Further response to the Tradeskill Depot issue

People forget how much of an impact even a rumor can have on the prices. Now imagine how much stuff will go up when its more then just a rumor ? Even a handful of people paying higher prices for a krono will inflate prices of them all and the people selling kronos see someone paid that much so why would they sell for less ?

I don't believe the impact was that low but it will take time for the prices to come back down as people simply wont pay that much so the sellers will lower the prices.

This is an issue of complex economics. It has echoes of 1980s monetarism because what needs to be considered is not just the amount of plat on a server but the speed at which it is circulating. One plat which gets used in 1,000 transactions in a month has more impact than one plat which sits in someone's bank account and does nothing. In the real world central banks can influence the speed of cash movement through the economy by playing with interest rates making it more attractive or less attractive to keep cash in the bank. EQ can't do that. Taking actual plat out of a server economy has a similar effect though.

We have to consider 'sticky' prices as well in an economy like EQ's prices go up a lot faster than they come down. As others have said it doesn't mean things are selling for the asking prices quoted. Lastly we are seeing a supply and demand issue which DBG could possibly look at by manipulating the supply side. Prices reflect the balance between supply, demand and cash availability high demand, high cash availability but low supply equals high prices. High supply and low cash availability counters that no matter what demand is like (although high supply tends to depress demand).

If I were looking to rebalance the economy of EQ I look at supply side solutions. Increase drop rates for top end gear, make it more tradeable and let market forces do what they do best.

As stated by many previously, the Oakwynd economy is outrageously out of whack compared to what it was just days before the exploit ran wild. Use all the smoke and mirrors you want with your numbers, but in the end they don't change anything.

What should have been done was a server rollback. Sure, folks would have been ticked off for "work" lost, but isn't the fun playing the game? A few days lost would have been the lesser of two evils. This has soured me (and many others) on the game, I'll let my remaining couple of weeks expire and wait for the next TLP.

Hopefully you will learn from this and handle any future major exploits better, Tunare knows you couldn't do any worse.

This is how I know Elenderil is a professional economist, ladies and gentlemen. The available data is ignored, irrelevant economic principles are applied and infeasible recommendations are given.

(I'm only kidding, please don't start quoting Mundell)

Yea imagine that! Be like someone telling me what prices to put on my trader.

I agree 100% with this statement!

Imagine playing since 2000 and not understanding how the barter system works.

Yikerdoodlez!

There was a post made on the Bug forums and a discord message sent to Meeko with a response that it would be passed along several days prior to any action being taken.

I understand it was the holidays, but please don't say you took immediate action, when there was an obvious known dupe that was left rampant for nearly a week.

Yep. As far as I can tell it was first reported 11/18. From Discord:



They hid that thread though.

DPG should really provide an answer for what is going to be different next time this kind of issue occurs. A week-long response time isn't enough assurance for many players that are considering whether to spend $$$ for krono.

I appreciate the further response, but I am still disappointed. I can go sell a krono for 575k right now in Oakwynd. There is at least one person in barter with 15 million plat available to spread around this very minute. Perhaps they didn't dupe themselves, but they definitely got unfairly rich as a result of the exploit. This means the economy is still screwed. While there are mediocre items for 200-500 plat, many items that are barely above mediocrity as still being sold for more than a krono was worth before the dupe. There is no incentive to sell for less because there is too much plat in the system. At least we'll be able to buy our spells from vendors when PoP comes out.

We still need a rollback and the longer we wait, the worse it is for everybody that didn't have unfair gains. Either that or release amazing loot for Nobles. If you could buy best in slot velious items for Nobles (for example), it may be worthwhile for people to burn their plat, and eventually the loot will become irrelevant with the expansions. We just need a way to siphon out the excessive amount of plat out there. Heck, sell exp for money, I don't know. Spending 60k on red wine to level is pretty much that, with server lag added for free.

Imagine if they put this same amount of invested time just sitting in the primary exp zones of Rizlona to just spectate and sniff out the cheats being used massively on that server so that they could better detect them being used on the other servers, then ban those accounts so that they stop preying on TLP servers for kronos to fuel their 40 accounts.

As a master tailor, this server is dead to me. The ability for me to make a decent return on investing in my time is gone. The inflation has destroyed months of work and there is no way to recover. In my opinion, as painful as it would have been, the server should have immediately taken down, rolled back, bonus instated for compensation and life would have moved on. But now I tread water for the next TLP. This is an opportunity to learn and move forward. I hope the lesson has indeed been learned.

One more thing - Perception for many is Reality. This is very true for a service company. If the perception is that things are broken - they are unless fact prove otherwise. Unfortunately the facts are inflation is many, many times what it has ever been on any other TLP in history. The price for a Krono, the standard all live by, is what everyone looks at as a yardstick. Darkpaw can tell us all the nice things they have done, but if the perception is "its still broke" exists, the evidence of the fix is not here. I sincerely hope this company honestly re-evaluates it's response. There is no going back now. Admit your errors, ask the community for forgiveness, learn from this horrible event and do not let it happen again. I fear, if you allow a repeat of this, Everquest will die because as much as we love this game, we will move on. There will be no Everquest 3 because there will be no one left to play it.

All of this has happened before, and it will happen again.

I'm even worse than a professional economist Tuco....I'm a retired Tax Consultant!

Thank you to the EQ crew! Just putting my 2 coppers worth in. The over worked long hours of a small team keeping a 20+ year old video game going is remarkable. Only love keeps such a thing going. The under appreciated and un noticed efforts laid in with the disgruntled and blistered comments from those on the *Play* side of the game could burn on any ones resolve. You stay on and power forward though. I commend you! The years of excellent entertainment. And near countless examples of pioneering! So again, Thank you!

This is my take on all of this...

People who are on these forums still frustrated, are venting, and that's a perfectly healthy thing to do - we as humans needs an outlet to express our concerns and frustrations and need a place for our voice to be heard. But the truth is, if you are on here excessively logging more time on the forums "venting" than actually in game, playing... I would highly suggest you should reconsider your priorities...

I understand the game you once knew, is essentially "broken" and the activities and systems you once relied on have been so abruptly upended. But truth is, all this screaming, yelling and shouting does nothing. If you want to announce on the forums that you're over this game and that you have cancelled your accounts! We hear you! and are sad to you see you go!

But it's possible that these people announcing their departure from this game was something already premeditated a long time ago and such person simply needed a "reason" to cancel. Maybe you have other priorities in your life that you need to at this time rather than playing this game, and are using this situation as a reason to quit. Maybe you sold all your Krono right before the market influx and suffered a substantial monetary loss which drove you to quit. Whatever the reason, we are actually and honestly, truly and genuinely sad to see you leave and wish you the all the best on your future endeavors. (because we all know we'll see you back around again - maybe during the next bonus event?)

However despite all this, life goes on (in-game). I was actually someone that was truly sad and disappointed this had occurred - anger, frustration, confusion all went through my mind for the days and the week to follow. But after taking a step back to really assess what happened... this is simply a matter of adapting.

Yes this happened, we have to accept it for what it is and there is nothing we can do about it. Ideally a rollback would have been nice, a bazaar shutdown, or a series of many other mitigation tactics to alleviate the damage that had occurred, but it didn't, and that's also the reality of the situation - we need to accept it.

We as humans, are resilient, and we CAN and WILL work with what we have. Throughout the course of history, it's always been the case - evolve and adapt. As much as this sudden impact of the economy has created such a giant ripple effect, the economy will eventually once again stabilize, and we as a community will come together to figure out what pricing works best and what doesn't (that's what an economy does).

Change sucks - but not being able to adapt to change - sucks more. The inability to adapt to change results in a perpetual cycle of living in the past and further creates a lack of ablity to learn, grow, and evolve as an individual.

So let's do our best to come together, once again as a community, and get back to enjoying the game we all love and adore!

Just my two cents!

I see no issue with what or when JChan posted. It's not that big of an issue. Just because someone thinks it's a big issue doesn't make it one.

I can accept that they are probably running on limited funds and a small staff but i have a serious question. How many devs does it take to press the shut down button on a server? Private EQ and WoW servers handle dupe issues better with volunteer staff. So what is the real excuse? To me it sounds like they believe the situation was handled well which is very concerning for the future.

There are people who love to Trader krono on one account and Barter krono on a different account to make plat/krono. Think you're seeing a lot of buyer/sellers.

What I'm seeing is the market price for krono.