Low server pop threatens ingame economy #mergeEarthenRing

Earthen Ring
#1

Yesterday, an AH whale bought 97% of the server’s market supply of Tidespray Linen, reposting just over half of it at around 150% the price.

This is one of my first posts up here so I guess I can’t link it but if you search Tidespray Linen on The Undermine Journal you can see what I’m talking about.

ER has been a small server for a long time. I’ve been here, off and on, since just before BC. The market is smaller and there are quirks involved with that, like that like higher prices and overall lower supply. Selling stuff takes longer, too. This is not that.

It’s not a normal market reset, either. TSL is a material that players practically trip over just by playing the game. The problem is pretty evident when you log in and see the capital cities almost entirely void of players.

This is what happens when your server pop is dangerously low. The reality is that without more players on the server to boost the item economy, it is not all that difficult for someone who plays daily to save up and monopolize a core market like this. I would imagine that Tailors on the server who don’t have any TSL lying around have not been able to produce much of anything at all since the price gouge.

ER’s low pop isn’t just a problem about not passing by other players ingame often enough - it has very long-reaching consequences. I’m fully on board with #mergeEarthenRing now.

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Realm Connections -- September 29
#2

Financial AH analysis about low Pop. Holy N’zoth.

Appreciate the heads up. Good to know. I know ER would appreciate the posts, as well. In game suggestions, posts on the forums during realm connects, all that stuff, helps get our voice out. This will help too! Good stuff, Citibank.

(There’s a sentence I never thought I would say. Hah!)

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#3

Of course! ER is my home, I’ll do whatever it takes to see it thrive again.

At this point, the only way I can see this happening is a server merge so I’m posting suggestions regularly. Personally I don’t mind if we lose RP tag status but I know others feel differently and that’s equally valid.

More specifically on the AH thing, I’ve been buying TSL at a loss to try and get the prices back to equilibrium at 2g, where it has been for most of BFA. We should be back to fair prices by Saturday.

If y’all have some unused Tidespray laying around and you’re reading this around the time I posted (Oct 1 2020), posting your cloth at market price would be a big help to everyone on the server.

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#4

Breathe some life back into the bones of this OG Community @Blizzard. We need it more than ever.

#MergeEarthenRing #ConnectEarthenRing #SaveEarthenRing

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#5

C’mon Blizzard, give Earthen Ring’s RP community a revival! We need this!

#MergeEarthenRing #ConnectEarthenRing #SaveEarthenRing

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#6

I was noticing more of what Citibank was mentioning as I’ve been on the AH more recently. It’s definitely getting bad. There are a few people it looks like that are just driving price up across the board. Other people are trying to pull some things down, but… it’s an uphill battle.

We really need more people in order to drive down those prices, and I don’t see that happening without a Connection for Earthen Ring.

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#7

The struggle hasn’t gone away just because of the pre-patch. We still don’t have enough people (especially RPers) to have a thriving community on Earthen Ring. The AH prices are still being driven up by select few and without more competition, the AH will be difficult to use.

#ConnectEarthenRing
#SaveEarthenRing

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#8

We’ve been holding out for answers, @Blizzard. At the bare minimum we’d appreciate hearing something on the matter.

#mergeEarthenRing #connectEartheRing #saveEarthenRing

#9

We’re still here, @Blizzard.

#mergeEarthenRing #connectEartheRing #saveEarthenRing

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#10

And still waiting for an answer. Any answer.

#mergeEarthenRing #connectEarthenRing #saveEarthenRing

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#11

I’ve still been putting in weekly in-game suggestions. What do you have for us, @Blizzard?

#mergeEarthenRing #connectEartheRing #saveEarthenRing

#12

This is one of the best posts on the merge topic so giving it another /bump. It’s more than just walking quiet streets and recruitment, there are concrete consequences on the server economy as well. Raid consumables and mats for legendaries are a hefty cost.

We’re here to keep from being separated, not for the quiet streets or overpriced AH. A merge with similar servers would be incredibly beneficial socially and financially.

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#13

Isn’t there a word for resurrecting old posts?

AH problems are not totally inherent to population. Do not mix game design issues with population.

There are whales, goblins, farmers, bots, and everything possible in all the servers.

Greed is another issue that is not mentioned in the posts above. Even if you have more population this won’t change unless there is a fundamental change in the AH system (set prices for base items, min/max buyout, limit repost, merge Alliance / Horde AH, etc). This is not the post for AH suggestions. Just one example. Why Legendary items are expensive? Callous Hides. Those are the basic items for leather and mail legendaries at the moment at 75g per item. Then this adds up when you create a Heavy hide which is at 1k. Then you need 2x Heavy hides to create an Enchanted Heavy hide which is 2k (4k in the AH now). Then for rank 4 leather head you need 20x Enchanted and 20x Heavy hide. All together that means your r4 leather head costs 65k+ just on mats (90k in the AH at this moment). As you can see the issue relies in the cost of the Callous Hide. Thus, one could argue that the issue is not the number of people farming the hides because there are thousands available in the AH (2k+ as we speak). The issue is the price they put this base item driving all the cost.

Do not mix game design issues with population.

#DONOTmergeEarthenRing

#14

Greed is another issue that is not mentioned in the posts above.

Yeah except if you’re greedy on a server that has a healthy population, and by extension, a healthy supply of materials, you can be as greedy as you want but you can’t buy up the entire supply of a core crafting material.

Do not mix game design issues with population.

I’m not.

I posted this at the end of BFA near the SL prepatch, a time when the market supply of tidespray linen on other servers was very high with players trying to clear out their banks. Not here.

Your comparison to legendary base items does not address the problem with having an anemic server population and is a non sequitur at best.

Callous Hide at the start of Shadowlands is not analogous Tidespray Linen at the end of BFA – in my post, I even went out of my way to note that cloth is a good that players figuratively trip over just by playing the game. Not only that, people had the chance to figuratively trip over that cloth for two years.

I have no issues with the cost of base legendary items and understand why the cost is high.

The issue is not about Blizzard’s design choices with crafting.

The issue is that nobody should be able to monopolize a core crafting material in a massively multiplayer online game.

Hell, that’s one of the many reasons we have a gold cap.

I’m pretty annoyed by this army of two on the forums running a counter narrative against the people who actually play max level characters and spend nearly every day on this server.

If Blizzard could get around to at least doing the bare minimum by acknowledging this is a problem I’d be much happier with my subscription.

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#15

Cross-posting into all related #merge threads.

Submission forms to the BlizzConline’s Q&A portion are available. If you have strong opinions about server merges, server population, ghost towns, etc., please take some time to submit a question if you can:

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#16

This will happen even if you have 1000000 population or 10000. You are mixing both topics. Why did you then named this topic? Low server pop threatens ingame economy.

#17

No, if you’re on a high pop server you can’t. The supply of core crafting materials is high enough and the markets are active enough that anyone attempting to price gouge cloth would find themselves either incapable of buying the entire market supply on the AH or being undercut with the introduction of supply from players’ bags until the good reaches equilibrium at a rate fast enough to make the prospect completely unappetizing.

For example, there’s 445,408 Shrouded Cloth on Illidan-US right now. There’s 16,000 on Earthen Ring.

Since we’re now apparently on the topic of base legendaries, let’s do some math. Let’s say you’re a freshly maxed tailor on ER and want to sell rank 4 legendaries. Grim-veiled hoods are a good candidate as they’re the preferred base item for fire mages, a pretty popular spec at the moment.

To sell your first rank 4, you have to craft 15 base legos from rank 1-3, and then that first rank 4 itself. That means to craft a rank 4, you’d need 4,495 Shrouded Cloth.

That is approximately 28% of the AH supply of Shrouded Cloth at the time of posting this. By the way, it’s a Wednesday, so people are raiding and that means people are posting on the AH. There would undoubtedly be an effect on the price of Shrouded Cloth if this were to happen.

These data are not a non sequitur, they’re supporting evidence. The server population has adverse affects on the ingame economy when it is as low as it is. As more players drop off in activity between 9.0 and 9.1, these conditions will only worsen.

#18

More players will bring more mats to the AH? Maybe, but that leads us to think that bringing more people will fix the AH? Not really.

Your solution for the AH and professions is bring more people? Even if you bring them they maybe wont farm the items you need.

The AH needs other solutions discussed lengthy in other forums (without mentioning population).

How about merging the AH from Alliance/Horde. Maybe merge all the servers’ AH?
Cap on the number of items posted and cancel auctions.
Price set for commonly used items.
Vendors sell items for gear including Legendaries.
Rebuild the Legendary crafting so they don’t require that insane amount of mats. Maybe a quest or scenario?

I am no Economist, but I from what I understand Wow has an economy and it needs to be regulated similar to the fiat currency and such. Even there you can’t guarantee that you won’t have monopolies, scarcity of goods, supply and demand, etc.

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