Lady Valory
Caldari
Caldari Strike Force
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Posted - 2008.09.15 23:52:00 -
[1]
I guess we should add some certainties to the discussion:
1) isk farmers dont pay their recurrent monthly fees with their own cash...
OK, that's all we need to know....
SO, we have a "illegal player base" of thousands of accounts who will NEVER pay their monthly fee in cash... [not counting stolen credit cards here]
This means that there must be legitimate players (thousands of them) who pay for THEIR accounts with cash AND also sell game time cards for isk to fund the isk farmers account!
If for whatever reason these "double payers" decline, then the price of time cards goes up ALOT since isk farmers will never pay for their accounts with cash...
If the amount of legitimate sellers declines by more than the statistical norm, then the smaller pool of game time cards will be fought over by the farmers as they have the most isk.
Then the few thousand legitimate players who use time cards to fund their extra accounts are in a bind:
1) how can they compete time-wise with isk farmers farming 23 hours a day
2) is that extra account really "worth" 500-900 mil isk a month?
So they start selling fewer time cards, and the isk farmers are now forced to compete against the shrinking pool of time cards...
Also I have another theory...
Finally characters from Red Moon Rising and other expansions are becoming maxed out...
Many players had several alt accounts so they could train for MOM pilots, or a max exploration pilot, or a max hulk pilot or whatever...
Since HEAT, there haven't been ANY really intense skill paths that would warrant extra accounts... In other words many people are completing mauraders 5 or heavy dictors 5, etc...
This means that a few 1000 people can now move the "finished" character from a training account to their main account, and cancel the training account.
With the lack of completely new skill paths, there will be a shrinking of accounts somewhat and also subsequent decrease of need for isk to fund those accounts... In the end as the pie gets smaller, the farmers will just keep bidding against each other for time cards...
Last, with the 60 day time cards, farmers lose a lot more isk when their accounts are banned...
For example, if I was CCP, I would ONLY ban farmers on the first day of their 60 day renewel, I.E. a farmer funds his account for a new 60 days, and on day ONE I ban them. This not only bans the farmer but costs the farmer the 500mil isk they just paid for the time card. This in turn leads the farmer to immediately add a new farmer and buy a new 60 day card, so then 61 days later BAM, that one is banned...
I'll make a wild prediction of 1 billion isk max for 60 day time cards... |