The prices are out of control. 100k for 1 Raw dark Matter, 80k for a Opal encrusted Stein, and then theres the people advertising buying Kronos for 2mill right alongside buying for 200k. Nice scam if someone falls for it. Either merge servers so there is a population or shut the game down. Even F2P is not worth it anymore.
If you mean to imply that those items actually sell for those prices, you should definitely get in on that action fast.
Or .. call me crazy here.. instead of moving thousands of people .. Perhaps .. maby just maby .. Only YOU .. have to move.. #mindblown.. stratagy !
Kronos sell all day long on BB at 2.0 to 2.1 million plat. Now if you're talking about the TLP servers then I wouldn't know. I sold several Raw Dark Matter for 25k ea. last month. Prices are determined by market forces. A very large part of the EQ economy takes place outside of the bazaar in my experience. If you are a buyer you need to shop and be patient.
Speaking of economy, what is the policy on these traders that are ingame and automatically update their prices to be 1% less than yours at set timed intervals, following exactly the script of a certain unmentionable program that is publicly viewable? Is this investigated? Does anyone besides me feel like the people that do this are destroying the value of items because they don't care what the time value on items are worth because they likely obtain said items with very little to no effort using the same elicit scripting program? Are people who actually update their prices manually not offended by people who do this? I know I am.
The “fun” solution is to drop your own price drastically.... then purchase all of their supply at a deep discount.
If you could do that consistently at all hours you could cause them pain. In truth all automated play should be banned IMHO. Easier said than done I realize.
That sometimes works, however, I have recently run into people who seem to be able to set a minimum. Say my item starts at 5000, and over the course of many hours I check my trader and reduce it below theirs, and every time, like clockwork, theirs then adjusts to be lower than mine by exactly 1%, it then gets walked down to 4100 for example, ill put mine at 3900, and magically, theirs stops updating the price for that item. Their minimum was set for 4000. I think the cheaters have caught on to our methods of bottoming their prices out and buying it up... so what is the solution now? We know dbg claims to investigate these things but what is the reality? Slim to none I imagine. However, I would think that maintaining the integrity of a servers economy would be amongst the highest on their list of things to protect. And surely there is logging and methodology to detect such patterns and scripting, hell the code is publicly available, id imagine that would make it oodles easier to detect, yet this is quite rampant, and the traders are arrogant and taunting if you try and contact them and ask them to stop.
I've seen some stuff that seems like absolute scams. Things like 'a torch' that is the common one available from vendors selling for 100pp. It could be ignorance on the sellers part but appears the intention is to scam someone into thinking it is 'a torch' for the Magician epic. That's not the only problem I've seen of course. Used to be this type of thing was policed a bit. Somethings like Druid/Wizard ports or Cleric resurrection meet with disdain if the prices are too high. Not so in the Bazaar where things like summoned toys routinely sell for 500 pp. I should do something about it but I've lost interest in running a vendor over the years. I suppose I and people like me are part of the problem.
I have also noticed that these traders who are using auto update programs tend to have everything in their inventory for sale, pods of water, etc.
The only way to combat that is to figure out what their minimum is and the price match them. If you have a lot of a certain item you want to offload advertise in general a discount on bulk sales. Yes it sucks to make less but it's one solution we as players can control. It would be nice if they detected and banned these people.
You really need to specify what server you are on. I’m on Vox a lot and the bazaar is fine over there. Krono consistently sell around ~2 million plat. There are always people listing buy/sell at weird prices. A lot of times it comes down to how patient someone is. I saw Gnomish Heritage crate teleport clickies seller listed as low as 500k and have seen success by myself and others reselling for ~1.5 mil +. Sometimes it’s a question of how patient the seller is for plat. Server mergers really won’t solve anything trader related and could actually exacerbate platflation and drive prices higher because there are people lazy enough (and with enough spark plat) to pay 100k for epic items like the crown of elemental mastery for their alt even on a Live server. Poor server economy would be if you had few or no traders and no one was buying anything. Even on Vox I see my defiant gear turnover over the course of a few weeks or so. To me that indicates a decent economy, not great but good enough.
I've done this so many times to people that bot bazaar. I setup shop next to them, drop prices on everything they have to next to nothing and then horde everything they have. Bringing alts by to unload items onto them.
No, that's not how mainstream economic theory really works and that's a common misconception. A larger market does not inherently equate to more competition and lower prices. Please understand that prevailing economic theory has two curves: 1) Demand Curve: Driven by how many players exist and how much plat they have and are willing to spend on an item. Assuming a larger server with more population and more platflation merges with a smaller server with less plat, the curve will shift towards higher prices, because the larger server's players have more plat to dump. 2) Supply Curve: Driven by the number of sellers AND AVAILABLE SUPPLY. In theory if you have more supply/sellers relative to population, then yes the curve shifts towards a lower price. HOWEVER IN EQ'S CASE: If we look at more recent items that can be attained through instances, then the curve really isn't going to do anything from a merger because just any many producers relative to population will exists (e.g. 3 raiders / 8 players = 6 raiders / 16 players). Best case, you likely net zero, unless you're in a complete ghost town server where no one raids at all. But in that case supply just got worse relative to population demand, so price is going up (3 raiders / 8 players > 3 raiders to 16 players). Live servers do not have pick zones, meaning desirable old world items will be less available (e.g. 1 Crown of Elemental Mastery a day / 8 players > 1 Crown of Elemental Mastery a day / 16 players) The curve is going to shift towards higher prices because the lack of pick zones or instances in the old world creates supply bottlenecks. With that in mind I suspect sellers generally win in the merge scenario, at least where the prices are impacted. I won't touch on Krono because those markets are too disrupted by people buying Krono to resell on 3rd party sites (which is a TOS violation!). Often those individuals are the ones excessively camping/botting hot items on TLP to get the plat to resell for Krono, which is part of a bigger problem. I think this post though could serve as the foundation as to why a we need a feature that allows an AllAccess member to create temporary instanced zone. (e.g. 10 DGB for an instance token, or 120 loyalty points for 20 instance tokens). I think a server merge + a pick zone feature could be beneficial overall, but only if done together. Thoughts?
