The Overpricers Are Trying to Kill Themselves

Not that I normally personally buy any of these specific things on market (though I do on rare occasion), but since the prices stabilised after the last bout of greed, a new wave of greed has been noticed on market... primarily in the iron, coal, and FE area.

Fortunately the "greed disease" hasn't heavily caught on yet, but there's a few who are trying it.

Now, there's been greed rounds in the past, but this one is taking things to a step of no return. A step that takes the greedy ones into battle with NPC prices, which don't change so it's a definite losing battle.

Let's take a look at what I'm talking about. The current stable prices of these three items are:

iron - 4gc
coal - 2.5gc
FE - 5gc

Not including food, that totals for bars to:

iron bar - 45.5gc
steel bar - 59.5gc

Right, what's the NPC price for these bars?

iron bar - 50gc
steel bar - 70gc

So at those prices for the ings, there's some leeway to make a profit, though not by much once you include mixing food and lost ings while mixing.

NPC Bar Prices

Why do these matter so much? Because the bars are hardly the endgame. Bars -> S2Es -> the holy hydro grail. These bars are just ings, just like the ings used to make them.

Upsetting the price of the lowest ings affects the price of these bars (which have an NPC sell price limit), in turn affecting the price of S2Es, in turn affecting the price of hydro bars (also have an NPC sell price limit).

So there's actually 2 NPC price limits involved with these three primary ings. The second those ing prices go above either NPC sell cost, the entire chain will get wiped out.

And that means that iron, coal, and FEs, currently methods many use to make gc by harving/mixing, will die off. Sure, some will still sell, but nowhere near how they do currently. Which means they'll lose their usefulness in gc making.

How the Overpricers are Ruining Their Own Product

Having shown "the NPC factor" above, any harvester or FE-maker with a bit of common sense should easily grasp that hiking prices at this point is going to hurt their own business. If it's cheaper to just buy something from the NPC, that's what will happen. We see it already with things like spirit essences, health essences, and so on.

Iron and Steel Bars are the primary use of these 3 ingredients. It makes good business sense for the ing providers to keep the cost of those ings below what the NPC will sell the bars for.

But some don't quite grasp that. Names removed to protect the ignorant:

[----- @ 3]: selling 10k coal at 2,75ea , ... , 5k fes at 5,2ea
[------ @ 3]: selling 1.25k iron ore 4.8k pm me
[------- @ 3]: selling 10k iron 4.5 each

Those are just samples of recent ads seen on market. Other pricing by the greed patrol has been about the same.

Let's assume the iron hike is to 4.5gc, and use the coal/FE prices in the first ad.

That would make the bars (without food):

iron bar - 50.15gc
steel bar - 65.35gc

Those prices alone already killed the iron bar. 50.15gc for ings, add to that food cost, and you've made a grand case to just buy the iron bars from the NPC at 50gc.

Steel bars aren't far behind. Combined with food and ing loss during mixing, these prices are starting to make the case for just buying the bars directly from the NPC.

The Basic Gist

Simply put: If more people start buying bars from the NPC, less are buying iron, coal, and FEs from you.

Keep that in mind next time you think you're bright by overpricing basic ings. And yes, your name gets noticed when you show your greed so publicly. For every 1 person you've sold to, 3-4 have probably added you to a don't-buy-from list.

I know I have. I trust noone who so blatantly shows their greed, especially when it's to their own detriment in a case like this.

The Alchemy Dead Zone I: The Wolfram Bar

There's several items in alchemy that are just never made, at least not without some sort of insanity being involved.

Having worked so heavily in alchemy, I've thought about these time and again, wondering if it were possible to change that.

The primary reason being that the NPC price is cheaper (in some cases much cheaper) than the ings. The NPC prices were set way back when many items cost a lot less.

They do, however, keep the price down in some cases for certain items.

I wondered if an ingredient change might make the actual construction of these items worthwhile again, without upsetting the delicate price that in some cases is only held down by the NPC price.

The first item I decided to look at is the one that is the absolute worst bar to self-mix...

Wolfram Bar


Current ings:
- 10 wolframite ore
- 1 serpent stone
- 30 fire essence

Suggested change:
- 15 wolframite ore
- 10 coal (approx.)
- 30 fire essence

Reasoning: The combo of wolframite and serpent stone makes ings valued at over 18kgc. The NPC sells for 15kgc. The serpent stone being in the mix completely disrupts the value of the ore itself. The serpent stone is currently worth about the same as 10 wolframite ore, whereas it was nowhere near this value back when the NPC price was set.

As such, there is no real reason to mix this bar, and most all of these bars enter into play solely from NPC purchase.

With the above-suggested change, the cost of the ings get brought down to just a bit below the 15kgc NPC price, despite having 5 more wolframite ores.

Benefits: While people could still just buy the bars directly for 15kgc, they could also choose to mix the steel longs (or buy them from other players), harv the wolframite, and mix the bars.

This would not only encourage the mixing of wolfram bars (with the option to buy still), but would also put more value for manuers to mix steel long swords for harvesting the wolframite.

Steel longs cost 900gc directly from the NPC, putting the price of the changed ings at a bit under 15kgc, however there's plenty of places here for lost ings which would likely result in the bar cost from players staying at around the same as the NPC price.

And as well, people would actually have a reason to harvest wolframite again.

The NPC price (and thus the market price) would not change, so this wouldn't affect the current price of items that use wolfram bars. It just allows for more possible mixing to go along with the ability to directly buy from the NPC.

The Latest Round of Price Whining

Seems to be a new wave of complaints about more recent price changes.

Focus: 1) Instance drop item prices dropping. 2) General use fighter items such as HEs and SRs costing more. 3) Nexus Removal stone price hikes.


I'll look at each of those individually...

1) Instance drop items - With the load of people farming instances, this is just simply "No shit, Sherlock".

Start flooding the market for an item that is only an occasional buy at best, there's too many, people have to lower their price to be more attractive for a sale compared to others.

The people complaining about this primarily are of course the instance farmers, since they're the ones losing money with each trip they make.

With any luck, instances will hit the point of unprofitably soon enough and the farmers will actually have to do something in the game instead.


2) Basic items (HEs/SRs/EnEs/MatEs/etc) prices going up.

I warned you people about this last year, but only few paid attention. The rest were too driven by greed to care. Now they're paying for it, and whining about what they did to themselves.

How were you warned? The boneheads that caused the sudden hike of silver prices from 2 to 2.5 are the reason for this.

I started a campaign to boycott these people. I along with others continued to sell silver at 2gc in an attempt to keep this from happening, as we understood what it would mean to the economics of the game to have such a hike on a base item.

But in the end, there were too many greedy boneheads. I have since had to accept the price hike as it became the standard.

You greedy boneheads who helped increase the cost of this one base item are at fault for all essie/bar price hikes. Even stuff not including silver.

And as such, you have no right to complain about price hikes of mixed stuff.

Silver increase directly caused price increases for HEs, LEs, and EnEs. And of course, silver bars.

Because silver became more profitable to harv than things like diamonds and iron, those things got harved less, until their prices also got hiked making them more profitable.

Which in turn increased the price of AEs as well as iron/steel bars, which in turn increased the price of S2Es, which in turn increased the price of hydro bars.

That one silver ore price hike caused price hikes around the board.


Add to this: The primary used essies such as HEs and EnEs give no chance of a rare item. This alone makes them less made than some other lesser-used essies. Fighters pushing to get these essies at lower prices get pissed when they can't, but don't grasp that they caused the hike selling silver for a higher price before, and there's not so many people providing these essies in the first place.

Matter Essies alone have seen a drastic hike due to both iron price increase and lack of quartz ings available forcing them all to be harved. (Anyone using the "well, there's places you can harv all 4 ings together" line to excuse wanting a cheaper price on these needs to be shot. The time it takes to make these is from the harving, not their location.)


So for things like HEs... the boneheads who increased the silver price, the lack of players massively making these, and the overwhelming need for them for fighters has all combined to increase the cost of them.

Similar combos of reasons can be found for other items as well.

Next time you wanna whine about the increased cost of essies/bars and such, figure out what you were doing when some of us were trying to keep this from happening by boycotting the 2.5gc silver sellers.



3) Nexus Removal Stone price drastically increasing.

I've read it all... there's people actually claiming it's the "greedy harvers" who find them that have caused this hike.

The truth: It's the buyers.

Many moons ago, I decided that Human 10 wasn't worth the cape and removed 3 to get Human 7 instead. At that time, I paid 350kgc each for the Human Removal Stones.

350kgc. This was less than 2 years ago.

Along came a bunch of gc buyers and such, buying up all these stones. Setting their bots to buy at the (at the time) outragous price of 700kgc, keeping that increasing as others battled to buy them as well.

Those price hikes? Certainly not the harvers. Those who find a nexus stone sell it at what they can best get for it. And it was the buyers offering to buy them at these prices, without the finder even having to set a price.

Those prices being offered to buy them just kept going up. Add to that, some other greedy types who'd buy them at the current high price on their bot, and sell them on the bot for yet another 100k. Again, not the person who found the stone's doing but greedy in-betweens.

A couple months ago I found a nexus stone. My very first and only in 2.5 years of harvesting with over 9.5million items harvested.

It sold for 950kgc. I set that as a buy-it-now price, but offered it in auction at 700kgc start. People hiked their bids directly up to 850kgc without trying lower first, until eventually the stone sold at the 950kgc after only a few hours available.

My fault as the person who found it? Hardly. Auctions allow those who are buying to determine the price. If it gets sold at an outrageous price, it's the player who bought it at that price to "blame", not me.

And these same players complaining about the nexus stone cost also tend to be instance-farmers, where we're starting to regularly see nexus stones come into the game. Funny, the price isn't going down because of them.

The Road to 100

Had a lot of harvesting to do the other day. Out of sheer boredom, I decided to do something while harving... see what it would take to get my non-100+ skills to 100.

Particularly, cost-wise.

Att, Def, Alch, Pot and Harv are all over 100. That leaves 7 that aren't.

Ranging - Intentionally left out as it's not easily calculable. Way too many varying factors. And well, it would obviously be blatantly expensive anyway. There's a reason noone has reached Ranging 100 yet.


So with ranging left out, I still had 6 skills to check.


COST NOTE: Costs below are "ideal". That is, if there are no lost ings during the mixing. Of course there's always lost ings, so the actual cost is more than what is shown.

TOTAL ITEMS NOTE: Again, "ideal" using only one item. I of course mix things other than helms in manu (for the daily, for example). And I teleport and heal a lot which would reduce the number of spells needed for the leveling examples below.




Listed as determined to be easiest to hardest, based on cost, ings required, and time it would take to do it.



1 - Manufacturing - Current level 72

WITH MANU GOD!

Cheapest method to get to 100 was of course mixing helms and selling them to Trik. The cost of leather, thread, and food is more than Trik pays, so it's still a loss, but not bad compared to schools.

That leather, thread, and FPs are all NPC-purchasable made this the easiest of the skills left to level as well, as there's no concern on finding or self-harving ings.

Selling to Trik, I determined I'd need to make 526,178 helms. The cost of getting to level 100 would be 1,846,885gc. Oh, and it would take 4349 trips from storage to Trik to mix helms at the NPC.

School would be faster of course, with "only" 263,089 helms to make. However, the cost of poofing the ings for those is 6,185,222gc. More than triple the cost of doing them at Trik.

With a tight budget like mine, the cheaper though longer route is better.


2- Crafting - Current Level 69

WITHOUT GOD! (Determined that my god plans for the future had no way to include crafting god in any reasonable amount of time.)

Fastest route to 100 here is moon medallions, selling them to the NPC.

This would entail mixing 168,502 moon medallions, incuding experience from polishing the sapphires and making the silver medallions.

Purchasing all ingredients and food for the process would be an 18gc per medallion loss. That's a total of 3,033,636gc. Almost double the helms at Trik.

Of course, I do a lot of self-harving so that gc amount would be drastically lower.


Glacmor rings were considered but rejected as my craft level is about the rec level of making them, which means a motherload of lost ings. Maybe in the 90's...

Just polishing saps and selling them to the NPC was also considered but dropped as being too costly unless WEs were self-harved and made. And as a 121 alcher I don't want to waste all that time harving and mixing low-level WEs.


3- Summoning - Current Level 51

WITH GOD!

This one surprised me. I was expecting much worse than I determined.

Yeah, it's bad, but not as bad as I thought.

White Tiger Stones are the obvious choice here. It would take 105,034 stones ideally to get to level 100.

If gypsum was bought at storage, it would cost 2,730,884gc with selling the stones to the NPC.

That's less than the crafting! However, this is ideal. In reality, that much gypsum doesn't get sold at storage so there'd actually be a lot of self-harving.

Buying all ings except for the gypsum, there'd actually be a 74gc profit per stone, though it would also mean 5,252 trips from storage to gypsum to mix at the gypsum.

That's a total profit of 7,772,516gc.

Still, I ranked this one lower than crafting due to all the gypsum runs, which are a nuisance.


4- Engineering - Current Level 61

WITH GOD! (Because I already have this god)

The cheapest method here is surely the slowest one. That is, Harvest/Degrade Indicators where turqoise is self-harved. Turq however is extremely slow to harvest, and you can plan almost an hour doing a full-emu trip to harvest and mix at the turquoise.

It would require mixing 235,992 H/D indicators.

If all ings (and food) except turqoise were purchased, there'd be a profit in that.

However, harving over 1.1 million turqoise doesn't sound like a good time to say the least. If you could "ideally" buy it on market instead at the common 4.5gc price (which, face it, you'll never find that much on market) it would be a loss of 4,129,860gc.


I decided a second option to be better, though a bit more costly... Point Defense mixed in the Eng school.

269,923 point defenses in the Eng school would have an ing cost (at current market prices) of 4,723,653gc.

I chose this as the better option because, being a 121 alcher, I'd harv/buy ings and mix the EnEs required myself. Even buying the ings and food for those, I'd save 1,349,615gc bringing the point defense cost down to "just" 3,374,038gc.


Still, ranking it below some of the other skills at that would still take a lot of time. (Of course, School Days getting 3x exp would be nice, but I don't rely on such days actually happening when I'm online.)


5- Magic - Current Level 73

WITH GOD!

Mana draining by itself is of course the well-known cheapest option. However, that's a PvP solution, and as most know I do not do any form of PK or PvP.

There's always MD-ing desert chims while training on them, but that's still incredibly slow and I just don't train that much these days anyway.


So I came up with an alternate option, one which I have already used before to get at least 30 magic levels.

That is: Grizzly Spawn - MD 30 mana from the bear, kill the bear, Radiation Shield which takes 30 mana. Repeat.

This works great as the bear gives the exact amount of mana needed, and bear respawn time is incredibly fast.

At my level, it would take doing 60,732 grizzlies. That's 60,732 mana drains and 60,732 radiation shields.

Total cost of the essies: 9,170,532gc

However, that's a lot of bear furs to sell too ;) The essies used provide enough space to pick up the full bear drop.

Of course, as a high-level alcher I'd wanna mix all the essies myself, which would make the cost much less. That would mean 240k+ magic essies mixed, a sweet alching thought for experience as well as EME chances.



BTW, if I did MD-ing like most PvPers, it would be 138,678 mana drains at a cost of 8,320,068gc for the essies. Less than 1 million difference.



6 - Tailoring - Current Level 39

(No god exists at this time.)

Wow. Yeah, ranging is probably more expensive. But Tailoring was more expensive than all 5 of the above skills combined!

It would take 1,073,053 blue dyes, or 1,430,737 orange dyes to get to 100 ideally.

Orange Dyes are considered as they're the only ones that don't require saltpeter, making them easier to mix.

Blue Dyes were considered because their flower ingredient is the easiest to harv. Doing these would mean a lot of engineering as well due to the saltpeter.

In the end, I decided to kill thoughts of blue dyes as I determined I'd be better off cost-wise doing orange dyes, and doing the aforementioned point defenses in the eng school to get my eng level up.

With all bought ingredients, and selling the orange dyes to the NPC, the total cost would be: 44,352,847gc

Holy crap...

It would also mean 20,030,718 each of red roses and sunflowers.

The cost of course could be brought down by self-harving, but hell, look at the number of flowers to harv!

And yes, that's sadly the cheapest way to level tailoring. :P

The blue dyes, btw, buying ings and mixing own saltpeter, would cost over 63 million gc.





Well, that's it for that fun. Not really a necessary entry, just something trivial I did for giggles.

Spreading Yourself Too Thin (Why New Stuff Isn't Working)

Today's channel 6 mess, er, chat, was on new stuff that isn't working. So it gets removed (or will get removed).

As well, stuff not getting implemented because lack of enthusiasm.

And stuff never being used at all after being implemented.

The big question: Why?

I can only speak for myself as someone who tries most everything (short of PK) as an all-rounder, but I have a few thoughts on these issues.

They all tend to boil down to one issue though: Spreading ourselves too thin.

What I mean by that is this: It takes time to work up enough cash to do something that's a gc-loss. Ranging being a good example. Tailoring, manufacturing... anything where the gc gained is less than the gc put into it.

I use alchemy and potioning mostly as a means of earning gc, which I can then use on things that are a gc-loss. 34 ranging levels, a fully leveled mule, dropping bricks and degrading armor in invasions, working up tailoring levels, tossing away leather and thread in a manu school, working up engineering levels is pretty much a loss, summoning is a loss, anytime I use my mule I'm taking a hit...


You get the point. There's a ton of gc-loss things I already do. The more gc-loss things done, the more gc I need to stop and make. That gets to be a LOT of time as it is just with the things I do. Others may have different things they do but are most likely in the same boat, their gc is already tied up in a bunch of gc-loss things.


This is pretty much the situation:
* We've got tons of things in-game that cost a lot of gc.
* We've got only a handful of things that are actually profitable (most that aren't a loss hit around break-even) to pay for those things that cost gc.
* We get various new things added that are all in some way gc sinks.

Quite frankly, our gc is already spread too thin among other things to allow for any meaningful use of anything new that is going to be just added cost in the end.

And that added cost seems to be multiplying, like everything new has to cost more than the last thing that was added. Yet the ability to make gc remains about the same. There's just no possible way that anything brought in that's more costly "than the last thing" is going to survive. We just can't afford it.

I don't know if there's a few people stashing gc whose storages are being used as a way to determine whether something new can be afforded, but if it is, they're gc hoarders, they're not actually playing the game.

People like me who actually are interested in playing the game and trying different things rarely have such gc on hand because we've already spent it on the plethora of gc-killers already in the game.

Personally I'd like to start saving up for some Nexus as I'm getting to the point where I need them, and don't want to waste my rare OA pickpoints on them. Especially now when the nexus removal stone cost has skyrocketed. I got plans to buy 10 nexus, not to mention I need a removal stone because I got one too many on one of them. But the only way I'll afford this is to give up more than a few of my gc-sinks for quite a while. Ranging, muling, manufacturing... all gone while I work on those (not planning to get them all at once, but ~550kgc each takes a lot of time to earn... as well they should, not complaining about nexus costs).

But that's just another place I already need to put my gc on top of what I'm already doing. I'm one level away from the rec level for the lowest summoning stone, and I still need 3 animal nexus if I'm going to start those. I've got level 64 manu but only 4 artificial nexus so a lot of the stuff I could try to make, I can't. These are necessities for future game play, not just tossing away gc.


So where does that leave all the new stuff that's being brought in... normally more costly than anything else and less of a necessity to play the game? Of course it's going to not be used, as there's other gc-sinks already taking all the spare gc we/I got.

If everything to get added just increases our costs (and at a much higher rate than anything already adding to our costs), there's gotta be something added to balance it out. At this point we're just expected to want to spend a ton of gc on something that will give us what is essentially negative value in return, and with the number of gc-sinks already in the game, that's just not going to happen. Nothing, no matter how good of an idea it seems, can survive at this point if it's horridly overpriced. (And I don't mean "expensive", I mean horribly overpriced.)




What's Gone Right?

There have been a few new things implemented that have gone well though. Or at least, getting some use out of them.

* Mules - I was among those who originally thought these would just cost too much to be of any use. Now I'm a fully-leveled mule (the cost being aided by being able to make my own food), and I regularly use the mule for hauling things like leather, thread, and wine to storage. As well, it comes in handy carrying bolts to the new ranging arena.

Yes, I'm losing money each time I mule, but the time saved makes up for it in a good enough value to make it worthwhile to lose gc over.

* Ranging Arena - A cost to get in, and the average experience per arrow seems to be a bit less than regular ranging, but considering the time it takes to level this skill, the arena was warmly received by those who've attached themselves to this skill. Even with the 3.5kgc entrance fee. Adds more gc-pain to the already gc-painful skill, but still deemed a value for the money considering the time saved.


Just examples. These are two things that have been added that, though expensive, were deemed worthwhile by some. They hit that sweet spot between not being too cheap so everyone will do it, but not so expensive that there's not a single person in the game willing to waste the gc on (i.e. the att/def reduction pots).



All in all, this is not a complaint, nor a request to make everything cheaper (or worse, go the route of that god-forsaken idea to have a crap server that makes all skills useless).

It's just an observation that the balance in our Eternal lives financially is already delicate, and too much stuff is getting added that's too expensive while ways to make the gc to afford these things stays the same. There's just no way to implement new expensive things at this point, when those things add to the other expensives, not replace others. Expensive new things are in all likelyhood going to fail no matter what unless other things are added that balance out their cost. We simply can't afford more gc sinks.

Yes, there's a need to make new stuff cost more so it doesn't completely change gameplay. I can see that in the same way I saw the need to not let "gold member" status give benefits that would ruin gameplay for others.

However, I think we've reached our point where our gc is just simply already spread too thin over the many gc sinks already in the game, and the expense level has already been passed. Make things expensive, just not as expensive as things of late have been.

Gold Farmers - make real life money, kill the economy

(Disclaimer: Chat logs edited to remove lines not relevant to the topic being discussed here. If a line is quoted, it's quoted in full though, no user's message has been edited.)


Last night's chat on channel 6 included discussion of "gold farmers". (For once it wasn't the usual politics crap that makes me and a dozen others turn the channel off! Woohoo!)

Gold Farmers being people who collect gc in various ways, typically by selling harvestables, only to turn around and sell that gc for real life dollars.

Two issues were brought up concerning them:
1) They cause less sales in the EL shop, sales of which support the game.
2) They are ruining in-game economy with their actions.

More to say on the second one, so let's look at #1 first.

1) Less EL Shop sales

According to Radu, sales in the EL shop are down a lot. While the (real world) economy can factor into that, it is also due to people spending their money buying gc from the Gold Farmers instead of supporting the game by buying from the shop.

Ideas brought up to counter this included selling plain old gc in the shop, at a rate that would screw the Gold Farmers completely. I get the feeling it wasn't something he wanted to do, but just might if the situation keeps up.



2) In-game economy getting ruined by Gold Farmers

(discussion started about hoarding or scarcity of rare items)
[01:51:49] [radu @ 6]: also, people didn't buy much from the store lately
[01:51:56] [radu @ 6]: maybe it's the economy
[01:51:58] [conavar @ 6]: gold farmers
[01:51:59] [asgnny @ 6]: if there were no scarcity, there would be no reason to save up items
[01:52:05] [jaclaw @ 6]: what asgnny said
[01:52:06] [Aislar @ 6]: that's probably b/c of the gc->$$ ratio
[01:52:06] [AltariA @ 6]: broke :((
[01:52:13] [Aislar @ 6]: its better for buyers than it used to be
[01:52:30] [radu @ 6]: well, keep buying from farmers then
[01:52:34] [radu @ 6]: and the efe will be 50K
[01:52:39] [Aislar @ 6]: lulz
[01:52:49] [AltariA @ 6]: nuuuuu
[01:52:56] [Smurf @ 6]: \o/
[01:53:15] [asgnny @ 6]: I'll sell 50 :)
[01:53:17] [conavar @ 6]: now everyone will hoard efe's :p
[01:55:04] [radu @ 6]: lol
[01:55:10] [conavar @ 6]: but most of the ppl i would imagine who buy gc for $ from farmers, dont care about the cost of efe's etc
[01:55:13] [radu @ 6]: thing is, if you buy from farmers, you cause inflation
[01:55:28] [radu @ 6]: because you encourage them to produce more gold
[01:55:41] [radu @ 6]: so in the end, you still pay the same in USD for EFEs and stuff
[01:55:54] [radu @ 6]: with the added bonus that you cause ingame inflation
[01:56:02] [radu @ 6]: so you fuck up the economy too
[01:56:28] [asgnny @ 6]: if the rate keeps going like this, the only people it screws over are normal players who don't buy gc.
[01:56:35] [asgnny @ 6]: is that really the goal?
[01:56:42] [conavar @ 6]: im not sure they actually care about that aslong as they getting 8k+ for a $
[01:56:42] [radu @ 6]: well, I can't make gold farming illegal


And it went on like that. Lots of lame ideas brought up to kill off the Gold Farmers without directly banning it, but every single one ended up screwing the normal player in some way.



Basically put, Gold Farmers have no care whatsoever about your in-game play, or care about the game in the least bit. Their only goal is real-life greed, attempting to make real-life cash off the game that they don't deserve, and to hell with how it ruins the economy and in turn ruins EL.

By buying gc from these Gold Farmers, you are contributing to the ruining of the in-game economy, making the prices of items go up, so you end up having to spend more, so you have to buy more...


More of the chat, including (in not my words) how you can help stop the economic ruin of the game:

[01:58:23] [Epitaph @ 6]: technically you lose shop sales because of gc buyers :P
[01:58:35] [Epitaph @ 6]: a lot of people just buy gc instead of shop items, because it's cheaper
[01:58:40] [asgnny @ 6]: without a doubt
[01:58:43] [radu @ 6]: yes, I lose shop sales, but if it keeps going this way, I will sell gold too
[01:59:00] [radu @ 6]: because otherwise it's simply not worth developing the game
[01:59:14] [Epitaph @ 6]: i wouldn't mind that :o you could set a flat rate,, and i'd rather buy from you, no risk
[01:59:34] [radu @ 6]: the thing is, I didn't want to cause inflation
[01:59:40] [radu @ 6]: but the gold farmers are causing it anyway


[02:05:35] [radu @ 6]: ok, well, then it seems i have to do something about the harvest farming

[02:25:22] [radu @ 6]: at worst, i am going yo sell gc at 1 usd for 10K
[02:25:28] [radu @ 6]: and then see if anyone beats my rate
[02:25:39] [Sqwurl @ 6]: rate atm is $1 for 8k :p
[02:25:43] [radu @ 6]: yes
[02:25:48] [radu @ 6]: so I am going to sell 10
[02:25:51] [radu @ 6]: just to piss them off


[02:30:56] [radu @ 6]: or, free market ftw
[02:31:22] [radu @ 6]: in the end, you fuck yourself by buying from farmers
[02:31:27] [radu @ 6]: let me give you an example
[02:31:33] [radu @ 6]: you want to buy some EFEs
[02:31:46] [radu @ 6]: then you think: cheaper to buy gold from farmers then buy the EFEs from bots
[02:31:48] [Quesar @ 6]: this is not the real world though. it is too small market for the normal balancing forces
[02:31:53] [bkc56 @ 6]: is free market valid when you have supply/demand OUTside of the environment? It throws off any supply/demand balance.
[02:31:56] [Sqwurl @ 6]: i need them sometimes to keep having fun
[02:32:00] [Quesar @ 6]: a few people abusing the system can screw up everything
[02:32:25] [radu @ 6]: not afew people
[02:32:32] [radu @ 6]: lots of people buy from them
[02:32:37] [Quesar @ 6]: ok, exaggerated, but you get the idea
[02:32:46] [radu @ 6]: same like IRL
[02:32:55] [radu @ 6]: if many people don't care, a society gets fucked
[02:33:17] [conavar @ 6]: but more ppl dont buy from them than do...so its the few fucking the many if nothing is done
[02:33:33] [Quesar @ 6]: exactly con
[02:33:34] [Usl @ 6]: consider though that there is nothing those who care can do, to stop those that don't. This is not like RL
[02:33:41] [radu @ 6]: well, the ostracize those that do
[02:33:51] [Quesar @ 6]: how can the majority of players that AREN'T doing the gc buying/selling fix things/
[02:34:00] [radu @ 6]: simple
[02:34:06] [radu @ 6]: don't sell anything to thsoe who do
[02:34:15] [radu @ 6]: ban them from your bots
[02:34:15] [Randall @ 6]: gonna post a list?
[02:34:17] [Kiwi06 @ 6]: Could you set up stings? ;P
[02:34:20] [Quesar @ 6]: give us some way to even know who they are?
[02:34:30] [radu @ 6]: well, I am sure you can find out







So what do you do?

1) Don't buy/sell/trade with any known gold farmers.
2) Don't buy gc with real-life money from these gold farmers. (Spend your money in the official EL Shop instead, support the game not greedy scumbags who are trying to ruin it.)
3) Know the gold farmers' bots as well, and don't use them.

(And btw, when a gold farmer is intentionally trying to artificially hike the in-game price of harvestable items, solely for the purpose of them getting gc to sell for real-life money faster, don't friggin' support them!)



As for who the farmers are, simply put if you see someone who does nothing but harv a certain item all day every day, they are questionable. I have not put names here because I only personally know of one farmer, and would rather have a list than pointing out just one person. If you know of a farmer and have some way to prove their actions, by all means PM me in-game, and perhaps we can get a list of gold farmers put together for this.