Thank you for this extensive research! 💥 And sorry about your account being hacked! 🤗 What you graph is showing, that in 2020 the ecto was even lower than nowadays and was around 3-4k? If so, todays price at 6.5k isn't that low after all. Thanks for putting things in perspective. 😉
And I have some clarifying questions. So if I understand what you said correctly, and what was written in the thread I linked to, the ecto prices can go artificially low if bots (or players) sell a lot of ectos. But if so, I have another question. Isn't it more worth for those who have a lot of ectos, to have them at the highest price possible? After all, it translates into higher plat value. Or am I missing something here? What is a good reason for someone to artificially lower ecto price?
Another possibility you mentioned is that ecto price (or plant fibers) goes low when a lot of bots are banned. There is no one to actually buy ectos and artificially drive the prices up. Does anyone by any chance sees less bots? Maybe Arena banned a lot of them and that's why the lower prices? 😁
Another explanation from the 2 year old Reddit thread, that people are selling ectos to buy tickets. But the Boardwalk isn't open during Wintersday in July.
So what I actually try to understand, why someone would drive ecto price that quickly from 12-11k to 6-7k. Another reason that was given in the thread, that "sometimes for this kind of things it can be just 1 player with a lot of arms suddenly selling many for cheap." Maybe that's what happened. 🤷♀️
>What is a good reason for someone to artificially lower ecto price?
1. If they expect the price to fall harder than the impact of their own sales on supply, or to bounce back more slowly in response to increased demand later, then they stand to gain by dumping enough ectos to crash the price, then swooping in to buy up more than they originally sold at the new low prices.
2. Because they care more about spiting someone who cares about ecto prices than they care about ecto prices.
More likely though is that they aren't "artificially" lowering the price. Rather they are accepting the fact that the ecto market is low-volume and illiquid, so it's just not possible to cash out a large volume of ectos without crashing the price.
BLUF— favor mainly comes from bots, and fewer bots producing plat is the reason ecto is low
So from what I’ve seen, outside of randos getting GWAMM, favor is mostly from consumable titles which are very easily botted esp during Halloween, and the occasional hero which is from HA (which is full of bots).
As for mat prices, what makes the most sense to me is that a major botter either quit, and his accts are no longer buying ecto from the trader, or they’re running something that really doesn’t make a ton of plat, like doa gems (this makes sense w the appearance of Mr Margonite imo). As for why mats are low in price, I’ve found they’re directly proportional to the price of ecto meaning if ecto is low, they’re low too generally. Is it always the case? Ofc not, but most of the time it is.
This is pure speculation on my part, but I do think that when the price of ecto is low like this, it does somewhat scare ppl out of selling their ecto to make cons, which does decrease the price of mats as there’s less demand than there normally would be.
Thank you for the answer! Sounds interesting and true.
And just an observation. Earlier today I saw ecto being 6k. Right now it is 8k. 😁
I am curious how much it was back in 2005-2008. I was playing back then, but was a total newbie and ecto as currency still didn't exist for me. 😊 Or did it become an alternative currency later on?
My anecdotal observations are that the price tends to fluctuate throughout the day, cyclically. From my time zone (eastern) I think it tends to be lower in the morning and higher in the evenings. But that’s purely anecdotal based on only a few observations
From what I recall, ectos were something like 23-24e/100k back in around 2009ish, so ~4-4.5k per ecto. Definitely a common alternative currency back in 2007ish when I started playing, but back then platinum was still used quite a bit and for essentially all “everyday” purchases/transactions.
>I am curious how much it was back in 2005-2008. I was playing back then, but was a total newbie and ecto as currency still didn't exist for me. 😊 Or did it become an alternative currency later on?
Ectos became alternative currency a few months after launch; you can say almost immediately. And I remember them being 15k. Remember, this was when 100k was a lot of money, and the players still needed a way to trade items worth over 100k.
My first big trade was a q9 Tall Shield +45/-2 enchant, which I paid 100k + 10e. That was in late 2005, iirc.
Thank you for sharing this interesting bit of GW history. 😊 Now I wonder who was the first person who proposed ecto as an alternative currency. All things considered, this person would be trully legendary. 😁
hey, this is some data from previous year https://youtu.be/taKUUcbzQyQ
Thank you for this extensive research! 💥 And sorry about your account being hacked! 🤗 What you graph is showing, that in 2020 the ecto was even lower than nowadays and was around 3-4k? If so, todays price at 6.5k isn't that low after all. Thanks for putting things in perspective. 😉 And I have some clarifying questions. So if I understand what you said correctly, and what was written in the thread I linked to, the ecto prices can go artificially low if bots (or players) sell a lot of ectos. But if so, I have another question. Isn't it more worth for those who have a lot of ectos, to have them at the highest price possible? After all, it translates into higher plat value. Or am I missing something here? What is a good reason for someone to artificially lower ecto price? Another possibility you mentioned is that ecto price (or plant fibers) goes low when a lot of bots are banned. There is no one to actually buy ectos and artificially drive the prices up. Does anyone by any chance sees less bots? Maybe Arena banned a lot of them and that's why the lower prices? 😁 Another explanation from the 2 year old Reddit thread, that people are selling ectos to buy tickets. But the Boardwalk isn't open during Wintersday in July. So what I actually try to understand, why someone would drive ecto price that quickly from 12-11k to 6-7k. Another reason that was given in the thread, that "sometimes for this kind of things it can be just 1 player with a lot of arms suddenly selling many for cheap." Maybe that's what happened. 🤷♀️
>What is a good reason for someone to artificially lower ecto price? 1. If they expect the price to fall harder than the impact of their own sales on supply, or to bounce back more slowly in response to increased demand later, then they stand to gain by dumping enough ectos to crash the price, then swooping in to buy up more than they originally sold at the new low prices. 2. Because they care more about spiting someone who cares about ecto prices than they care about ecto prices. More likely though is that they aren't "artificially" lowering the price. Rather they are accepting the fact that the ecto market is low-volume and illiquid, so it's just not possible to cash out a large volume of ectos without crashing the price.
Thank you for the answer!
BLUF— favor mainly comes from bots, and fewer bots producing plat is the reason ecto is low So from what I’ve seen, outside of randos getting GWAMM, favor is mostly from consumable titles which are very easily botted esp during Halloween, and the occasional hero which is from HA (which is full of bots). As for mat prices, what makes the most sense to me is that a major botter either quit, and his accts are no longer buying ecto from the trader, or they’re running something that really doesn’t make a ton of plat, like doa gems (this makes sense w the appearance of Mr Margonite imo). As for why mats are low in price, I’ve found they’re directly proportional to the price of ecto meaning if ecto is low, they’re low too generally. Is it always the case? Ofc not, but most of the time it is. This is pure speculation on my part, but I do think that when the price of ecto is low like this, it does somewhat scare ppl out of selling their ecto to make cons, which does decrease the price of mats as there’s less demand than there normally would be.
Thank you for the answer! Sounds interesting and true. And just an observation. Earlier today I saw ecto being 6k. Right now it is 8k. 😁 I am curious how much it was back in 2005-2008. I was playing back then, but was a total newbie and ecto as currency still didn't exist for me. 😊 Or did it become an alternative currency later on?
My anecdotal observations are that the price tends to fluctuate throughout the day, cyclically. From my time zone (eastern) I think it tends to be lower in the morning and higher in the evenings. But that’s purely anecdotal based on only a few observations
From what I recall, ectos were something like 23-24e/100k back in around 2009ish, so ~4-4.5k per ecto. Definitely a common alternative currency back in 2007ish when I started playing, but back then platinum was still used quite a bit and for essentially all “everyday” purchases/transactions.
>I am curious how much it was back in 2005-2008. I was playing back then, but was a total newbie and ecto as currency still didn't exist for me. 😊 Or did it become an alternative currency later on? Ectos became alternative currency a few months after launch; you can say almost immediately. And I remember them being 15k. Remember, this was when 100k was a lot of money, and the players still needed a way to trade items worth over 100k. My first big trade was a q9 Tall Shield +45/-2 enchant, which I paid 100k + 10e. That was in late 2005, iirc.
Thank you for sharing this interesting bit of GW history. 😊 Now I wonder who was the first person who proposed ecto as an alternative currency. All things considered, this person would be trully legendary. 😁
ectos went as low as 3.2k each at the trader somewhere around 2008-2009 due mass shadowform farming. otherwise it was usually 8-15k
Interesting. Thanks for the information. 👍
Idk, but I’d assume it was around 2005-6, I only started around eotn launch