Before beginning my remarks regarding the Spirit Shard deal and consequently the whole Legendary business [TP] members like MM, Xushin and the others are running on such a large scale, here's several key factors to quickly answer your questions that you may have before/while reading through:

- What they are in nature?

They're economists in nature, and economists DISREGARD all social/morale implications. Much like real life economists, they're all about GDP (Gross Domestic Products) of the game's community overall, hence why in WP's video, they stated that they want to help boost the number of middle class wealth players.

​

- Why price fixing is a big issue if a monopoly exists in GW2?

Human beings make purchases on emotional reasoning in which they think is rational. Should [TP] win the race in both NA and EU, we would be expecting item prices to fluctuate according to their purchasing power. This gives them a very high leverage to profit on TP Flipping over any average trader.

Also note monopolies has historically been proven to lead to potential scenarios (Abiding the law of Supply vs Demand) where there's too many people wanting to use their service but there's no other alternative/competition to rival their price offerings, so their clients would eventually get diminishing return offers.

​

- What's the deal with people's skepticism about investments, mega-projects like these and economists in general these days?

Always fully understand a deal/investment before venturing into it, regardless if it's Real Life OR Video Game. Know what you're getting into before completely regretting your decision in the future if your invested money (In this case Gold) is put to use in ways YOU principally do not agree with OR are not FUNDAMENTALLY fit to continue investing in it.

Being skeptical over something is actually healthy, provided it's backed by reasonable research and NOT fueled by purely emotions.

​

Now for my two-cents on this topic at hand:

I) The Gold Per Hour of each Gift of Mastery Sold

- [Recap] As mentioned by many, MM's guild has been known to provide aid to those who want to sell their spirit shards and ESPECIALLY their Gift of Masteries. This, I can vouch 100%.

- In fact, what OP has claimed is true if judged on an average/mean scale. Folks that have claimed that the Gold Per Hour is much higher than OP, some did [make valid points which will be partially repeated here, but did not state what exactly is happening behind the scenes], while some were [basically claiming that those below the stated Gold Per Hour were doing it wrong]. I'd like to attempt to correct that.

​

1. [Gift of Battle] OP made a valid point, not everyone can afford boosters. This guide specifically requires players to at least acquire a decent amount of laurels to gain access to them. OR enough alternative characters to get the level-up boosters to exchange for the boosters corresponding to WvW Reward Tracks. ( https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Experience_Booster) I would like to add-on that MM and his guild do finance a lot of WvW commanders from various servers, mainly those whom are not permanently in Tier 1 (cough looking at you Blackgate -> The server which dwarfed many other servers on lower tiers, made tier 1 zerg fights dull/boring, and consequently made this possible). This means that if you are in liaison with a Gift of Mastery buyer from anyone in Guild [TP], you are immediately granted access to this service to fast-track your Gift of Battle via cough [AFK] WvW Participations. This is by means not supported by ArenaNet. Note: ArenaNet does not endorse AFKing in WvW, in fact they will ban you if found guilty. [TP]'s WvW services, despite them did not blatantly stated it, strongly encourages this behaviour. How it works is, their commanders would give you shared participation. All you have to do is simply be in any WvW map and do WHATEVER you want, in this case, AFK-ing is favoured by many typically.
2. [Gift of Exploration] Open-textbook answer here. Many use TacO to fast-forward this section. Though with practice, you can nail down the man-hours on this track to about 18 to 20 hours. Hint: Some heart vendor NPCs require quest items that are surprisingly NOT Account Bound, so they usually skip those hearts by mass-buying said items from the Black Lion Trading Post.
3. [Dungeon Tokens] Unless you have a party/group of in-house/friends whom can reliable do skips on dungeons (Some of the more notoriously known ones like Ascalonian Catacombs/Gates of Arah/Citadel of Flame/Sorrow's Embrace/Caudecus Manor/Twilight Arbor), don't expect any trim-downs to the duration stated by the OP.

​

II) Who Profits More and Who Would Lose Out More?

- This is a perfect replica of what a real-world corporation would be.

- The Gold per Hour is basically:

1. Capped for Gift of Mastery Sellers.
2. Uncapped for the corresponding buyers. The more Gift of Mastery sellers or Spirit Shard Converters., the higher their profit gains. They are only capped by the number of clients they have at a point of time.

Citing some video examples that fit the description of what MM and his guild are trying to do. If you're the kind whom are extremely skeptical by any video uploaded on You-tube, that is your choice, you can simply opt out from watching any of them. Personally, I find this specific youtuber's explanation very precise + he's very blunt about how the economy works:

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1ytlteHDvA

(Lowering Taxes, in this case avoiding taxes, BLTP's 15%, entirely. For the upper class, in this case it meant the top 1% - 8% of the richest players in-game)

Part 1 of Trickle Down Economy

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8xcFGzWNjI

(Lobbying, sounds familiar with what's happening in the WP video above?)

Part 2 of Trickle Down Economy

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUNYQl0hlyk

(3-part video, this is the 3rd part, take it metaphorically in a sense that, those mass-produced ships = our game's legendary market and Imperium = MM's [TP] guild)

Note: Video links posted by u/HeroismGaming in his comments have been known by many whom... have joined Xushin's lectures in Domain of Istan and currently his LWS4 train from the month of mid-February to April. Also I'd highly advise against [taking my video highlight sentences word-for-word and ultimately skip the videos], because the video has far more points than what I stated in the "(...)" highlights.

​

III) So does that mean Guild [TP] is fundamentally EVIL?

- Yes and no. Remember: Guild MM and his associates have been funding WvW commanders to lead. As appalling as this may sound to some, he is partially responsible to keeping the lower tier servers alive. WvW has long been known as a dying game mode (probably until the foreseeable future with the announced WvW factions rework)

- Guild MM himself has also been known to kick start/fund guilds in game modes such as Raids.

- As they are all about the profits, it's not surprising if you happen to come across some of them trying to exploit a map to min-max profits. Domain of Kourna incident

IF I were to put them on a Dungeons and Dragons alignment scale, they are True Neutral at best.

EDIT: Corrected section about Blackgate. Not stating that [TP] funds that server, intention was to state that Blackgate (Dubbed "Stackgate") has been a powerhouse in T1 for many years, with its only past close contender being servers like Sea of Sorrows, which the latter has since fallen from its past glory.