Ectos and Economy: Sell or Hold

Given the restrictions on how much gold one can hold on an account, and the fact that many rare items in the game cost more than 100k, ectos act as additional currency.

The economy is going through changes. Gold is becoming more valueble as there is less of it coming into the game while ecto will be dropping at the same rate for farming purposes (or is it even better now? Is it the case that drops no longer degrade with frequent rezoning?). So I assume this accounts for the decline in ecto prices (7.5 when i left today).

Now my question is, if one had a large stack of ecto, would it be better to hold it or liquidate as much of it as you could into gold.

The other side of the coin seems to be that the things you want to buy with gold (rare items) will be dropping in price as well since gold is worth more and there are more or the same number of rare items coming in. So even if ectos are dropping in gold value, will the still retain the same purchasing power?

Essentially, did the change in drops screw people with a lot invested in ecto?

I think that it also didn't help that there are now tomes to go into the UW even when you don't have favor. that, plus the fact that monsters don't run away from you anymore in normal mode for the w/rt build (and possible other, don't use them) makes the runs faster so more runs and more ectos.
So I don't think that they will go back up to what they were before. I suggest selling as many as you can and salvaging your situation, but let other chime in on their opinions first to get an overall consensus before you make any rash decisions.

To me, it looks like ectos will be going down.

Keep them, ectos go down, but the items that are 100k + ectos, keep the same amount of ectos wanted or they're maybe even going down.

~Prof.

keep them. ectos will go back up there are things to buy so they are being sold right now to get money to buy new minis. once everyone is satisfied with the new minis or they drop in price ectos will go up again

Ectos won't go up in my opinion. PvE rare items aren't rare now. Mini-pet prices will go down too. But that's just my opinion.

Simply enough they will go up a little when all the new "leet" weapons from GW:EN are found (Example Ele blade in NF) then they will fall right back down and most likely STAY. because A-net has confirmed that there will not be any new professions in the next GW expansion there will be no new sets of FoW to have, so people are getting it on the one char they like the most and that is it, wile they are used as a secondary form of currency i dont think that is enough to impact the price significantly.

Hold for now. Panic won't help anybody, which is exactly what everbody is doing now. Prices of ecto aren't effected so much by the amount of gold and ectos in the economy, but by how much people panic and sell ectos to the trader. If there are 10 million ectos in the world and the trader has access to 1 million of them at all time, ecto prices at the trader stay stable. If there are 10.5 million ectos in the world after the update and the trader has 3 million of them all because of people panicing, that is where prices as a whole drop. Its not so much about the number of ectos, as it is about the emotions of people worried about losing their savings.

If ecto prices change enough, the value of rare weapons will just change to reflect it.
I plan to buy ectos hard as they continue to drop and assume that they will spike back up (as Reason said) with the release of GW:EN. Not only will ectos be used to trade the "new leet weapons" of GW:EN, but also less people will be farming UW and more people will be doing GW:EN quests.

This isn't the first time ectos were 7.5-8k.

It was only after the NF that prices went higher than that.

Ive been playing GW for over a year now and ectos have been at about an average of 10k throughout....Ive seen the price rise and fall, so i expect the price to go back up eventually.

It will rise again. Right now there was sort of a rush on the market. When they popped over 10K briefly a lot of people started liquidating their stash of ecto. The influx of extra ecto into the material traders caused a temporary price drop. Give the supply time to thin out and it will rise again. For those interested in powertrading in a long term investment scenario now would be a good time to buy.

I have seen ectos down to less than 5k and up at 18k again. I no longer dare to predict prices for ectos. I guess they will rise again but that time might be half a year in the future. Who knows?

Due to anti-farming code being permanently gone I would say ectos are going permanently down.