ChickenOfDoom
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Posted - 2008.09.19 00:03:00 -
[1]
 Originally by: Venko Trenulo
Originally by: ShardowRhino
If things were purely based off of RL economics then the current jump in GTCs would have happened months ago when people were being choked at the gaspump. Now that the noose has loosened we are seeing a jump in GTC prices which is backwards. The time for the increase was at the highpoint of gas prices,not when they are coming down. See what I mean? It doesn't make sense for it to have taken months to hit eve so that suggest there is something other then RL economics in effect.
There's more to RL economics than petrol prices alone. Economists have worked out measures that look at changes in the cost of living, including the Consumer Price Index. If you look at the US government's CPI page, for example, you'll see that the cost of living is continuing to creep higher, despite your apparent contention that the cost of living topped out before Hurricane Ike.
You will notice, however, that it is not proportional to the increase in gtc prices.
While there is a general trend of people having less disposable income, and some of them might be hit hard enough that they can't keep spending their money on internet spaceships, it's not going to be that many. The rich in our society are for the most part the same people today as they were last week.
That being said much of the content of that blog is ridiculous. It spends a lot of time repeating the idea that just because gtc sellers think they should get more isk for their money, that doesn't mean they should. It's irrelevant because 'should' doesn't really apply to this. Prices are what they are.
The causes I see as plausible are:
- organized price fixing involving fake sales. It's an old technique that can work well.
- Former GTC sellers switching to macro farmed isk. Ever since the switch to 60 day GTCs, I've seen some indignation about the rl cash/isk conversion ratio, and despite the measures taken by CCP I find it plausible that the cause of this price explosion was a gradual exodus from GTC selling that recently reached critical mass.
- Change in the distribution of wealth in eve. If, somehow, isk changed hands in such a way that a larger proportion of the playerbase was able to afford GTCs, the demand would rise. Considering the ever decreasing prices and profit margins of things that were once able to practically print isk such as t2 production, the anti-Jita influence of FW, etc. it would become more difficult for a single individual to become vastly more wealthy than everyone else through special circumstances. Thus more people have more isk, simply because it isn't as easy to take it from them by playing the market. Everything is cheaper; prices in general have been going down for a long time.
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