evilbob

You have to remember that for someone playing 30 mins a day, they are not playing the same game as you.  They don't care about Fractals or ecto prices or any of that.  The fact that they can't find a dungeon story group is meaningless, because they will never do one (except maybe that odd weekend here or there).  So, most complaints about what you cannot do don't really matter.

In the end, the game is huge, and nearly everything in open-world PvE (except event chains) can be done in small chunks.  Even some story missions.  So there is certainly a lot for someone to do, and if you only play 30 mins/day you'll have a lot to do for a long time.  It's probably worth the purchase price, especially if you're just trying out a new gamestyle, since this really is one of the most accessible MMOs to date.

The one thing that will eventually get you in the end, though, is when you get hooked on all the cool stuff you have time to do, and start to wonder about all the things you really don't.  Dungeons, WvW, playing the TP, and even crafting are not really possible with 30 mins/day (yes, I know YOU can do them in 30 mins, but that's after 100s of hrs of playtime and practice), and eventually you'll want to do those things just to mess around with them.  Even joining a guild isn't really something you can really do and get anything out of it.  A friend of mine doesn't have more than 30 mins/day to try MMOs and he isn't interested in doing it because he knows it will suck him in and he'll never get out again.    So:  beware!  Your 30 mins/day will beg to be longer...

I have absolutely no problem with the price of gems, except for the two things that I was sad about before the game even launched:  bank and character slots.  These are more than just quality-of-life improvements:  they are nigh-required to play the game.  You can't even make a character for each profession without buying character slots.  As someone who likes playing alts, this one really hit me hard.

And as someone who is still by most definitions a casual player, I am too casual to ever be able to afford these things via in-game gold.  I should have been better about buying a few gems here and there toward the beginning of the game, but throughout the 4 months this game has been live, "buying a character slot with in game gold" has been either impossible or it would take over 85% of my total resources (for a single slot), which is also basically impossible.  The idea that I was supposed to be able to play at my own pace and enjoy these basic parts of the game is just not true.

I don't know why the price of gems will drop again, ever.  It might be the case that a lot of people get some holiday money and decide to blow it on some gems and maybe buy a few gold, and that might make a slight dip.  But I wouldn't hold my breath.  I can see it leveling off at some point when buying gold with real money is so easy enough people just say "ah, screw it," but even then I wouldn't expect prices to drop back down - merely level off.

For future posting's sake, the price of 100 gems jumped to over 2g30s within the last 24 hours as Wintersday event hype gets to an all-time high. It's average recently has been a slightly more modest ~2g or so.  What we wouldn't GIVE to have the "faint-inducing" 50s price now, eh?  

Well, months ago when someone was showing off their legendary people noticed in the screen shots they had over 80,000 gems.  I suppose it's possible they blew it down to 22,000 by now, but I doubt it.  

You have to understand:  there is a tiny fraction of the playerbase that are playing an entirely different game than you.  For these people, 22,000 gems is chump change.  1000g is chump change.  That's how pure capitalism works:  the super rich get super richer.  And honestly, gems is still a good long-term investment as there is nearly no risk and the effort is next to zero.

So:  who thinks the precursor market will crash again?