Many MMO’s have broken markets. The most common case, is where there are simply too few transactions happening. This makes it a waste of time to check if anything is at sale at the marketplace, so people don’t bother. Instead, everyone spams offers and requests in global chat. This is the usual MMO scenario of the stagnant village market.
The GW2 market is not like that, it’s a global market bustling with activity 24/7, but it’s broken nonetheless.
The problem is, all prices are permanently depressed to levels where no in-game economic activity really makes much sense as a source of income.
Out of all MMO’s I’ve played, I can’t remember a single one where I was so hopelessly flat-out broke all the time. Even minor gold sinks like travel costs are a substantial barrier to use in GW2. The GW2 player basically lives off vendor trashing junk drops, and quick travel is a luxury that must be used in moderation.
At least until he or she discovers how to make money at the trade post.
It seems strange that it should be possible to make money trading this depressed market, where practically every item in the game is permanently on offer, often at near vendor trash values. But it is. There are certain safe trades that never fail to churn a handsome profit.
I’m not an expert here, nor need I be, since once you find one such trade, you’re pretty much set…
My trade is to place bulk buy orders for “Bag of Skritt Shinies” (buy price has ranged from 79 to 121 c for me). I then open the bags and post sell orders for the contents (sell price has ranged from 135 to 183 c, averaged over 1000 bags).
That’s it. The trade never fails, so no complicated math is needed, just buy and sell, and make as much money as you can be bothered to open bags. At least while you’re still leveling up, this is vastly more profitable than anything else you can do in the game!
Unfortunately, this makes a lot of in-game activity pointless. Why mine ore (which breaks ever more expensive mining picks and barely breaks even), when you can make a solid profit just by buying Skritt bags?
Now, we all know from basic economic theory that what I just told you can’t be – it is impossible for a free market to have an excessively profitable trade for any length of time. If such a “golden trade” existed, more and more market actors would be attracted to it, undercutting each other to get the action, until the situation stabilizes at a moderately profitable level, just as any other trade.
But persistent golden trades still exist in GW2!
Why is this? I don’t claim to know, but I do have a theory that might be worth consideration. It goes like this:
In my theory, ArenaNet was originally concerned that the market would be unstable, so they put in some “fudge logic” to keep everything running smoothly. Specifically, I theorize that if there is great demand for an item, and the supply generated by players cannot keep up, then the trade system fills some buy orders with items freshly created from thin air. All in an attempt to help, of course.
If this theory is true, then it has a few serious consequences that ArenaNet may not have considered. The market will indeed run more smoothly, but at a cost:
One is that prices will be permanently suppressed, since excess demand cannot raise prices, but excess supply can still lower them. This hurts in-game economic activity across the board, just as we are seeing.
Another is that golden trade opportunities will exist, since excess demand cannot raise prices, so there is no mechanism that restores the balance when more actors pile on to get a cut of the hot action.
In the end, this skews the functioning of the market and destroys the game economy by diverting resources from productive players who are out there mining resources, to non-productive players like myself who are double-clicking tens of thousands of bags like drooling idiots!
This is not a good thing for the game, and it should be fixed.
