Why do so many people farm gold?

[Jaunty.6018]

I ran Istan for about 3 hours and got no more than 30 gold. I'm aware some people can make more, but it's still not much. Considering you can spend $20 on various sites and get 2,000 gems, which equate to around 600 gold, I see gold farming in this game as nothing more than pointless slave labor. Even if you have a low wage job why not just work 2-3 extra hours and get a gem card?

 

At the rate I've experienced, it would take you _60 hours of farming_ to get 600 gold. 60 in-game hours vs. 2-3 hours of real work (or less if you're fortunate). It makes no sense. It's not as if gold farming is _super fun_ or anything. Hell, you can't even watch Netflix while you do it because the gameplay is too intense.

[phs.6089]

Not every player has NA wages?

Some players are old-school and prefer to farm in RPG instead of swiping?

[Lambent.6375]

Some of us want to earn our gold from playing the game.

 

If we just bought everything, that wouldn't leave us with much to do. (Speaking of open world pve players)

[Batel.9206]

I like the challenge of saving up for something I want. Sure, I could just buy a gem card and convert that to gold, but I'd rather work for it. I get to have fun playing the game, I get to learn my class, I get to explore, I get to make up stories to go along with the meta events (explaining why my characters are here, what they're doing here, their thoughts on the whole thing), etc. *I* have fun, at least, because I don't see it as a chore.

 

I don't do it all the time - very rarely, in fact. But it's fun every once in a while. :) Besides, while I procrastinate on time-intensive story missions (on the last personal story mission now...oh boy), I can tootle about in the open world and still be productive.

[Goettel.4389]

I enjoy farming 's all.

[Jaunty.6018]

> @"Lambent.6375" said:

> Some of us want to earn our gold from playing the game.

>

> If we just bought everything, that wouldn't leave us with much to do. (Speaking of open world pve players)

 

I guess that points out a pretty big flaw in Guild Wars 2 then, eh? The fact that you can buy so much of the cool stuff with real money. I personally wish the cash shop wasn't there at all, but since it IS there, it's always an option--and often the more logical one.

[Cyninja.2954]

> @"Jaunty.6018" said:

> I ran Istan for about 3 hours and got no more than 30 gold. I'm aware some people can make more, but it's still not much. Considering you can spend $20 on various sites and get 2,000 gems, which equate to around 600 gold, I see gold farming in this game as nothing more than pointless slave labor. Even if you have a low wage job why not just work 2-3 extra hours and get a gem card?

>

> At the rate I've experienced, it would take you _60 hours of farming_ to get 600 gold. 60 in-game hours vs. 2-3 hours of real work (or less if you're fortunate). It makes no sense. It's not as if gold farming is _super fun_ or anything. Hell, you can't even watch Netflix while you do it because the gameplay is too intense.

 

First off, not every one decides to risk their account with illegal sites, especially when there is in-game legal methods of converting gems to gold.

 

Second, people do just that if they have enough disposable income. Most use the gem exchange.

 

Third, not all players have NA income or similar or the amount of disposable income.

 

Fourth, some enjoy farming.

 

Fifth, in case of illegal sites, someone for that site had to farm, steal or in other ways acquire the gold they send you (while you risk your account). For the gem-gold exchange, the gold which gets traded for gems also gets farmed by players.

[Jaunty.6018]

> @"Cyninja.2954" said:

> > @"Jaunty.6018" said:

> > I ran Istan for about 3 hours and got no more than 30 gold. I'm aware some people can make more, but it's still not much. Considering you can spend $20 on various sites and get 2,000 gems, which equate to around 600 gold, I see gold farming in this game as nothing more than pointless slave labor. Even if you have a low wage job why not just work 2-3 extra hours and get a gem card?

> >

> > At the rate I've experienced, it would take you _60 hours of farming_ to get 600 gold. 60 in-game hours vs. 2-3 hours of real work (or less if you're fortunate). It makes no sense. It's not as if gold farming is _super fun_ or anything. Hell, you can't even watch Netflix while you do it because the gameplay is too intense.

>

> First off, not every one decides to risk their account with illegal sites, especially when there is in-game legal methods of converting gems to gold.

 

Ebay and Amazon are illegal? That's news to me.

 

> Third, not all players have NA income or similar or the amount of disposable income.

 

If you're in NA and don't have $20 to spend but you have have time to gold farm all day, I think your priorities are a little messed up. But I ain't judgin'.

 

 

 

[Mea.5491]

> I ran Istan for about 3 hours and got no more than 30 gold.

 

You're doing something wrong. When I farm I only do a Pala - Akili - GH rotation once. The whole thing takes about 1 hour (waiting for Pala time included). I usually get around 20 Gold out of it (slightly depends on RNG) and I don't even open unid gear (I heard people who do get more Gold but I'm lazy to boost my MF). If I repeat my lazy rotation 3 times (3 hours total), I get around 60 Gold. The good thing is that I get an hour of downtime after GH because Pala starts every 2 hours so I can log off to work (I work at home).

 

Also, many people who live in poor countries can make more Gold by farming than working. It's sad but true. They might not have enough spare money to buy pixels in a video game because of several real life reasons.

 

And finally, some of us actually enjoy farming meta events. I've met most of my friends this way so we always chat during events which makes them a lot more fun. :)

[Khisanth.2948]

> @"Jaunty.6018" said:

> > @"Cyninja.2954" said:

> > > @"Jaunty.6018" said:

> > > I ran Istan for about 3 hours and got no more than 30 gold. I'm aware some people can make more, but it's still not much. Considering you can spend $20 on various sites and get 2,000 gems, which equate to around 600 gold, I see gold farming in this game as nothing more than pointless slave labor. Even if you have a low wage job why not just work 2-3 extra hours and get a gem card?

> > >

> > > At the rate I've experienced, it would take you _60 hours of farming_ to get 600 gold. 60 in-game hours vs. 2-3 hours of real work (or less if you're fortunate). It makes no sense. It's not as if gold farming is _super fun_ or anything. Hell, you can't even watch Netflix while you do it because the gameplay is too intense.

> >

> > First off, not every one decides to risk their account with illegal sites, especially when there is in-game legal methods of converting gems to gold.

>

> Ebay and Amazon are illegal? That's news to me.

>

 

They are if the sellers obtained the cards via fraud.

 

[Jaunty.6018]

> @"Mea.5491" said:

> > I ran Istan for about 3 hours and got no more than 30 gold.

>

> You're doing something wrong. When I farm I only do a Pala - Akili - GH rotation once. The whole thing takes about 1 hour (waiting for Pala time included). I usually get around 20 Gold out of it (slightly depends on RNG) and I don't even open unid gear (I heard people who do get more Gold but I'm lazy to boost my MF). If I repeat my lazy rotation 3 times (3 hours total), I get around 60 Gold. The good thing is that I get an hour of downtime after GH because Pala starts every 2 hours so I can log off to work (I work at home).

 

That's exactly what I do and I definitely don't get that much. Just bad luck maybe?

 

> Also, many people who live in poor countries can make more Gold by farming than working. It's sad but true. They might not have enough spare money to buy pixels in a video game because of several real life reasons.

 

Fair point.

 

> And finally, some of us actually enjoy farming meta events. I've met most of my friends this way so we always chat during events which makes them a lot more fun. :)

 

Also fair point. There is always an opportunity to meet someone in a social event. But there's just as much opportunity to meet someone outside of farming, doing something you enjoy more.

[Sojourner.4621]

> @"Jaunty.6018" said:

> > @"Mea.5491" said:

> > > I ran Istan for about 3 hours and got no more than 30 gold.

> >

> > You're doing something wrong. When I farm I only do a Pala - Akili - GH rotation once. The whole thing takes about 1 hour (waiting for Pala time included). I usually get around 20 Gold out of it (slightly depends on RNG) and I don't even open unid gear (I heard people who do get more Gold but I'm lazy to boost my MF). If I repeat my lazy rotation 3 times (3 hours total), I get around 60 Gold. The good thing is that I get an hour of downtime after GH because Pala starts every 2 hours so I can log off to work (I work at home).

>

> That's exactly what I do and I definitely don't get that much. Just bad luck maybe?

 

Not bad luck, bad information. You hear "Istan meta is a great way of earning gold" without being told what that actually means. It's not just item drops, palawan phylacteries and unidentified gear trade-posted out. You have to take the Volatile Magic you earn from events and spend it at the VM vendor on the beach after the entire cycle is over. You spend that VM on either trophy or leather chests and sell the resulting materials. You make a TON of Volatile Magic from opening the Supply Caches that spawn all around after the Palawadan and Great Hall meta events. A ton of magic equals a ton of supply chests. A ton of chests equals a bunch of leather and trophies which sell for a high price per unit.

 

The full cycle involves doing both... Palawadan itself, and a cycle of doing Great Hall as often as possible on as many maps as possible until Palawadan starts again. The ones who make even more than 20g an hour tend to map hop between the main meta so they can hit more active GH metas since those are not on a fixed timer but rather an interval after the previous one ended. If you're really lucky there is never more than a minute or two break between metas except for the 10 minute lull before Palawadan itself.

 

The truth is almost always more complicated than "farm here, get gold." You have to do a lot of legwork to turn the assets you gain from the event in to liquid assets. RIBA Silverwastes farm can also net 20-35g an hour, but you have to factor in transferring all your bags to a mid level character and opening on that chara instead, then salvaging all junk and TPing any of the rares worth more than a fifty-ish silver. If you're REALLY in to making the maximum profits you can even max out your magic find stat on that bag-opening character, then open the bags inside the SW for its magic find boost, and right in the first seconds after opening a bandit chest for a double MF bonus.

 

Once you start looking at it that way, devoting, say, one hour a day of your play time to metas to make around 100g a week isn't really that much of a sacrifice.

[Taygus.4571]

 

Some people are poor you know, even in western countries.. and don't have much dispossable income. They could be working 40-60 hours a week, have two or three children in uni or are barely scraping local rents for a safe area.

Also, even in the US some states have ludicrously low minium wage.

 

Also not everyone can work.

 

We spend most of the little we have on rescuing cats.. that leaves me next to nothing for ingame purchases.

 

[VanWilder.6923]

> @"Jaunty.6018" said:

> I ran Istan for about 3 hours and got no more than 30 gold. I'm aware some people can make more, but it's still not much. Considering you can spend $20 on various sites and get 2,000 gems, which equate to around 600 gold, I see gold farming in this game as nothing more than pointless slave labor. Even if you have a low wage job why not just work 2-3 extra hours and get a gem card?

>

> At the rate I've experienced, it would take you _60 hours of farming_ to get 600 gold. 60 in-game hours vs. 2-3 hours of real work (or less if you're fortunate). It makes no sense. It's not as if gold farming is _super fun_ or anything. Hell, you can't even watch Netflix while you do it because the gameplay is too intense.

I agree with you. If minimum wage per hour is above $15 then working extra hours can be way more efficiency than in game farming. For casual players who only play couple hours per day, I dont call that farming,I would call it "Playing the game"

Beside, there are things that can not be bought by Gold and they do need a lot of farm, for example like Legendary gears (2nd gen Legend weapons), Fractal God title, etc...

People just play the game as they like it for whatever reasons they thinks will be most enjoyable.

[juhani.5361]

Lots of people love farming. Heck, I don't mind it sometimes myself. Plus, sometimes it feels good to get some in-game benefit for playing instead of hauling out Mr. Credit Card. I know I'd feel a lot worse about the LW episodes if I'd spent more than a couple of bucks on the lot of them after converting my in-game earnings to gems.

[Jaunty.6018]

> @"Sojourner.4621" said:

> > @"Jaunty.6018" said:

> > > @"Mea.5491" said:

> > > > I ran Istan for about 3 hours and got no more than 30 gold.

> > >

> > > You're doing something wrong. When I farm I only do a Pala - Akili - GH rotation once. The whole thing takes about 1 hour (waiting for Pala time included). I usually get around 20 Gold out of it (slightly depends on RNG) and I don't even open unid gear (I heard people who do get more Gold but I'm lazy to boost my MF). If I repeat my lazy rotation 3 times (3 hours total), I get around 60 Gold. The good thing is that I get an hour of downtime after GH because Pala starts every 2 hours so I can log off to work (I work at home).

> >

> > That's exactly what I do and I definitely don't get that much. Just bad luck maybe?

>

> Not bad luck, bad information. You hear "Istan meta is a great way of earning gold" without being told what that actually means. It's not just item drops, palawan phylacteries and unidentified gear trade-posted out. You have to take the Volatile Magic you earn from events and spend it at the VM vendor on the beach after the entire cycle is over. You spend that VM on either trophy or leather chests and sell the resulting materials. You make a TON of Volatile Magic from opening the Supply Caches that spawn all around after the Palawadan and Great Hall meta events. A ton of magic equals a ton of supply chests. A ton of chests equals a bunch of leather and trophies which sell for a high price per unit.

>

> The full cycle involves doing both... Palawadan itself, and a cycle of doing Great Hall as often as possible on as many maps as possible until Palawadan starts again. The ones who make even more than 20g an hour tend to map hop between the main meta so they can hit more active GH metas since those are not on a fixed timer but rather an interval after the previous one ended. If you're really lucky there is never more than a minute or two break between metas except for the 10 minute lull before Palawadan itself.

>

> The truth is almost always more complicated than "farm here, get gold." You have to do a lot of legwork to turn the assets you gain from the event in to liquid assets. RIBA Silverwastes farm can also net 20-35g an hour, but you have to factor in transferring all your bags to a mid level character and opening on that chara instead, then salvaging all junk and TPing any of the rares worth more than a fifty-ish silver. If you're REALLY in to making the maximum profits you can even max out your magic find stat on that bag-opening character, then open the bags inside the SW for its magic find boost, and right in the first seconds after opening a bandit chest for a double MF bonus.

>

> Once you start looking at it that way, devoting, say, one hour a day of your play time to metas to make around 100g a week isn't really that much of a sacrifice.

 

And even if I did exactly all of that, the profit still absolutely _pales_ in comparison to just throwing a few bucks at the game. But I guess some people really do enjoy farming and there isn't any argument against that. Ya like what ya like, and power to ya.

[Jaunty.6018]

> @"Khisanth.2948" said:

> > @"Jaunty.6018" said:

> > > @"Cyninja.2954" said:

> > > > @"Jaunty.6018" said:

> > > > I ran Istan for about 3 hours and got no more than 30 gold. I'm aware some people can make more, but it's still not much. Considering you can spend $20 on various sites and get 2,000 gems, which equate to around 600 gold, I see gold farming in this game as nothing more than pointless slave labor. Even if you have a low wage job why not just work 2-3 extra hours and get a gem card?

> > > >

> > > > At the rate I've experienced, it would take you _60 hours of farming_ to get 600 gold. 60 in-game hours vs. 2-3 hours of real work (or less if you're fortunate). It makes no sense. It's not as if gold farming is _super fun_ or anything. Hell, you can't even watch Netflix while you do it because the gameplay is too intense.

> > >

> > > First off, not every one decides to risk their account with illegal sites, especially when there is in-game legal methods of converting gems to gold.

> >

> > Ebay and Amazon are illegal? That's news to me.

> >

>

> They are if the sellers obtained the cards via fraud.

>

Okay so assuming ALL sellers on eBay and Amazon are fraudulent (which they certainly are not), you could still get the 2,000 gem card from retail stores for $25. Not a big difference and my point still stands.

 

[Jaunty.6018]

> @"Taygus.4571" said:

>

> Some people are poor you know, even in western countries.. and don't have much dispossable income. They could be working 40-60 hours a week, have two or three children in uni or are barely scraping local rents for a safe area.

> Also, even in the US some states have ludicrously low minium wage.

>

> Also not everyone can work.

>

> We spend most of the little we have on rescuing cats.. that leaves me next to nothing for ingame purchases.

>

 

I know there are always exceptions. I'm just speaking for the majority of players who spend so many hours gold farming.

 

And you rescue cats? You are awesome. <3

 

[stephaniehall.2631]

I sort of feel the exact opposite, why on earth would you pay for something you can get for free just by playing, when the whole point of a game is to play it.... even if I did have £20 to spare I would definitely use that to take my kid's for an ice cream. Don't get me wrong sometimes I wish I could get things faster but that's also my motivation to keep playing, if I already have everything by swiping and there's no challenge to the game... I don't know what would motivate me to continue playing.

[Jaunty.6018]

> @"stephaniehall.2631" said:

> I sort of feel the exact opposite, why on earth would you pay for something you can get for free just by playing, when the whole point of a game is to play it.... even if I did have £20 to spare I would definitely use that to take my kid's for an ice cream. Don't get me wrong sometimes I wish I could get things faster but that's also my motivation to keep playing, if I already have everything by swiping and there's no challenge to the game... I don't know what would motivate me to continue playing.

 

Well the point of the game is to enjoy it. If you're spending hours per day grinding for gold that could be so much more easily obtained by throwing a few bucks at the game, then I don't see that as very enjoyable personally. I feel I'm wasting my life when I grind needlessly. If there weren't an omnipresent cash shop in the game I wouldn't mind it as much. The farming would then be the most efficient way to get what I want from the game. But that's not the case.

[stephaniehall.2631]

that's why I like gw, grind here is actually a lot more profitable and entertaining than some other games I have played and i don't have the options to swipe because every penny I have goes to my kids. I even asked for the base game + expansions for my birthday/xmas so didn't even pay for them. I guess we all have different priorities for our money and enjoy different aspects of gaming. I spend time in game mostly when my kid's are sleeping and I can't really go anywhere or do anything else anyway so its not a "waste" of my time... a waste to me is money disappearing into pixels.

[joneirikb.7506]

I had this discussion with a guildie that asked what was the fastest way to get a Legendary, and I answered "Working a few hours extra at work, and converting the salary into gems to gold and buy it of TP." This naturally spawned some different comments.

 

Different people have different tastes and preferences (as well as economical and psychological reasons), and as such it is impossible to really put a "right/wrong" label on this. Would it be factual FASTER to swipe a credit card to buy gems->gold? Sure, if you have the money we can't argue that it's the fastest way to gain gold in the entire game. And in *many* cases we will gain more real life cash in a shorter amount of time than we can grind in-game, but not always and not everyone, it depends too much on to many factors.

 

Examples: Teenagers with no income, unemployment, families with lots of expenses (see kids), lone parents, minimum wages and lots of expenses, retired with little to no pension, etc.

 

Sometimes people also just flat out don't think you should spend money on a game (I know several), or other reasons like feeling it cheapens the challenge/experience etc.

 

---

 

Personally I'm *Allergic to Grinding* and just flat out can't stand it. I'll play what I like how I like and if it gives me something cool, if not, too bad. I've spent money on gems several times (especially first few years, when I had lots of disposable income), and often converted the rest after buying stuff I wanted from gemstore, into gold.

 

Now thankfully for me, I have absolutely no interest in a legendary weapon, at all. But if I was, I'd buy it form the TP for gold, probably with gem->gold change. Because the pure grindage that is legendary crafting... just doesn't work for me. So to the said guildie I talked about in my first line, I said that I had calculated that I could work about 2 days extra at work, or 1 Saturday (with overtime) to earn enough cash to gem->gold to buy a legendary. And that I found that a much better investment of time for my part. I do in-fact find work to be more fun than I find grinding in any game. and 8-10 hours of work, which I can spend chatting with co-workers, or just lose myself in thought while working, is generally much more palatable to me than sitting repeat what I consider to be boring repeat tasks in a computer game.

 

Now, for some reason, most of my guild members disagree with me on this :p and that is entirely ok, everyone have their own reasons, and some people enjoy the "relaxing medium" of grinding, and being able to see their own progress steadily improving. There is a quote about this which I can't find again, but basically: MMORPG's: Many players watching small numbers grow

[Tanner Blackfeather.6509]

> @"Jaunty.6018" said:

> Even if you have a low wage job why not just work 2-3 extra hours and get a gem card?

>

 

This is an argument that comes up pretty much every time any kind of spending money on the game is discussed.

 

I have a decently paying job, but that job *does not offer me the option* to work more than my normal 40 h/week. Most jobs here don't offer that in a way controlled by the employee. Overtime is occasionally offered, but that is entirely on the employer's initiative.

[Danikat.8537]

For me there's a few reasons but some of the main ones are:

1) My job doesn't offer paid overtime, certainly not whenever I feel like doing it. If I do extra work then I get extra time off - for example this week I worked on Saturday and I get next Friday off.

2) There are many, many more things I can do with real money, including many things I'd rather have/do than get items in GW2. If I could do it legally I'd turn my gold into real money rather than the other way around. I do sometimes buy gems because I don't have the gold/time to get it and I think the item is worth the price, but in general I'd rather get stuff in the game by playing.

3) I admit I don't enjoy farming the way most people do it. I'm not going to play the same events over and over for hours on end, but I do like doing meta-events and various other things which can earn gold. And since I don't do things I don't enjoy for it gold is basically free to me - it comes as part of playing the game.

[Bloodstealer.5978]

> @"Khisanth.2948" said:

> > @"Jaunty.6018" said:

> > > @"Cyninja.2954" said:

> > > > @"Jaunty.6018" said:

> > > > I ran Istan for about 3 hours and got no more than 30 gold. I'm aware some people can make more, but it's still not much. Considering you can spend $20 on various sites and get 2,000 gems, which equate to around 600 gold, I see gold farming in this game as nothing more than pointless slave labor. Even if you have a low wage job why not just work 2-3 extra hours and get a gem card?

> > > >

> > > > At the rate I've experienced, it would take you _60 hours of farming_ to get 600 gold. 60 in-game hours vs. 2-3 hours of real work (or less if you're fortunate). It makes no sense. It's not as if gold farming is _super fun_ or anything. Hell, you can't even watch Netflix while you do it because the gameplay is too intense.

> > >

> > > First off, not every one decides to risk their account with illegal sites, especially when there is in-game legal methods of converting gems to gold.

> >

> > Ebay and Amazon are illegal? That's news to me.

> >

>

> They are if the sellers obtained the cards via fraud.

>

 

Does not make a site illegal just because someone sells something on them that is not legit.. Would be interesting to see how you would handle a legal challenge from those sites though.

There are many sites/shops that sell gem cards... without issue, some ANET partner with some they don't. Does not make any of them illegal.

If your choosing to use goldsellers to procure gold, then that is entirely different and yeah you stand to risk your account, but gem cards not so much unless they were in fact stolen cards, which I would hazard a guess is a lot less frequent than being scammed by a goldseller.

Pretty sure even if you purchased a stolen card, then the worst that could happen is the card code gets refused when trying to activate it in the cashop, your account would not be at risk because your not giving such details to either the site or the seller, your just left out of pocket.