I hate when a new player asks a question and gets these negative responses.
The economy has been affected by inflation... just like the real life economy has. That's not to say that some of the issues brought up by the posters before me aren't legitimate... but let's think about this logically here. This game has been around for nearly 20 years and has been accumulating gold with more and more players since then. With the largest concentration of players also moving to the Atlantic shard, inflation continued to grow as most gold and other assets in the game are now on Atlantic.
There are plenty of ways to earn money and many existing players in this game always willing to help out new players buy armor, weapons, or anything else needed in order to get a start. Especially if you join a good guild, you will find plenty of people willing to help you out.