Given the staggering amounts of isk that many folk claim to make running lvl 4 missions, ratting in null, market trading etc, I would have thought that PLEX would need to cost at least 2 billion isk before anyone cared or worried.

It's a general rule of thumb that PLEX rises in the long-term. We have 3+ years worth of data to back this up, and the fundamentals suggest that CCP will only implement more schemes to increase PLEX consumption.

BUY BUY BUY

Plex is the reason for EVE=inflation methinks.

Easy supply to humongous mountains of isk means ppl can charge what the heck they want on the market for stuff, and it will still sell...

Remove plex, make everyone earn isk the hard-way like they should.

I'm dizzy just thinking how high PLEX is now.

CCP is forcing people to buy PLEX with real money instead of isk at this point

Great time for rich people to buy PLEX and sell for all that tasty isk!

Except that as the ISK value rises it incentivises more players to pay real money for them as they can now trade them for more in game currency. Ask my buddy why he suddenly decided to buy 8 of them. This would at least partially offset the drop in subs. Also if people stop subbing with PLEX then demand will drop until the ISK price comes back to a level that people are willing to pay.

I'm dizzy just thinking how high PLEX is now.

CCP is forcing people to buy PLEX with real money instead of isk at this point

Plex is the reason for EVE=inflation methinks.

Easy supply to humongous mountains of isk means ppl can charge what the heck they want on the market for stuff, and it will still sell...

Remove plex, make everyone earn isk the hard-way like they should.

We don't care

Plex is the reason for EVE=inflation methinks.

Do people really NOT understand Supply & Demand :P

CCP said they would step in if they got out of control.

I would say a 300% increase in price in the past 18 month "out of control"

How the hell did you come up with that completely false logic?

From my perspective, what's "really" going on is this:

People are buying PLEX from CCP to sell for ISK. Being impatient to get their ISK injection quickly, they sell their PLEX to buy orders (i.e.: right-click, "Sell this item", sold).

Other people are buying PLEX with ISK to extend their game time. Being leave-it-to-the-last-minute types, or living-from-hand-to-mouth types, they save up their ISK, then buy from sell orders.

Both groups are doing it exactly wrong. In the middle are speculators who are posting the high buy orders and low sell orders. A speculator can keep flipping their PLEX once or twice a day for a 2-5% profit after taxes. The more PLEX they obtain, the more sales they'll own, or the more regions they'll be trading in.

Throw into the mix the Faction Warfare plex spinners who fit a fast ship with no weapons and a decent capacitor tank. They make billions of ISK a month, then immediately go and spend it. The spikes in PLEX prices that occur during cash outs are indicative of the FW spinner folk being low on long term planning capability or "delayed gratification". These are the same fools who transport tens of PLEX in battlecruisers or other similar ships (i.e.: non-cloaky, or cheaper to gank than the potential drop). So not only do they drive the sell orders up (by buying from sell orders because they have billions of ISK burning a hole in their pocket) but they destroy those PLEX with no benefit to anyone in the game. Very selfish of them, IMHO.

So between the routine speculators who are simply trading in PLEX to fund their retirements and the FW plexers who have nothing better to do with their ill-gotten gains than buy heaps of PLEX to then lose in a splodey ball, I think there's more than enough explanation for the steady inflation of PLEX prices without resorting to "ISK inflation of the economy" or "L4 missions pay too much" (that canard has been doing the rounds since at least 2008).

If you're selling PLEX for ISK, make sure you list it on a sell order and be prepared to wait entire hours for it to sell. Just hang in there, it'll sell. If you're buying PLEX with ISK, make sure you post a buy order and be prepared to wait entire hours for your order to be filled. You might need to babysit the order and bump the price up a few times, but it will be far cheaper in the long run than buying the PLEX from a sell order.

Of course you can go ahead and blame moon goo, L4 missions, unemployed people with too much time on their hands, ice harvesting bots, or the Jove. But from what I've seen, the three groups of people I've just mentioned are good enough explanation for me.

Until the buyers and sellers wise up, or CCP places limits on the number of PLEX market transactions per character/account, I expect PLEX to continue to rise inexorably. CCP could inject PLEX into the market from their confiscated stockpile, but that will simply allow the speculators to boost their speculating base, accelerating inflation.