Post about IGE you should readFollow

It really becomes a shame when enjoying a friendly 'game' of killing and looting we have to worry about the economy. Toons or not people cant hide their true self. Most of the players I've met in game are true knights in shining armor, conversation can be enchanting, and a day well spent in Norrath can be magically relaxing. On the other hand their are those who are true thieves,beggars, gnolls and mugworts. My point is we probably have met a few of these cheaters. How can we avoid them? Close Bazaar? Even though I can't afford to shop there often I do on occassion find a much needed spell scroll at a reasonable price, (next to same scroll selling at four times the amount)this would be unfair to those who come by their items honorably. If as one poster stated an exploit 'merchant' can be run mostly without human interaction, maybe the solution could be to not have bazaar merchants afk? Since I am not a seller and have little tech knowledge on this matter it is only a What if?
Oh well nuff said

. never mind -

Edited, Fri Jan 30 09:21:27 2004 by Speedbow

*sighs sadly*
I've been on the game since beta ...
Recently ... Ive been on to actually play maybe a total of 6 hours in the last 6 months ...
With four accounts between hubby and myself ..
and two DAoC accts ...
and for old times sake and such *was alpha tester*
We have two Realm accts ...
I can see where I will be saving some rl cash soon if Sony doesn't do something ... heck, ANYTHING about this ...
But I fear its a deaf ear we are shouting into atm :(

I read the post under mine? Who exactly are you referring to? as "in support of these people" What I support is exactly what I spend while playing Everquest and tat is time well spent. Otherwise I wouldn't be there at all. I play for the fun and relaxation. Really there are no winners because there is no end to the game. The only losers are those that play only to deploy exploits or cheats, no fun in that remember can be run almost without human interaction. Whats good about everquest is the human interaction. Yeah I would like to be the one with the biggest and most toys but i'm not. I can be just as happy for a guildie or partner to win theirs, buy theirs or whatever.
Did I say btw I adamantly DO NOT SUPPORT 'These Kinds of People" who do exploits or any other kinds of activity not in keeping with the spirit and guideline of the game.
UPDATE post no longer there? even so just want to be clear on this. Thanks for endulgeing me[lg][/lg]

Edited, Fri Jan 30 09:47:05 2004 by Creatz

I wonder what people think about putting a cap on the amount of money an account could have (8 toons - 600k plat).

or something to do with the account registration like each credit card can only have 2 accounts attached to it. Its been a while since I registered, but they can require a credit card during registration like AOL does.

With restricted account numbers and restricted bank account, it all of the sudden becomes a huge pain in the butt to do multiple large purchases or money transfers.

My 2 cents

Zurob
56 Bard Ayonae Ro

This is such encouraging reading for "newbie" with 5 characters at the 30+ lvl, guess i should start all those skills now rather than power level my way up. Economies rise and fall with people that use them. There is a life after EQ! Don't settle for the high priced items.

This sounds like a nice idea, until you actually try to get a camp for a contested item. Here's one, Fishbone earring. Ever tried to get that camp? At least on my server you better have 2 weeks, and you had better be able to take the MOB down to 49% health in 1 nuke, or its gonna be KS'ed. Allowing items to be buyable helps distribute the player population and encourages the play nice policy. Not everyone can get a popular camp, but everyone can grind out PP.

It works the same way on a basic level in real life. Not everyone can be car builders, but everyone can save up enough money to buy one.

I am on the Bristlebane server..WAY WAY WAY out of control. eq. Cloak of flames 95k? Ornate 50-100k? umm ya right

flame me as long as you want for that but you are a SUCKER, a LOOSER and have obviously not understood that EQ is not a F****G SIM but an RPG!

If you only feel well if you're a Superhero play Spidermen or Hulk on a console, ok?

PS: do you also prefer to pay to get laid because you don't get the "high lvl women" otherwise?


Edited, Fri Jan 30 10:38:06 2004 by Leiany

In a controlled economy, like EQ, the black market will tend to be more "efficient" than the planned market, because it will always be on the lookout for arbitrage opportunities that arise from unintentional flaws in the price control structure. That's what corrupted the Soviet economy, that's what's happening here.

I hope that Sony, being a good capitalist company, takes a hard look at its economic model and the unintended consequences before the release of EQ2, because that's where they have the most control in the long term.

The real solution is to "free" the economy by putting it entirely (or nearly entirely) in the control of the individual players. The bazaar was the first step to a free economy, but we see the problem of a mixed capitalist & planned economy with the plat dupe schemes. By exploiting the plat dupe schemes the dupers use the controlled economy for leverage in the marginally free economy.

To make the entire economic system "free" you have to make all items except for the most basic of basic supplies (food) player craftable. It has to be craftable from items that are available in game that don't require excessive camping and respawn times. It can be "laddered" in such a way that items are increasingly hard to make, and take continual building up with harder to get items, so as not to deflate the economy. In the end this would prevent massive speculative arbitrage on the scale we see it today. It would work this way: Producers (player tradeskillers) would flock to make any product that commanded a high price, thus creating competition and bringing the price down. This would ensure that prices stay on a marginal cost basis, rather than a monopoly or cartel price basis the way they are today. Make sure that high-end items are appropriately level restricted, and you have demand leveling as well. The barriers to entry to become a producer are relatively low in this concept, because the barrier is just player investment in character tradeskills. Cartels and monopolies would not last long because traders would be created to compete. If they did last, then all Sony has to do is monitor monopolies and enforce anti-trust, much easier than fixing a planned economy.

Market imbalances would be self-correcting, rather than requiring Sony to hire developers to investigate and correct vendor pricing imbalances. Correction to vendor pricing imbalances only create more imbalances at some other location. The problem is in the basic conception of the system, not in the details of its implementation.

I'm not sure the EQ1 system can be saved. As a very smart Eastern European economist, George Staller, said about the transition of the Soviet economy from a free one to a planned one (in the early 1900's) then back to a free one (in the late 1900's): "It's easy to make fish soup out of an aquarium. Turning fish soup into an aquarium is very hard."

Not quite. There is no reason for them to buy items that sell so low. If spiderling silks could be resold for say 1000pp each yes, they would buy them up, but otherwise why bother? Buy the high end items that are reasonably priced, stack the price, and then sell the PP to someone so they can go buy your inflated item. Then turn around and use that PP all over again to buy up more reasonably priced items, mark them up, and then sell again for inflated prices, and re-sell the platinum ONCE AGAIN.

Items that are common, and easily farmed by folks way under level 50 even, are not worth thier time to inflate. It's the items that people want that they will inflate.

On Xev, we have someone that farms the BoT Tower bosses every morning, and sells the loot rights for thier items for 50,000pp. This person, supposedly then PA's the PP to make his rent. How true that portion is, I am not sure, but I do know that this group of folks does sell loot rights every morning.

EQ Economy is screwed up, people that have no interest in the game and it's mechanics are what made it that way. The only way to fix the problem is to not buy thier PP, but everyone that can afford to take shortcuts will.

Ur actually quite wrong, u cannot craft/loot or quest everything u want on ur own. E.g if ur character is lvl 61 or below, and u do not have teir2+ pop flags, it is impossible for u to loot/quest(w/o buying the patterns) or craft ur own ornate armor.., with peices going from 20k to 100k+ recently its unlikly u could afford them either?

And with ref to ur previous post, that stuff is trash any high-end char wouldn't even bother looting.

The people this is really affecting are thoes who cannot play 24/7, and are not in "uber guilds" but who do invest some considerable time and effort in leveling their characters up, to then find any reasonable upgrades are beyhond them in price range.

E.g. Ornate Leather Boots for bst's about 6k usually, FT3boots, and very nice when u can get em at lvl 55, when they become 50k.. its only twinks that are likely to be able to afford them.

It is silly to spend real money for virtual, but its basically just a currency exchange.