monopoly holders

[Suva]

This is more a need to vent than anything since I know there is nothing that can change what is upsetting me. Heck, if I had the time I might have done it myself. Just so incredibly frustrated. I started talking about this on another thread, but decided to make a fresh one.

For over a month now 1 person has mostly had a full monopoly on the acrylia and windstones for my server. They buy out any person priced below them and resale at considerably higher prices. This would not be so bad except the markup rate is high enough that if you buy form them, you lose money on acrylia armor combines. With legs going for 900pp currently, 2 windstones that they sell at 300pp each plus blocks of acrylia at 140 each mean 1020 plat right there with no failures and not buying the other items.

Now I realize this is actually a good way to make cash for the person. The fact that thier trader seems to be in bazaar 24/7 means there is also a steady supply of these pieces. I can occasionally get the pieces cheaper, but the fact that they are also always online means people price around them now too. I've watched as over the last 2 months while I have been doing smithing the acrylia costs inched up.

I usually will not buy from them as the only way I can protest against this. Sometimes if I just need a few to finish off a batch of combines I'll buy though and it pains me to do so. I know people who have deep pockets though who will buy at those prices and not even flinch and can eat the loss.

I get so tired of hearing about how tradeskillers are all rich cause we can make these great items. That it's only fair the people who provide the pieces get thier chunk of the profits. Yes, you collecting those items is saving me a lot of time. But when I end up losing money on the item because the cost you are selling at to get your deserved fair share..I'm going to get frustrated.

*sigh* back to shadowscream farming while I glare at the trader in bazaar selling shadows for 500pp each.

[Gargazon]

/comfort

I wish I could tell you that sooner or later people will realize that they can't stand to losses, and then get out of the market and then prices will go down since no one wants to buy the componets....but...

As long as there are people powerskilling and dumping the market will continue to skewed in the favor of to componet seller, and not the tradeskiller. This probably why I have taken a temporary break from skillups and started selling componets. Selling componets I actually make money. I might say the heck with it, but I am helping a friend farm stuff in the same zones anyway for his tradeskills, so I might as well make money while doing it. It's probably a good thing too, since I can't afford my own prices if I were buying.

[Cigarskunk]

Sigh, the PoTC earring and the BD cultural were the death nell for tradeskills.

These two items caused tons of folks who would never have even touched tradeskills to become active in them as well as making the bulk of the player base familiar with tradeskills and what raw materials they need.

As a result, folks like this yahoo can thrive - they've got the time and the plat to dominate an aspect of the market and keep it hostage for as long as they can keep interest.

The only real way to fight these folks is to flood them out - go out and farm the raw materials and then start putting them up for sale as close to his price as you can, but still low enough that he buys you out.

Additionally, use the profits from that to also buy out anyone else who's pricing lower than this character - eventually you'll either whipe out his plat base or you'll overload him with stuff he can't sell - he'll have to drop his price at some point.

I saw this happen after I'd finished up pottery a few nights ago - I had just over two stacks of zombie skins left, so descided to sell them in the bazaar. Someone had a very large number and was selling them at 15p each - this guy had been selling at this price for some time and I remembered him simply because 15p for zombie skins seemed like a joke to me.

So I priced at 10p each just for the heck of it (some cleric who was also farming Unrest had been whining about the fact that I could out farm him and was trying to claim that he could get 10p each for the skins easy).

I didn't even have time to go through the rest of my stuff and make sure my prices were all competitive when Mr 15p each came over and bought me out - funny part was that I bet he thought I was the bad guy here.

[Gargazon]

A cleric farming an undead zone complaining about how you, an sk, could outfarm him? I see either a large level difference, or a clueless cleric lol.

Not only that...but 10p per skin? and 15p? OMG!!!1 I wish it were so on fennin. On fennin those are 2-5p per skin. They are just too common. Not to mention it's easier to get skins in innothule now I think.

Maybe the devs will wake up and realize that demand is so much greater than supply that it is shutting low levels completely out of the market, and forcing people to skill up at a serious loss, and actually do something about it. Probably won't happen, but we can always hope.

[kiztent]

Maybe the devs will wake up and realize that demand is so much greater than supply that it is shutting low levels completely out of the market, and forcing people to skill up at a serious loss, and actually do something about it. Probably won't happen, but we can always hope.

Sure, they could. All it would take is rolling the tradeskill recipie database in game back to May 7, 2002. That would completely kill the demand for raw materials, allowing low levels to tradeskill in peace again.

I continue to remain undecided if I think that would be good or not.

Telling the devs to wake up though, well, can't say I find that a well thought out position. Just like there's spawn contention for the high end mobs because they drop good loot, there's contention for tradeskill goods because they make useful loot. To remove the demand, cut off the need for the final product. Are you SURE that's what you want?

As for the losses tradeskilling, those are a fact of life. If you can make money skilling up, the market will be trashed until you can't any more. Simple supply and demand. Adding new 'profitable' recipies will result in a few making a profit until the market is trashed again. So sorry.

[Phabos]

Seems like this comes up every few weeks in one form or another.

I sympathize with your wanting materials cheap. We all do. However, even in EQ economics (make that especially EQ economics), the law of supply and demand will take effect. Looks like acrylia and windstones are in short supply in the Bazaar, and for a high price. Demand is high, so prices are high. Means you have a couple of options.

Option #1: Pay the high price.

Option #2: Don't.

With Option #1 you'll have to raise prices on final combines or whatever else you sell to make up the difference so you can recover the added expense.

With Option #2 you'll have to either find something else to make/skillup on, farm the ingredients yourself, or go around the Bazaar. Skilling up to 250 isn't supposed to be easy (at least with most skills besides Brewing, Fletching, and JC), and you either have to put out a great deal of effort or a load of plat to do it. Find someone else who farms acrylia or windstones and offer to buy theirs as soon as they are finished. A lot of people will jump at the chance to sell immediately, even for a slight discount, and not waste time in Trader Mode. Trade other products for raw materials. The Bazaar is not the end-all for buying/selling/trading if you work a little at it.

Phabos Aphsion
Drunken Paladin of Brell
Of course all my prices are fair...
Ladies and gentlemen, today's lesson in Economics is brought to you by the letter $.
Tarew Marr

[Suva]

It's not so much lack of supply. It's one person controlling all of the supply. It's a rare time I go to bazaar and this person is not online with large amounts of these items.

Like I said, if this person has the time to monitor the bazaar almost 24/7 to keep thier monopoly..then they must be making good cash doing it. I don't blame them for finding a way to make money. All it does is frustrate me by taking away a skillup path. As a half elf, for smithing I only really have 3 choices. I can farm shadowscream, make sickles, or the acrylia armor. With prices what they are currently, it is pretty close in costs for sickles and acrylia now.

Least i only have 13 more points to go til I can do the aid grimal stuff and go back to slower skilling up and less frustration.

[Hibashira]

Cornering a market is nothing new. With the Bazaar unintentionally centralizing commerce, it is inevitable. Acrylia or not, Windstone or not, even high level gears and spells, there are always someone trying to corner the market. Given the lack of perfect information, it can be a very successful practice.

Of course, price fixing also has a down side. The large inventory no doubt tied down a tremedous amount of cash. In a sense, you can looking at it as his reward for risking his capital and spending the amount of time buying up all the available stocks out there.

Of course, this does not help the buyers but then, the fact that he is in business tells you that there are buyers out there willing to pay that price. Which means, the market can actually sustain a higher price than you thought.

Oh the wonderful world of supply and demand.

[Delfontes]

When I was lvl 35-40 with both of my characters I loved acrylia, I made my first 1000pp on them. Selling it at first from grouping, then later buying the too low priced ones and reselling it for higher.

Now, I've bought every piece of acrylia on Brell, and put them on various mules.

D. Trump.


Ok ok, so it isn't me Suva, I do feel for you though .

After I passed the point where I could exp off of them I got out of the acrylia market, I am currently invested in Centi futures, and the market looks promising.

[Farnyr]

Um, am I the only one that caught something....

He isnt taking away a skill up path! In EQ it is IMPOSSIBLE(yes, Impossible) to hold a monopoly on an item.

You dont like what he charges? Go farm the items yourself! Its not like they dont come from multiple mobs in multiple zones. Now if he some how had it set up so he was permacamping every mobin Tenebrous, Grimling Cave, AC, HSM, TS and DSP(did i miss any?) then I might conceed he has a monopoly. But I dont think this is the case.

I dont want to sound mean, but I dont agree with anyone who only goes into the bazaar, checks its prices and then screams "No fair!". Tradeskilling is a trade off, camp or pay. Its becoming increasinly more true as SoE has been adding in small little items to force a person to camp or pay(dye components, temper components, drop only ore, drop only pelts).

[Reflan]

500pp each for swirling shadows? heheh

I'm in the same situation with pottery. Luckily I already maxed it out, but there's a fellow -- nice fellow, actually, really -- who buys each and every permafrost crystal on the market. I used to find them fairly regularly, in at least small quantities here and there. They generally sold for a max of 50pp, and usually less. With iron oxides at 50 to 100pp, I could make divine crystalline glazes for high end (non-POP) pottery at 150pp at most.

Pottery items sell slow on my server. Can't really do pottery anymore unless I want to spend a lot of time in Permafrost caverns getting the permafrost crystals myself. Turns out that those crystals are the lynchpin on which all other high end pottery depends. Not a lot of people have ever hunted in Permafrost, and the limited supply of crystals coming into the market is now gone completely. I talked to the fellow and he admits he snatches them up as soon as he finds them -- and he or his mule are up 24/7.

Or...I could buy the divine crystalline glaze this fellow makes -- at 500pp each!!! Holy moley, with a 40% success rate on spiritstones at 250 pottery with geerlok, and the golden idols of tunare selling at 700 to 900pp, I really can't afford to make any pottery these days. I've stopped advertising myself as a 250 potter or responding to /market and /ooc requests for 250 potters because I can't replace my glaze at a reasonable price if I lose it. Especially since people seem to want to pay about the same price for a 30k pottery item combine as they would for a halas meat pie. My last 7 permafrost crystals are precious, and are held in case a friend needs an item here and there.

[Silound]

I dont balme anyone about their complaints. On Prexus, as many others I think, people banded together right around PoP release date and flat out said, we are not paying over 700pp for a BD. no, BD's on Prexus are vendro fodder. I can go to PoT/PoK/Gunthak and get a minimum of 10 per day at 262.5pp each. People try to resell them in the bazaar for 300+, but it doest work. If you can sell one for more than a merchant will pay, you are doing good. On the other hand, I find that the easiets way to fix price gougers is A)dont sell to them or any of their known mules or B) price your items barely below theri price. less cashthey make trying to gouge the prices, or, you can hten /auc WTS them in trader, no reasonable offer refused. For awhile, people tried ot fix price of small pieces of acrylia at 65pp. Didnt work, a few poeple can outfarm those who try and pricefix.

Silound
Minstrel of Prexus

Edit for typos
Sil

[Cigarskunk]

A cleric farming an undead zone complaining about how you, an sk, could outfarm him? I see either a large level difference, or a clueless cleric lol.

It was a combo really - 53 SK vs mid30 cleric (forget his exact level).

We were both working the yard initially but then some XPers showed up - he stayed in the yard while I went into the house to see if I could get any skins there - not a skin to be found - OK plat reward though.

During his time of trying to own the yard, I noticed that in typical clueless farmer fashion, he wasn't killing anything but the zombies - as such he'd end up with a yard full of non-zombies really quickly and then run around like a dunce for a while.

The best part was that if he hadn't been such a punk about it (I auctioned for skins for 1plat each - he then proceeded to spend about five minutes mocking and telling everyone that they were worth 10plat) then I would have pointed out his mistake and he could have enjoyed some good farming with me running around - I was doing one shot one kill one just about everything while I had the pet hotkeyed to clean up the beetles.

But greed gets what greed gets - nothing in the end - he left when the XPers left because there were no more zombies popping in the yard and he was too dumb or lazy to clear the other mobs.

[Suva]

Just an update, acrylia legs have dropped to 500pp now...so kinda sucky there...

but...this person currently has 117 windstones at 300pp each, and another has 41, and another 20....and they have been that way with just more and not looking like any have sold for awhile. Looks like people finally stopped buying at that rediculous price. Swirling shadows on average now are 50pp and the hollowshade war is so easily farmed. I finiahed my smithing and got my earring, but others i know working on it would rather do sickles than pay that for the acrylia armor combines.

[Cigarskunk]

Pah! Serves him right trying to frag folks like that - hope he takes a pounding when he finally has to let all those windstones go.