The GW2 economics thread

[Alaris]

This isn't meant to be a debate thread or a "stuff is too expensive" thread, rather, I want to try to put our collective minds together to try and predict the trends for prices of store gems, materials, and the worth of gold, and how that will change early and over the first few months of the game's release.

I do expect the supply to ramp up slowly over time as people level up, but I expect the demand to be pretty high. However, and this is where I bug out, I don't really know what the supply and demand will be like comparing across things. Will there be a big supply of gems early on and that will slow down quickly, with a spike when new items are added? Will the value of gems drop faster than the value of gold?

In other words, I want to try and predict what would be best to invest in early on, and this way make a good profit.

Any data will help, especially on what tends to happen in early months in other MMORPGs.

[RD]

STUFF IS TOO EXPENSIVE!!!

I don't have any data, but I'm guessing gem value will just keep rising the longer the game is in market. Presumably, ANet will continue to add things to the store, including costumes, maybe even expansions (maybe we'll never get a full expansion and will just buy new content piecemeal).

You'll always have people who want to buy consumables and they will probably sustain the price of gems. Add in the folks who don't want to drop real world money for character slots and stuff, I foresee gems getting progressively more and more costly.

[Alaris]

I see gems as being the impulse-buy item of choice. There will be regular use of course, due to people trading in gold for them or using them for consumables, but if new stuff comes out (as is the case on release) it is the one resource you can most readily get without spending time in-game. I expect people to (1) use a lot of them when new stuff is added to the store, and (2) trade a lot of them for gold when new stuff is added in-game that you can get for gold.

Basically, if you can predict when they add stuff that needs gold or gems, that means respectively that you should (1) buy gems before and resell after, or (2) sell gems before, and trade for gold after, respectively for those two scenarios.

My problem though is that I don't really know what the longer-term compares with gold, because while the demand for everything will be high initially, it will be high for everything. You're probably right though, gold will just gradually increase in supply so it will likely lose its worth over time, making gems more valuable.

[Buddah]

Going to be a month or two before things settle down. Crafting will drive many prices, but those fluctuate as the players move through the ranks.

Also I'm not sure the list I've seen on the materials on the wiki are complete. Last beta I swear I had got a Onyx Shard as a drop. Ended up making a +10 health/+10 Power rune. I really wish I had screen shot it.