Thank you
@Smoot. At least we're talking about the state of the rares economy, and rares collecting in general, openly, which is a good thing.
I agree; the market is, or already has, crashed. Honestly, though, I've been waiting for it to happen. There were only so many types of server birth, monthly, daily, etc. Even for rubble, my site shows that they pretty much can all be known; there's not more of them coming, nor, with the possible exception of a few unknown unique pieces, is there some great undiscovered variety of them still to come.
EM drops, on the other hand, turn it all upside-down. There's constantly more of them coming, you can never know when you have every item in whatever set you've decided to assemble, and there's so many of them, noone can know them all - without Decadence's site and Manticore's list, who would know them all? Noone has documented all of the EM crafted items - and realistically, it would probably be hopeless to try and make such a list now.
The economics simply argue that this was unsustainable. I've given this to others in ICQ for a while now when we've had this conversation; I'll post it publicly here. Please do note that this involves some broad generalizations, but these numbers would have to be very very far off before the point would be any different.
Number of Shards (xferrable): 25
Number of EMs per shard (averaged): 1
Number of EM items per EM per month (averaged): 2 (Some shards may be fewer, but then you have shards like GL, and Mesanna items)
Price each item is offered for sale: Let's say 300m on average
Number of months in a year/season: 12
So for just a single season's worth of events, aside from all "old-school" rares, the EM drops program is injecting what 'value' of rares?
25*1*2*300*12 = 180,000m
We're now in season 13. Again, broad generalized numbers here - but this is also ignoring server births, rubble, seer items, bug-created stuff, and any other types of rares outside of simply EM drops. If the rough total value of all drops in a season is 180 billion, with 13 seasons of such stuff now, simple math says there's
2.34 trillion gp worth of EM items floating around now.
That number is so vast, it's pretty much insane. One effect is, as we all likely also recognize, that EM drops - and with them, all other types of rares - mostly devalue over time. Yet everyone, when they sell, wants to get at least as much as they paid; I hear that stated all the time. "Set the reserve at X; that's what I paid, and I don't want to sell at a loss." Or you hear it when you're negotiating to buy an item. Yet for many of these items, there's simply noone left who is willing to pay that much. Look at the top 100 most expensive items on vendors in Luna. 80-90% of them sit there rotting, day after day, until they're taken back off the vendor, or the prices are slowly lowered. Your choice is either to continue to sit on it, or to sell at a loss.
So all of us are sitting on some number of rares, and all of us are significantly overvaluing them. For the event players, you guys at least paid nothing, so you don't take a loss. Yet every drop, we all see the same rush to post, always super high prices, which inevitably fall with time. So if you're willing to wait a week, you save a hundred mil or more. If you don't really really want it, you can wait til the next fest, and likely save another hundred mil or more, as folks try to unload unsold inventory from the past few months.
Anyone who has been watching the rares market for the past year should recognize that this is what is happening. The days pre-AOS when rares were the safe investment (as long as the devs didn't use that server birth's graphic) are long over; now, investing in rares is pretty much guaranteed to lose in the long run. So for the normal player, the one for whom spending a couple hundred million is not a normal thing to do, they have every incentive to wait, and not buy now. The bad feelings currently going on around event items and x-sharded event players on Chessie, on Oceania, on other shards, that doesn't help make normal non-collectors all that interested in buying, either.
So, in other words, the market has crashed because of the constant influx of new stuff. Adding 3.75 billion worth of new "rares" every single week simply can't continue indefinately. At the same time, though, that average price continues to go up. A year ago I'd have maybe said 200m was the average. But as people find drops harder to sell, they keep raising their ask, driving more people away, and inevitably leading to yet fewer sales in the future.
So where does it stop? I think we've reached that point. More and more friends in the community tell me they're quitting collecting, or downsizing, or even quitting the game, simply because the numbers have gotten rediculous. I hate to see them go, but I can't blame them. Hell, I've been downsizing as well; I may still buy here or there, but I'm not looking to grab every new crystal ball drop simply to keep my collection "complete" - there can always be yet another tomorrow, and I'd yet again have an incomplete collection.
Besides, isn't anyone else tired of the EM drop game almost always being story, story, boss, lucky few get a drop? When there's something different, like stealables hidden across the lands, isn't that far more fun and challenging? Sure, it's harder to get a few items that you can turn around and sell for an easy few hundred million. But what's the point? Sure, RMT, selling gold - but for anyone who sells, forget your wallet; there's far simpler ways to make RL $. The way we're going isn't sustainable, and it's seriously damaging the game.
LOVE you guys!!!) to ATL a lil while back for that simple fact.
