Ectoplasm Prices.

Ecto prices soared by over 25% in the past 2 days, and they continue to rise.
This is interesting, as they have never got this high in a while, I think that this has something to do with the drop rate in UW. In my 10 UW runs today, I averaged 2.4 ectos per run, compared to 3.3 for my average run. (600/smiter)
This is not a big nerf (27%), so in theory the ecto prices should increase by at least 27%. (margin of error = ~15%)

But I think that they will get more expensive this weekend since it is double faction.
Supply will decrease by a bigger factor than demand, which will therefore bring the prices up even more. As there is a constant increase in demand and I think supply is staying constant for now, prices will go up.

Drop rate nerf + decreased supply + increased demand = Big price increase.
I'd think they will be 7k in the course of a week if there is no money dump into the economy.

or maybe it has to do with the fact favor is dropping, and people are hoarding ecto's now..

i kind of doubt it will rise much, to be honest.

I've watched them jump and fall the last few days. They were at 5.5 (from trader) on thursday then dropped to 4.9 yesterday. Today they jumped again to 5.5. It makes me think that people just aren't buying/selling with the trader anymore so when a few people do it makes a big jump one way or the other. I suspect they will hover a little one side or the other of 5k.

This post smells of somebody trying to cause a panic and stir up ecto prices. Ecto will not get up to 7k anytime soon, and drop rates over the course of a a couple of runs is too statistically variable to prove anything.
Reporting for close since this is just trying to cause a price panic.

Make 1000 runs and see a specific drop rate. Then make another 1000 runs and see a different drop rate. Now that would be something to talk about.

10 runs tells you ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

As noted, the price jumped to 5.5k, and then back down to 4.9k in a matter of hours.

Ecto prices are in flux, and the drop rate has not been 'nerfed'.

Keep dreaming and keep farming. Nothing has changed.

^This, exactly.

My 3.3 is based on about 1800 runs. The 2.4 is still being tested, as I'm running right now, Im up to 13 runs and it didnt increase much at all. Do a run and see for yourself, ecto's are dropping less.

If its based on 1800 runs, then you should have 5940 ectos (or the half of that, not sure if you meant the drops for yourself or for the team). R U RICH?

Also, its pretty weird that you noted the drops for 1800 runs.. I mean, no offense, but you must be hella bored.

Dronte, I'm an economist, I've been keeping track of prices of ectos, average drop rate, drops per run for every day/run that I've played in GW. And I've played for a long time.

Edit: I've also noticed golds are dropping much more often. Up to 1.6 per run from 0.7 per run.

If you really are an economist then you'd realize that 13 runs means absolutely squat and wouldn't have uttered a peep about it until you had at least 500 runs done.

Played for a long time but yet only 12 posts on guru before today?

also, if you have been keeping track as you say, you know that ectos price moves in steps, not in a smooth curve.
Therefore a movement from 4.9 to 5.5k can happen with the purchase of 1 ecto from the trader (as you would be aware Im sure).

There is a plentiful supply of ectos - at least until anet make another use for them, so I disagree with the OP post, and stating that he is an Economist then basis his hypothesis on a sample of 10 runs makes me worry that he might be an economist in the US banking sector (oops) :P

the ecto rate is the same ,
here is the reason whyecto prices are going up, there is a couple of reasons for this

1, they nerfed the fast easy way to farm so now we dont have noobs sellig to the trader at a high rate
2, im not the only on that noticed that companys selling gold are also selling ecto, and from there point of view trading gold is easier to catch then selling ecto,
and sence time is money a company would rather by ecto from the trader, then from poeple. in saying this now we have companys acutally helping the ecto prices by doing this, say some one putin a offer to buy ecto, the company then goes and buys the 200ecto from trader and now we have more pople selling to trader then buying from him. thus rasing the price,

and more pople are getting lazy instead of farming they buy it ther for the can buy titles.

if the favor issue was true last time favor went down to 60 min left ecto prices would have went through the roof but they didnt change at all,, only scrolls did

Ecto prices were stable around 4.9-5.5 at the trader for several months before the advent of the Shadow Form sin UW farm. It has just taken a little while for them to fully recover to this price. I wouldn't expect them to go any higher any time soon.

If you really were an economist, you would understand how little economic theory applies to this game, where 'money' constantly pops out of thin air and into the system.

Having .9 fewer ectos per run on one day is not a big deal.


Most likely a few people bought some gold and ran down to the rare mat trader.

If you really had any idea what you were talking about you would realize that economy applies to everything.

Look at my join date, ectos do not move in steps, they move in a curve.
Farming nerfed-prices go up.
New build-prices plummet,
Favor-prices skyrocket,
Easier to make money for noobs-Prices go up.(inflation)
Harder to make money for noobs-Prices go down.

Also, the trader prices dont count for anything, I count the prices people sell them for. Trader can be used and abused, infact, you can make people think prices went up whe nthey actually didnt, just by buying about 500 ectos from the trader.
Everything is mapped on supply and demand, there are no jumps, or steps.

If I waited till I got 500 runs done, it would be irrelevant. I am not giving you hard facts, I am predicting.

An economist would also know a 27% nerf to ecto drop does not automatically result in 27% price increase. The price would only increase to levels that the market may bear. (I dont think real world economics could apply to a video game too)

When there is an infinite supply of currency in a system it is always a 1:1 ratio.

what?

12 characters (first time I had to do that...)

Just realized. Small error, fixed now. supply up demand same = prices down.

have you ever thought your ectos are dropping less because your farming them too much?

So by what you say someone typing:- "WTS Ectos 8k each" = OMG prices have gone through the roof!

That bold statement above, proves that you indeed do not watch prices, as the prices AT THE TRADER are the only ones you can watch for accurate pricing. anyone can ask ANYTHING to buy and sell, it does not mean they are buying and selling.

Also the people who are buying and selling are doing so relative to the TRADER PRICE. Or maybe you think people buy for 6k each when the trader is selling for 5.5k

Having sold all materials to the trader at one point or another, I can tell you quite clearly that the traders work on increments and for ectos the current ones are 4.9k and 5.5k.
If you wish to prove me wrong, I suggest you watch the rare mat trader and put up a SS with them at 5.2k on "your curve".

you my friend are about as close to an economist as my cat.

Over the last couple weeks not only ectos went up. It's an effect on much larger scale.

Many different items' prices increased. Many materials are higher than a month ago, and just look at Black Dyes - they are higher than in any moment this year. And Sup Vigors, also 1-2k higher.

So many 'economists' in this thread but nobody mentioned the dreaded word: INFLATION!

Yeah, it's inflation this time, not anything else. There's suddenly MORE MONEY in the economy... you don't need to look far - it's the new M.O.X. quest that rewards a whooping 10,000gold for every character you do it with!

And the source of problem is deeper, it's the lack of ingame GOLD SINKS. While there are many 'money' titles, most of them don't remove the gold from circulation, they only make the gold change hands.
The game needs more gold sinks!
Add generic Hairstylist and Buyable Storage suggestions here

This is how rumors start. Someone who claims to know what they are talking about make statements that although sound good, are inaccurate, or wrong.

I assume you are either TRYING to start a rumor that ecto prices are in trouble, and thus reap the benefits, or you are a complete idiot.

If you are an economist, I truly hope the people who pay you for your skills are doing so for laughs. Not one thing you have stated in regards to ecto drops and prices makes ANY sense in the game I play.

Prices always drop. Just because some guy logs in and decides to buy a stack or two of ecto because he's bored, doesn't mean the price will stay high for long. I've been there/seen that before so you guys can stop the conspiracy theories.

OP:

If you want to impersonate an economist, the least you can do is at least read up on theories of currencies before attempting to do so. You are either a really clever troll or a complete blithering idiot. I'm going with option 2, as you seem too sincerely self-righteous to be trolling. Trolls usually want to be caught. Eventually.

Some basic points here:

1) There isn't an infinite amount of the currency in the game. There's a bloody lot of it, which means that the ecto's value is primarily based upon expectations and that panics are ugly, ugly things due to the sheer quantity of ectos that can be tradered in a panic.

The good examples of ecto panics are the loot scaling crash and the permasin crash. What REALLY happened in both cases is that new excess supply flooded the marketplace (probably mostly sellers rather than farmers reacting to expected drop rate changes) and eventually got tradered due to time price (see below). Once the price went down at the trader, smart people that were holding hundreds or thousands of ectos recognized that the value of their ectos was only going to decrease, so they sold what they could on the open market and tradered the rest. This led to more players seeing that the value would only decline, leading to more tradered ecto, and the cycle continued.

2) A real economist believes what mathematical models and data tell him. You need a large sample size in order to infer that the observed effect is not merely random chance.

3) The traders govern all in this game. The trader sets the reasonable upper and lower limits on the item. The resale of EVERY item in this game comes with a transaction cost: time. The more time you spend selling, the greater your opportunity cost (the loot from farming/dungeon running/other you forego by spending your time selling).

Buying from the trader or selling to the trader comes with NO transaction cost; it's instantaneous. As a result, the trader's buy price is the absolute floor on reasonable sale prices, and the trader's sell price is the absolute ceiling on reasonable buy prices. (Almost) no one will sell for less than the trader will pay or buy for more than the trader will sell for. (Yeah, some people fail at life and sell outside those ranges. Take the free money and the laugh and move on.)

Since the trader sets the bargaining range, your argument that ecto prices move in a curve is laughable. Trader prices are a step function and it follows that ecto prices are a step function as well. If you were a real economist, you'd know what I meant by "step function". But you aren't, and so you don't. Instead, you blindly quote an oversimplified model designed to teach you the basics of economics without any conception of the assumptions that must hold for that model's conclusions to be valid.

4) For whatever reason, ecto prices seem to be very sticky between 4.9k and 5.5k as the trader sell price. I don't know what quirk of the rare materials trader's code has caused this, but it's definitely the case. If you'd been collecting data every day, you'd know this was true.

5) The price hasn't been rising. It settled into back into its old equilibrium a long time ago. Ectos were 4.5k to 5k on the secondary market for a year before the permasin UW farm. We're right back there again.

Kindly acquire a clue and return with the facts if you want to talk economics. Thanks, and good luck with that introductory econ textbook.

The reason why prices are rising, is because GW lost more than half of their players in the past couple months... I actually expected this. The fact there there is alot less people farming in UW, means there is less ectos being farmed... so it has nothing to do with drop rates, everything is the same, except there isn't 1000's of people farming UW. I'm not saying that this is 100% of the reason, but to me it seems like it would be. The game is dying, plain and simple.

i belive that ecto prices changing are due to the amount of people selling to the trader.....as this is what has always happened, they go high, people sell all to the trader, then the price at the trader drops, then when people start buying from the trader the price goes back up...thats the way the material traders work, changing prices due to demand.

end of story

This is as far from truth as it can be.
"GW lost more than half of their players in the past couple months" = complete and utter BS.
While players activity was higher during summer holidays and is slightly reduced (I'd say it's more like 10-15%, not more than half), judging from the number of districts in most populated towns, the trading and spamming activity in those towns, and from the number of titles max'ed per day.

And smaller player activity can't bring prices up. It's rather opposite - prices tend to be higher during weekends (significantly higher player activity) since GW release in 2005. Are you sure that only ecto farmers quit but the rich buyers who make their cash in other ways remain?
/lol

There are only 2 main reasons why ecto prices were going up in the last month:

1. Extreme Chaos Plains farming, The Reason why ecto price has dropped from long-time stable [email protected][email protected] has been nerfed. Masses of solofarmers don't produce 12+ ectos per hour. While the overfarm satisfied a large chunk of the demand, it was obvious the demand for ectos will be back. Prices were

2. Inflation caused by high cash reward in the M.O.X. quest caused prices of various goods to rise. This greatly accelerated the process of ectos going back to their old price, without it, it could take a few months more.

Players speculating of ecto prices rising because of favor going off can't drive the price up that sinificantly. There's no panic and there's no reason to panic. Ecto prices won't change in the long term because of /favor hitting zero and being active for only 60-75% of the day.

Read my earlier post about how rumors start after reading what I just quoted.

Also notice when the last time the OP responded to anyone in this topic.

Or... it could have something to do with the fact that school has started again and summer break is over, so all the kids who played non-stop in summer now have less time to play.

That's actually accurate, as prices do tend to flucate based on how many people are playing at any particular time, which happens every year and varies by RL stuff (weekend vs weekday, holiday vs normal day, summer vs fall). Although I doubt your BS 50% number.

Who says ecto prices are rising? I'm not seeing any significant change.

/facepalm.
Why would you want to analyze GW economy...not like you can make a presentation out of THAT O_O
I think ppl are just hoarding the ectos until it gets to at least 9 or 10k...then whoever sells fast wins. Everyone else will be stuck with 3-4k worth ectos
wow there are actually 31 ppl viewing this thread O_O

Data to support assertion, please.

You're implicitly assuming that the people that went back to school either trader more ecto than they buy from the trader, or that their trader interactions change when they return to school. I'll believe that they farm less ecto, and that they are less likely to trader it as a result. But this explanation still leaves unanswered questions:

1) Why do ectos stick at 4.9-5.5k at trader? By your argument, the price should have continued to rise past 5.5k.

2) Who the heck buys ectos from the trader anyway? No one I know. Only exceptions are the trader reset and when everyone anticipated the SF nerf due to the dev update.

See, this is good theory. Increased supply of cash + same ecto creation rate = ectos are more expensive. Both cause and effect are clear and make sense.

Never said I was an economist. However, I know more than enough economic theory to tell him precisely how and why his economist impersonation fails. Constructive criticism > "LOLURNOOB".

I agree totally, however trolls do not deserve constructive criticism. You notice the "economist" has not posted in this thread anymore. He used loose theories and Swiss cheese stats to try to prove the rise of ectos. His cross section consisted of 12 runs after the alleged "nerf"which is not near enough to prove any kind of inflation.
And isnt there a farming patch in Guild wars that decreases the drops after a person repeatedly farms a certain area so many times?

Suddenly my Obsidian Armor fits better than ever. ;-) When I look back I've purchased my ecto's and shards at the lowest point in the price chart. A good thing after my diamond debacle. (Buying my first diamonds for 12k ea when they were new )

At any rate the increase in the price of ecto is due to several reason that I can see. Ill list then explain in a second.

1) Ursan
2) Permaform
3) MOX

Ursan: This allowed noobs and their dogs to quickly and easily make money. Most of these people played ursan so much that it was all they did/could do and got lots of money hoarded. Now that Ursan is nerfed, they have limited options and so have money to spend on new chars, weapons etc that they didnt have time for before, due to ursanning all the high end areas. (Note that it took this long because permaform was another option immediately after ursan nerf).

Permaform: Same deal as Ursan, brought price of ectos down due to ease of farming, the players made an absolute killing, lots of money. Now they are starting to spend more, and their hoardes of ectos are drying up as farming ectos isnt as fast, and takes a brain. Those with hoardes were releasing them, whilst those are gone (Demand= constant, supply drops, price goes up)

MOX: The ecto supply started dropping, and people have money to burn... price increases... bang. Simple.

In my opinion ectos will stay the same until the point that permaform gets burned, because then there is no fast and/or easy way to farm ectos, and prices will return to pre eotn prices. Note that ectos moved to 4.5-5.5k after eotn, most probably due to the ease of farming with ursan.

I have no idea why ecto is 5.5k again at the merchant. As I don't really play Guild Wars other than to log on and do nothing like lots of other people. What I do know is, it's good for me.

WTB a "WTB all ectos 10k/ea" panic thread..

need some cash

IMHO, that's an indicator of a smart man.