ZAX is almost to 500

zibadawa · May 2016

Time to don our tinfoil hats and run to our bunkers, as the economic end-times are upon us.

wildfirede · May 2016

or maybe it has something to do with the t.bar berf and the upcoming anniversary sale?

zibadawa · May 2016

wildfirede said:
or maybe it has something to do with the t.bar berf and the upcoming anniversary sale?

What anniversary sale? I know that desirable sales and new mods can drive ZAX prices up, but I haven't seen or heard anything about a sale.

And one way or another, if these things can drive the ZAX this close to 500, then I contend the economy is in a bad state and something needs to be done, as 500 is a very bad thing. The ZAX didn't even get this close to capped during the weeks of 50% off mounts after the stables were released.

urabask · May 2016

zibadawa said:

wildfirede said:
or maybe it has something to do with the t.bar berf and the upcoming anniversary sale?
What anniversary sale? I know that desirable sales and new mods can drive ZAX prices up, but I haven't seen or heard anything about a sale.

And one way or another, if these things can drive the ZAX this close to 500, then I contend the economy is in a bad state and something needs to be done, as 500 is a very bad thing. The ZAX didn't even get this close to capped during the weeks of 50% off mounts after the stables were released.

It's in the calendar on preview.

zibadawa · May 2016

magenubbie said:
I'll raise that and say it never reached the cap since September 12 2014, just before mod 7 dropped. But it's not unexpected with so many people playing the AH/ZAx instead of the actual game. It's more surprising it took this long.

And while new mods often "inspire" the ZAx to rise, I hardly believe that a mod that brings no new content and more grinds of old content would have this much effect by itself. Mod 7 was "new" back then and the ZAx dropped like a rock in a pond almost the same day it was released.

New mods mean new lockboxes means a spike in key demand means a spike in Zen demand. I believe I started playing after mod 7 hit, so I'm not aware of what happened to it then. But I assume, "everyone could smell the stench of death on it before it was even released" was part of it.

zibadawa · May 2016

defiantone99 said:
I raise again-It is all an orchestration by the same ones who removed the Zen to crash the market after LS was removed. They just put it back up. lol

While I see a big chunk of well over 200k at 500, the ZAX is still at 498, with about 25k or so under 500, when I checked about a minute ago.

urabask · May 2016

hotpantsu#7783 said:
its not biggie if there isn't enough AD in the game you know what this means?

2x Astral diamonds right on the corner

It takes a 50% zen market sale for demand to get high enough for this. It will settle eventually and Cryptic will still refuse to run 2x AD.

namelesshero347 · May 2016

The rate nearing 500 doesn't mean there is a lack of AD. There are not enough zen for sale for the demand. A zen sale would encourage more people to buy zen for dollars and to make available on the exchange.

As for manipulators, cryptic can take them out to the woodshed by selling zen into the exchange. Fill orders down to where it was a week or two ago at 460 to flush the weak hands out. Then watch the rest follow as the rate drops some more.

If we ever see a double-AD again, it probably means there isn't enough players refining. The game would truly be dead at that point.

zibadawa · May 2016

namelesshero347 said:
The rate nearing 500 doesn't mean there is a lack of AD. There are not enough zen for sale for the demand. A zen sale would encourage more people to buy zen for dollars and to make available on the exchange.

As for manipulators, cryptic can take them out to the woodshed by selling zen into the exchange. Fill orders down to where it was a week or two ago at 460 to flush the weak hands out. Then watch the rest follow as the rate drops some more.

If we ever see a double-AD again, it probably means there isn't enough players refining. The game would truly be dead at that point.

The problem is that a capped exchange rate means that the economy immediately gets warped and twisted once you're at the cap. And, in my opinion, it is a very bad thing to make (or fail to make) alterations to a game in such a way that regular events can warp the economy like that. The essential nature of Zen and AD, and the draconian controls over exchanges between them, doesn't give this economy an out. If absolutely every Zen purchase was tradable, and not just in the AH but in character-to-character trades, then it wouldn't be that big of a deal. We may have to switch over to some other new meta-currency like superior marks, but in principle we could exchange things for their actual worth. Once you hit a 500 exchange you are prone to enter a very quick spiral where no one really wants to exchange Zen for AD anymore, and the economy is forced into a completely unnatural form, which is exactly what happened during Leadership's Reign of Economic Tyranny.

feadan · May 2016

After being at around 500 for some time, there is now no more Zen available at the exchange.

Has that happened before? What's next? Hyperinflation? Meta currencies? Either way, interesting times

sockmunkey · May 2016

Hopefully it will slowly return to normal in a couple of weeks, after a few events pass.

If not, history has shown what we can expect. That being, Cryptic waiting months before taking action. And when they finally do. It will be to blame players for causing the mess before nerfing heavily.

snotty · May 2016

if cryptic would stop with all the sales the zax would get back to normal....or at least whatever normal was after they removed the coal wards from the T bar store.

warpet · May 2016

snotty said:
if cryptic would stop with all the sales the zax would get back to normal....or at least whatever normal was after they removed the coal wards from the T bar store.

don't think so it is in rise ever since they removed ward from t store sales only speed it up a bit

zibadawa · May 2016

feadan#2363 said:
After being at around 500 for some time, there is now no more Zen available at the exchange.

Has that happened before? What's next? Hyperinflation? Meta currencies? Either way, interesting times

This was the de facto norm when Leadership AD was a thing. You could wait days or weeks to get the Zen you wanted, because few people are willing to sell at 500 when that's viewed as a loss of income.

At the moment there is a backlog of ~420,000 Zen wanted at 500 AD.

vida44 · May 2016

Of course this is what they want. If there is no ZEN to buy with AD and they put a sale or a new item in the store the only way to buy things is if you pour money into their accounts. Logical isn't it.

zibadawa · May 2016

vida44 said:
Of course this is what they want. If there is no ZEN to buy with AD and they put a sale or a new item in the store the only way to buy things is if you pour money into their accounts. Logical isn't it.

It has rather the opposite effect, I would expect. Whales are no longer buying large amounts of Zen to exchange and non-whales are more judicious and conservative with their purchases. Everyone recognizes that Zen->AD is a bad deal at the cap, which removes fluidity from the market. Stability and health of economies are based on the ability to convert forms of wealth into goods. A Zen backlog removes such a conversion from the system.

As is, I've got ~20 days left on my VIP. I can easily afford to purchase an extra month even at a 500 AD/Zen rate, but who knows how long it'll take for the backlog to get to me (it's now over 520k@500, about an hour after it was at 420k), and I've no intention in participating in a needlessly broken economy. If it expires before the ZAX backlog clears (and it's pretty much only going to if Cryptic actually DOES SOMETHING about it right away, which they never, ever do), I won't be playing any more. Which is one less person that might put their own money into the game, or will give incentive for whales to effectively buy Zen in exchange for game items/currencies.

instynctive · June 2016

(As of 9:30pm eastern)

zibadawa · June 2016

instynctive said:

(As of 9:30pm eastern)

The "Sell Zen" tab is a bit more instructive in this case, as it shows you how much Zen is being sought, and therefore how big the "queue" is for anyone else wanting to get Zen off the ZAX.

zibadawa · June 2016

defiantone99 said:
692,311 500 That is 7 thousand dollars. Let us hope some whales feel like spending.

Yeah, that's the hilarious part here. There's unmet demand for literally thousands of dollars worth of goods, which apparently means there's several thousand dollars worth of income that Cryptic isn't getting (and presumably doesn't want). I wonder if people think this is still market manipulation by a few. In which case, how many hundreds of thousands of Zen are those guys sitting on?? Must be a lot more than 200k (or even 700k) if they didn't just dump it all at 500 for maximum AD gains.

namelesshero347 · June 2016

Back down to 630K and falling. While it may be possible the price was manipulated up, for sure all the manipulators have unwound and dumped by now. Besides, this backlog is nothing. I remember the backlog when it was double-digit mils and lead time for filling orders well over a week.

mamalion1234 · June 2016

update it: now is truly 500 with backlog ha;p

zibadawa · June 2016

namelesshero347 said:
Back down to 630K and falling. While it may be possible the price was manipulated up, for sure all the manipulators have unwound and dumped by now. Besides, this backlog is nothing. I remember the backlog when it was double-digit mils and lead time for filling orders well over a week.

A temporary drop, then, as it's over 750k now. It's basically only ever going to get worse from here if they don't do anything.

lantern22 · June 2016

Why should Cryptic have to do anything about it? If players are holding onto their Zen for the supposed sale (and I am one of those), creating a shortage and if people want Zen so badly you can't wait for it, pay for it.

Its not unfair for Cryptic to expect people to spend some money on Zen

ZAX is almost to 500

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