Botting PWI

Hi guys. I've been playing pwi a loooong time, like a month or two before Harshlands opened. And I'm frusterated. I watch people in pw forums, and everywhere else QQ about the game economy while sporting r9rr and such. What am I missing? I can't cs enough usd to buy a car, and I work for a living so I'm not able to drop 30-60 hours a week in game. I've tried merching, only to be under bid by someone who's making 36 coin per sale near as I can tell. I've got all the skills of my class, leveled before bh was a thing, let alone fc. And here I sit getting murdered by some dude nobody ever heard of 3 weeks ago in r9rr +12 josd... What am I missing here??? 5 years, countless hours, and yes real world cash have me emotionally invested in a game - I've done the time. Is there no serious way to get geared and compete? I believe some spoiled rich kids stole their parents card and paid $3,000 for new gear. And I'll believe some people played 40 hours a day for 2 years and farmed the coin for their gear. But not everyone. What am I missing? I don't want to ruin anything, I just feel I've done my time. Anyway, it's probably that I'm just too busy to have nice things, but I thought I'd ask. lol

Why do you want this gear? For PVE it is useless and in a TW you are welcome without R9 too. Yes at NW you have now chance without R9. But the sale prices for these items are low.

I am happy with the old gear from times without R9 and G16. Play only approx 1 hour a day just for fun. If it is get "work" I turn the PC off.

And this is why I keep saying that the game is dead. There may be some players left, but it's essentially an enormous pay2win situation, and if that happens game is dead for me personally.

I merchanted my way to R9 for me and my ingame wife. I did write a program to control a party of bots for fun, but merchanting is the best way to make money. I haven't played for ages now though, so I'm glad I never invested any real money into the game. If you like PvP I'd recommend getting into a game where your gear isn't as important such as Guild Wars 2. The main PvP mode there (small scale, so 5v5) is separate from the PvE and WvW (large scale PvP) modes, where you can just pick the gear you want to use and don't have to do anything for it, you also get auto lvled to max lvl.

For the large scale PvP mode (Servers fighting servers on maps with a limit of around 80 players with siege and castles n stuff) you do use your gear acquired in PvE, but it's very easy to come by and there's no gear that comes from the cash shop, only skins (If you were to insist on converting real money to ingame money to buy your gear, it would cost around 30$ to get top of the line endgame stuff, but it's easy enough to get for free). The game you only need to buy, no subscription fee.

If you insist on sticking with PWI, I'd recommend not even trying to stay competitive and just focus on having a good time with your guild, as it's all about the social interactions really.

Maybe I'm just not cut out to be a merch. Everywhere I look, people are underselling things in ways I don't understand. List price of a mog based on w/c today was 25-30 mil each. Buy 5 from boutique @ $100, convert to in game coin works out to around 36 mil each. That's with no profit... How is this possible? No clue, but it seems like the players with the "secret" undercut the own game's cash shop, which is the only place to get mogs. It doesn't make any sense.

In conclusion, Harshlands doesn't seem dead to me. World Chat is hopping, pvp in west arch all the time, and server runs about 10 or more tw per week. But my brother has the sin "peek" inventory skill... He tells me there's about a third of all players with hundreds or thousands of dreamchaser packs, and endless stacks of the pots from them. Maybe I'm fighting upstream against an exploit that didn't get plugged fast enough, where everyone sold tons of accidentally free stuff and got their heart's desire. But damn it, I've never invested this much time, effort, cash, or anything else into a game before. The idea that the answers available are move on to another game or live with the fact that I'll always suck.... I LIKE this game. The graphics, the nw and tw setup, the unexpected pvp in the middle of everything else. This is a be ready for anything game. The next level after console games, with everything they have, plus freedom of movement, choice, and the unexpected human element. Anything can happen. I don't WANT a game that takes pvp out of questing. Or where you can't go where you want when you want, or can't pvp in the air... :'(

They key to merchanting used to be buying in cash shop when things are on sale, then start selling them a week or two after they go off sale. Then with experience you learn how much you need to buy of the different items. Right now there are a lot of merchants with tens of billions of coins though, worth many thousands of dollars and it might be hard to compete with those.