What happened to Ecto and Shard Prices

The number of shards being farmed has not diminished, if anything it's had a very minor increase.

What's happening is, as ecto becomes more and more affordable you're getting more people deciding to buy Obsidian armor, which of course requires ecto and shards. Now since the increase in ecto availability is not being matched by an equal increase in shard availability, the supply of shards is going to decrease overall if people are buying on the same proportion to what is being farmed as they are with ectoplasm.

tl;dr - shards are being USED more, not farmed less.

I tthink it was the dupers that hit it hardest. around the start of last year( around 8-9k if i remember) ectos were normal but around june and a bit before they went down alot( around 5.5-6.5k) which it remained at even after Gw:en.

so ursan isnt a real cause, it didnt do it any favors but it didnt have a real impact imo.

a/e is a problem tough.

Over supply of ectos as it is being farmed like crazy, so prices fall to remove surpluses in order to achieve equilibrium.

Since ectos are droping, more people now want fow, it would mean they would need to buy shards aswell. Because shards are being farmed considerably less then ectos, there starts becomes a shortages of shards because of growing demand from the people who want fow. Thus prices of shard rise in order to remove the shortages and achieve equilibrium price.

Though, these fluctuations should ease within a month

I'm nitpicking here but it's an infusion of ecto, not cash. There are only a couple of things in the game that you can actually buy with ecto, in every other situation it's just a convenient produce for bartering between players. Infusion of cash is what you get from mission/quest rewards, gold drops and merching items.

Also, it's a good thing for those who don't have ecto but would want some, but it's a bad thing for those who had a lot of ecto to begin with.

Should have switched commodities in order to maximise the worth of their assets. YOU CANNOT BE COMPLACENT WHEN SRS CASH IS AT STAKE.

Have you realized we have a double EotN reputation points weekend? I'm sorry but that favor will last at least another month.

Fun. I don't think you go to ToA much, do you? And if you go it's only to enter with your sin, amirite? Because people are buying at 3.5k-4.1k. They were 5k at merchant four or so days ago. Last time I saw they were at 4.5k at merchant. So there's a price drop, over the course of few days, and the drop will probably continue. Most people don't realize that the prices dropped after a couple of weeks after the SF release, because they had to take their sin out of noob island.

And people will sell them for 500-700 gold less than merchant, you know why? Because there's NO DEMAND on ectos. So is hard to sell them and the owner that has been spamming for 3 hours will sell them to the merchant. You know why there's no demand? Because 1/3 of the GW community is farming them.

Many people here also fail to realize that the player price is the current price of the ectos, not the one of the merchant. This one is only to determinate for how much you'll sell the ectos.

Poor prediction. The lack of favor can't stop the farmers.
When favor will hit zero in about 3 weeks (my prediction based on gathered data over last week) the favor will still be active during the high hours, favor will be still on for the most of the time during the day.
And at the hours when it will be off for a while, there are still scrolls, they are still cheap (1,300 at trader today), paying 300g more to enter UW when there are no favor won't stop the farmers.
And scrolls are common drops inside UW, any farmer with half a brain will save them and use only when there's no favor.

Oh, and EoTN rep titles don't affect favor, so don't expect a /favor going 35k again.

Hmmm....


ectos are at 4.3k


I must admit, I'm starting to think a lot of us (including myself) were wrong and prices are going to crash.

They look to be at 4.5k to me. Unless you meant people sell price.

They were at 4.3 last night, with merch buying for 3.6

Guess I'm not on the Lion's Arch Stock Exchange.

BUY BUY BUY

They are 4,5k at trader, but people buy them at 4,2k-4,4k.

Btw - way to buy scrolls, I AM GOD DAMN SURE IT WILL BE 40K MINUTES AGAIN. Hahahaha.

couldnt sell mine for more than 4.3 k 2 days ago.

I thought Eye of the North rep titles didn't count for that, only Legendary Master.

Anyways I heard SF will be getting nerfed, course it's through the grapevine so don't take it as official but don't discount it totally either. Heard it from a friend who's in dV.

Despite the drop in Ectos, the price will go back up again when SF will be returned to normal.

Pol

OMG THE SKY IS FALLING! What will I do with all my ectos? Its not fair that I hoarded them up and now they are not worth what I think they should be!! QQ Its not fair that I farmed the shit out of them and now that every Joe Blow can everyone can have ectos!! QQ My private little corner of the market has ceased to exsist! What ever shall I do?? QQ

/end sarcasm
I am sure that players would find something new to use for currency. Who was the magic person that stated at the beginning of Guild Wars " thou shalt use Ectos as thy Currency, Farm it sparingly so not everyone shall have access to them"??? Get over it. I hope they leave SF and Ursan alone.

If there wasn't a gold cap of 1000 plat in the storage, then alot less people would be QQing, and ectos would not have reached such a high price to begin with.

Need 100,000,000 gold storage plz!

No, nor has my sin even been in the UW.

Last night I sold mine to the trader for 4k each - if people are stupid enough to sell to others at or below the trader value then Oh well. That isn't supply and demand, that is stupidity.

They have been stable at around 4.8k for months (plus or minus around .2k). Last night they were 4.8k when I sold mine to the trader.

The player market, especially on short term basis, works on many other factors than simply supply and demand. Right now it is operating on "fear" and you see many idiots selling for below what they can get from the trader. Short term trends have never been good indicators, especially in the player market where people have a tendency to panic. However, the trader operates solely on supply and demand and will eventually be what the market stabilizes around - it has been roughly 4.8k for quite a while and, so far, hasn't changed for the SF update. We went through the same with Ursan Blessing and they stabilized right back to where they were before.

Maybe not this time, maybe they will drop to 2k each - but then that isn't an economy crashing either. It's the purchasing power of the top 5% or so players loosing money and the purchasing power of 95% of the population increasing. Were I in Anet's shoes I would consider that a Good Thing, though since I'm not I would prefer them to stay higher.

Wow I guess some folks have notice the price changes by response of this post. Lots of good theories and sounds like the prevelent one is one of supply and demand (not getting into specifics as they have been speculated by all the other posts).

I was wondering also if folks with wealth are starting to use it. That is, get all the things you wanted in the game, because either your interest in playing the game is diminishing or you believe the life of the game is closer to the end than the the beginning. So folks may figure, you might as well have all the things you wanted to enjoy the game (spend your money) before it comes to an end (either because you stop playing or GW2 comes out).

I suspect as soon as GW2 comes out GW1 will rapidly die, that is if GW2 takes off. I suspect that GW1 will become a ghost town and even if GW2 does not meet expectations, I still suspect folks will move on away from GW1, because GW1 will have no new content and there is plenty of competition out there.