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It seems that recently, the price of 'most' in game items have noticeably dropped in price on US West and I would guess the same has happened on East and possibly EU (of course that doesn't mean that 'buying power' has actually increased...). I'd just like to hear other people's thoughts on what has caused this fairly quick onset of deflation on most items in the game, and I've got my own below.
Scrolls:
S3 now drops them, though I don't know how many scrolls that adds since the same players would have just run S2 before the change. We also had a scroll event fairly recently, though it seems the prices haven't changed much since then (I don't remember prices remaining this 'flat' from the previous scroll event, could be wrong though).
OJs:
Seal shop is the easy reason here, that and I suppose since S3 now drops scrolls more people run it, so there are also more 'natural drops' around as well.
Accessories (belts/rings):
Nemahain apparently drops them often enough that however many people are regularly clearing it now greatly trump the amount of people that used to 'farm' the drops.
'Gear':
For all the reasons above, plus we had the scroll event recently, and I suppose prices are dropping in anticipation of 95 gear.
Comments
People used to need to use level 90 purple gear because oj armor feathers/solids/smooths were hard to get hold of for a new player and level 80 gear was still pretty expensive. Now they just use the free level 80 gear because the stats are roughly the same anyway and save up seals to NPC craft level 90 oj gear.
3 star blue armor used to sell for a lot, but most people just NPC craft OJ gear now because the mats required to upgrade 3 star blues to OJ are insanely expensive (blame devcat for being bad at this). It used to make sense for end game players to have 3 star blues because it took a lot of time to get hold of OJ armor feathers anyway...but that isnt the case anymore.
Scrolls drop in more places now, sure...but that just means people tend to run s3 instead of s2. There is far too much parallel content, and there just isnt enough time to do them all unless you are on vacation or a NEET. If you work a typical 8-5 job, you might get home at maybe 6. Factor in time to cook, prepare your stuff for the next day, household chores, etc....that only leaves you a few hours at most to play. On weekdays, most people arent playing by 10 pm anymore and the server is noticeably dead at that point.
Most people in endgame are probably focusing on s3 raids/shining keag (only due to the free graces)/nif (partly due to the low party size required) and s3 dailies. Most of the s2 raid parties that ive seen have been small groups of level 90s running lak/ulchas/havan because they dont have enough people for s3 raids.
It's a very nice change overall. It makes the gold players can actually earn from "better paying" side quests helpful as they level up and such. They only thing that has stayed relatively high is NX merch, but that's to be expected.
The only thing likely to notably recover in price is abomination belts/essences once the 2x / 2x event is over. Prices will probably remain depressed until level 95 items, a new character, or the influx of summer players.
AUS.