Why is gold still so high?

tipsier01 wrote: »

What's keeping gold prices up so much now that the rep sale is off again? Are people really spending 800k+ for packs?

You can blame your fellow gamer for the high gold prices however the fault also lies with the way PWE does sales and releases new things. It is just a typical economy but online.

The devaluation of in game coin brought about by Jolly Jones bounty order quest.

A single alt account with eight 71-80 characters who commits to doing this quest daily for one month adds 38 million by accepting the bounty orders and another 148 million each month by competing the bounty quest.

When coin is devalued to this scale is it any wonder why gold and boutique item are so high.

Let's not forget that the Jones quest replaces the former dq prices that were withered away into nothingness. Back in 2009 I made over 10m a day in some places grinding dq. I'm a person that has embraced this new system for however long it lasts, because it is a way to afford something that is set up against bots, which are means of inflation.

Don't blame sources of income for inflation as much as a lack of in game coin sinks. Nw forges provide some sinks, where it costs coin to make the items. Jolly offers dq points (which are about to disappear as well) that costs a certain amount of coin. That's another sink away from the player to player economy.

You could say that Phoenix Valley is a sink, because it can include some hefty costs with only exp and spirit as rewards. Lunar Glade costs money to participate, which balances out the rewards. And then AH has fees and such as well, but after that examples are hard to come by.

So how do you fix it? I don't know. I know last time there were back to back **** sales the price went way down. Those times are good for people to build up low cost gold and wait for later. However, when pack sales, flyer sales, rep/chips/ MoG mega sales, and heaps of fashion sales all follow one another, that will drive the price up. That is inevitable.

And even people like me, who invest in the jolly old jones bounty order system, stay away from the gold prices.

Edit: Oh and just one more thing, the jones system has a choke point set up for the 71-80 quest. Only one person at a time can grind from the advanced grinding machine. That seriously halts the amount of full harvesting that can be done at that level, and then is so boring when you can do it, that it's difficult to stick to it. Not to mention things that are repetitive tends to halt interest as well. And then you just have people picking up, and not gaining from coin quests at all.

As for another reason these jones quests are a good thing? It's an illusion that the game is thriving, because it is set up in the otherwise dead newbie areas. Although this doesn't exactly hold in plume and ether areas... but in Lost it looks like a party most of the day.

I know there has to be some statistical nerd out there that can counter to my point about why gold is so high with something other than an opinion. Like,

Over the past 2 months ago gold and related R9 mats took a 30% increase on RT server, I should know since I've been merchanting my way into R9. This increase as we all know happening during the R9 super sale. GST went from 4.8million to 6 million and MoG from 15.5 million to 20+ million, DURING SUPER SALE.

Now, it might be a coincidence, but there was quite a bit of faction forum chat about stacking up an alt account to take advantage of the Jolly Jones Bounty Order quests. The simple fact, in less than a week you can power level eight alts to 71+ and start cashing in. Also, I will admit my previous post is a bit extreme so I will scale it back a bit.

On RT server at CotL's Jolly Jones, at any given time I will see 10+ characters surrounding JJ. Let's assume half are afks, that leave 5 that are actually doing JJ. And, for the sake of argument 2 of the 5 are a multi-character alt account with four lv 71+ toons. For those who have just the taken the bounty orders quest knows it takes less than a minute; so, to cycle through 4 toons will take less than 5 minutes. Doing a little math (2 accts * 4 toons)+3 main accounts = 11 characters every 5 minutes completing the take the bounty orders quest. Now for those that still think JJ is not the biggest reason for inflation follow the math.

11 (lv71+ toons) * 158,000 = 1.738 million EVERY FIVE MINUTES

12 * 1.738 million = 20.856 million EVERY HOUR

24 * 20.856 million = 500.544 million EVERY DAY

30 * 500.544 million = JUST OVER 15 BILLION EVERY MONTH

As for the "choke" at the advanced grinding machine, it takes roughly 2 minutes to dig three times. Doing similar math advanced grinding machine can be dug 720 time a day. Utilized 50% of the time its dug 540/day times 88k adds another 47.52 million coin every day or just under 1.5 billion per month.

Final tally, 16.5 BILLION in coins is pumped into the RT server economy every month.

Feel free to scale up or down these numbers but using 11 characters every five minutes as a bases is not unreasonable.

Bottom line is that you cannot just give away free coin without devaluating the currency and causing inflation. It’s basic economics here. When you devalue your economies currency (coin) what becomes valued are your economies commodities, in this case gold and boutique only items; but, given PWI history, I'd stay away from boutique only items.

Unless the economy improves, better get use to paying 2+ million for gold and expect to pay over 3 million by the next map reset in March.

TZoner - Raging Tide wrote: »

I for one am too lazy to devote the time and energy each day into doing this and wouldnt mind seeing this part of the game taken away given your statement. Or put a limit on it somehow preventing people with the same IP or something from doing it with more than a couple of chars a day...idk...i mean i know it wont happen but would be nice

I am too... I guess the first time doing it - it was wow! But ... I think I'd rather spend this time leveling my pets in the cube.. which is.. very boring.

can't blame jolly jones for the economy.. I remember a couple of nov-feb couple years ago when gold hit 2 mil+

last winter, it peaked at 1.7mil? I think? on arch server anyway.

I imagine it's a combination of various events (such as nw, for example), sales, and other players selling it for that price because people will buy at that price. if no one bought it, it'd drop.