value.. or something like that.

How much is a mini polar bear going for these days then?

Anyone who thought armbraces would hold value is a moron. Anything that can be farmed only decreases in value over time.

I believe your view of the economy is kind of black and white, which maybe be oversimplifying it. In my opinion, the economy in guild wars has decreased steadily over time, and has now flatlined for quite a while(I'm using the static ecto price to base this claim).

A good indicator of how well the economy is doing (game-wise), is the balance of supply and demand. In guild wars case, from my experiences of being a "power-trader" and merchant (buying low selling high), at this point this part of the game is nonexistant. Supply has continued to stockpile and be hoarded, where-as demand has fizzled out because people have finally realized that buying certain items only guarentees that you will lose money over time, the prices of items will go down the tubes.

Now, surely you may want to argue: "Well, this is normal! Over time the value of an item will surely decrease as it is attained by more and more people." Well, in saying this you would be correct, and it is exactly the reason why this lack of demand has occured: Item RARITY and value have dissapeared. Inscriptions, greens, etc. have erradicated all rare mods and skins, making them available to the average joe.

All of this has culminated into where we are now. With a few 100k+ecto, almost any skin or mod is available to any player. As for those of us(like myself), who have horded our sum of plat and ecto in hopes the economy will revitalize itself, the time for change is closing in (as GW2 approaches). It is impossible to revert to the old non-inscription market, and there will be no new skins or items coming out as GW2 looms ahead.

In a nutshell, the economy sucks for like 10% of the remaining playerbase (not to mention the countless amount of "old-timers" who quit.) I'm fine though, PvP is prolonging my infatuation with this game, so even though I've given up hope in the economy and in trading, I'm still having fun in other ways .

I did forget to mention one market that remains, which is the mini-pet market. However, this as we all know is plauged by dupers and ebayers and is unnatainable for 99.5% of the whole playerbase. So we might as well just pretend it doesn't exist, it is literally impossible to get XX Armabraces by playing fairly.

The economy situation isn't bad for people who have been here for a while and farmed/played a lot back then. I'm way better off than those who haven't played for almost 3 years, but still, I never got into the farming, and I was incredibly casual with my gaming due to other mmos/consoles i was into. It is much harder to make money now as a newbie than it used to be. That's really all that has to be fixed. Casual gamers/new gamers need a slightly better way of making money than having to farm. Most of my money was made off merching crap drops and selling the really good drops i got from regular questing and missions. This got me a good enough sum of money. These days, it just isn't coming as easily. Dunno, maybe I'm doing something wrong.

I think what makes a good economy is a diverse range of wealth. If everyone were uber-wealthy, it would be a bad economy. If everyone were dirt poor, it would be a bad economy. It makes sense that there are only a handful of uber-wealthy players, but that the average player has some vanity items. The low end is usually held down by new players and backup characters. There are only a handful of certain items that float around among the upper-class that most of us will never even see in a trade window. That is as it should be, marking a healthy economy. If it were a good portion of the items, there were lots of them, and still no one could buy them - then there would be a problem. All in all, I find the economy extremely healthy, and those that think otherwise seem to be just dissappointed that they aren't one of the few upper-class.

To digress a bit, the way we define wealth can be broken into two categories: net worth (more common) and worth potential. My net worth stays pretty low. Count up my armor, storage, hero equipment, I might only be worth close to 500k. I would put my worth potential at 25-100k/week. If I did not spend any money, and only played the game the way I usually do, I would make about 25k a week. If i farmed instead of played, I could push 100k or more a week easy. This probably puts me somewhere in the middle. I could slowly work my way into the upper class if I saved up, but I'd rather play and spend my money on helping my guildmates or buying lps or whatnot. I would expect that if we looked at the economy and pleyers wealth in terms of earning potential, we would come to the same result. The majority wouuld fit in a similar range as myself, with a handful much higher (game time influences this significantly), and a handful much lower. This too is as it should be for a healthy economy.

You may argue with the numbers I use, but the principle, I believe, will remain.

- So what can't be farmed then? There's very little point in having "economy" on game like this, where nothing is consumed and max stuff is offered by every single trader and collector outside the newbie island.

Actauly I think our economy is doing fine. Back when eBaying FoW was all the rage, thats when the problem was.

We're doing pretty good, its just hard to sell things. Thats not an economy thing, thats a trade system thing. Which hopefully we'll be surprised with a Xunlai Marketplace or something before GW2.

There is no economy - in any meaningful sense of the concept - in Guild Wars to be good or bad.

The only commodities in the game are materials, and there is no effective distribution mechanism anyway with which to move them from the "producers" (sellers) to the buyers. All other saleable items are strictly vanity purchases - dyes, skins, minis, etc.

That means two things:

1. The things people need can not be effectively purchased at real market values, only the delayed value you get from traders.

2. Everything else is dictated by vanity so, by definition, the only other things people would want would be traded strictly among the rich.

The game's design never allowed for an economy. Griping about the swings in prices for individual items is meaningless because there's nothing that could conceivably drive any real economic development in Guild Wars. There is no "good" or "bad" economy, just the arbitrary price points certain things randomly move to.

The economy was in the moment instantly broken, when GW got flooded by Gold Sellers, hundreds over hundreds of players cheated and duped loads of armbraces and got somehow not the ban hammer for it, that they deserve (who knows if Anet isn't corrupt and hasn't banned all, because under the cheaters were friends or so of the devs, who knows that all ...)

At the moment, when GW good flooded by hundred of thousands of hardcore farm botters ... , this all together were the begin of the ending of GW's good economy and leaded the economy to become broken.

The final crush did come then, when anet introduce over tiem more and more god damn limited uber rare minipets. Those minipets gave the economy of GW finally the deadly HEAD SHOT >.< , because evrythign started instantly to turn around iname only about those ober rare minipets...

people buy ebay gold and cheat with duped armbraces, only to become rich enough, to buy one of those likmited uber rare minipets -.- or to have simple no problems with buying fow armor, which is also one reason, why the economy is broken, due to farm botters permanently farming ectos and shards.

Would all those farmed/duped stuff find their ways onto the market instantly, ectos and shards would be worth ASAP only 100g -.- brecause I really doubt, that only armbraces got duped. people surely duped also massive amounts of ectos and shards, what is the reason, why explosively run around massive more people in fow armors -.-

High End mini-pets
Items that no longer drop - No negatives
Extremely rare non-inscrib stuff - Crystallines low req with perfect inherent mod etc
Req7 stuff - Big boom at the minute

These are the only items that will either increase in value or decrease slowly over time.

Mini-pets will dwindle in time, when more are added etc


These low-mid level items people treasure so highly are doomed to fall into the worthless pit.

- Wrong. As time passes, more and more characters get their birthdays, thus increasing the supply of high-end minipets and decreasing their value.

- This one's correct.

- Over time these will become common too, if they still drop.

- "their value either increases or it decreases". Tautology much?

Absolutely. This is one of the beauties (and fallacies) of the current economy.

Basically, the very casual player is at the point where he can afford the substantial majority of things without any significant degree of effort...and this soon will be almost everything in the game.

However, for those exceptionally rare items (i.e. the items you mentioned), it will be increasingly difficult for players that have not amassed wealth to "climb the economic ladder" to afford those items, because of the disappearance of the "middle class" items you refer to above.

So, in other words, without insane amounts of grind, those items will remain exclusive to the uber rich, who will continue to get richer.

It's good and bad...and personally, I am rather ambivalent to it.

The economy is dead because instead of giving players unique items that require skill and coordination to get, anet gives them items that drop in a dungeon that everyone and their dog can do but with a very low drop rate.

Gj anet, instead of encouraging skill you encourage grinding..

We need HM exclusive drops from places like UW and DoA, maybe a new elite area with its own set of unique weapons/armor.

Because we don't have any cat pictures yet?

1. Most of the rarest minipets are not available via birthday presents. He's not referring to mini Gwen...he's referring to the mini Panda, etc.

2. The extent that these weapons are being removed from the game (i.e. via customization, attrition of the playerbase, bans) are far exceeding the rate that they are being added to the game (if at all).

3. What he is saying is that prices will not remain the same, which is a fallacy of many players' thinking. Items will either steeply increase in value (due to increasing rarity), or steadily decline in value (due to decreasing rarity). Those looking for stable commodities in items (e.g. armbraces) are doomed to fail because of this phenonmenon.