Wanze´s Economy Blog – Introduction and Personal Impact

Wanze’s Economy Blog part 1 – Introduction and Personal Impact.

Hi Guys.

My name is Wanze and I played GW2 since launch. Apart from playing WvW and some Pve, I spend most of my game time trading and trying to make a gold coin or two. So the game economy is my favourite part of the game. Since early 2013, I enjoyed talking about trading, crafting and the game economy in the retired official gw2 BLTC and Crafting subforums as well as the general discussion and HoT forums.

At the end of last year, I decided to take these discussion to reddit and revived the /r/gw2economy subreddit in order to foster and moderate discussions around the game oconomy in style of the old official bltc subforum.

After 2 months, the subreddit got established with around 1000 subscribers and I have seen many great discussions and advice given there.

In the last three years, I posted alot on the official forums and i think many of my posts concerning the game economy had some merit, so I established a solid follower base and it seems to be the case on reddit as well. Personally, I really like to write about the economy and wanted to write my own blog. However, I am not much into web design and couldnt be bothered to host my own blog so I looked for hosts.

Talking about trading or the game economy usually has a negative taste to it for most readers, because there is the prejudice that the writer has his own interest and profit on top of his agenda. Throughout the last couple of years, I checked out many different blogs, VoD´s and online guides with the same suspicion.

And whenever I posted about my investments, I was accused of hawking to maximise my own profits, whenever I suggested changes to the economy, I was accused serving self interest.

Its a valid claim from the untrained eye, so this is something I would like to address in this blog.

By now you noticed that this blog is published on Dulfy´s website and i would like to tell you why its published here.For the last three years, I was happy to to discuss the game economy on the official forums, in my opinion, Anet produced a great game, which kept me occupied for more than 7k hours and I only paid 50 bucks. Throughout the years, I realized that many people followed my advice or at least listened to me, so I really contributed towards the great GW2 community. In my opinion, this was a great way to pay back. I never felt the urge to buy some gems to boost revenue, I usually had enough gold to buy whatever I wanted from the gem store anyways but I was happy to be a vocal member of the community, which in my opinion is a mayor selling point of this game.

For several reasons, I decided to switch to reddit for game discussion in general, shortly after HoT launched. But reddit didnt really make it easy to publish a blog like publication, so I decided to look for other fansites that would like to host my blog. I never really wanted to earn any money or gold with what i do here, so i didnt want to start my own blog. I got a couple of offers from fansites to host my blog but in retrospective, I wondered, which fansite I liked the most. And it was Dulfy´s.

As already mentioned, I dont usually read 3rd party blogs, especially about the economy but throughout the years, Dulfy´s website has always been a go to site for spot on info.

Until now, she didnt have an economical blog and i am pretty sure she doesnt need one. Thats why i decided to publish here. She has been of exceptional service to the game community and this is my way to pay her back for all the favors she has done me. I am pretty sure that she earns a pretty buck with her website and she might earn some more, If I blog here but I have no regrets giving her the extra clicks for extra revenue because she deserves it.

Back to business.

Plenty of people accused me of hawking my own investments throughout the years and this will be a claim thats hard to prove wrong. Its hard to calculate in game wealth in the first place (how do you calculate my ~100k gem purchases with gold over the years at different rates), how do you calculate items stored in personal guild banks (the api 2.0 doesnt cover that yet). Its a common accusation that gold rich accounts usually only “mainpulate” markets and make the game economy less interactable for common folks. Thats shiny bollocks. Its right that I have probably more gold at my disposal than Average Joe. But just because I have 10, 20 or 30k gold in my wallet, doesnt mean that I spend that amount on buying out the whole supply of potatoes, iron ore or a flashy new skin.

Most players underestimate the economical impact the average player has on a global economy economy, as we have it in GW2.I might have as much gold in my wallet as my 100 man guild combined but that doesnt mean that I impact the market the same way my 100 guildies do. There might be that new flash skin around that I fancy, alongside 10 of my guildies. I might be the first one to get it because i have more gold than them, but in the long run, the price of it will be determined by those ten guildies and other consumers, not by me, who bought it in the early stages. Even though I might have 10 or 100 times the gold ressources compared to the average player, I only generate demand for 1 account, especially for 1 time consumables like skins, minis or collection items.

Long story short, my impact on the economy is far less than most people think it is.As a consumer, I am still one account. To be honest, I have 3 accounts, 2 were gifted to me, when I set up investment funds 2 years ago and those 2 extra accounts share five 250 slot guild banks. But i dont really share any ressources or gold between my main account and those two. First of all, I dont lack gold or anything else on my main account and I dont want to risk a ban by transferring 500g every week from my trading acounts to my main. I mostly use them for long term trading and research.

My point is that there is barely any reason for me these days to use my popularity online to trick anybody into buying my sell listings.If I talk about investments of mine, I usually invest first because i think its a good idea (due to economical reasons) and then might talk about it.

My reasons usually make sense (at least to me), before I post. As much as i would like to have a great online following, I also know to be humble and i know that the amount of people reading whatever I write, dont really make a difference compared to the global economy of GW2. It doesnt matter, if 1000 players start buying leather, the change in price will come, if the average player stops vendoring it and starts selling and buying it.

One of my strategies to teach game economics to the public was always to be open about what i do, fortunately, with the API 2.0 release with HoT, this has become very easy. So i will vouch now, to publish any of my trading data of my main account, Wanze.8410, known in game as Bloin.

My next blog post on this website will be describing screenshots of my top 10 flipping, sales and purchase items in the 90 days since HoT release. I hope you will learn a bit about trading from this.

If you wish to discuss this blog, feel free to visit /r/gw2economy.

I have plenty more to say on this subject but i dont want to expand this blog, so lets discuss there, I value any opinion.

Extra Thanks to dulfy for hospitality, even though its only virtual.

Happy Trading.