And The Winner Is...Follow

Whether selling a site to Yantis or IGE, or accepting banner-ads, the net effect is to damage the game itself. We've watched the Norrath economy turn to crap when Yantis or colleagues flood the market with bogus pp
I'm delighted that Alla has the integrity to take the stand he has, and by the words of encouragement from other regulars here.
On the basis that for other site operators, kind words haven't been enough, I too would happily pay an 'enhanced' Premium Fee for a Class-specific sub set of this site.

Ack! I lot of sites to avoid now. Kind of hate hearing about Caster's Realm. They were my source for spell lists.

For those wondering why this is a problem, I figured I would try to explain as best as I can. I'm not an economist, so maybe someone with more of a background in it can do better, but what the hay.

Putting aside any use of exploits and dup bugs (and you know they will use them if they find them), these companies still ruin the economy through the use of legit game functions. They set up a gaming factory in a third world country whose sole function is to get the most pp it can as fast as possible. I believe IGE has said they have 50 employees in China alone. Because they are not playing the game for fun, they don't care what it takes. Sit in a corner and click a button for 12 hours a day? No problem. Whatever it takes to manufacture plat. For them it's a job, not a game.

This plat floods the market. The people buying it from them are people who would not have normally had that type of money to spend. It doesn't take an economic genius to know that adding extra currency to a market causes inflation. That's economics 101. Thus, by pushing so much pp into the game ecomony, they are inflating the prices of items in the bazaar. They in essence control the demand and have greatly increased it.

But that's not all. They are also farming items. Now this is a guess on my part, but makes too much sense to me not to be right. They are farming items not to sell them, but to destroy them. Sure they sell some, but the purpose of farming the items is to try to decrease supply. I imagine they have created a database telling them the most in demand items in the bazaar and are doing their best to get as much of that supply as possible. What happens when the supply drops? Prices go up of course.

So now they are increasing demand by adding extra currency and decreasing supply by removing the most sought after items. Major inflation. As a result, prices soon go up so far that most players can't legitimately afford them. So what's their choice now? Buy plat for real money! How else can you afford these inflated items? Thus more people give in and start to use their services. I imagine once you take that first step and buy something from them, it's much easier to buy again.

It's beautiful really from a pure business standpoint, and of course horrible for the game. The more they are able to raise item prices, the more people give in and buy pp from them in order to afford them and the more control they gain over the item prices. A viscious cycle. And the worst part is that it is their own customers who are doing it to themselves. By buying plat from them, you are feeding them the control needed to force you to have to buy even more plat.

Moreover, by buying up all the major EQ sites, they are able to make themselves more mainstream and erase the stigma that currently exists for buying from them. "If Caster's Realm says they are OK, maybe they are". Thus, they convince more people to use their services, sell more plat, raise the prices even higher, and make even more profits. Viva Capitalism!

This is why we should worry about Yantis and IGE buying up all the major sites. The more mainstream they become, the more people will use their services and the more damage they will ultimately do to our game.

Hope that makes sense.

Above posting is in reply to Kaolian's post about the Rangers Glade - it did not string as I had expected.

Elinda

at first i viewed this as just bad publicity for our game and an unfair in game economy for us.

however after trolling around the sites that have been bought out by yantis it apears to be a much deeper problem that could cause the end to eq.

if the in game economy gets any worse how many people are truly going to hang around? im on Tarrew Marr and we always had a higher economy then the newer servers but with yantis's hands firmly grapsed around our bazaar when will the economy ever stop rising ?

Eagleflight. Click on spells. Choose the class. Click and higher and you get the full list of spells for that class. Put a number before that and higher and it will start at that number.

Has Sony made any offical commit about Yantis or IGE buying these sits, or how they are trying to ***** up EQ for there own gain?

What is Sony's position on this?

As I said in another post, good luck with the alternate sites. I actually mean that, by the way. I know when Monkly Business sold out to Yantis, people stalked off in disgust to start new sites which failed miserably and Monkly Business remains "the" monk class site. Sounds like the new Beastlord site is up and running well and Druid's Grove already had a following so here's hoping they fare better than Feigned! and the rest of them.

Like me you've chosen not to say, but you could if ya wanted

I'll come clean and say that in my 1st year of EQ I bought pp twice. Why?

a) because I could

b) Because I didn't realise how much it can ***** up the gameplay

At the time I thought it was just a few keen players making a few bucks/quid as a bonus for being good at farming.

Although I don't subscribe to the weirdo consipracy theories (I'm not convinced that Yantis eats babies), some facts are becoming apparent:
This is so plausible (knowing the wage differentials between Western Hemisphere and SE Asia)

In Short: I have the opinion that Yantis and IGE are damaging the game for players old and new alike by flooding servers with massive amounts of pp to buy really rare drops. Result: Value to Difficulty ratio is down the toilet

Like Empyre (power to you for not just toeing the line bro) I sure as hell won't sit in judgement on people who have bought plat/items for real money. I'm in no position to do that! I've just decided not to do it any more.

I do, however, tip my hat to those who are prepared to invest development time/gameplay/subscription fees into sites that celebrate the joy of playing.

This Watershipdown.org?http://web.archive.org/web/20010408175819/http://watershipdown.org/index.html

These Sweat shops in China???? Where do I send my resume? Just kidding. But sounds cool to play everquest for a living. I wonder how many families this plat farming is helping, if they weren't farming plat, would they be unemployed? Would little Timmy get that operation he needs? How do we know it is a sweat shop, maybe they are a well organised group of EQ players. I agree they are ******** up the economy, how can we stop it? Start tracking large PP transfers, with reference to chartacter names/accounts. Shouldn't be that hard... the banks do it in RL, and it should be an even easier task being that SOE is god of the world they have created. How did Character X get 10,000,000 plat? Why does character X keep giving away plat? Or maybe its just me.

You may as well get used to it.

Its a maturing industry, the "user" base has grown to a such size and shown the willingness to spend such a sizeable amount of money each year that commercial interests must inevitably be drawn in.

You could say that the "amature" era is passing.

The only surprise is the slowness of SOE in capitalising on it.

If SOE are sensible about it they should be looking to "partner" enterprises such as Allakhazam. (It has been interesting to see the slow but sure change in attitude by SOE to Allakhazam, from opposition, to ignoring, to tolerance and to now what looks like acceptance and a certain degree of acknowlegement, )

Oh, and by the way. If any one is really that concerned about the passing of a fan based "class sight", set one up your self!