Price Increase? ... or Inflation? ...

It really doesn't make sense. I got my first set of Obsidian before SF was buffed, before the XTH, before it was easy to rollface over UW and get ecto. Ecto were going for 5.5k then, and were as 'hard' to farm as they likely will be after the nerf (can't really tell yet, people need time to work that out on their own). So... it doesn't make sense for the price to skyrocket :P

inflation and speculation. we have a speculation bubble over ecto's price now, rocketing it. simultaneously, the buying power of gold is going down due to it's abundance in the game.

just see it economically, as two different currencies, like dollar and euro (though they're too stable to be the best example, but you get the idea). there are different rules and triggers here than in the real world, but the speculations and the uncontrolled market always lead to the same thing - rich people (aka ecto hoarders) getting relatively richer, while poor people (aka newcomers, non-farmers) getting relatively poorer.

i'm actually curious if it's a random, natural evolution of GW economy or a planned sabotage made up by top power traders and hoarders. shouldn't be too hard, to be honest.

I've figured it out guys. it's beautiful. I call it the Grand unification theory. We are all correct, yet we are all incorrect. All of our forces are responsible for the current ecto prices.

jinkies is correct about inflation raising prices as could be seen directly with spikes during RR days, and gradual inflation from z quest farming.

martin is correct about ease of farming (ectos were cheap as dirt when chaos plains netted people a crap load). Spiritz confirmed that UW is harder to complete with skeletons and dhuum, thus less people are selling. The masses are correct in speculating, the SF nerf is supposed to come, making future farming more challenging.

gifted is spot on about lack of decent gold sink alternatives to ectos, forcing people to put their money into ectos, regardless if they like the price. If you want to buy most things, you're paying in ecto prices, one way or the other.

reverend is right that ecto price directly correlates to the trader price, which can be manipulated. And there's no doubt that it was and is being manipulated constantly.

hawk of storms is right that hacked accounts would've been stripped and cashed in for ectos as fast as possible to remove any trace of previous items.

ensign is right that festival events (halloween, wintersday) create noise in ecto prices because sellers are harder to find, as most are farming their butts off.

drkn is right. players with more money have a much larger effect than those with little money.

So there is inflation, speculation, manipulation, information, procrastination, fast food nation, on vacation.

Can clever people profit off this? Yes.
Can they profit huge sums of ectos with little time or effort invested? Hardly. Even if they make 1-2 ectos profit / 100k. Consider the time they will have to invest selling ectos, buying other gold sinks, selling those gold sinks, buying ectos. They could've just played the game how they see fit and made the same amount (farming, speed clear, PvP, power trading, dungeon running)

they can if the ecto price fluctuations is really a GW-type of currency speculation, just putting a bubble over it instead of spiking it down as usual. it's just an option of the shock doctrine - supposing nerf of SF and 600/smite caused the wide shock, so that ecto hoarders started keeping their ectos and fueling the general SF-panic instead of selling their ectos as they were before.
it's a large profit in the whole mechanism, not trading, though.

i'm not sure on that, but i believe it is possible to strike ecto prices down or introduce another wide currency with medium effort, though.

You'd be surprised. I made a few stacks in a few days during the last major currency upheaval (Spring 2009). And I didn't really work at it.

It's all about exploiting the variance between players' perceptions and reality. I owned a fair number of sharp players during that week just by having volume on both sides of the equation (ecto/zkeys). When everything is in flux, you can make a lot just by having the ability to take bad bets from either side.

You still overestimate the ability of players to tweak the trader price. Doing so is never individually rational, because tweaking the price of ecto doesn't translate into the ultra-high-end markets quickly.

still, sooner or later the speculations must end, the bubble will blow. it will either be done by the buyers - not many will want to pay 100k for 10e for sure; by sellers - when two big ecto hoarders break and start selling ectos cheaper than the mid market price, people will eventually start following the trend; the community itself - with a medium force of people in various forums and trading locations (aka spamadan), even with no ectos at all, the prices can be dropped by clear propaganda.

Absolutely, the bubble will pop.

All I'm saying is that providing the spark yourself is never a good idea. Ride the wave, yes. Assume the cost to push the price up? No.

I doubt that the wave of speculation will break until the update hits. Prices may remain constant, but I seriously doubt the collapse will land until the update hits. A day or two later, someone will post the new team build for farming and prices will tank.

i doubt it'd take a day or two, rather a week or two, but yeah - the prices should fall down soon after the update or, well, nerf that was used as a shock in the market.

i wasn't talking about spiking down the ectos artificially by selling them to merchant yourself (or myself), though. i was thinking about exploiting the market rules to make it reduce the ecto price itself. i'm not certain it would work though, as mmo economy is different, but i believe it is possible.