I have a number of serious problems with Guild Wars 2 and hope to explain it adequately.
First, content unlockable by gems is not even close to being worth the price to purchase in real money. ArenaNet has not done a thing to fix this. The fact that Black Lion’s chests are virtually worthless highlights this point. Each should contain content worth about $1 each in real money.
Second, the exchange rate of gold for gems, which provide only miniscule added content, shows the value of gold is steadily depreciating.
Third, in-game rewards for completing events, quests, stories and so on, remains fixed while gold continues to devalue.
Forth, crafted items are sold at less than their fair material costs making the sale of crafted items prohibitive. This may be because players are foolish, or because hacked accounts are being liquidated fast. Either way it discourages both crafting and trade.
Fifth, extensive farming and/or botting has created a vast surplus of some mob drops, materials, and junk items. That surplus may make crafting less expensive but it also drives players away from playing the game post-80. Low value for items = low interest in gathering unless you are a professional farmer. A reason there are vast supplies of some items in the trading post could be because the desire to consume them is very low – again, driven by peaked demand for craft results.
Sixth, item speculators do manipulate prices by creating artificial demand or artificial surplus. The amounts of items some people on this forum discuss parallels the trade in derivatives in real life. The same mechanisms at work that caused the flash-crash in the stock market are magnified in ArenaNet’s poorly regulated financial system.
This game is about 2 months old. Its economy has evolved rapidly but actions to protect and regulate it have not kept pace. Feel free to blast me about these comments but I stand by them. The conversion between real money and the three main game currencies (gems, gold, and karma) is badly broken. In my opinion, karma is the only stable major currency at this time. Gold/silver/copper continues to fall in value and gems are a joke because of their fixed exchange rate to real money. In fact, I believe gems should not be sold directly for real money. They should be discontinued or made purchaseable only with karma. Save the gem idea for serious content expansion such as opening a new area, a new profession, or buying items with higher attributes than exotic 80.
