Gold selling and in-game prices

Ramajama

 I´ve been playing AoW NA version for couple of weeks and there are two points that caught my attention regarding ingame prices for items and illegal gold seller prices.

1. In the four weeks of my experience, gold sellers have been competing and spamming intensely and prices for 500 silver are dropping roughly 6-8% per week (last I saw it was some 8 bucks for 500 silver)

2. If I wanted to buy above average player crafted gear or workshop for crafting or some selected flying skills (I am not talking about top-level end game rare stuff), I would have to spend 800-1000 silver, which equals to around 16 USD if buying gold from illegal websites. That seems crazy to me

Since this is my first sandboxy beta experience, I want to ask if this is normal development for games starting with in-game economy and what is your prediction on development for the following weeks/months.

On a side note, the only way I have been making money is by harversting ore (I do not like dungeon runs), I cannot craft anything valuable because cannot afford workshop yet, but I am getting there.  Also I am not saying there are no other ways to make in-game money, its just I have not found them yet.

ikarrian

What do you expect? Where do you believe 99% of  the RMTs come from in all other games? AoW is like RMT Paradise... I bet the RMT workers will be first to have a union in China. When ever that happens. Lazy western people are their bread & butter, a huge market for them. And now they made their own game!  lol.... I bet the RMT has payed for it.

 

 

Ramajama

Sure, it was to be expected to see illegal gold spammers, chinese-made game should be no different than any other mmo out there.

What I am intrigued by, is the quick decline of the gold prices and at the same time still see ridiculously expensive ingame items (e.g. 1hr long crafting workshop for 1000 silver=16 bucks).

Alamareth

Originally posted by Ramajama

Sure, it was to be expected to see illegal gold spammers, chinese-made game should be no different than any other mmo out there.

What I am intrigued by, is the quick decline of the gold prices and at the same time still see ridiculously expensive ingame items (e.g. 1hr long crafting workshop for 1000 silver=16 bucks).

Stop looking at things as if its value were tethered to the 1 gold = 10 liang unbound conversion.  That conversion is among the worst tradeoffs imagineable.

Gold sellers are just competing very hard with each other, especially considering they are barely competitive.  I've got nearly 7 Ding, and I've spent roughly 20 Ding since I started playing.  Does that mean my account is worth somewhere around $400?  Nope.

Ramajama

Originally posted by Alamareth

Originally posted by Ramajama

Sure, it was to be expected to see illegal gold spammers, chinese-made game should be no different than any other mmo out there.

What I am intrigued by, is the quick decline of the gold prices and at the same time still see ridiculously expensive ingame items (e.g. 1hr long crafting workshop for 1000 silver=16 bucks).

Stop looking at things as if its value were tethered to the 1 gold = 10 liang unbound conversion.  That conversion is among the worst tradeoffs imagineable.

Gold sellers are just competing very hard with each other, especially considering they are barely competitive.  I've got nearly 7 Ding, and I've spent roughly 20 Ding since I started playing.  Does that mean my account is worth somewhere around $400?  Nope.

Exactly. That is my feeling as well - the official exchange rate for gold = liang is pretty outrageous. What is surprising to me is also the illlegal gold selling, as mentioned in the posts above, is absolutely out of any reasonable bounds. Question then arises, who is buying from these gold sellers? Are there actually folks that are willing to spend this kind of RL cash for average ingame items? The answer seems to be, that there have to be and plenty of them actually - since the game is in this state for quite some time, and if there is supply, there has to be demand.

Alamareth

Originally posted by Ramajama

Originally posted by Alamareth

Originally posted by Ramajama

Sure, it was to be expected to see illegal gold spammers, chinese-made game should be no different than any other mmo out there.

What I am intrigued by, is the quick decline of the gold prices and at the same time still see ridiculously expensive ingame items (e.g. 1hr long crafting workshop for 1000 silver=16 bucks).

Stop looking at things as if its value were tethered to the 1 gold = 10 liang unbound conversion.  That conversion is among the worst tradeoffs imagineable.

Gold sellers are just competing very hard with each other, especially considering they are barely competitive.  I've got nearly 7 Ding, and I've spent roughly 20 Ding since I started playing.  Does that mean my account is worth somewhere around $400?  Nope.

Exactly. That is my feeling as well - the official exchange rate for gold = liang is pretty outrageous. What is surprising to me is also the illlegal gold selling, as mentioned in the posts above, is absolutely out of any reasonable bounds. Question then arises, who is buying from these gold sellers? Are there actually folks that are willing to spend this kind of RL cash for average ingame items? The answer seems to be, that there have to be and plenty of them actually - since the game is in this state for quite some time, and if there is supply, there has to be demand.

Are there people that are willing to spend that much RL cash to for items?  Absolutely, and it happens often.  I've had several people just top up 200-300 gold to buy a script from me (that's about $90).  So yeah, people like that are causing market inflation but that doesn't mean that the game is P2W and requires you to pay that kind of cash to get good scripts either.  I don't have a lot of other school scripts primarily becase I can sell them for such ridiculous prices (and when I'm banking 2-5 scripts every event, you get the idea...).

Afterall, you know what they say about separating a fool from his/her money...

Ramajama

Originally posted by Alamareth

Originally posted by Ramajama

Originally posted by Alamareth

Originally posted by Ramajama
Stop looking at things as if its value were tethered to the 1 gold = 10 liang unbound conversion.  That conversion is among the worst tradeoffs imagineable.

Gold sellers are just competing very hard with each other, especially considering they are barely competitive.  I've got nearly 7 Ding, and I've spent roughly 20 Ding since I started playing.  Does that mean my account is worth somewhere around $400?  Nope.

Exactly. That is my feeling as well - the official exchange rate for gold = liang is pretty outrageous. What is surprising to me is also the illlegal gold selling, as mentioned in the posts above, is absolutely out of any reasonable bounds. Question then arises, who is buying from these gold sellers? Are there actually folks that are willing to spend this kind of RL cash for average ingame items? The answer seems to be, that there have to be and plenty of them actually - since the game is in this state for quite some time, and if there is supply, there has to be demand.

Are there people that are willing to spend that much RL cash to for items?  Absolutely, and it happens often.  I've had several people just top up 200-300 gold to buy a script from me (that's about $90).  So yeah, people like that are causing market inflation but that doesn't mean that the game is P2W and requires you to pay that kind of cash to get good scripts either.  I don't have a lot of other school scripts primarily becase I can sell them for such ridiculous prices (and when I'm banking 2-5 scripts every event, you get the idea...).

Afterall, you know what they say about separating a fool from his/her money...

OK then, well that seems to answer my question  thanks for sharing the experience, I couldn´t believe there could be enough people willing to spend a pretty decent cash at this kind of exchange rate. According to the size of the illegal gold selling market and your experience, I assume there is actually quite enough of them.

And I agree with the statement that AoW is not P2W, I am slowly building up my character and the bank, so definitely doable without spending RL cash. At the same time, this game seems enjoyable when taking it slow and enjoying all the aspects it offers.

Biskop

OK then, well that seems to answer my question  thanks for sharing the experience, I couldn´t believe there could be enough people willing to spend a pretty decent cash at this kind of exchange rate. According to the size of the illegal gold selling market and your experience, I assume there is actually quite enough of them.

And I agree with the statement that AoW is not P2W, I am slowly building up my character and the bank, so definitely doable without spending RL cash. At the same time, this game seems enjoyable when taking it slow and enjoying all the aspects it offers.

I agree. MMOs to me are all about the journey, not the goal. Building a character through trial and error, acquiring more money and gear by exploring various aspects of the game and its world at my own pace - that's the charm of the genre, not a rush to "endgame" asap and then getting bored because of burnout and lack of content.

And that's one reason why I like AoW. You can do many different things and the game's design permits lots of gameplay options right from the start. Yet some people seem to feel the need to rush it, to pay ridiculous amounts of money to max their toons as fast as they can. Ofc the game allows that too, but I feel sorry for all the fools who paid hundreds or even thousands of $ to skip huge chunks of the game and then end up wondering what to do with that maxed, expensive char of theirs (they probably end up selling it to some other fool).