Post about IGE you should readFollow

I saw this on the safehouse. It says what I was trying to say earlier, but far better than I put it. I'll post it below, but here's the link as well:

http://pub146.ezboard.com/fthesafehouseloungegeneraldiscussion.showMessage?topicID=29404.topic

Here's the post by Jinex22:

You might someone's post awhile back explaining that there were dupes inflating bazaar prices in the game.

You might remember that shortly after this, SOE patched and posted they were working actively on fixing the problems.

You might remember that after this, things seemed to stabilize for awhile. Prices in the bazaar started to become more reasonable so that players could actually begin to buy some toys without being forced to buy duplicated or exploited platinum from Yantis or exploiting it themselves. I mean, let's be serious here. 150,000 platinum or more for ornate armors? A normal player will never be able to afford that. 500,000 Platinum or more for a white dragon helm? Same problem.


Now, you may have noticed that again, prices are increasing in the bazaar to insane levels. Ornate is again up there at 150,000 + for the pieces that anyone wants. The cool items are again running way too high on the pricing end.


Enter in two new issues. I will not explain details of where or how to get anything in this post. I will explain the problem, though.


Number one, as most know that have read other various posts on the issue and online news sites. IGE and My supersales have merged. Each side used to combat eachother on platinum prices for real world money. Each side's main opponent was the other. Now, they have no competition, and thus the only hurdle is how to control the platinum market.


Platinum for real life sales is controlled by supply and demand like any other market. Supply here is simple. IGE and My supersales has a dedicated team of professionals specifically employed to hack, crack, cheat, dupe and macro. Basically their job is to find any and all ways to get excessive amounts of platinum easily or for free using loopholes or bugs in the game. These are paid individuals hired specifically to, in essence, cheat YOU.

Look at My supersales offering level 1 to 65 and 300 AA in 24 hours some time ago. They yanked this when customer accounts were getting banned and people were issuing complaints when their $1500 purchase was deleted overnight, and sometimes their main characters as well if registered on the same credit card. Remember the post by SOE and the patch that fixed this?

Look at My supersales listing up billions of platinum on every server while simultaneously refusing to buy platinum from anyone. Remember the post by SOE and the patch that fixed this?

It has reached that point again. The prices IGE and My supersales pay for platinum is extremely low, and they say they are "full" when you try to sell to them in quantity.


They have an unlimited supply line. Dupe or macro or exploit or whatever, that platinum they have is "free."

There was rumor posted by another individual here, saying that my supersales had received thousands of free EQ accounts through Ubisoft. They give out free trial accounts to any email address. Yahoo, hotmail, etc. When the last dupe was in they banked millions on every account and let them expire. When SOE banned off the exploited platinum, these expired accounts were not checked, and now when platinum is needed they are renewed for $15 and the plat is pulled from them for use or sale.

Because whatever plat they get, and how they get it is free, they can price it extremely low. Low enough to push out remaining competition for them, unless that competition has access to the same exploits.

But there's a problem. People only need so much platinum. Now, it does no good for IGE or My supersales if their plat is priced extremely low so people can buy alot cheaply, because that just means the customer will be able to buy all the stuff they want faster.

So they need:

More customers.

or

In game inflation on items.


More customers is way too hard to control. But in game inflation, for an entity with access to ulimited free currency, is very very EASY to control.

So, number two,

There is a program out there currently that does the following:


You set up a character in the bazaar and set price points for items you want to buy. So... I want to buy all white dragon helms that are up for 300k or less.

I set this program to white dragon helms for 300k or less and when someone puts one up for sale for, say, 275k, it warps right to the vendor, buys the item, and continues searching. The program runs 100% free of human interaction, so all that is needed is one person to restock the plat on the characters when it becomes low (it will even make the PC beep when it is low).


You can set it to search for anything. You can make a list of 5,000 things and it will search for them.

What happens is any item they put in this program fixes the price at whatever they put it at. Since within SECONDS it will buy anything put up for less than their fixed price.

---HERE YOU HAVE INFLATION 100% CONTROLLED BY THE PEOPLE WITH ACESS TO THIS PROGRAM AND ACESS TO THE UNLIMITED PLATINUM---

The program exists. EQecon.com uses a similar one to find all server prices for their site. You can't get the program from them. I merely list it here for an example of a legit site that uses the basicsof the program for non detrimental means to prove it exists. And I know IGE and My supersales will have people come here and post up that all this inflation is due to Lost Dungeons of Norrath. Please, the playerbase is far more intelligent than that.


If they have unlimited plat, and this program, why don't they just buy ALL high level items that show up in the bazaar? Items are a hard sell and platinum is an easy sell. Price fixing causes people to NEED more platinum, increasing their sales. If they bought up all high level items there would be no need for people to buy platinum from them, as people would have nothing to spend it on. It would also make it glaringly obvious, and they get enough bad attention, and likely do not want more or do not want this thing getting nerfed.

Why do they only control the high end prices? Simple, that is what people buy plat from them to buy in game. People don't buy 500,000 platinum from them to go in and buy a bunch of 2,000 plat value items. They want the things that are 100,000 +. They are, to put it bluntly, ******** people who do not buy plat from them, but ALSO ******** people who do buy plat from them, forcing them to buy more and more.

The end result here, is total control by IGE and My supersales on the in game economy. TOTAL. And it will continue until it is stopped. The prices on in game items will keep going up a little bit at a time as they artificially raise. In the last couple of weeks ornate and other high end prices have gone up 80% or so. Expect more of the same as long as this is allowed to go on.

Your game, your enjoyment, your fun, is being controlled by these individuals. At the moment the in game economy is controlled more by them than by all the players and SOE combined.

It is possible SOE does not even know about this. Or if they do they are not doing anything about it because the players do not know and are not complaining.

Now you know. If you do not care, that's fine. If you do care, tell a friend and tell the makers of Everquest you want this stuff fixed.

Edited, Thu Mar 4 13:21:36 2004 by Allakhazam

Wow. This is a great summary of this issue. I may have to link to this one.

Well written. Spread the word.

thank you for this well worded insite(sp?) on the issue.

its things like this that will force me to drop my 2 accounts sooner rather then latter. its because of the 'lack' of hacks/cheats for EQ that got my attention and have kept me playing for so long.

well things are different now. SoE does not give a rats ares about cheats, hacks, exploits, etc. or ppl/compaines in direct breach of the EULA except every once in a while to nerf something here and there to make the game LESS enjoyable, or to just have a giggle effect so to speak.

the last set of bans was purly for PR and nothing more. if it was real, then a lot more accounts would of been dropped at that time and since.

its also BS like this that keeps the dev. team from working on fixing real bugs and other game play issues as they might be slightly distracted by the real world $$ they can earn by not fixing things. even though SoE claims there was no insider on the plat duping exploit with the bank, that is far to convienent to NOT of been an inside job.

nothing in the patch leading up to that exploit had anything to do with bankers, merchants, or even that zone, yet there it was. i do not belive in coincidence in any way, let alone in a game this large.

Shadowbane had a simalar problem. Several indivuals were duping gold by the billions and then selling them on ebay. Prices became so high that only those savy enough to buy and sell items in the marketplace(like me), guildleaders, and dupers could buy anything of real value. Bacily it ruined the game, since SB was a empire vs empire mmrpg and gold was the only resourced used for building cities and war machines. Bacily cities became a moot point since you can easily rebuild them. There were always the nay-sayers that claimed that dupes didn't exist(even after offical statments made from ubi after the fact). I have noticed severe increases in prices of higher-end gear and I hope the players are listening and aware and will make complaints to stop them.

i read a little about the post here, well from what i gather yantis is linked in a network system.....well all you batards that have been killing my system ie crashing erasing just giving me hell.....why not do something good and give them hell.........."i dont know what i am saying but i am saying something".

Sewveral great points in it, just made me wonder if SoE is willing to challenge them with their own weapons. Since they are scooting for what could be called underpriced items it must be childsplay to find the ppl mules etc. etc. involved in this. They can monitor the userqueries somebody querying the database for the same items allmost continiously is a drone.
Alternmatively soe could focus on key items that are controlled if the price in the bazaar is suspiciously high, allow the item to drop a bit more frequently.
Additionally to encourage craftsmanship, overhaul the current system and allow players more easily to make things with better stats. Items could be guilddrop or something so that it can be transferred in their guild or between your own alts and everyone can contribute to it, rather than have something wich is potentially great as ingredient rot because the characters involved have no skill and happens to be no drop.

Basically these kinds of things can be fought off by SoE and won or at least the odds can be changed to get the equillibrium shifted more in favor of normal players like most of us rather than commercial ones.

Apperently the initial stroke with the banning of accounts was just a blow towards the institutions (Let more blows strike them) and didn't put them off yet. Or SoE is not vigilant enough yet and doesn't know how to monitor for what's going on.

let's hope SoE has soon another patchmessage in wich they state they've banned more accounts wich belong to shady characters.

I've a better suggestion, why not delete the bazaar and go back to the way it was, when... if you wanted to sell something you sat and hollered in the EC Tunnel.

Let me start that this is a great post. Extremly well researched, understandably written and even if you share your personal point of view it's largely unbiased.

If you aren't already some kind of journalist and young enough then think avbout career options there

Redgarding the topic I beg to differ one of your final conclusions.
This is simply wrong because a big part of High-End gear is sold in-guild only and never sees the traders stalls
AND no one can stop me from
-questing items
-crafting items
-looting items

So I will always have it in my tiny Elvish hands to equip myself the best I can - only twinking would get harder but personally I don't give a F**K about a twinkie with 5ok who doesn't get the gear the intends to.

But I agree that in a game where building space, houses and other non-lootable/craftable/questable stuff has be bought money is far more important than in EQ


Edited, Fri Jan 30 05:41:55 2004 by Leiany

This post sickens me... to put it plainly. I linked it for my guild to read, but, come on, spreading the word is going to just help these people as much as hurt them.

A well known journalist once said, "Any publicity, is good publicity." Now, more people know about ige. and since people are going to spread the word, even more will. While a good deal of us, HOPEFULLY will concider thinking twice about buying plat now, there is an equal, and possibly greater number of lame people out there, who are just going to buy it now, cuz they just learned about it.

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There is only 1 solution here.. And only 1 group can find it. Thats SONY. The ball is in their court. I dont know how, but they have to fix this problem.

Alot of you remember a while back when verant told Ebay to stop to selling EQ stuff... Ebay laughed at them, and then the Dragon Sony reared its ugly head and FORCED ebay to comply. ( They were going to BUY EBAY otherwise ). SoE cant do a damn thing about ige. Maybe change a few things here and there, but IGE most likey employs as many or more programmers to exploit, as SoE employees to do all the normal maintenence, and upkeep, on top of any trivial attempts at preventing this.

Sony needs to protect their investment, hopefully they will see how much this endangers their profit margin.

my only comments are that i agree totally that duping and cheats ruin the game and the economy and that one way to combat that is to boycott the bazar and let what they have rot till they drop prices.

Simple ...SHUT THEM down SOE WTF you gona let them ruin EQ cause ya dont caure since EQ is close to coming out? bah blow me get no more of my money im quiting you let these ******* ruin it and **** YOU.