Plat duping and hyperinflation - beware

[Draggar]

Originally posted by GraemeFaelban
A while back, after a patch, on at least two servers, the sharks in Erudin were dropping some rediculous amount of plat I am told. Like 1 million each. I don't have first hand knowledge of this however, so take that for what it's worth.

Why did I see that and go hunt them?

God, walkig aroun with 1M plat must take forver to get to he bank!

[Itek]

Ok.... here's my experience

I was looking to buy Vallon's Quickening.

At level 56 it was selling for 13k or so.
At level 62 it was selling for 9k or so.
At level 65 when I had 2 to 3 k in the bank it was selling for 5500 to 6000.
The DAY before I would have had 6k in the bank... it went to 15k. And stayed there for a couple days.
Then it went to 35K. I kid you not ... 35k.
Lucked out 2 weeks of looking later and got it for 15k.

I thought it was a fluke. That people had seen me coming.

Then I saw that "offline" plat sales prices drop. From a prohibitive 1200+ bucks for a million plat to under 1000 bucks. And it continues to fall.

And the number of plat for sale, and the number of places with large pile of plat for sale, increased a lot.

Then I heard rumblings of vast price increases across the board for bazaar (and bizare) items.

Then today I heard about this here... so I decided to check it out.

Misty thicket picnics.... couple months ago 7pp each and flooded market. Now 10pp is the low end... and some joker has them for 150 EACH. And has about 300 for sale.

Boots of Flowing Slime.... been 35-45k for quite a while. Well out of my price range. Today .... 120k. Ok, it's nice, it's FT, it's rare.... It's NOT 6 figure plat rare.

Heard a Stein of Moggok sold for 1k. I have been selling those things since before half the current servers EXISTED and i've never sold for more than 300pp.

Ornate Silk patterns. 4 months ago there were at least one of each for sale. Turbans there were 8 for sale and you couldn't unload them at 5k.

Today there were 3 turbans each 10k+ and two boots for 35k and 45k. Nothing else.

Something is up I say. So I check out one of the plat-sellers.

If I do the math right there is something like 4-5 MILLION plat for sale from this one seller on JUST the server I play on.

Something's broken, and BAD. Duck and cover I say. I'm not going to be doing a lot of buying/selling in the bazaar for a while. And I'm certainly not going to buy stuff offline. Yeah a million plat sounds nice, and the price is about as good as it will ever be, but I don't want to explain to a GM...

GM: So... Wallace gave you 1,000,000 plat two weeks ago. What did you sell him?
Itek: Um.... I cyber'ed him for it?
GM: Really.... wow. Oh, did you know Wallace gave you that million out of a gift of 4 million he got for Xavierous.
Itek: I don't know Xavierous so it's news to me.
GM: Oh, well that's too bad. You don't have a good chance of meeting Xavierous anymore.
Itek: Really? Why's that?
GM: Oh, because Xavierous got banned this morning for duping plat. Now.... about this 1,000,000 plat .... payment for cybering Wallace you say....

[eniamn]

and i use to hunt sharks in erudin. and you can't move with 1mp. at 1 agi the only way to move is to get a sow or i hear a snare works too. in pok you can't try the snare thing though and thats where i have needed it.

[Velurian]

You can move if you have the improved run speed AAs, no matter how much you're carrying.

Now going down stairs might be another matter entirely...

"YOU have fallen for 6422 points of damage."
"LOADING, PLEASE WAIT..."

[Phabos]

Originally posted by Itek
Misty thicket picnics.... couple months ago 7pp each and flooded market. Now 10pp is the low end... and some joker has them for 150 EACH. And has about 300 for sale.

SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

There is no market for Misty Thicket Picnics. It's all an illusion. They sell for next to nothing, honest.



In all honesty, if this is going on, I fail to see how it would apply to readily available items, such as MTPs or Padding, both of which have risen in price. My thought is that it is due to supply and demand, and that fewer people are doing tradeskills for whatever reason. Just because someone can afford to pay a higher price does mean he or she will pay the highest price. There just seem to be fewer people in the market at the moment with those items to sell, and prices will naturally rise.

I don't know anything about the higher-tiered items or the buying and selling of plat. I don't do it, it is bannable, and if SOE decides to take an action, it is their perogative. If someone with duped plat is buying my picnics or padding, I don't know it. I'm not doing anything wrong by raising my prices with the markets, just like I am not doing anything wrong by lowering prices when the market becomes saturated. I've sold (for me) a lot over the past two weeks, but I think if GMs go back and look at my logs and history that there won't be anything of note.

Just my take on the situation.


Phabos Aphsion
Drunken Paladin of Brell
Tarew Marr

[Shinianad]

Originally posted by Velurian
You can move if you have the improved run speed AAs, no matter how much you're carrying.

Now going down stairs might be another matter entirely...

"YOU have fallen for 6422 points of damage."
"LOADING, PLEASE WAIT..."

Actually thats the best thing that could happen, as long as you are in a zone with a bank Die and drag your corpse beside the banker..

[eniamn]

i have levitate.

with 1,000,000 pp who wouldn't rez you in a town with a bank though?
erudin you can go up stairs to get to the zone with the bank but the palace has the bank on the bottom floor you are going to die there.

i now have another reason to buy run aa.

[Itzena]

The dupe 'bug' is becoming widely known now (if it is what people claim it is), so I really hope it got fixed in today's (unannounced) patch.

'Bug' is in quotes because if it worked like it is claimed to work it's either the worst bug in the entire history of EQ...or a deliberate act by someone at SOE.

[eniamn]

how did it work? nothing specific enough to duplicate but was it a drop or something like diablo 1 where you copy over an item with something else and ppl turned malachite to blue diamonds? just straight extra pp? camping the one guy shouldn't have made this much pp though. what was the return like 100% profit or what?

unless it was something outstandingly gross i doubt it could have generated this kind of pp unless you could macro it and thats also against rules. i guess you dont mind breaking and entering if you're commiting murder though. (macro and selling pp for rl cash in this case.)

[Maevenniia]

There seem to be two exploits. As servers went down unannounced early this morning I trust it was to fix them.

{Text removed by Verdandi - Sorry.}

{LOL, no problem ~Maeve}

[skirren]

two threads I saw on this:

http://www.mobhunter.com/message.jsp...257869#message
http://www.rpgexpert.com/608.html

[skirren]

beat me to the post by a minute, I shoulda refreshed ;<

Sadly it will take a while for everything to recover.

On Eci at least tons of ppl in the bazaar were looking to buy the 'uber droppables', even if the plat is removed or thier accts banned, still have the items transferred around.

[Itzena]

You know, there was a reason why I didn't post a link to the exploit(s).

Anyway, if the dupes weren't fixed in the patch I'd expect a rollback in a day or two once most people have 1x10^6 plat in their account.

[Rewde]

If it were a 'bug'.. wow
If it was deliberate .... why?

I'm at a loss for words

[eniamn]

do bankers work if you move them? tap the guy and root and gate out. assuming it isn't fixed. i can uderstand how it wasn't cuaght quickly and why so much was created.

i hope they can track down the money created by this.

expect sellback on ore to change. or even better all or prices adjusted and lowered to the even point. 3 peice of ore costs the same as one peice of next higher.