State of the Guild Wars 2 Economy

And since it's not entirely obvious from the screen shot, the recipe is 1 Ecto + 1 Mystic Coin + 500x (two stacks of 250x) any of the other items shown.

It isn’t interesting or fun to have a market flooded with items that contain very little value, so we’re making adjustments to the game every day.
Click to expand...

Anyone else find the interventionist policy of ArenaNet with regard to the economy somewhat troubling? They see Iron Ore/etc. is too cheap, so they create arbitrary demand by making these recipes. I would have preferred if they let supply/demand reach equilibrium on its own.
 
It's tough to bring out own real-life economy ideas into a created, fictional, economy like GW2. The GW2 economy needs to be constantly and regularly regulated, otherwise we'll quickly have an imbalance of wealth. Those with the skill/time to research the GW2 market will be able to abuse it and horde copious amounts of gold and therefore dictate the market. Plus, since this economy is regularly and quickly generating it's own wealth (drops, resource nodes, etc.) new gold sinks/crafting sinks are necessary to avoid inflation.

I understand your concern, and I do think that some things should be left to regulate on their own, but GW2 economy is not real-life economy and I believe should be more regulated than what we're used to.
 
I'm definitely the opposite of concerned - I love it. Like they said, they are only messing with things that are at rock bottom...and it's no fun to go mine iron when it's worth only 5c...and silly when copper goes for 4x as much. I really, really disliked the economy in GW1. Run a fun alliance event, best a tough dungeon, and get lucky? Fantastic - you got an item worth about 2 lockpicks. This was the case for most things, because ANet allowed people to run dungeons solo and be nigh invincible...so very few items were worth earning. And instead of fixing the invinci-builds and making Shards Of Orr tough to beat, which would naturally make Bone Dragon Staves expensive, they simply had super low drop rates for rare items. Bad form. This made them even more out of the reach for people who ran the dungeons "normally".

If people want to farm, that is fine, but it becomes an economy issue when it is (literally) 50x as profitable. The only thing I would find troubling is if they took the very rare things and made them not rare, causing a lot of people to lose money overnight.

Just my opinions, though!
 
It's still early in the game and adjustments should be made to equalize things a little. Some of us have no head, or desire to become uber wealthy, but want to still be on a somewhat even footing so that the game doesn't call for all accounting majors or business majors to play for a real chance to enjoy the game. I currently have just over 1 gold, and I have worked the basic functions of econ 101 to get there. I have spent 1 gold on my lvl 40 manual, and need 2 gold for the last manual. What happens when the few who play for uber wealth decide to hoard and manipulate all resources? Basic market strategy becomes unworkable. Yes it is an artificial world economy, but some basic rules apply, so let Anet adjust things to keep it on an equal footing.
 
the problem was supply/demand would never reach equilibrium on its own as things were, there was just way too much of certain resources and not enough need, thats not just suddenly going to go away. With the way level scaling is set up, even at 80 i spend time in lower level zones, so im still mining iron, getting green/soft wood, etc.

plus it kind of adds a bit of fun to playing the trading post

and i really, really want to be able to transform in to an elemental (there are both consumable and permanent tonics as possible drops)... dont ask me how many of those chests ive made... ;)
 
Good points all. I think you are right that intervention is the right move early in the market formation, especially with all the abnormal circumstances surrounding the TP downtime.

I was just thinking about the particular issue with Iron Ore, and I think the problem is that Copper Ore is only available in the 1 - 15 zones which you can level through much faster than the 15 - 35 zones where Iron Ore is located. I don't know if this problem will ever resolve itself, since the amount of time people spend around Iron Ore will just be that much higher, leading to much higher supply.
 
I wouldn't worry too much about high-end market manipulators...as they only operate in the high end arena. Nobody can do anything to manipulate the cost of leather or cultural gear, and they can't stop you from getting dungeon armor. If you're going for Sunrise or Twilight, well you get what you get. :)

As to iron ore, I hope that in addition to this temporary fix, they did something to fix the problem permanently. That might be in the form of decreasing the amount of nodes, etc.
 
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