The Spirit Realm

Your title fits you perfectly.

I might want to buy a clue, but I won't do it with real cash. YMMV.

so like, whats those recippees that you can buy stuff and sell it back for 6p profit, cause like everything i make with tradeskills looses me plats. i would never macro, but i will make profits in game when i can.

first of all.....this is old news....we've all heard this story at one point or another....and frankly, its not as bad as he's making it out to be.

we've all seen the articles on gaming sweatshops that farm plat....SOE can't do anything directly about 3rd parties selling in-game items, because it doesn't affect their company's earnings, even though it is against the EULA, they can only enforce it in game, i.e. if they catch you, they can ban/suspend you and whomever else is doing it. but they can't do anything about the company outside of the game.

and also, if the economic model is applied....people hoarding plat, <i>which has an unlimited supply</i>, will not drive prices up, but rather down. prices will only go up if a VAST majority are buying the plat/items.

personally i find this to be a LARGE problem, and anyone willing to go spend RL money for plat can KMA. It IS reasons like this that prices on servers went crazy, look at items like the fungi tunic, 15-30k item (30k MAX) now sells for 70-100k, Pre-nerf Circlet of Shadow, used to sell for about 10-20k, now sells for a minimum of 200k up to 700k, manastones, sold for 40-60k, now sell for a minimum of 400-800k
Tradeskill items and research components that used to sell for 5p-20p a piece now sell for 500p-1k (for old school crap) newish (50-60 spells) used to sell for 100p for common words up to the rare 10k for words for the REALLY hard to find ones for certain spells, up to 40-60k for words such as the yaeths 73 page for RGC.
Primal Essence spell, super easy to get, but also uses RGC page last few prices for that i have seen have been 30-100k
These prices are insane, some of these prices have dropped a little bit just due to mudflation, and some have jumped a little due to server merges, in some lucky cases prices have dropped due to the server merges.
Then there's just the money hungry idiots out there who sell 20-200p items for 20-50k, hell, even the avg price on nerfed CoS seems to be 10-50k lately.

You plat buyers that dont think you're ruining the economy are stupid, all you are doing is making it worse and making it MORE expensive for yourself.
The more you guys buy plat, the more plat is made and released into the server, the more prices go up = the more plat YOU have to buy. Then shit gets to the point where its costing the HONEST players have to spend outrageous prices just to keep up, or be forced to buy plat (which i think is the main goal of the jackass sellers).
I agree, something HAS to be done about this.
It would be a simple enough problem to mostly solve if the plat buyers would simply boycott the sellers, but obviously, thats just too much for you to handle i guess.

If this was true people would be buying all the shit on my bazaar mule, and they are not. Even the relatively good stuff doesnt really sell. As far as I can see, aside from tradeskill items and rarer higher end tradeable items, prices generally seem to be under downwards pressure.

The real danger in a macro or dupe is not so much when it is in the hands of one individual, as it has been for quite some time. They merely use it for profit and control of the out of game market, and the effects in game are minimal. Of course, this is detrimental and dangerous to the game but due to the immense amount of money someone may make with this, they keep it locked up as tight as possible to ensure their exclusivity to it. The real danger is when it is in the hands of many individuals, all competing with each other.

There currently is market for about 2 million platinum per day, per server, in Everquest. Beyond that, the platinum just builds up in the inventories of these people. They lower prices due to supply, but demand never really goes up. Thus they sit on platinum accumulating, while they make less and less over time. This happens quickly in the face of much competition. If one guy is exploiting to get plat, and he is the only game in town, he wants the most money he can get out of it. Thus he wants his price to get him the largest share of the market without forcing the price down. When two people have it, it doesn't matter. The largest share of the market goes to the lowest price, and because of that, down it goes.

What then will happen, and what happened 2 years ago, is that these individuals will "invest" in items and tradeskill pieces and other things of value in game. This decreases the supply of items in game, and drives prices up. Also due to the fact that these people have platinum which is worth less and less, they will happily spend more and more to get the high end or high value rare stuff. In turn, people selling their other items increase prices so that they can afford this inflated top end gear.

This is a gradual process, but it can and will be accelerated within the next few weeks as these exploiters multiply in number. It took less than one week, two years ago, to catapult prices on the in demand items to 5-10x their price.

So many have access to it, that it is almost certain to continue spreading. Do you think that some kid in China hired to run a macro on a farm of 40 computers for dollars a day is going to be loyal to his company? No, they get the macro and sell it off to another similar company for big money, or a percentage return. I am 100% without a doubt positive that this is going on right now. No, I can't offer proof, and no I won't be posting the for profit combines that I currently know of. Those have been reported to Sony, but I've no idea if I found the right one.

But I am just one voice. Many voices get heard much more quickly.

And I understand some of the animosity. There are generally heated emotions when someone mentions a plat farmer or "ebayer" or whatever you may like to call them. Because of how some act and the perception by some that they ruin the game, such a light is not particularly a favorable one to be in. While it may lend credibility to my post it also will close people off from it due to these emotions.

To answer some of the posts

It depends what you have on your bazaar mules. If you have high market twink stuff, it will sell. The 500k stuff won't sell because that is niche market. High market is the 5k to 50k area. These items move quickly and sell in quantity. You may sell 500k items once in awhile, but in the long run you make more selling the mid road stuff. Prices on platinum have not dropped down to the level that 500k items are yet "cheap." Though, if platinum falls another 50% it will be.

I have no reason to raise the demand for plat. Demand will go UP out of game if prices go down, which they are. I would like nothing more than to see demand go down outside of the game, and prices come down in the game as well. I just want the exploiters gone, as I would think anyone would, no matter your level of play. And I assure you players do not generate tons of plat game wide. They do not generate more than a couple macro bots can. "Generated" platinum comes from vendor sold items. "Traded" platinum comes from selling metallic drake scales in the bazaar for 10k. There is a massive difference in which generated platinum is new platinum to the economy, and traded platinum is merely platinum which is moved around from 1 person to another, but nothing new is created (except for the drake scale). The plat that enters and exits the server each day goes to and from NPC vendors. The guy selling off 300k of stuff on his bazaar mule is not making any money and thus is not pushing money into the economy. If 2 million worth of "Traded" platinum is sold out of game for real life cash, it has very very very minimal impact. If 2 million worth of "generated" platinum, as in acquired through macro or dupe, is sold out of game, that doubles or triples the rate of "generated" platinum in the economy, and people's pockets start to fill up, and things cost more as a result. Keep in mind as well that there is an outlay of platinum which players use for coffins and corpse summons and potions and gems and reagents and tradeskill parts and so on and so forth. Subtract this from the number of generated platinum, and you get the actual amount entering the server on average per day. If this is, say, 250k, but you also have Mr. Macro over here adding 2 million on top of that a day, then you have inflation. If you have 5 Mr. Macros, who now have nothing to do with their plat, then you have a serious problem. It is getting to that point.

I didn't get busted or anything like that. I would never ever ever run a macro, dupe, expoit, or anything like that. And I assure you if I came across such a thing I would be the first to report it to Sony. If that makes me a fool (and it probably does in today's world) because I could sit back and cash $100,000 checks every month with it, then so be it.

I don't want prices in the bazaar to go up. I'd like to see them go down. Fixing this issue would push them down, I guarantee it. It did two years ago, to great effect.

Server mergers were 8 months ago. Prices steadied after a month or so beyond the merges.

I won't supply the recipe for 6 plat per profit. It's out there though, on one of the more popular websites which list such things, and it is not behind locked doors or anything. With some searching you can find it, but I'll merely say it exists, as I am sure posting details of what is an exploit, here, will get the post deleted quickly.

I beg to differ, Brohg.

I paid 220k for the loot right to Qvic arms myself. I've been trading in the Bazaar for 2 years come Christmas, and I've yet to stoop to selling/buying plat for RL money. All in all, I've paid a million+ plat for various toys/spells/drops which are out of my reach. I've just joined a raiding guild, though, so pretty soon my days of buying upgrades are over. But all generalization aside, there are some of us who spend hours daily trading in the bazaar instead of farming/raiding/grinding/etc, and who feel that that is just a viable way of playing the game as any other.

Anyhow, don't let me sidetrack the thread - just felt the need to clarify and defend my position as a "bazaar" shaman.

Not meaning to hijack either...but if you spent those "hours daily" out killing mobs and camping gear you wouldnt have to spend x amount of plat to get the gear because you could get it yourself. Now I would much rather burn DKP or be awarded a nice drop by my guild on a raid because of my contribution to the guild than pay plat for it any day of the week.

Having said that, I have never sold plat, but I admit that way back when EQ was still in Kunark/Velious era I did buy plat a few times. Back then I was going to school, then working evenings as a bagboy at a grocery store and played EQ for one or two hours once or twice a week. I wanted better gear, didn't have time to farm it, didn't have time to stand in EC tunnel (I miss those days) trying to sell every little thing I got just to get the plat to buy that "uber" piece of gear I was drooling over. Occasionally I would toss $10 or $20 and buy the plat to just go ahead and get the item.

I no longer buy plat because I don't need to. I have time and actually get enjoyment from earning my drops. However looking at those people who don't have the time to farm gear or raid, I don't fault them for buying plat. Have you ever been really undergeared for your level and tried to play EQ in today's game? Try making an alt and leveling it wthout buyig gear in the bazaar. In today's EQ not having the gear means not getting groups etc. That just plain isn't fun. So if someone wants to waste their money on plat so they can gear up and actually spend their few hours of game time each day playing and having fun instead of sitting in the bazaar or farming 1 drop, I say that's their perogative and let them do it.

That's a fair point, Rune, but I think the problems faced by undergeared characters are class-related. Most non-melees can bluff it in a grouping situation with less than stellar gear, as long as they're a half-decent player. I have a huge amount of sympathy for guildless / casual tanks - deficiencies in their gear can make or break a group, especially if it's a pick-up or suchlike.