Cornering the market out of control.

not a programmer, but figure an "easy" possible change.
1) make Krono no-trade item
2) create an NPC trader in the BAZ
3) player purchases Krono from DBG
4) player gives Krono to NPC.. when it sells, the plat is mailed via parcel to the player
5) players that want Krono, purchase it from the NPC, and it adds 30 days Game time to that account instantly.. does not become an "item" in their inventory
similar to way blizz does it with WoW
-prices controlled by DBG to prevent craziness on the market, guess end result will be plat starts to have value again, more people using plat for trade of gear, Krono becomes more affordable for those that want to pay for accounts in that format.. removes Krono as the primary source of currency ..
ELIMINATE illegal 3rd party real money transactions that rumors still float around about.
I am all for totally killing any opportunities for 3rd party real money transactions that affect the game
this option, making Krono a no-trade item, only sellable to / purchase from the NPC will go a long way in fixing this issue

What is obvious is that someone else bought something you want but cannot afford, so you implied they should die (darwin award). You may dispute your motivation, but regardless of that - saying someone should die is pretty clearly hate.

Why do you want Daybreak dictating the plat value of the krono to you? They have gone up in market value from 300K when they were first introduced to 2.5M on my server. The highest you can sell on baz trader is 2M. Your real world money buys more plat now.

I think this is the biggest oversight in this conversation (especially on the part of the OP and his supporters):

DBG ALREADY CONTROLS ALL THE VALUES, and what you see is their intention. DBG controls the loot that drops in the game. Every single piece. They also set all the real-world prices of subscriptions, Kronos, and all marketplace items.

It is blindness to believe that anybody other than DBG (such as "farmers", "market corner-ers" botters, RMT's, or whatever catchy name you use today) are responsible for making YOUR in-game experience less than fun.

My point is that the game is exactly the way DBG wants it to be. They study their target audience, and they change the game to maximize their profits. It is hubris to think you know their target audience better than they do. I believe they have done the numbers and they prefer targeting gamers with more spending cash, those who would spend money and buy a krono instead of complaining that prices are too high.

that may be true ... I still want to see any and all RMT killed.. destroyed .. obliterated.. and a dedicated concerted effort put into perma banning all those involved... don't care about anything else... I want those folks DEAD DEAD DEAD in game. perma dead

Kronos and subscriptions and marketplace items are all "RMTs". And since just about every toon has come into contact with somebody who has bought a Krono (kinda like almost all cash has traces of drugs), your dream is actually to see everybody banned. Self-annihilation is in this year.

If DBG thought there was a problem, they would do something about it. Since they don't think there is any problem, you come off like a crazy person with tinfoil on your head screaming about nothing.

Scream on, crazy man! But be careful, eventually your hateful ravings may get YOU banned.

There are a couple major flaws with this but I will point out a few. The first issue is people will be perma camping said NPC waiting for someone to sell krono's to said NPC so basically only a handful of individuals will realistically ever obtain a krono for plat while everyone else will have to basically sit at the NPC instead of playing the game in hopes of obtaining a krono if they need one. The second flaw assuming the NPC will only have as many krono's as are sold to them is people will sell "loot rights" for their krono. I am sure it would look something along the lines of "WTS krono loot rights for xxpp pst" If someone wants a krono they will pay the individual a set rate, that person would then sell the krono to the npc and then the person wanting the krono would buy the krono from the NPC. Not a very difficult work around really but instead of having some sense of security people might rip people off in the process. Person A trying to sell krono takes your plat and just leaves instead of selling the krono to the NPC. Maybe they had a krono to sell or maybe they didn't. In the long run this process will just create more grief than anything and make the system more complicated.

Sounds like you misunderstand the purpose of Kronos AND their value to DBG.

there are literally tens of thousands of tradable items in this game. The fact that someone else is selling something that you also have and want to sell does not constitute a monopoly. In all seriousness outside of a few select items in game such as tribute and pow bow staffs its nearly impossible for someone to have a monopoly in this game. Someone can farm an item more than you or utilize a barter to buy a huge percentage of the server supply but at the end of the day the opportunity to obtain items is the same for everyone. All prices are made up even the price that you think an item should be is made up. The only real items that have a minimum defined value based on in game currency are player made items and that's in terms of what an item costs to make but even then just like in real life something is worth what someone is willing to pay for it. Either figure out a way to get a piece of the pie or sell a different pie. There is no single player on any server that sells every tradable item. That would requires hundreds if not thousands of bazaar mules which seems far from cost effective in terms of returns.

YellowBelly it would help if you mentioned your server and gave concrete examples of what you consider fair price and what the "manipulators" charge.

Otherwise your claim is without merit.

As long as DBG sells Kronos at an acceptable rate there is no need for DBG to interfere. Why kill the goose?

Personally, I made a few million of plat when tradeskills came back in vogue due to Artisans Prize. Tons of old ores and pelts that were languishing in my bank were suddenly in demand by /barter buyers.

With the plat I bought myself a set of Glowing Sebilisian for an alt because well, there will not be any more of this gear made until next May/June.

Predictably, Glowing Seb is going x3 on what I paid and is likely to increase unless the new expansion brings something similar.

krono is a big part of the issue IMO. these tokens have caused most players to just buy their plat and skip selling. this issue is not unique to EQ, all MMOs that have a token such as krono has this issue. these tokens had good intent, pull the cash away from gold sellers, but at the cost of destroying the broker economy if not kept in balance.

now for DBG, krono being sold in bulk is smelling of a money grab, some players have 10-20 years of krono game time (1k+ krono). that makes Krono a Ponzi scheme situation. it was sad when SOE/DBG embraced the founders money grab for LM (at $120), but now they are selling krono by the ton.

the krono situation MUST be addressed by DBG, nothing we can do as users, it keeps flowing out of the greed shoot of DBG.

remove the bazaar also and convert to an EQ2 type trading system. add 2 rows to the bank, set aside for selling items only. players will sell from the bank window and receive their items via parcel when they buy. the /baz tool will work in any non-combat zones. so enough with the talk about trader NPCs and such...

put an expiration date on krono, problem solved. krono need to be used by 3 months or they poof. the only reason for krono is to provide game time, not to be the in-game BitCoin!!!

krono has become a Ponzi scheme and the EQ BitCoin. fix it DBG.

I don't want to give out the server name. From the responses so far it doesn't matter. It looks like a problem on every server and not just mine. Resellers play their little game within a game and everyone suffers except them.

These people seriously need to get a life, job, or some medication for their autism. Better yet daybreak can do something.

It's just a video game, and they are just fellow players having fun. Not sure what the ad hominem attacks are about.

Explain how having a subscription is "RMT"?

You can play for free. But if you pay a subscription fee (which is a Real Money Transaction) you get a far stronger character. In the days when subscription was required to access the game, every player paid it and had access to same exact stuff in game. But with FTP, paying a sub is not that much different from buying PL services or twink gear.

To other posters and their "genius" schemes to cripple the krono: do anything like that and plat trading will simply shift to 3rd party, the way it was before krono. Dealers in game typically consume kronos to maintain their own accounts cause to them it is a better value than paying a sub. You make things hard for them, most will just sell plat through 3rd party and convert to annual $10/month subs, cutting DBG revenue for those accounts almost in half. Many might reevaluate their need to keep all their accounts gold and go FTP on some if them.
People willing to buy krono today will be just as willing to buy plat on the outside. With that purchasing power, bazaar prices will remain where they are. Items sold for krono now will be posted for real $$ outside of game. Again, the way it was for any high value tradable drop back in the old days. If you are having wet dreams of suddenly being able to afford stuff without putting in the time or the cash, ain't gonna happen. What will happen is a sizable chunk of revenue that goes towards maintaining and improving the game, will instead go into external reseller pockets.

coming from a player that is sitting on 1k+ krono?

krono was created with good intentions and has been worth some of the issues it has caused. but Krono has turned into the BitCoin of EQ used directly to buy gear and such, never to see it used as game time.DBG don't care, they have the cash, but the economy cares at this point (refer to all the post about the situation). this is nothing but a Ponzi scheme at this point, someone is going to be left holding 1000s of krono and the hammer is going to fall. Now players are forced to buy krono to finance game play (FORCED), because of the massive, out-of-control inflation of the markets.

you guys think resalers are cornering the market on fishwine, while they really are doing it to the krono.

I disagree, nothing is preventing you from signing up for a subscription instead.
Apart from servers where individual players are monopolizing specific drops, practically everything you can buy from other players is also available through normal gameplay.

FTP-mode was probably intended as a "preview"-mode for potential subscribers, and not as an "RMT"-way of buying power for cash, think of it as a limited "demo-version" instead. Thats why It never really struck me as RMT.
I guess only software-pirates(not feasible with EQ, unless you count emulated servers) are free from RMT, if you go by the technical definition...

How is it a Ponzi scheme? How is it a scheme at all? Who is forcing (FORCING) you to purchase it? Subscriptions have been around for 18 years, and are a lot more economical than purchasing krono. Why does it matter to you how many krono someone has, and if the hammer will fall with them holding onto it?

View kronos as time, as they should be. They give you 1 month of play-time. At $17 (I think?) per krono, how many hours of your job are you going to have to work to pay for that? 15 minutes? 2 hours? Lets go with 2 hours - maybe a bit more than minimum wage depending on where you live.

At 10 kronos for a rare (give or take), that's equivalent to 20 hours of real world work. Moving that to game time, are you going to get a rare item in 20 hours of play time? Perhaps... It's what, 1 in 4000 kills for a rare? That's 3.3 kills per minute for 20 hours straight before someone in EoK sees the drop. I think it's much more than that actually. Seems like quite the grind. Or, drop 10 kronos and save yourself the time. If you make more money, your time is worth more and again, you'll be more inclined to use krono to purchase an item that still stands at a lot of game-time to acquire.

People charge krono for PLing as well, and I always see criticism for it. Why? You're buying someone's time, why wouldn't they want to be paid in time?

Krono is BitCoin only in the sense that the price has gone up dramatically from what it started at. That's not the fault of DBG - people are finally realizing what $17 is actually worth in terms of playtime in the game.

Bazaar rats have been around since the start. They've grinded out thousands of hours playing the game their way. The introduction of krono didn't start it, and it's certainly not a game changer. No one is stopping you from farming. I've farmed plenty, and made plenty of plat and krono doing it.

Curious WHO is forcing people to buy kronos ?

As far I know, people can stil buy a subscription, nobody has forced me to buy a kronos. I asked in guild if any been forced to buy kronos, they all say no.

And if you do not wanna pay whatever the price might be in bazaar, what is preventing you from farming the stuff you need yourself ?

Are you sure that your main complain is really about, that you maybe could control the market prices earlier, but now you not able to do so ?

I LOVE resellers. I get to place my inventory out at a price I think anyone would pay and those dumb dumbies hand me plat almost instantly. I then get to use that plat to purchase things like Half-Elf Hero's Forge as an example instead of using my Station Cash to attempt to get what I may want. I can also use that plat to avoid farming I don't want to do. On my agenda now? Magma Crystals. There's a vendor right now on Bristle selling like 30 of them for 100k each. He's literally storing inventory for me to learn PoP chain and plate smithing recipes!

As I've stated before - You're all complaining about convenience. No one NEEDS anything in the Bazaar.

Thank you reseller for having no life and holding onto inventory I need!