Also not sure about the "but in order to reach that you must be able to accept that weeks payment in full." I just returned from a hiatus, and my main account had 5760 (the cap). The odds of me having just the right amount in there to be able to get the cap (using that scheme) are 1/120. And I also happen to know that I didn't have a "round number" of loyalty points left, so I don't think this rule actually exists. Tat
I use it now and then for something inexpensive out of laziness. It really is worth an extra hundred plat or so to me to avoid going to the bazaar and back. In the round trip time to the bazaar and back I could likely zone into whatever zone the guild portal is set to, kill a few mobs, loot a diamond or two and come out ahead for the same amount of time. Then again I hate zoning, so I'll use gate potions when leaving the bazaar to avoid the stopover in pok.
When I spend 120 plats on some food or drink, I'm a big spender and spend the extra 10% to have it parceled to me .
Alright, I'll do it. It's a great burden, but I'll be the plat sink for EQ. Please send all your plat to me, or buy expensive things in the bazaar, and send the items to me. The scarcity of items will increase their value, which is just another way of providing a plat sink. Chronos will also be accepted. With our efforts combined, we can save this economy.
In that case, well I had a 2 year break out of the 13 years I've started my main which I've had since 2002. I've spent quite a bit of loyalty tokens but never had a ton of them at once. My age of my account goes back 13 years.. so idk.
Except for the fact that I have personally had 5800; I did extensive testing on this when Loyalty was added (the posts are somewhere in the archived forums). It is very simple to see, when at 5760 go buy something in the 80-119 crowns range; token of resurrection (86 crowns) is a good choice. Give me about 1/2 a year or so, and I can post a pic of it. I never have anything that I need that immediately. I really only go at either the start or end of my playtime when I am already in the Lobby/PoK; and usually the time it takes me to get there and then off to wherever I am going to grind/quest/etc at isn't anywhere near long enough to have killed enough mobs to make up for 10% of what I spent (unless I stood around doing a lot of window shopping). But that could have a lot to do with my system set up. Most of the people I know simply wait till they are going to log off and buy whatever they need with their 'zaar mule and either parcel it to their main or put it in the shared bank. I can see how it would not be a big deal on very cheap items, but generally if the items are really cheap they drop a lot and I can get them just as easily farming them myself and in less time usually than it takes a diamond or similar gem to drop. Either way, to the point of the thread, any kind of bazaar tax would not work as a real plat sink because it would just drive people away from using the bazaar on big ticket items. People would just revert to a completely item based barter system to avoid the tax. The big ticket items are more what drove the price of Kronos up so much so fast, not plat inflation. Kronos were around for almost a year and were around the 250k-400k mark the whole time; it was only after the change to All-Access was announced that the prices started to increase to the 350k-600k range. The final straw though was the addition of chase items to the game which pushed Kronos up to the 700k-1200k ranges we see today; with the ACoF having a lot to do with that jump.
Items are and are not the cause for the jump in prices. More plat in general is the cause for the jump. Some of that because of advanced loot, people who may not have ever bothered to loot before now just auto have diamonds appear in their inventory. Some (I think alot, but I may be wrong) is just plat that was hoarded before because of nothing to spend it on now has something to spend it on. There's plat out there flowing, and that causes inflation. Now people have something to spend their plat on. That means millions upon millions of plat that people just held on to, now they have something to do with. Now on average everybody has more plat . So prices go up.
I've seen no change in Krono prices since the addition of /advloot; they were in the 1.2 million range here on Tunare like 3-4 months before it was even added. At most /advloot just gave the people, who would complain about how poor they were while never looting any of the corpses that they killed, all of the items and plat which they dropped. So they don't complain, as much, because they now can easily support their gameplay They, however, still cannot buy the top of the line gear drops or Krono easily. Regular casual game play alone is, only going to get you enough plat to do a little better than tread water; over time you can save up but it isn't going to happen quickly without you doing something more like actively selling something to other players. I agree, with the rest of what you said though, things like the chase items and collectibles have given people actual reasons to buy something from other players in large amounts that they have not had in a long time. And as you said, not that plat is flowing now, which is what I was meaning that the chase items are the reason for the jump in price. Do have more plat, but the people who have the most plat don't have much more or less than they originally did over all.
not the way i saw it.. price was ~1Mpp before TLP then after stock went way down and price went to 1.5Mpp+ even had a few days with one person only selling for 2Mpp.. prices have settled back down to 1-1.5Mpp
Yea on Cazic they were 900k range pre-tlp then shot up to like 1.5m now they are back down to about 1.1m
If you ask me, that sound more like the people who regularly buy Kronos to sell for plat on your servers knew that the TLP were coming out then and bumped their prices accordingly for the first month or so; then when they realized that they weren't selling they dropped back down to the range at which it had previously been selling; as opposed to the price being increased due to higher demand.
On my main EQ2 server, they went from ~3Kpp in March (and for the 5 months before that) to ~15Kpp now, up five-fold. Before, I would farm plat on EQ2 to get them (much better deal than EQ1). Now, the farm time would be roughly equal. Tat
Nah, on Bristlebane it was almost the same as Riou describes it to be on Cazic. Krono was like 920-990k in Baz prior to TLP. A few weeks after TLP started (like 3 weeks or so) the prices started rocking up, and got as high as 1.6 million. It has come down to 1.25 or so now. People were making fast and easy krono on TLP and bringing it back to their home live servers to make their main toons richer, seemed like to me.
So people who have plat are spending what some of us would consider crazy amounts to buy kronos. Whee, free market. That's how it works. I don't like it, I'd love if krono's were pocket change, but they aren't. Don't worry about it, just pay for your subscription.
Nod. Still I do resent it a little when people try to corner the market on items and price gouge in the bazaar expecting me and others like me to in fact pay for THEIR subscription. During emergencies and wars (we are in an endless war on Norrath, neh?) that's called profiteering. The authorities invariably put a stop to it. Storm coming and the gas station is charging $10/gal? Not for long. "If people will pay it" or "supply/demand" won't be a successful defense. I'm a fan of capitalism: Industry - yes. Industrial waste in the water supply - no. Profit - yes. Profiteering - no. Even when recognizing the importance of greed to drive an economy early economists also considered social responsibility. You can sell bottled water but you can't fence in the river. Where things get out of hand (Purity of Chasity/Oath of Marr augs, Ancient Cloak of Flames bazaar prices) DBG could step in and alter the supply/provide near alternatives (an Ancestral Memories III item dropping in a group mission sure would have changed things). Real hard to ask 1Mpp for a common drop that can't have it's market cornered.
This may be the first time ever, but I 100% agree. However, let me remind you there are near alternatives to the items you listed. 25 purity augs are pretty common and fairly inexpensive and the drop off in stats from a 30 to 25 purity is minimal at most. It may take some effort, but there are older raid items that offer AM3 (16% OH). Heck, the naggy raid for HH is really easy and can be done with probably just a few groups of group-geared players. Yes, it's a limited time and there is always the dreaded RNG, but it's better than nothing. Obviously the alternatives don't offer the full stats, but they are close to it. Isn't that what an alternative is, anyways?
