Even Allakhazam is worried

[Kerath]

I don't normally link to posts in our forums (actually I don't think I ever did this).  Moreover, I have made it a point to try to stay officially neutral in most of the debates that have raged about the game over the years, and instead have tried to provide a forum where people could debate free of influence or censorship and provide plain game information for those who prefer to just stay out of the debates altogether.  So this is a double whammy.  Some of you may know from other forum posts that I have consistently turned down offers from certain platinum for cash sites for large and lucrative ad deals and even for the actual purchase of the site.  Why?  I believe that, while the sale of plat and items for cash on a small scale is fairly harmless, these large conglomerates have far too much power over the game to be tolerated or to be allowed to enter the mainstream of our community, and I have not wanted to give even the limited stamp of approval an ad on our site might provide (not to mention that our wonderful premium members give me the business flexibility to turn down their offer and still pay our bills).  This post, which was actually a repost of something posted on the Safehouse, seemed to sum up my thoughts on the matter pretty well (and I will note that even if the program this poster describes does not exist, it is possible to do what he describes totally by hand, which has always been my concern), so I decided to link to it and say I support the jist of what it is saying.  I believe this is one of the most serious issues to be faced not only by Everquest but by the whole MMORPG community in years.  http://everquest.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=1&mid=1075435996761751677&num=0

This was posted by Alla on the main page of his site.  I think it speaks for itself.

[Thrashum Gud]

Copied the same reply I gave in Campfire thread.


I don't personally condone or approve of Yantis but even I can see there are other factors that are causing the market to go up that are the fault of no one but SOE and us.

Remember when expansions where once a year if that? Remember when twinking really was considered a bad thing to the point that the entire bank platform in Faymart would ooc and shout a twink out of the zone?

Those days are long gone and what's the result? Twinking is commonplace, that's not a bad thing BUT anytime a new expansion comes out (3-4 times a year at the current pace) everyone twinks a toon to be able to run it.

The professional farmers and traders know this and that's why the prices have surged recently, all of a sudden there's a rather huge market as everyone is gearing up their Bezerker twinks. Demand goes up supply falls down and the prices rise.

There's the real reason for the current state of the economy, and we did it to ourselves.

[Kerath]

Gah! Sorry, didn't see this was already posted in the Campfire.   :oops:

[Kerath]

Bah! What am I apologizing for?  My post was 1st!  8)

[Grymlok]

You just posted yours in the place with less traffic  :D

[Pojodan]

And the funny part is that one can play EQ and never even run into these people... granted some items will be out of reach due to their being farmed heavily... but if you really look at it the stuff that's not much harder to get really isn't very much lower in quality than the high priced stuff widely available.. esepcially with LDoN.

[mac173]

I think that for the most part the people that are buying plat in that quantity are also the ones that bought chars, and really don't get the point of EQ. The people who play console games with cheat codes, who run their own game servers with cheats built in, those are the people buying chars and plat. They think the game is about power, and equipment.

Most of us know it's about friends, and community.

I feel for the high end gamers who worked thier way up to level 65 and now have to put up with the power gamers. It sucks for them, but they know who their friends are and can work around the PGers.

The way to stop this is to stop buying high end equipment, and farm it yourself.

Sony can stop it by making more of it No Drop.

[Gotog Ironskull]

OMFG I am so Sick of this issue.


Some ppl who have a real life out side of EQ would like to have nice items also.  But we dont have 3 week of constant sitting in 1 spot waiting for 1 item to drop.  The having some eq junkie with out a life come by and steal the kill.
So sorry we have to buy them.  If sony thinks this is a Problem then Make every thing NO DROP.  Not just new stuff, but evey thing in game.  Summon Items also everything.  that way you will have to farm everthing you want.  

Will lose a lot of ppl doing this but the holyer then now EQ Players will be happy.

I left eq beastlord not because of yantis.  I dont give 2 shits about him or what he dose.  I left there because the ppl that made that sight great were gone.

Rant off

[Lorathir]

You don't *have* to buy anything. You can level any charecter up to 65 with relatively modest gear. There is nothing you cannot do in EQ that isn't moderately achievable, you just have to *work* at it.

Having goals, and achieving them with friends, is the most enjoyable, rewarding and satisying thing about a mmorpg.

Further more, IT'S THE POINT. Buy a level 65 with xxxx amount of aa's and Planar gear, and you've missed the sweetest, most exciting moments EverQuest can give you. And the journey to 65 is abso-freaking-lutely rammed with them. Believe me, I started with a Druid who didn't have a pot to piss in. I moan a lot about EQ's shortcomings, but it's been the most exhilarating gaming experience I've ever had the pleasure to enjoy.

If a player buys his way to the top, or just takes a short-cut, then they've just totally missed the reason why others don't. The shame is, they'll never 'get it' either.

If mmorpg's are to flourish (and looking at some of the upcoming titles this year is gonna be HUGE) the buying and selling of items and plat needs to be stopped. Imho, it can only prove detrimental to the scene.

[celodar]

Beastlords have it fairly easy, as you can get to 65 and still get groups in hopperhide, grimling skullcracker belt, club of ice ocean, and sheetmetal ulak.

But other classes don't have it that easy.  Its not unheard of for a non-twink warrior to get punted out of a LDoN group because they don't have a windblade, copper hammer of striking, anger proccer, or similar weapon.  I have not seen anyone booted for equipment first hand, but I have decided to MT when the warrior in my group was dual-wielding short swords of ykesha, and had mainly crafted armor.  I told warrior to just make a /shield macro, keep close to me, and jam it down when it cycles.  Won 3 ldon's with that group, and got the warrior to a point where he could buy some decent ldon items.  Plate tanks, and pure melee can't compensate for mediocre equipment by a pet, dots, or kiting.  Beastlords have it lucky, even naked, we have a baseline DPS level at 65 of at least 50dps, just with a pet, 100+ if we cared to engage with melee or offensive spells.

[Cyphen Wilder]

Once again, we are hit with yet another post about EQ economy and IGE/Yantis involvement.  As in-game, I am tired of them, but also as in-game I enjoy throwing my 2cents worth of opinion in everytime.  

Now we all know there was a problem with plat duping/bugging that introduced a huge amount of platinum into the EQ economy.  For SOE to come out publicly and annouce it means that it was enough plat across the server board that it was impossible to just sweep it under the covers.  Their actions to ban known accounts, fix bugs and what not was very good in my opinion to show the average EQ player that SOE would not stand for this type of cheating at all.  However, with the time frame between actually catching bugs and fixing them the influx of "illegal" plat into the economy was probably more then we can imagine.  So actually deleting the plat would be impossible since the circulation of that plat had already been integrated into the community.  SOE instead discovered a way to soak up this plat with the introduction of the casino.  Although badly implemented with buggy programing, in concept it was brilliant.  Players were tunring plat into NPCs in exchange for chances to win items.  Being a casino of course, odds are with the house, and the return not equal to the investment.  GU comincs has funny comic out right now hat illustrates this with one of the characters in the casino trying to win a Black Bridle and having already bet beyond the actual cost of a Black Bridle from a vendor.  With this idea alone, SOE came up with a way to soak up some of this excess plat which in my opinion has worked to some extent.  However this does lead us to Yantis/IGE.

Yantis/IGE in my opinion have taken virtual business to a brilliant level.  They recognized a demand, and created a supply.  A demand that however how many people seem to shun it, MUST be a great demand due to their success.  No we can get into what I really feel are all the conspiacy theories of macros/progs/duping is the main stay of their ability to produce mass amounts of plat.  I will admit that they do exist to some extent, but not to the economy shattering extent that everyone seems to think.  I just checked plat amounts for sale on MySuperSales.com for the Bristlebane server.  Quatities available as of right now total 2.1 million plat.  That is alot of plat, but in retrospect, I have easily made more then 10x that amount during my almost 4yrs of playing EQ.  I play at a very casual pace, highest character level is 56.  I have stayed at levels in each one of my characters for countless months farming mobs even after they have gone green just because of the profit margin on the loot they drop.  I can easily see how dedicated employees of a business could easily surpass my amount when getting paid to do just that, farm plat.  If any at all, IGE/Yantis could be guilty of hoarding "illegal" plat obtained from the original plat dupers and nis now selling it.  However, for them to continue in business they do still need to farm plat.  If we go to a hypothetical situation we can easily see how this is done, legally.  I can easily farm 1-1.5k plat per hour on geos alone in Crystal Caverns.  Four hours of gametime and I am walking away easily with 4-6k plat per day.  I sometimes will farm plat for purchases about 4 days a week, which would put me at 16-24k per week.  Now lets look at what maybe Yantis/IGE may do with an employee.  Offer to pay for account, and offer maybe 5% return on plat farmed for IGE/Yantis.  Said player, does play 7 days per week from 8-12 hours a day.  If he is a level 65 player, I will go with 10k plat an hour.  Take into account that 1 drop of Ornate pattern can sell for a minimum of 10k so my 10k estimate is quite low.  That would add up to 80k-12k an hour,   640k-960k per day, 4.48million-6.72million per week.  Multiply that figure by number of employees and then by number of serves, and the numbers become huge.  IGE/Yantis overhead per player would be just a subscription and whatever the 5% plat fee would be per player.  This hypothetical situation alone could account for IGE/Yantis being able to stay in the plat selling business.  This brings us to the actual business of IGE/Yantis.

It is a fact that Yantis/IGE were around for awhile before the known plat duping incident and that even before that, individuals were selling plat on Ebay as well.  The economy was in no jeopardy back then from what I remember.  Granted, I have been playing EQ for going on 4 yrs now and have been part of that economy.  If any at all, IGE/Yantis could be guilty of hoarding "illegal" plat obtained from the original duping/bugging incident.  IGE/Yantis could even be guilty of accepting "illegal" plat from its employees.  I think that IGE/Yantis does not ask where the plat came from, just that is coming in.  But to blame IGE/Yantis for the problems of the economy is not where it should be directed, but at the individuals that are responsible for the duping/bugs.  To show my point, say that a criminal enterprise has developed a way to counterfeit US currenct to such a degree it is absolutel undetectable(which plat is, no security bars or special paper to tell real from fake).  For it to affect the economy, it would have to be in the trillions(large US economy verus server size economy).  Now to introduce it into the economy, they use Las Vegas to unknowingly to launder it into society(bazaar/auc/Yantis/IGE).  Do we hold the hotels and casinos responsible?  They may have had a part of bringing it into society, but are not directly responsible for the crash of the economy.  If we do that, we have to place the blame on all the people that went to the casinos or worked for the casinos or in EQ terms, every player that buys or sells any item in EQ.  

Ok, gonna close rant now, but will end on players that may buy plat.  Personally I have no need for it.  Like I said, I can farm my plat just fine, and equip my characters jut fine.  Maybe more farming for items that have risen in price, but all in all, the economy is not killing me.  I don't care if people buy plat either.  It is there choice and I don't see how they are disabling the economy by exchanging real currency for virtual currency.  I have a friend that has three kids, married, and works his ass off.  He has no time to farm, and really cannot commit to a guild for the high end drops.  When he logs, it is purely to hunt, level, and have fun.  He has bought plat a few times and has equipped his cleric as he sees fit.  He still enjpys the game, and him hitting 65 was still an accomplishment since he did have to hunt with the cleric to get those levels.  As for buying a 65 toon, again, their choice.  I wouldnt group with them when I hit 65 since they probably woundnt know how to play their character, but that is another issue not related to the economy in my opinion.

[Cyphen Wilder]

Was just wondering if my arguement what that convincing that noone replied or if just so mind numbing dumb, everyone didnt feel the need to reply....lol

[Grymlok]

This topic was beaten into the ground in January.

[feralize]

I just don't think anyone cares anymore.