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33 posts
I noticed on Ebay and onther sites that you can purchase Platinum money for EQ. I think that is kinda of stupid, buying video game money. I was wondering how they get the plat. to their customers, and many people acually buy plat.? Thanks :)
The biggest companies(MySuperSales) in the platinum buying business make a vast majority of their plats by dominating specific aspects of the economy. It has probably been lost to time, but there was a very well-written thread about this months ago.
It's basically reselling on a whole new level. The idea is to buy up a majority of the most expensive items available on a server, then raise all of the prices, leaving people with no option other than buying at your inflated prices.
Yantis' site also claims to buy platinum from other players, but this doesn't even come close to accounting for the amounts he offers on his website. I would expect him to give you somewhere around $10 for 100k platinum, which is hardly worthwhile for the effort you exert making it.
The last option is that they create it through exploits and bugs, but I find it somewhat unlikely that so much platinum is made without GM and designer intervention.
Yeah, people buy a lot of platinum. Otherwise these businesses wouldn't stay around and become so large. I just plain can't afford to spend my money on it, but there are a lot of wealthy people playing the game.
It's basically reselling on a whole new level. The idea is to buy up a majority of the most expensive items available on a server, then raise all of the prices, leaving people with no option other than buying at your inflated prices.
Yantis' site also claims to buy platinum from other players, but this doesn't even come close to accounting for the amounts he offers on his website. I would expect him to give you somewhere around $10 for 100k platinum, which is hardly worthwhile for the effort you exert making it.
The last option is that they create it through exploits and bugs, but I find it somewhat unlikely that so much platinum is made without GM and designer intervention.
Yeah, people buy a lot of platinum. Otherwise these businesses wouldn't stay around and become so large. I just plain can't afford to spend my money on it, but there are a lot of wealthy people playing the game.
33 posts
Ahh I see... Thanks for the info. :)
This was an interesting little thing about how MacroQuest can be used to cheat to all hell. SoE has made it known that they do not want tradeskill items to be sellable to vendors for a profit, but occasionally something slips.
http://www.rpgexpert.com/428.html
http://www.rpgexpert.com/428.html
33 posts
What is macroing? I have read it a few time but I don't full understand it.
1) Well published Ph.D. thesis on the economy of EverQuest have been recognized and used for articles in international papers, mosly British and some European. Economic analysis based on Plat created by player placed EverQuest somewhere in the realm of the 80th largest country in the World if Plat generation per capitia was equivelant to dollars. Verify the 80th - not to sure of that.
2) Before Yantis purchased IGE to remove competition and maintain large profits on plat sales, IGE was offering roughly $50 - $75 dollars per 100K Plat. This was in the December to January time frame when the infamous plat duping was rampant. I do not know what the buy and resale value of plat has been since the Yantis consolidation.
3) I second what fair Atiba stated regarding the cornering the market and reselling of hi-end gear for extreme profits. There was one 'buyer' on our server that was purchasing Blade of Carnage for 500k - which is very high - and reselling for 1,000,000 plat. Rather extreme. This went on for roughly two months; I believe he was one of the few with cancelled accounts when Sony finally cracked down.
4) I have noticed a reduction in bazaar prices over the past three months. Apparently Sony's main motive in the Casino was to remove plat from the game; I wonder if this is the slow 'trickle down economic effect' we are seeing in the bazaar prices getting lower. I do not know, and would be interested in comments on that.
5) Sony wants to get in the Plat business. There is additional real money to be made in it, and they are a typically greedy and short cited corporation. Wheather Sony will or not is to be seen, but this is by no means ending, but I believe entering a new venue. My gut feel is big established brokers as Yantis will enter into cooperative agreements with the game publishers, and they will eventually become the economic Fed with a Greenspan who attempts to control the economies. Controlling the game economy in a few years when these games exceed 1 million players will be difficult, and probably to much for each individual game publisher to become sufficient in. Rue the day your game toon is taxed in the player economy to pay for these 'benefits'. I am actually even more cynical then it sounds here. Sigh.
Journey far and fare well!
2) Before Yantis purchased IGE to remove competition and maintain large profits on plat sales, IGE was offering roughly $50 - $75 dollars per 100K Plat. This was in the December to January time frame when the infamous plat duping was rampant. I do not know what the buy and resale value of plat has been since the Yantis consolidation.
3) I second what fair Atiba stated regarding the cornering the market and reselling of hi-end gear for extreme profits. There was one 'buyer' on our server that was purchasing Blade of Carnage for 500k - which is very high - and reselling for 1,000,000 plat. Rather extreme. This went on for roughly two months; I believe he was one of the few with cancelled accounts when Sony finally cracked down.
4) I have noticed a reduction in bazaar prices over the past three months. Apparently Sony's main motive in the Casino was to remove plat from the game; I wonder if this is the slow 'trickle down economic effect' we are seeing in the bazaar prices getting lower. I do not know, and would be interested in comments on that.
5) Sony wants to get in the Plat business. There is additional real money to be made in it, and they are a typically greedy and short cited corporation. Wheather Sony will or not is to be seen, but this is by no means ending, but I believe entering a new venue. My gut feel is big established brokers as Yantis will enter into cooperative agreements with the game publishers, and they will eventually become the economic Fed with a Greenspan who attempts to control the economies. Controlling the game economy in a few years when these games exceed 1 million players will be difficult, and probably to much for each individual game publisher to become sufficient in. Rue the day your game toon is taxed in the player economy to pay for these 'benefits'. I am actually even more cynical then it sounds here. Sigh.
Journey far and fare well!
You know, I hadn't considered the issue of plat sales in light of the actual size of the seemingly 'virtual' EQ economy. I wonder if Yantis is on to something much bigger than just cashing in on transactional fees between buyers and sellers. If Yantis is in control of the 'real' value of the EQ plat, then he is acting as Greenspan is to the US dollar. A powerful position to be in when no independent source appointed him to this post.
I have been hesitant to believe that there is sufficient volume of plat sales to make a real difference in-game. It isn't like there are any real numbers that any of us can quote to prove or disprove, we just go on gut feelings based on our emotions. I don't feel affected aside from my personal repugnance of those who would attempt to turn what is a game to me into a business for themselves. Have there been plat dupes and macroed platinum windfalls? Of course, there is no doubt. Even fletching a simple arrow used to result in money made, amplified by hours and weeks of unattended computer keystrokes. Will there always be a way to make plat from nothing? I assume that in any game/program as complex as EQ and its 7 expansions that there will always be a code error that one of the millions of players will find eventually.
Sony has been surprisingly proactive (recently) in detecting and correcting tradeskill and other methods of exploiting their code for real $ gain. When taken along with their own probing questions on how we all feel about them getting involved in the transfer of virtual goods for real money, it looks, indeed, like they might want a piece of the action. They are clearly driven by a cut-throat marketing department that digs its claws into even individual expansion features to ensure that a partly disinterested playerbase will still have to fork out for each new batch of code, when they only want a few lines of it.
This unintended business side of the EQ plat may indeed be far more lucrative than even selling a game and collecting monthly fees. It is impossible to believe that, as savvy as giant Sony is, they aren't looking at it with more care than the code they release in their next patch.
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As for money sinks and the casino: My feeling is that the casino had a minimal impact. You never see anyone there now, unlike when the novelty of first release gripped those with disposable plats. The few items of real value which are attainable are just too few and far between to make it worthwhile to dump 100k on a chance of winning one.
Plat enters EQ constantly as each mob is killed. These plats concentrate into the relatively few players that 'make market' in high end items. It doesn't matter if these people acquire their loot 'correctly' by killing and looting for it, or if they are engaged in grey area activities. Once you have a million plat, it is easy to make the next million. Dropping 100k once into the casino doesn't make that big a dent unless it results in a sustainable and continual loss of player net worth.
When you talk about high-end gear, I think you are referring to gear between 100K and 1000K. I follow this gear constantly and I have never seen pooling or odd price swings which can't be accounted for by the ever present factors of multi-boxed bazaar mules and simple supply and demand. Even your average piece of 10K mid-level gear will swing wildly in price as market forces change. The key is to remember that there is no real measuring stick to generate a 'real' price for any item. If there are none for sale today and I put one up, I can price it at any value and it *might sell. Wild 4X-price swings occur on a weekly basis making the 'market timer' a potential king of the bazaar.
When you talk of general price drops in the recent past, I agree. My feeling is that the number of bazaar traders is declining and the number of people looking for any given piece of tradable loot are also falling. Two reasons come to mind for the latter: more people who are sticking with EQ are finding their next gear upgrade is coming as a no drop loot, and fewer people are logging in. Either way, a drop in demand will result in a drop in price.
I have been hesitant to believe that there is sufficient volume of plat sales to make a real difference in-game. It isn't like there are any real numbers that any of us can quote to prove or disprove, we just go on gut feelings based on our emotions. I don't feel affected aside from my personal repugnance of those who would attempt to turn what is a game to me into a business for themselves. Have there been plat dupes and macroed platinum windfalls? Of course, there is no doubt. Even fletching a simple arrow used to result in money made, amplified by hours and weeks of unattended computer keystrokes. Will there always be a way to make plat from nothing? I assume that in any game/program as complex as EQ and its 7 expansions that there will always be a code error that one of the millions of players will find eventually.
Sony has been surprisingly proactive (recently) in detecting and correcting tradeskill and other methods of exploiting their code for real $ gain. When taken along with their own probing questions on how we all feel about them getting involved in the transfer of virtual goods for real money, it looks, indeed, like they might want a piece of the action. They are clearly driven by a cut-throat marketing department that digs its claws into even individual expansion features to ensure that a partly disinterested playerbase will still have to fork out for each new batch of code, when they only want a few lines of it.
This unintended business side of the EQ plat may indeed be far more lucrative than even selling a game and collecting monthly fees. It is impossible to believe that, as savvy as giant Sony is, they aren't looking at it with more care than the code they release in their next patch.
------------------------
As for money sinks and the casino: My feeling is that the casino had a minimal impact. You never see anyone there now, unlike when the novelty of first release gripped those with disposable plats. The few items of real value which are attainable are just too few and far between to make it worthwhile to dump 100k on a chance of winning one.
Plat enters EQ constantly as each mob is killed. These plats concentrate into the relatively few players that 'make market' in high end items. It doesn't matter if these people acquire their loot 'correctly' by killing and looting for it, or if they are engaged in grey area activities. Once you have a million plat, it is easy to make the next million. Dropping 100k once into the casino doesn't make that big a dent unless it results in a sustainable and continual loss of player net worth.
When you talk about high-end gear, I think you are referring to gear between 100K and 1000K. I follow this gear constantly and I have never seen pooling or odd price swings which can't be accounted for by the ever present factors of multi-boxed bazaar mules and simple supply and demand. Even your average piece of 10K mid-level gear will swing wildly in price as market forces change. The key is to remember that there is no real measuring stick to generate a 'real' price for any item. If there are none for sale today and I put one up, I can price it at any value and it *might sell. Wild 4X-price swings occur on a weekly basis making the 'market timer' a potential king of the bazaar.
When you talk of general price drops in the recent past, I agree. My feeling is that the number of bazaar traders is declining and the number of people looking for any given piece of tradable loot are also falling. Two reasons come to mind for the latter: more people who are sticking with EQ are finding their next gear upgrade is coming as a no drop loot, and fewer people are logging in. Either way, a drop in demand will result in a drop in price.
Although I was not espacially interested in this "problem" I have to admit there where few but very well-writen and researched comments.
Threads like that make this board No1 for me in the EQ world.
Threads like that make this board No1 for me in the EQ world.
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