Post about IGE you should readFollow

This post on how IGE "may" be controlling the economy got me to thinking, (bad habit, I know). It concerns me that I may be getting sorta "tricked" when I go to buy items in the bazaar by an Evil Empire doing the price-fixing thing, but then I remembered how I usually go about buying, and felt better.
"Patience" is the key to avoiding the trap of ever increasing prices to feed a RL companies growth. Don't buy that item if it is at the top of the price tier, wait until it is at the bottom.
I created my trader the day the Bazaar opened, and I play the same one today. Don't buy from a trader you dont know, one that has too many high ticket items time after time, or that are here one day and gone the next. I know this means waiting for that new item sometimes, or passing up what seems to be a deal 'to good to be true,' but if you care as much about the EQ economy as some of you claim to, it should be a small "price" to pay.
Lui

This, my friends, is exactly the mentality that makes this an unresolvable problem.

People who buy pp for real cash, who pay outrageous prices for high end items, see themselves not as the perpetuaters of the problem, but as victims.

Being an unrealistic idealist it pains me to say this, but this problem isn't going to ever be "fixed" because people simply refuse to stop buying pp and paying unrealistic prices for high end gear.

They complain about being victimized as they give their credit card number to IGE.

Edited, Fri Jan 30 19:07:46 2004 by Yanari

What if Yantis IS SOE? You could make a real Conspiracy Theory here.

By the way- According to a news article I read, IGE bought Mysupersales, Yantis is now part of them, and a member of their board. IGE is in Florida.

There probably is not a legal remedy for this. The EULA prohibits the sale of in game items, but this is not the case Sony's legal department is going to choose to establish precedent on. As the law stands now, They can say whatever they want in the EULA, if they go after IGE, they'll challenge the legality of the EULA, and if IGE wins, SoE loses what bargaining power they have with their EULA on companies like EBay. Remember, SoE went to Ebay and got auctions there shut down through intimidation. EBay didn't want the hassle and complied. Playerauctions arose because of that. I'm sure they've gotten letters from SoE to shut down, but they're willing to take it to court, and SoE backed down.

Also I checked the link earlier, or in another thread that said there was an overseas precedent that virtual property belonged to the player, not the host, and it didn't say that. It said he was suing over that issue, not whether any decision has been handed down yet.

http://eqlive.station.sony.com/news_section/communitynewsview.jsp?story=56915


The reason I am linking this here is I want to show proof that Sony does not care, because THEY ARE IN ON IT. This link is to an article that EQLive put out back last June, about EQ Platinum. They said it was a database of 10,000 articles to help out the EQ community. Sounds nice, huh? Problem, is that Yavis and SuperSales OWNS IT, has links back to their BUY PLATINUM RIGHT THERE. EQ is supporting these guys, and wouldn't it be a trip if they were the ones doing the price fixing in hopes to settle the market. Also, FYI, it is against the law for two opponents to use price fixing for a certain item. This is a FEDERAL OFFENSE, Punishable under the Anti-Trust Laws. I hate to sound like a barracks lawyer about what should be just a freaking game (as Woodlandmaster keeps telling me), but if there is something to this or not, I would like to hear something official from Sony and EQ.

There are several great ideas here on how to fix the problem. The best in my opinion are to put the price maximum at 100,000pp in the bazaar, which will slow and hinder the controllers to make the whole effort less profitable, or to change the bazaar.

SOE very easily can set prices on all items, change them at will, etc if they remove the /trader function but keep the /bazaar function. They could simply have a set of NPC's that will buy any non-tradeskill created droppable item, with all prices set at what either they figure a fair price based on the level of the mob that drops them, or what they calculate by looking back at bazaar logs for some time. The item once bought will skip over to another NPC with empty slots available and marked up to another set price. Thus, players have to collect and supply the bazaar still, but prices are all fixed.

Downside of this is, all items would be gone at every server crash or patch (unless they dedicated some memory to remember what merchants had).

Upside of this would be they could steadily remove pp from the world, adding pp at x and removing it at 1.1x (10% mark-up on all items). They could then have some "sales" like on Halloween etc where they prices are x to 1.09x. People could still try to sell things at higher prices, but they would have to auction for it.

Whenever SOE wanted to remove some items from the game they could just not have the buyer move the item to the seller, thus removing it from the game. Whenever they want to remove even more plat from the game they could just up the equation to selling the item for 1.2x etc.

They could adjust prices as they wanted, and the economy could become fixed enough that the only way to try and cheat would be to auction to do it the old way and auction items right there...

This would leave the bazaar there for normal folks who could care less about spending the time to sell to always be able to get a fair price, and would allow the people who enjoy the buying/selling thing a chance to head to the bazaar and buy the items at the slightly higher rates or buy them off people about to sell and then go do their /auctioning.

There is no macro that would allow a bot to interact, while they could set one up to /auction every 30 seconds with a message to call a phone number if you want to buy. Those would be so obvious to catch they would never last.

These items are probably not on the buy-cheap-program's radar. Yes they are great items, but they are not uber items. Those programs are looking for items that are considered finishing touches for your 65 lvl character.

I honestly see those items on vendors. They are becoming hard to sell because severs don't have as many new, or low level characters as they used to. Visit any newbie zone and see what I mean. The market is becoming saturated.

I haven't seen any reference to the idea as of yet, and I'm not sure it's original. But perhaps the reason SOE doesn't seem to care about this crap going on is that SOE has there own financial intrest in the whole plat-for-cash business. I'm not trying to be a conspiracy theorist or anything, however this is not a new issue. Anyone who has been playing the game for more than a little while has suffered as a result of this bs. There is no way SOE isn not aware of the issue in any way. It points more to them being the driving force. When people buy money to get new stuff for their character, they will play that character longer, and thus extend their contract to play the game. I'm not saying that this is how it is....I have no way of knowing. But then why does SOE let their customers get more and more screwed? They only logical explaination that I see is that they have some sort of interest in the bastardizng and destructive business that is the subject of all this discussion.

The idea of getting rid of the bazaar is a good one on the surface. But when you look into it, these cheats and hacks could do these price mark ups even in the old EC format, tho it would cost them a little more to run, and would take a little more time. But with the kind of money their brining in from this, it would only be a minor setback. The idea of making all high end stuff nodrop again looks good at the surface. But then, how many people would stay with the game is that were the case? I'm not saying that I wuld quit. But how much money would SOE stand to lose from people that would give up playing because of the time it would take to get the good stuff?

In the end, I think that there is more to this issue then people are seeing. I think the guy who made that post on ezboard.com sees that too, only didn't state as much. I'm not trying to put words into his mouth by any means, it's just my opinion.

Maybe it's because I'm neither a native english speaker nor from Iowa but "walking down the isle"? What has that got to do with your would-be-insult that I'm the result of intermarriage?

if that's the kind of achievement that makes you proud your life must be a terrible one and I really pity you.....

While I dont know about the programs or programs described, I ca draw historical parralels to the real world with what is going on in EQ. That is a gold rush mentaslity. Runaway inflation is caused by two things. Either you have a lack of money, where people are trying to get what is very scarce and prices jump to provide this, or money is extremely plentiful and prices jump up so goods and services have some real value to the providers.
An example of the first is Weimar Germany, following the First World War. There you had the Mark rising literally into the billions for a loaf of bread. This was extremely tight money that saw any attempt at controls fail utterly. It took support from the US and other nations outside to bring it under contol. The reasons that led to the great depression were factors that contributed to the situation, that I will not go into here.
The second is even with us today. Ranging from the '49ers in California, you saw prices jump as merchants tried to relieve weary but rich prospectors or their hard-earned but valuable gold dust bu jacking up the prices. Eggs that sold for pennies a dozen would sell for dollars each. A prime example is today's Major League Baseball, where a journeyman infielder, hitting .250 will earn a million dolaars a year. The cause of each is the sudden influx of cold hard cash. In California, it was lots of gold. In MLB, it was a billion dollar TV contract. WHile the money dried up too fast, the inflation does not.
In EQ, we have a similar situation to #2. Money is flowing into the game, and the high end items are getting higher end. Why quest for items when you can simply plop down $50 or $100 in real life money and simply buy the uber tiem you want? This helps you, by getting the itme, and helps the vendor, by getting the cash to get their own uber item.
Unfortunatley that leaves those of us who cant afford to buy platinum the victims of htis Gold Rush Mentality. You can say what you will, but when you see items in the Bazaar selling for 5 and 10x what they should be, then the fever has hit.
I have noticed, on Firiona Vie at least, that the prices did stat to creep down some weeks ago, and are now again climbing back up. And when I go into trader mode, my armor, weapons andf so on are not selling. Instead, I, as a druid, am selling all my foraged items. Many are the days that I will sell fruitm berries, vegetables, and so on, items that a player will use in Trade Skills. THat is one area that you cannot twink. Trade skills must be earned.
What is the end result ahead of us? Will we see simple items, like a Shiny Brass Sheild eventually go for 100k pp? I think not. WIll we see some of the uber items come down from the 100k+ pp plateau that they have reached> I also think not. At least not for some time.
The solutions are as complex for this in-game problem as they are for real-world problems. SOny can patch, legislate, and punish, but they have to do so in such a way that the game-play isnt affected. And they also, in today's world, need to keep ever vigilant about lawsuits. Granted the Licensing Agreement covers much, but you know that there are lawyers who would drool at the chance of suing just to do so.
I have never bought platinum, but I have friends who have. Would I? to get something i very much desire? I say no, but.....I am Human (at least in the real world)


Edited, Fri Jan 30 16:49:01 2004 by silvedawn

Edited, Fri Jan 30 16:50:48 2004 by silvedawn

Lots of good ideas and discussion here.. One idea that I have not yet seen: Limit the amount of pp that a char can bank to 300k personally and 100k in the shared bank.

* Any item over 300k in the bazaar is just a ripoff anyway.
* make it harder for the dupers to store their stolen booty.

In the end, you will never be able to keep all of the dishonest losers out. What you can do is "harden the Target". This is the same principle as locking your windows at home. yeah, windows are made of glass and easy to break... but most thieves are lazy slugs by nature. If they were not lazy, they would have an honest job. That said, make them have to work or at least be in danger when doing the dishonest stuff and the cheaters may (we hope) get tired and find some other easier way to make a living.

-empty-

Edited, Fri Jan 30 18:04:35 2004 by ShaikYerbooty