GW 2: The Gathering

The way gathering will work in GW 2 is rather different than that of WoW. The same general professions will be around such as mining and herbalism, but they will work a little different. Gathering nodes will spawn across the world and they will be gathered on a per player basis as opposed to the world. Meaning that once you mine a node empty, another player will be able to come and mine the same one. The main purpose of this is to prevent "node ninjas." When you mine a node, it will be "empty" for you and only you and will not dissapear.

So 5 seconds later another player may come and mine the same node in the same place at the same time and mine it for themselves in addition to you. This small change has numerous ramifications that may have a significant impact on how the economy works.

Here's an example. There's 5 people mining saronite in Sholozar basin or nagrand or -insert popular farming zone here- all at the same time. This would reduce the amount they can farm by a lot due to everybody chasing after the same nodes and hoping to catch the respawns as they fly over them. However in GW 2 they will each be able to mine the same nodes and only have to wait on their personal farming route. This leads to several very important and immediately noticeable effects.

1. A more available supply in raw materials.
This is due to the much less limited supply of materials that can be gathered in a set amount of time with a lack of competition for the same nodes.

2. More potential for botting.
While arena net is very opposed to botting, they're not perfect. But with nodes having the same locations and not having a random respawn timer, it would be much easier to program a bot to gather much more. In WoW when you mine a node it dissapears from the world for everyone and comes back in a random location, rarely the same as where it was last. This makes it a bit harder for mining bots to find them. But when they are in the same spot with only a random timer, bots will come and provide much more materials for cheap than in wow. That is of course, if they aren't hit with the b& hammer in a few days.

3. "Farmed for free!"
With the ease of farming it will lead to a great rise in "I farmed it for free" that is rampant in almost every game with gathering/crafting. Also with a lot of players being new to this system (as it was not present in the first guild wars) may lead many to fall into this mentality due to lack of experience. This could result in a lack of sales (or markets even) as people are unwilling to spend their hard farmed gold on something that can be gotten for free (after several hours of work).

This may take some time, but even in WoW there are still plenty of people that know the difference so this shouldn't be too much of a problem once people find more needs for gold and have less time to farm instead of enjoying a new game.

4. Natural rise of goblins will be slowed.
With farming being made so easy, people will be less likely to turn to the AH and learn to be a goblin. With a simple and mindless source of income there will be far less of a desire to find a more effective approach at making gold. Also people don't usually look at making gold as a goal and only amass money when they have a need for it. You can liken this to the daily quests in wow, easy money for little work. Hell even somebody on my server got gold capped by mostly doing dailys. When there are no truly effective means of making gold outside of farming people will look for an alternative, but when you have something as "thought free" as easy farming this necessity will not be sought out by many.


Like all up and coming AH players, your fortune has to start from something and that something is almost always gathering. It was for me of course. So naturally I'll be doing my best to gather what ever it is that I can find while steaming towards the level cap of 80.


Thanks for stopping by!