The other day I received a comment about a very important detail that I have yet to write about just yet. It was something very small stated in an interview with one of the GW 2 developers. Server transfers will be free and only have a short cool down. The cool down most likely be only 3 days or once a week as to coincide with the "World vs. World" pvp matches that will be held. Here's a quote from the wiki:
"Eric Flannum : World vs. World PvP, or WvW as we call it, can be figured as a massive strategy game in which each player is a unit in the conflict. Each week, we'll take 3 worlds (what they call "servers" in other games) and make them fight in WvW. Each world will be in charge of castles, mercenary camps, mines, lumberjack camps and villages in the starting zone. Between those starting points there'll be a neutral zone, controlled by no clan, that will contain fortresses, mines and villages too. WvW is the battle between those 3 worlds for the control of strategic points. Players may decide to fight alone against a supply caravan, join a single group and capture a mine or create a large alliance to assault one of the numerous fortress that could give an advantage in the zone.
The battle may continue in any zone, including the starting territory of a world. Hold control points and control territories will grant bonuses to your world. At the end of the week, a world will be called victorious and 3 other worlds will be picked to fight in the next battle."
This one little detail means, quite literally, a world of difference in the auction game. Several worlds as a matter of fact (you see wut i did thar?). There might not be a lot one can say on it, but it's such an important thing that I feel I should discuss it. In warcraft you have numerous different servers to play on, each with their own economy, prices, markets, supplies, and demands. Different people farm different things, craft and sell different items and so forth. A successful market on one server may be very weak on another server. This is just the natural order of things.
This is essentially set in stone as the process to change servers may take anywhere from a day to a week, during which time you cannot access any character on your account. Not to mention it also costs $15 per character and may require a name change if it's in use on the target server. The likelihood of enough people going through this process to disrupt an entire game economy is essentially zero. But in GW 2 the process to change servers will be completely free and, I assume, that all names are reserved once you create them on any given server. The big question here is...
...will the auction houses be linked?
If so, that means a shortage of any material may be unheard of. All prices will eventually balance out to their own respective "values" with price spikes only coming and going as they naturally do. The only concern here is the amount of farmers which, I can assure you, will be many.
However! If they are not linked, that means the potential to find super cheap deals on raw materials and other items is almost limitless. Lets say that Level 1 crests are worth 300 gold on your server. However on MY server they may be worth 3,000 gold. Then it's as simple as spend all your cash on the cheap crests, transfer to my server and undercut me by 50% and make a mega profit. But that's just plain items.
If you check and find a certain server where, say, ore is usually cheap you can buy those, craft a bunch of items, sell the items for a primo undercut and the remaining ores to take hold of yet another market. Remember my constant yammering on about get into as many markets as possible? Never forget that you can sell the raw materials as well! This means that if there's a demand for something, it will ALWAYS have somewhere to be strong. Though depending on the transfer cool down and linked AH this might not be a practical idea.
The cool down between servers will mostly effect the amount of gold or items to sell that you should take with you to another server and how often you may find it feasible to do so. And one final bit of info that is unknown that will make a huge effect on this. Will you be able to transfer single characters like in warcraft or will it be an "entire account or nothing" transfer? Again, this is just a small detail but has a huge effect on the game.
Just like the addition of a jump button. Fuckin' cool!
Thanks for stopping by!
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