Read this article, this is 100% why I abhore Auction Houses in an MMO. Being able to aquire wealth through "gaming" the AH is the #1 reason why games with AH's lose appeal. This is the reason why I believe an AH should only be there to "hawk your wares" or find items you need and want. It should never be used for people to be able to aquire wealth. The wealth should ALWAYS come from playing the game IMO and this post elegantly explains why GW2's Trading Post is a POS.
First off let me give you a little bit of background, I have been a player of Guild Wars 2 from launch. I've been trading almost nonstop in the game for the last four month, and had stockpiled an amount of gold that was pretty unreasonable, I was starting to feel like smaug. My pursuit of more gold had become somewhat of an obsession, and finding ways to extract 100's and sometimes 1000's of gold out of the markets and away from other players became exciting and fun. I had no plans or goals in mind for the money besides increasing my own power to manipulate markets.
I am making this post because I have been removed from the game due to my snowflake exploiting, I am beyond guilty and made 200-600% (multiple thousands of gold) in returns with the exploit because I used it as soon as the patch dropped, and through the next two days. I do feel a little bad for the players who did it towards the end before it was removed as they probably only made a few dozen gold and still got the same ban as players like me, regardless I accept my ban from the game and in retrospect I realize most of my actions in game have actually been hurting the in game economy, and all of you. It's probably a good thing that I am no longer allowed into the marketplace.
As one of the players who saw ways to manipulate and profit from market I can say the number one problem to the guild wars economy is not exploiters (although they are clearly a problem), it's the market confusion from normal players. When markets are out of balance (goods from one market can be converted to another market at a profit) That means players can cycle wealth and create gold out of the trading post at an unlimited level. This is what has happened to Guild Wars 2, markets have been out of balance for four months. Those who see it will create hundreds of gold, those who are not looking will become poorer over time, and eventually unable to compete in the unfair trading waters of the plutocracy.
The markets are already mostly run by wealthy players, and I think it's pretty obvious to most people by now. The only way to stop this trend from becoming worse and worse is to identify these markets and have the community actively work on balancing them. This is done by players seeing the profit and deciding to also engage in a market converting activity. As an EvE online trading veteran it is surprising to see that the Guild Wars 2 community has failed to fix these unbalanced markets since the game has launched. I suspect that the main reason is due to the trading post tax being so high, it makes markets very confusing and the question of profitability always has to come into play, even when making steady normal profit. The other would be information suppression by those players currently making hundreds of gold off of these unbalanced markets.
It seems the prevailing notion in this community is there is nothing you can do to the wealthy players, and they already control the markets. This is not at all true, you have the ability to close off the free gold making machines they have been using since the game launched. I will now go into the problem markets that are making Guild Wars 2 into a less and less fair trading economy, and detail what the average user can do to fix it, and at the same time make a modest amount of gold for yourself. Once the markets are relatively balanced again I think the Guild Wars 2 economy will be in a much more stable and equal position.
1 Tier 5 Materials -> Globs of Ectoplasm
This is the craft and salvage market, it has massive volume and is by far the number one money maker in the game. It has pretty safe returns in general and can yield very high profit margins. I would go as far to say that 30-50% of all the gold generated by traders comes from this market. The reason I say it is so high is because botters are supplying endless amounts of T5 materials, even ordering a thousand gold of materials does not really have a significant impact on the T5 market. Since the bots went underwater large scale orders I used were filled in the 10,000's in the matter of an hour.
You can currently pick up Tier 5 Materials at a cost of around 95 copper. For 15 of them and about 4-5 silver in silk, leather, and thread you can craft lvl 80 rare items. This should cost you about 19-20 silver to make. Now to salvage the item with a master salvage kit should yield about .9 ectos per item (I've done 10,000's of salvages and made thousands of gold from this market can confirm master kits return higher than the others and at a rate of .9 ecto per item. (9 ectos per 10 items salvaged on average)
This allows you to turn 20 silver into .9 ectos, or if you set it to the price to obtain 1 ecto it becomes 22 silver to obtain an ectoplam. If you need ectos for yourself it is an amazing way to save 35% of the market price, if you are looking to sell them you can make about a 20% return on any money you put after tax is taken out. The returns are immediate and can be cycled. Ideally enough people will start doing this to eventually balance the markets and fix the massive wealth disparity. This will cripple gold sellers easy way to print 100's of gold a day, and stop the guild wars 2 economy wealth gap from continuing to split.
Major -> Superior
Similar returns are possible on material upgrading. Specifically major runes to superior runes, and major sigils to superior sigils in the mystic forge. This market involves a lot more luck, but its like a slot machine that returns 130% back over the long run. Sure you lose a lot of the time, but if you put 100 gold in you can expect 130 gold out. There is still risk of not hitting any good runes in smaller sample sizes and losing money. Maintaining these markets requires knowing the average cost of the superior rune markets, and that takes a lot more time to watch and maintain. If there is enough community demand I can go into the numbers of this market to show the profit margins.
There are also quite a few other smaller markets that I could share if there is enough interest in this. I just don't want to spend any more time on this if there is not.
I am not sharing this information so a few reddit members can make gold trading as well, although some probably will because its a side effect of balancing the markets. It's my aim to instead shut down the infinite gold supply that 1-2% of the community is taking advantage of at the expense of the other 99-98%. It's up to you guys how you want to react to this information, but I figured since I am now banned from the game, and I doubt anyone making hundreds of gold from it would give out this information and destroy their own money making machine I might as well make this information public, and leave the fate of the Guild Wars 2 economy up to the larger community.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
Comments
UPDATE:
Read this article, this is 100% why I abhore Auction Houses in an MMO. Being able to aquire wealth through "gaming" the AH is the #1 reason why games with AH's lose appeal. This is the reason why I believe an AH should only be there to "hawk your wares" or find items you need and want. It should never be used for people to be able to aquire wealth. The wealth should ALWAYS come from playing the game IMO and this post elegantly explains why GW2's Trading Post is a POS.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/162v35/how_average_users_can_save_the_guild_wars_2/
First off let me give you a little bit of background, I have been a player of Guild Wars 2 from launch. I've been trading almost nonstop in the game for the last four month, and had stockpiled an amount of gold that was pretty unreasonable, I was starting to feel like smaug. My pursuit of more gold had become somewhat of an obsession, and finding ways to extract 100's and sometimes 1000's of gold out of the markets and away from other players became exciting and fun. I had no plans or goals in mind for the money besides increasing my own power to manipulate markets.
I am making this post because I have been removed from the game due to my snowflake exploiting, I am beyond guilty and made 200-600% (multiple thousands of gold) in returns with the exploit because I used it as soon as the patch dropped, and through the next two days. I do feel a little bad for the players who did it towards the end before it was removed as they probably only made a few dozen gold and still got the same ban as players like me, regardless I accept my ban from the game and in retrospect I realize most of my actions in game have actually been hurting the in game economy, and all of you. It's probably a good thing that I am no longer allowed into the marketplace.
As one of the players who saw ways to manipulate and profit from market I can say the number one problem to the guild wars economy is not exploiters (although they are clearly a problem), it's the market confusion from normal players. When markets are out of balance (goods from one market can be converted to another market at a profit) That means players can cycle wealth and create gold out of the trading post at an unlimited level. This is what has happened to Guild Wars 2, markets have been out of balance for four months. Those who see it will create hundreds of gold, those who are not looking will become poorer over time, and eventually unable to compete in the unfair trading waters of the plutocracy.
The markets are already mostly run by wealthy players, and I think it's pretty obvious to most people by now. The only way to stop this trend from becoming worse and worse is to identify these markets and have the community actively work on balancing them. This is done by players seeing the profit and deciding to also engage in a market converting activity. As an EvE online trading veteran it is surprising to see that the Guild Wars 2 community has failed to fix these unbalanced markets since the game has launched. I suspect that the main reason is due to the trading post tax being so high, it makes markets very confusing and the question of profitability always has to come into play, even when making steady normal profit. The other would be information suppression by those players currently making hundreds of gold off of these unbalanced markets.
It seems the prevailing notion in this community is there is nothing you can do to the wealthy players, and they already control the markets. This is not at all true, you have the ability to close off the free gold making machines they have been using since the game launched. I will now go into the problem markets that are making Guild Wars 2 into a less and less fair trading economy, and detail what the average user can do to fix it, and at the same time make a modest amount of gold for yourself. Once the markets are relatively balanced again I think the Guild Wars 2 economy will be in a much more stable and equal position.
1 Tier 5 Materials -> Globs of Ectoplasm
This is the craft and salvage market, it has massive volume and is by far the number one money maker in the game. It has pretty safe returns in general and can yield very high profit margins. I would go as far to say that 30-50% of all the gold generated by traders comes from this market. The reason I say it is so high is because botters are supplying endless amounts of T5 materials, even ordering a thousand gold of materials does not really have a significant impact on the T5 market. Since the bots went underwater large scale orders I used were filled in the 10,000's in the matter of an hour.
You can currently pick up Tier 5 Materials at a cost of around 95 copper. For 15 of them and about 4-5 silver in silk, leather, and thread you can craft lvl 80 rare items. This should cost you about 19-20 silver to make. Now to salvage the item with a master salvage kit should yield about .9 ectos per item (I've done 10,000's of salvages and made thousands of gold from this market can confirm master kits return higher than the others and at a rate of .9 ecto per item. (9 ectos per 10 items salvaged on average)
This allows you to turn 20 silver into .9 ectos, or if you set it to the price to obtain 1 ecto it becomes 22 silver to obtain an ectoplam. If you need ectos for yourself it is an amazing way to save 35% of the market price, if you are looking to sell them you can make about a 20% return on any money you put after tax is taken out. The returns are immediate and can be cycled. Ideally enough people will start doing this to eventually balance the markets and fix the massive wealth disparity. This will cripple gold sellers easy way to print 100's of gold a day, and stop the guild wars 2 economy wealth gap from continuing to split.
Major -> Superior
Similar returns are possible on material upgrading. Specifically major runes to superior runes, and major sigils to superior sigils in the mystic forge. This market involves a lot more luck, but its like a slot machine that returns 130% back over the long run. Sure you lose a lot of the time, but if you put 100 gold in you can expect 130 gold out. There is still risk of not hitting any good runes in smaller sample sizes and losing money. Maintaining these markets requires knowing the average cost of the superior rune markets, and that takes a lot more time to watch and maintain. If there is enough community demand I can go into the numbers of this market to show the profit margins.
There are also quite a few other smaller markets that I could share if there is enough interest in this. I just don't want to spend any more time on this if there is not.
I am not sharing this information so a few reddit members can make gold trading as well, although some probably will because its a side effect of balancing the markets. It's my aim to instead shut down the infinite gold supply that 1-2% of the community is taking advantage of at the expense of the other 99-98%. It's up to you guys how you want to react to this information, but I figured since I am now banned from the game, and I doubt anyone making hundreds of gold from it would give out this information and destroy their own money making machine I might as well make this information public, and leave the fate of the Guild Wars 2 economy up to the larger community.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!