Price on Ectos

I have been playing guild wars more lately, and i am wondering "what the heck happened to ecto prices?" I stopped playing GW for a while when ectos were 24=100k. Now i start playing and its 15=100k. I started playing a lot around there, and somehow they dropped to as low as 12=100k! I still havent gotten obsid armor, and i think i should get it before they go down to 1=100k

Anyways, can someone tell me why ectos are so expensive now?

-Midget-

Well, it's a fickle market.. The 24 = 100k dated back to the UWSC record of 7min, i.e. pre Halloween 2009. They skyrocketed from there on, although I think by then they settled around 20 = 100k.. So they went up to 16 = 100k overnight I think and from then on they were stable for over a year on 15/16 = 100k, went up a bit after HoM update to 14 = 100k. Then there was wintersday, causing a lot of people to say "f*ck it" to all sorts of SCs for a week or 2 and there were very little people farming/selling ecto's, so they went up to 12 = 100k, which caused a bit of panic I think, causing people to mass buy of merchant, causing them to go up to 10/11 = 100k for a day or 2-3. Now they stabled out again at 12/13 = 100k.

You gotta know, those things will always fluctuate, and a bit of panic can cause a sudden drop or rise of it's price.

Its not a down hill trend, its not going to keep getting more and more expensive til 1e = 100k. It fluctuates around the 7-8k region but is still fairly stable.

Above poster gives a nice story about why the prices dropped. While more and more people quit, less people are busy farming ectos. At the same time, less people are in the game who want/need ecto. So its basically going to be pretty stable for a while now.

I cant see it getting more expensive, so if your going for obby armor try working up the money as gold, then when/if the prices drop a little, you will save a little. Dont buy an ecto everytime you got 8k, wait till you got a good 500k++, and then wait for a nice time to buy

This, Exept im sure there will come more ppl back in some months to fill their HoM, and will be needing their ectos so it will go up abit..

Rather close at gw2 release most likely.

The largest ecto price rise in the last years was just recently - during this Wintersday. It was mainly caused by a large influx of fresh pure gold coming from the extreme overfarm of the Snowball Dominance and Crush Spirits quests. The numbers may look small but active players were able to produce like 100k new gold per day. In fact it took just about the first ~5 days of the quests overfarm for the prices of ectos (and shards, zkeys, bdyes, etc.) to peak.

In an economy with so few gold sinks a sudden major influx of fresh gold will always result in a sudden inflation. Because there were no new gold sinks added, the overall increased amount of gold in the economy will not decrease for a long time so the prices of ectos will stay high.

I haven't even mentioned the strong demand for ectos caused by HoM but that shouldn't be overestimated. Without the excessive influx of new gold the price of ectos would have just remained stable at the post HoM-update rates.

What I noticed over the past year or so went like so ...

1e~5k or less: pre Halloween 2009 and introduction of Skeles and Dhuum to UW

1e~7k: price seemed to settle around there after the added foes in UW

1e~8-9k maybe: Wintersday 2009/10 through Jan. 2010.

1e~7k: sometime Feb. 2010 to start of Wintersday 2010/11

1e~8-9k: Wintersday 2010/11 to now.

I can't say why it spikes during Wintersday, but so far I've watched it happen two years in a row. Yawg makes an interesting point about the influx of new gold into the market from this recent Wintersday. I suppose only time will tell if the current 8kish price sticks around longer than last year's Wintersday spike or not, but I've been expecting it will settle back to ~7k simply from seeing it happen last year.

I do think the increase in obsidian shard prices has a lot to do with the introduction of HoM calculator and the surge in interest/demand for obby armor. Ecto has been such a widely accepted alternative currency for so long that I'm not sure if the increased obby armor demand is significant enough to really raise the price. This latest jump well above ~7k each did not happen until Wintersday, two months after the calculator came out. By then, most of the stuff with price spikes clearly caused by HoM calc's release had already started to settle down to "new averages."

Luny you missed an important trend

Ecto price along with most materials drop right before and during afk weekends as people need fast plat for tickets to afk the rings.

as sure as the sun will rise, prices will fall coming into CNY...

gotta agree with u there, last weekend all the Ruby/saphire drops i got went straight to the merchant for picks. and this weekend if i cant sell enough ectos to players a lot of my ectos are gunna go the same way just so i can AFK rings.NEED TITLES!

This is most clearly seen with Rubies / Saphires and Diamonds as well as Shards.

The only reason Ectos did not rise in price was that they have long since been used as an alternate trading currency and players already had them in their posession.

Shards/Rubies/Saphires and Diamonds on the other hand were hardly ever used for trade and therefore were not hoarded by the playerbase. Once the HoM Calculator came out and Vabbian Armor and a Destroyer weapon was a requirement for 50/50 people started buying these materials like mad which caused the gigantic jump in prices (4K to ~12K on Rubies and Saphires for a short time).

On a side note. Armbraces have been seeing just the opposite trend. The reasons for this as far as I see it are. Only one Armbrace is needed to get 50/50, but as this is the most expensive item compared to the other options, players are just farming / saving up for only one Armbrace and are then farming / buying the Destroyer / Opressor weapons to fill the rest of the HoM needs.
On top of that, there are so many players doing DOASC, Glaiveway and other -way runs that the market is currently being flooded with new Armbraces which is again causing the prices to drop. If this carries on, then I expect the prices for an Armbrace could drop to around 15e per (that is if no serious Nerf to the current SC builds is made in a future update which would probably only be temporary before a new build is found... not that im complaining about lower prices for Armbraces).

Basic economics ^^ but yeah I think ecto gonna fall back a bit with CNY

Edit: Bought a lot of ecto 7K ea this weekend

Ah, interesting! That makes sense. I don't tend to watch it really close every day or week. It's more like up until a few days into the start of this Wintersday I never had to wait around very long at all in Kama to find someone willing to trade 1e/7k with me, in either direction. That has not been the case for over a month now, but I do remember it happening last year, too. Thus, I expected it to come back to 7kish again, as there haven't been any changes to UW spawns or skills.

If it does change to some higher average, that's ok with me. I'm simply not sure the 8k it seems to be at right now will stay for long.


EDIT - well I just got online into game today. I checked NPC, and he was selling ecto for 8k and buying for 6k. Within a few minutes I found a player selling for 7k and took him up on a few. So, for whatever reason, it does seem to come back down.