So Ectos Just Hit 11k!

I predicted this several months ago with the rumors of inscriptions.

In short, the value of most rare items (and green items) have plummeted into the toilet (check the Ventari's Sell forums if you doubt this). Those players with excess cash that used to invest in rare items are now investing in the most tradeable commodity (ectos) because they are nearing (or have hit) their maximum gold storage.

More people buying ectos from the trader = ectos continue to rise. Unless A-Net puts a cap on the value, ecto prices will continue to rise.

At one point not too long ago when the trader was selling ectos for 8k I bought some and after purchasing 10-12 the price went up by 500g. I waited for a little bit, checked again and the price was down to 8k - did the same thing and the price went up to 8.5k again. If by sitting there clicking buy over and over and over again the price can go up by 500g for me, what would happen if someone sat there and clicked buy 250 times? What might happen if there was a large influx of gold into the economy and many of those people sunk their wealth into ectos in a relatively short period of time?

As for the price of gold, I looked and it's now under $50 for 1000k on Ebay. I also checked and found that over 58 million in gold was purchased on Ebay yesterday. I couldn't tell you whether that's unusually high or not, but if even 10% of that was sunk into ectos at one time I can't imagine that it wouldn't have a siginificant (if only short-lived) impact on their price.

Akhilleus makes me always smile when he applies economic theories to GW

I mean, if someone wants to apply an economic model to anything, he should have reliable data on what is going on in the "economy".
Do we know how much gold is produced every day and what is the trend? Do we know how many ectos/sapphs/rubies are dropped? Do we know how many of those rares are burnt in the process of creating armors? And do we know how those figures are evolving?
NO. Since no one has those information, everything is a pure guess, no one can claim to be the owner of the truth in this field.

Though, I agree on this point:
True, the wealthiest already have their stacks of ectos, earned by power trading, farmed in periods in which they got 50 per day, or bought at 100g each, and they have no reason in selling for cash, the only usage is in their limited market of crystallines and so on.

This seems wrong to me:
Ectos are not currency (despite they're used as currency in some cases). Ectos are "produced" in some areas of the game, but also destroyed when players craft their armors. Dollars are not destroyed, I don't think that when you buy a car for 100k dollars, the seller takes you bucks and burns them on fire LOL.

This seems a Harvard lesson:
The market sets the price, the market wants ectos at Xk ... what is the market?
The market are players, players don't "want" ecto at 7k, they want them at 100g or less.
And traders DO influence the prices, the first thing a seller/buyer watches is the trader price, and then he starts to spam WTS/WTB for 1k less.
Did player in the past "want" superior absorptions at 100k? No, they wanted at 100g as now. They went at 100k because players with eccess cash had no problem in buying for whatever price.

And all those things change during time, accordingly to what A.net nerfs of buffs.

My personal opinion, (and I, differently from someone else, admit that it's just one of the possible opinions and not the undisputable truth based on my vast economic culture) is that there's less "production" of ectos due to recent nerfs, so players probably prefer to farm elsewhere for plain cash and then convert it in ectos at trader.

Simple and plain. I read posts on forums about botters spotted in some areas of NF, for those and for sweatshop farmers the production of gold is easier in other areas, and ectos are just a way to storage gold.

But, I repeat, this is just an opinion, and should be verified with actual data that unfortunately are not available.

Ectos doesn't make the game, it only make you look better with FoW armors on it.

Skills and players make Guild Wars what it's all about, not these mindless materials!

my guess is that the ecto price increase is because of the wintersday event and high player activity. i went from hardly 100k in my storage to 600something just from on and off wintersday item selling, and i know there are ppl that made much more gold than me. and if a fair number of them decided to spend their easily earned gold on fissure armor, the price will go up.

price probably shot up because america never has favor and for some reason FoW armor seems to be in high demand. ive heard more talk about it latley than usual. also, ectos are the only things that have any value anymore. nightfall screwed the economy with greens and golds.

I agree, FoW armors is in high demand right now.

The bulk of gw plays for a variety of reasons and can't be lumped into this category or any other. Some for titles, wealth, items, pvp etc. No offense but any first person shooter requires more actual skill than gw ever will. Mindless to one .. precious to another it can be debated forever as shown in many threads on this forum.

To the person that pointed out 58 million in gold was sold on that day. Shh you will prove the point of how small the percentage of Ebayers in the game actually is. Even if it was a thousand unique buyers over a month (which I doubt) out of 3 million copies ... you do the math.

It's funny. I logged on to GW last night just to sell my ectos, and no one was buying in TOA or LA. A couple people were selling, but there was no action.

I agree that EBay is not the determining factor, but I also believe that it's something that cannot be entirely ignored. Just think, all the gold the bots farmed need to go somewhere, and believe you me, that's a lot of gold! So they sell it on EBay and people buy them up and then spend them. This is assuming of course that bots can sell all the gold they farm, which is a fair assumption, because otherwise the bots wouldn't have to keep farming for gold. Anyway, I would also make the assumption that people who buy gold off EBay need it for making big purchases mostly, purchases that exceed 100k, which add ectos to the equation. Maybe not all of that EBay gold will be converted to ecto, but a very significant portion will be.

Now the question is, do EBayers buy from merchants or from real players? I'm of the opinion that they'll buy from the merchant. Why you ask? Well, simply because if they're so lazy as to buy gold off EBay as opposed to actually work for it, why would they bother putting in the work to buy ecto from other players, when a few clicks will get them ecto from the trader?

So, in conclusion, I think even though the ecto market is still largely determined by honest players, EBay does play a larger role than people would like to admit.

Think ectos will drop down in price after few months?

They already have (9k as of this posting).

IMO, ectos are likely to drop (based on what we saw with the release of Factions and Nightfall) right around the PvE preview event for Chapter 4. People will see the "shiny new armors" and will start hording gold, basic crafting materials and rare crafting materials based on their anticipated use in crafting the new armors in Chapter 4.

To gain these funds/materials, they will likely start to liquidate some of their ecto stashes, which will cause the trader price to drop.

I have also regulary seen this effect:
Material prices are high, you hurry to sell your stock but during the process you see the prices drop.

But you are probably not alone. Lots of people hurry to sell their stuff at the same time. You saw that effect particulary during the Nightfall preview. Lots of Nightfall characters bought loads of materials to craft armour. The material prices spiked and everyone dumped their stock and prices dropped fairly quick. One single player had very little effect even if dumping 3-4k of materials at once.

There have probably been attempts to manipulate the market. I think there during the first summer, were some groups of players who coordinated bought up all black dye from the merchants for a week or so, and got the price up from 10k to 20-30k. I'm not sure about the details of that thing since I was pretty green at that moment, but rumors said it was a deliberate attempt to manipulate the prices. If so, it was pretty successful.

Regards,
Cloudbunny

Generally the econ 101 is on target, but you overestimate the size of the market for ecto. The overwhelming majority of players do not buy or sell any ecto at all. Only a tiny minority farm, buy, or sell ecto and most of those people rarely do so in bulk. Reference the old dev post that said something like 95% of players had less than 10k and didn't own any sets of 15k armor. Also observe for yourself how few toons have fissure. Because the market for ecto is relatively small, it is more subject to manipulation by a few players in the short term. Finally, this short term manipulation HAS happened in the past, as most of the old timers will recall. Many people used to ban to together to buy out the trader and jack the price up to control the market. I have a screen of black dye selling for 35k at the trader because of this, for example.

Ectos are back to 9K... big worry for nothing

I gotta ask. Where in the world are you ppl getting your loot??? Nearly playing a year now and i have never been near 400k @ a time. btw, what is the top-out in gold storage (how high)? Sorry that this doesnt really pertain to the actual original post but you ppl obviously have some jack. im jealous

Farm, buy-low-sell-high, and farming.

Max gold limit for the Storage is a million gold.

The rich don't set the price. Supply and demand does, end of story.

/fingers crossed hoping America holds favor tonight when I get to play.