Further response to the Tradeskill Depot issue

Sorry I didn't word that very well I meant in at least in supplying a response of awareness and ongoing work on whichever issue.

An on call GM would however be able to send a tell saying stop or be perma banned and disconnect a player doing bad thing in real time.

I was on a phone call with a senior exec with Sony watching them repeatedly bounce a player who was purposely using an exploit to keep crashing the guild lobby once.

It would only take ONE person in a position of control to head off things like this, which do happen from time to time in all MMOs.

Are there FAKE items in the game? duped items.

Yes, 22% is indeed laughable given the very visible impact in prices across the board weeks after the fix/cleanup. Sadly, that is not the number quoted, 0.22% increase was quoted which is literally 1/100th of the number you find laughable.

Let's do a little math for fun to get a rough estimate of actual platinum numbers, using the 0.22% increase number given - along with some other information we know because screenshots and videos have been posted.

I've seen several screenshots of vendored tradeskill items, but I am going to use the example of 1 item type on 1 vendor. In several screenshots I have seen velium bars on vendors that were sold, one of which was around 3,000,000 velium bars in total.

Math time!

3,000,000 velium bars * 250pp per bar = 750,000,000pp of duped plat for 1 item type on 1 vendor.

If this was indeed an initial 2.2% inflation of the platinum economy, lets calculate how much money supposedly was already in the economy given this statistic.

750,000,000pp * (100/2.2) = 34,090,909,090pp in economy prior.

Let's take this one step further so that we can an idea of how much 34B platinum actually is relative to the server population of Oakwynd. Let's be super generous and say 5,000 players actively play on Oakwynd.

34,090,909,090pp / 5,000 players = 6,818,181pp on average per player would be what is expected before the exploit if indeed the 2.2% initial injection number is correct. Please chime in, how many people had over 6M plat before this exploit on Oakwynd? Anyone anyone?

That said, let me reiterate - this is 1 item type sold to 1 vendor to get these numbers. I think it's safe to say 1 of 2 things. Either the 2.2% is incorrect, or someone(s) has been hoarding tens of billions of platinum on accounts before this exploit took place. Either way, something is not right.

Also - if I screwed up on any of this math, feel free to correct me.

I am curious. Does this statistic include non-platinum related gains? We have seen in the past users being able to launder their platinum through the acquisition of stackable items (including Noble), through parcel, through item destruction, and by buying perceived high value items (be it single or stackable) through the bazaar regardless of value, distributing them around to mules, and then cashing them back at "a then current market loss" (although still a net gain overall) once the ban wave passes.

We have seen the same thing happen every other TLP for the past 10 years, and every time the reaction is late, the answer is lacking, the ones that abused the worst get free to keep exploiting, and everyone else in the server has to deal with a worse playing experience. At this point is hard to believe you guys care to be honest.

Absolute nonsense, nobody except botters was sitting on "millions" of plat before the dupe. 2 million plat is over $500 of krono at 70k each. But now everyone is a millionaire and were supposed to believe only .22% plat was added.

The economy went from about 1 billion of platinum in circulation to about 11 billion that it is now. This is after the dupe was fixed and the 90% was removed and those people were banned.

Every item is 10x+ since the dupe
Krono is up 15x since the dupe

The only way to fix Oakwynds economy at this point is to wipe out all platinum and stackable items on the server.

Gas lighting at its best , way to ruin our game GG eq wont be coming back if this liar is in charge

I just believe whoever gave JChan the data gave them bad data. Or maybe just a misplaced decimal point.

Like instead of 2.2% duped platinum it was really 2200% duped platinum. This would explain a lot.

Exactly my thoughts. I by no means think JChan intentionally or maliciously is providing data that does not match the basic sniff test. I think the data needs to be looked more closely and potentially corrected if something is off as it does not align at all with observation. If it is correct, I think a much larger issue may have been exposed.

Soooo Oakwynd was only affected by 2.2% or after removal you're saying 0.22%. Can you explain to me then why an item before the exploit was 50,000pp but after you've "removed" about 90% of the illegally obtained pp the price for that same item is now 600,000pp... "MJ gets popcorn gif" and waits for answer....

2.2%

I just think that since Oakwynd seems to be the most affected, and they badly dropped the ball on being on top of it (why roll out a patch if everyone is going off on vacation same week and or 100% focussed on upcoming expansion in the first place???), by NOT actioning on the depot bug within HOURS of the patch rollout (instead of days and days later) , this is the best/closest they can do. I don't think it is intentional false data being provided either - the integrity I expect and the respect I have for the dev of my most favourite game for 24 years is much higher than that.

Wiping everyone's stacks/plat is just a worse solution to be honest.

At this point, for Oakwynd, you just have to live with this, and the legacy AA exp. not working (with no communication on that). At least, that's what I am doing, and done with posting about it also.

It is just off that a catastrophic bug had to happen for some action on the 24x7 bot armies which have plagued TLPs for years, however temporarily they might be gone from Siren's Grotto. I didn't even think those had Depots bought in the first place, guess they did once the bug was out in the open for days - who knows.

I think it would clarify a lot of the questions if you defined the numerator and denominator and the cutoff date/dataset used for each. For example, "Total platinum generated on Oakwynd" doesn't sound like it includes items generated that just haven't been sold yet, and might not include platinum generated but then taken out of circulation by transferring it into plat sinks not related to the TS depot, like nobles, depending on what cutoff dates you used for your snapshots.

The reaction you are getting is largely because you just say 2.2% without any explanation what that means, and anyone can go to the bazaar and see there's a big impact and not one which would align to that figure. The impact has been so large that it's put the gold farming bots out of business even.

Because people don't need it. I know several people who have 40+ million in plat just sitting there because they have no real need to have more. If you don't buy stuff from other players, then you really don't need to use plat, and if you just pay for your subscription or have one of the Lifetime accounts, then you have no real need for Krono either.

Also, during the actual release of Luclin people were sitting on so much plat that they could sell enough of it to actually live off of in real life, as in pay their rent, food, utilities, and their account.

I guarantee you that there were hundreds of people who were sitting on millions in plat. Not everyone messes with Krono. Before people had no reason to buy Krono, they were only 70k each. When the price started to go up, they knew it was not going to be going down. As such, some people bought them as future investments others bought them to use before they started going even higher.

You don't want to accept that with modern knowledge of the game that it is easy to get millions in plat. 0.22% plat is probably right on for the age and what is unlocked on that server.

Fixing the exploit would include removing the items created by it, this isn't their first rodeo with something like this.

Can you break this all down for me a bit more? I'm a bit slow. Here are some things I do not understand:

1. making millions (or even 10's of millions) of plat legitimately in late velious/early luclin is easy for anyone with "modern knowledge" of the game. Hundreds of people do this routinely? Can you elaborate a little on how?

2. These people don't impact the normal krono price, because they "don't mess with Krono." These people either have lifetime subscriptions or they would just prefer to spend real money rather than click 2 buttons in the bazaar and get a free month.

3. When the exploit started, all the average people with millions of plat started buying krono because krono were going up, even though these people don't need krono, don't normally mess with krono and even though krono always go up anyways.

4. now, the price of krono is where it should have been in the first place because the people who don't normally buy krono started buying them for reasons(?), and it hasn't gone back down because we just need to give it more time?

First, to remove some of the misrepresentations that you make. I never said that the people with millions don't use Krono. I said that they don't mess with buying Kronos when they don't need them. I also never said that those players do not impact the price of Krono; they actually tend to keep the price down. Also, I made absolutely no claims about where the price of Krono should be. I said that it isn't going to go down immediately.

1. Don't spend money constantly, go kill lots of mobs, loot all of the trash and sell it to vendors. Either sell the TS components to other players or make TS items with them and sell those. Camp tradeable items and sell those to players. Modern day players know the best ways to do all of these things in the shortest amount of time and spending the least amount. Especially those who have been doing it on every Progression server since the Combine. It is also made even easier by the fact that you can have bags with 20-40 slots on your characters when before the largest bags were a mere 10 slots.
2. I already cleared up the false claim that I said none of the people with millions use Krono for their subscription. That said, my reply would be, "Because not everyone is so tight for money that $16 is going to make or break them for a month."
3. As I actually stated in my post, the people with millions that do use Krono only for covering their subscription bought them, when they otherwise would not have, because they wanted to get them at the better price when it was going up unexpectedly. The people who don't use Krono for anything, still have their millions.
4. Again, I made no comment about where the price of Krono should be. I simply stated that it isn't going to immediately drop because people do have the money to buy them and are actually buying them at that price. They may well never drop back down to the prices from before the panic. Not because their is any more plat, but that there simply are people who will buy them at that price. Those who sell Krono are more patient than those who buy them. Over time the price of Krono will normalize. It likely will drop, but it is doubtful that it will drop back to the prices it was before because they know people will pay more than that. Unless you expect no one to actually buy them at all at those prices; which is what would be required to go back completely.

I posted this during the 400% inflation era on Mischief around this period in Luclin, where many posted (without presenting any actual numbers) "its easy for farmers to farm millions and millions of plat during Luclin".

If you'd like I can post the lengthy detailed specific numbers, but I will summarize at a high level what I did to calculate this. Sirens Grotto is known as the most profitable vendorable loot zone in game up until at least PoP. I cleared the entire zone 10+ times and took the average of vendor sales per zone clear.

To clear the entire zone based on the number of mobs in it and the potential DPS output of Luclin raid geared players, you would need approximately 5 groups in order to keep up with the 20 minute spawn cycle of the entire zone (I can grab the exact number I think it is between 150-200 mobs that spawn in the zone).

That said, given the average plat per zone clear of SG, it would take 5 groups of raid geared players completely clearing the zone on the 20 minute spawn cycle, approximately 40 days without 1 missed cycle to earn 10,000,000pp if they did this 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

You don't have be a mathmetician to realize 1 billion nevermind 40 billion platinum circulating the economy in Luclin is not possible legitimately. It would literally take 100 picks of SG with the 20 minute spawn cycle of 150-200 mobs completely cleared 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 40 days straight to accumulate 1 billion platinum. You have to either be trolling or be doing some frightening mental gymnastics to think hundreds of people each have millions of legitimate platinum during Luclin.

First off, where the hell does 40 billion even come into the discussion? I never mentioned it I know that.
Second, you are acting like the one way you measured is the only way that plat enters; it isn't. It isn't even the fastest way for plat to come into the system. The introduction of TSers to everything pretty much destroys your numbers. There are a number of items which can be sold for significantly more than what the individual components sell for. Most TS items from original thru Luclin come from considerably lower level zones than Siren's Grotto.
Third, you are basing your investigation on faulty premises. Just because you might be able to get the items that sell best to a vendor from the zone, does not make it the best zone to farm for plat. As with everything in EQ it tends to be better to get less per kill but more per hour.
Additionally, your premise ignores the number of players involved in the generation of plat into the system. This alone makes the 1 billion that you pulled out of the air easy to reach.

So let's set the goal of reaching 1 billion plat by this point in the TLP's life; so 6 months old. I will just use 180 days for a round number. Also will ignore times during the year where the spawn rates and drops are artificially increased. Let's assume only 2,000 people play on the server, we all know far more than 2,000 tend to play on the server.
1,000,000,000 divided by 2,000 is 500,000 plat per user over the 6 months, ~180 days.
500,000 divided by 180 days = 2,777.778* plat a day. *Rounded up to the nearest copper as it is actually 2,777 7/9 plat per day.

So 2,000 people would have to average making a bit under 3k a day per person. Your method had those groups per person making upwards of 8k a day and was just counting the plat from items being vendored from what you described. That is hardly mathematically impossible to do. After all, I would say that there were far more than 2,000 playing on the server especially during original and Kunark time periods, so that number would be much lower at those points.

There camps which are great for straight plat/gold/silver/copper. There are camps that are great for gems or items. There are camps that are great for TS items. The sale of vendor loot is not always the fastest way to generate plat, especially in early eq.

**To put it even more into perspective, assuming there was always just 2,000 people playing on the server 24/7 for the 180 days; then whoever was playing would only have to average about 116 plat per hour. The early days, they would likely fall behind, but once most of the server got to the 40+ level range, generating 116 plat on average per hour per player/toon is not hard; especially starting in Velious era.
***Oh yeah, I forgot we are talking about Oakwynd, so their is a loot modifier of 125% starting with Kunark; so they would have been getting 25% more loot than previously making it even easier to get plat.