35 replies to this topic

[evilbob]

100 gems shot up to 2g24s within the last few hours.

First:  what is going on?  I knew the makeover kits were popular, but this is crazy.

Second:  so now that 1g only costs about 77-78 cents:  would you buy gold with real money?  My theory is that it will still need to go a lot lower before enough people will buy gold in-game to cause the ratio to go down.  I mean, if a precursor cost 500 real-money before and now it costs 250, does that really make a difference to anyone?

Third:  someone who bought gems with gold even as lat as 36 hours ago could still make a tidy profit converting back right now.  Anyone get in on that?

[Senatic]

Everyone bought gems for wintersday.

[evilbob]

I thought that too at first but 1) it's not until Dec. 14, 2) it was announced yesterday and 3) you'd have think people would have learned from Halloween?

[Senatic]

evilbob, on 28 November 2012 - 04:35 PM, said:

I thought that too at first but 1) it's not until Dec. 14, 2) it was announced yesterday and 3) you'd have think people would have learned from Halloween?

People did learn from halloween, that's why no one is waiting until last minute. As soon as it was anounced everyone wanted to get ahead of the curve so they all went to buy gems to be sure to get them before the spike. And as such they caused the spike.

[azanti987]

They have staff at Anet just to work on the economy, there is a pretty good chance they are artifically meddling with the prices there somehow.

[Vihar]

evilbob, on 28 November 2012 - 04:32 PM, said:

100 gems shot up to 2g24s within the last few hours.

First:  what is going on?  I knew the makeover kits were popular, but this is crazy.

Second:  so now that 1g only costs about 77-78 cents:  would you buy gold with real money?  My theory is that it will still need to go a lot lower before enough people will buy gold in-game to cause the ratio to go down.  I mean, if a precursor cost 500 real-money before and now it costs 250, does that really make a difference to anyone?

Third:  someone who bought gems with gold even as lat as 36 hours ago could still make a tidy profit converting back right now.  Anyone get in on that?

The exchange rate for gold-->gems, and gems-->gold are different.

   I learned the hard way that if you buy gems with gold, in order to sell them when the price goes up, is just going to cost you a lot of gold.

   Buying gems as an investment to sell for gold later is a guaranteed loss.

[EnRohbi]

Senatic, on 28 November 2012 - 04:41 PM, said:

People did learn from halloween, that's why no one is waiting until last minute. As soon as it was anounced everyone wanted to get ahead of the curve so they all went to buy gems to be sure to get them before the spike. And as such they caused the spike.

Hell, I bought gems for Hallowe'en like 2 days before the event started and I still made a profit off them.
Not as much as others, but I made some

[Senatic]

azanti987, on 28 November 2012 - 04:43 PM, said:

They have staff at Anet just to work on the economy, there is a pretty good chance they are artifically meddling with the prices there somehow.

Mmm, honestly I think it has something to do with the aliens. *brings out tinfoil hat*

[sakura az]

Don't forget that makeover kits just came out too.

[malevolence]

sakura az, on 28 November 2012 - 04:58 PM, said:

Don't forget that makeover kits just came out too.

When did they come out? source please? Thanks.

[soxx]

http://www.guildwars...er-kits-are-in/

On the front page...

[typographie]

malevolence, on 28 November 2012 - 05:17 PM, said:

When did they come out? source please? Thanks.

Few days ago. For source, look in the gem store.

[Senatic]

malevolence, on 28 November 2012 - 05:17 PM, said:

When did they come out? source please? Thanks.

Well you could look on the front page for example

http://www.guildwars...er-kits-are-in/

Edit: Ninjas.....

Edited by Senatic, 28 November 2012 - 05:27 PM.

[Gilles VI]

Vihar, on 28 November 2012 - 04:47 PM, said:

The exchange rate for gold-->gems, and gems-->gold are different.

   I learned the hard way that if you buy gems with gold, in order to sell them when the price goes up, is just going to cost you a lot of gold.

   Buying gems as an investment to sell for gold later is a guaranteed loss.

Euhm that's not correct.
It works just like the TP with sell taxes.

If you buy for 100 and sell again for 101 then you'll make a loss.
I bought gems for 70s/100 and at same time they were 55s/100 for selling.
If I wait till gems are 1g10/100 and thus selling for 85s/100 then I made a profit..

[AJS]

malevolence, on 28 November 2012 - 05:17 PM, said:

When did they come out? source please? Thanks.

check Guild Wars 2 Guru - yes the same one you are posting on.

[Gilles VI]

I think it's a combination of Wintersday/Make-over kits/Speculation that is driving the prices up.

[Reikou]

evilbob, on 28 November 2012 - 04:32 PM, said:

My theory is that it will still need to go a lot lower before enough people will buy gold in-game to cause the ratio to go down.  I mean, if a precursor cost 500 real-money before and now it costs 250, does that really make a difference to anyone?

Price of gold will keep dropping until they get to a similar range to buying gold from RMT.  That means about 38c/1g according to today's spam prices.  Perhaps lower when the price actually gets there.

[Enscheff]

One way to get rid of the gold farming bots is to make the price to buy gold from ANet competitive with the farmers' prices. Just a thought.

[malevolence]

Senatic, on 28 November 2012 - 05:26 PM, said:

Well you could look on the front page for example

http://www.guildwars...er-kits-are-in/

Edit: Ninjas.....

thanks, totally missed that lol.

[Waar Kijk Je Naar]

Enscheff, on 28 November 2012 - 06:57 PM, said:

One way to get rid of the gold farming bots is to make the price to buy gold from ANet competitive with the farmers' prices. Just a thought.

Well goldsellers still offer a rate that's roughly 40 times better than legal gold, atleast if I have to believe the last spam mail I got.

[evilbob]

1) I have serious doubts that anyone at Anet is intentionally messing with prices.
2) If you bought gems 36 hours ago you would have paid about 1g25s - 1g35s for 100 gems.  If you sold them a few hours ago you'd get 1g60s for 100 gems.  You'd make a profit.
3) Makeover kits came out yesterday as well.  There's already a clear bump from those, as well as a clear decline after the bump.
4) What does RMT mean?  I assume "real money transaction," but that makes no sense because Anet offers real money transactions.  I think the person who said that meant "black market" gold (or "scammer" gold would be more accurate).  Either way, please understand that there will NEVER be a time when Anet can offer gold for the same price as black market prices.  Black market gold is basically free:  they get it by scamming people and using bots and whatever, and while that does take a tiny amount of time/effort it still costs them nearly nothing, which is why it's a great scam/business.  Because of this, they can ALWAYS lower the price to make it competitive with Anet.  If Anet ended up selling gold for 20 cents a gold, they'd sell it for 10.  Until gold is nearly worthless (at which point the game is probably in trouble) this will not change.


Also, the price of gems in gold just DROPPED over 30% and now it's climbing back to where it was before this all started a few hours ago.  It seems like this could have been all some kind of short-term market manipulation...  Either that, or those people who were all hoarding >80k gems all dumped them at the same time when they saw what was up.  It's still possible someone could have simply purchased a few hundred thousand gems at once (for a few thousand gold), then dumped them after the price adjusted, but looking at the data they would not have made money in the short term.

On the other hand, someone could have bought gold for gems right when it peaked (1g22s per 100) and then converted all that gold back into gems when it crashed (1g9s per 100) and made a profit (for example, you could have started with 1000 gems and ended with 1000 gems + gold, or just more gems).  But that would have crashed the market further...

We don't know how many gems/gold are really in the system, so it's hard to know how much a single player can influence the market.  The trend LOOKS like prices got pumped like wild... and then someone got out of the gem market a little, and then someone else dumped a TON of gems.  But it's hard to know just by looking at a graph.


Either way:  still wondering at what price would you finally decide it was worth it to buy gold for real money?  Is 75 cents per 1 gold enough?  50 cents?  25?

[Piteous]

Its all about the conspiracy man, you see they got these aliens locked up at area 51 and they spit out the prices for gems.

[Daesu]

I am seeing inflation going up from observing the TP.  People seem to be getting a lot richer recently (FOTM?).  Prices of crafting materials seem to be going up and fluctuating.  If that is true, that can account for the rise of gem price to gold.

Edited by Daesu, 28 November 2012 - 09:09 PM.

[Mister Stygian]

I am thinking there are far fewer players willing to spend real money to get gems now and the last month has seen a bunch of the gems that were out there sunk into BLT items.

[Deyadissa]

evilbob, on 28 November 2012 - 04:35 PM, said:

I thought that too at first but 1) it's not until Dec. 14, 2) it was announced yesterday and 3) you'd have think people would have learned from Halloween?

I know right, I lost so much money on haloween and got nothing. Never seen a company be so bad at giving people things for the amount they hand them.

[evilbob]

Certainly players are getting richer in general - probably due to FotM, maybe veteran drops, maybe just because more people are getting out of school and have more time on their hands - who knows?  And this trends the market up.  But it doesn't cause the market to jump up a huge amount in a small time and then crash back down a very short while later.  Just seems weird to me.

[wxkinrc]

Vihar, on 28 November 2012 - 04:47 PM, said:

The exchange rate for gold-->gems, and gems-->gold are different.

   I learned the hard way that if you buy gems with gold, in order to sell them when the price goes up, is just going to cost you a lot of gold.

   Buying gems as an investment to sell for gold later is a guaranteed loss.

i bought 1200gems for 0.89Gold/100gems and sold the for ~1.40Gold/100gems

[Aetou]

Mister Stygian, on 28 November 2012 - 09:20 PM, said:

I am thinking there are far fewer players willing to spend real money to get gems now and the last month has seen a bunch of the gems that were out there sunk into BLT items.

Probably this. Also, gold is quite easy to get since Fractals which means the price of almost everything is going up (the price of gems relative to ectos hasn't shifted all that much, for example.)  Although the timing is interesting and there certainly was a spike I think what we're largely seeing at the moment is general inflation/devaluation of gold.

[Daesu]

Mister Stygian, on 28 November 2012 - 09:20 PM, said:

I am thinking there are far fewer players willing to spend real money to get gems now and the last month has seen a bunch of the gems that were out there sunk into BLT items.

The gem<->gold exchange rate is determined by the demand for gold->gem or gem->gold.  If someone spends real money to get gems, the price is always fixed at $10/800 gems.  I think it is inflation.  If gold is plentiful, because of FOTM or otherwise, then there is no real need for people to convert gems to gold.

Edited by Daesu, 28 November 2012 - 10:20 PM.

[Castaa]

Anet has every reason to create an economy to inflate the price of Gems since they make money from selling them.

Edited by Castaa, 28 November 2012 - 10:42 PM.