What caused the Great Christmas Inflation

[Absolutely Virtue]

Then christmas rolls around, and parents who have no real parenting skills or connections to their kids figure a good present is this 'gil' thing that their kids 'need' to play their game. It's easier than a gift card and can be done online. And it's under $20.

I've always laughed at the suggestion that the RMT explosion was fueled by kids getting gil from their parents for Christmas.

Maybe my parents are specifically retarded, but I don't think they could have managed to navigate an RMT transaction when I was a kid. I don't understand everything about how RMT works, but from what I gather you buy the gil and have it delivered in game (how else could it work?). So were kids giving their parents their user/pass so they could log in and do that?

Or did parents just place orders and have them dbox'd to the kid's mog house? Did RMT sites set that up to have the gil automatically delivered on Christmas morning?

I just don't understand the specifics.

And while I'm sure the quality of parenting has declined in recent years, I have to imagine most parents would still be pretty skeptical about the concept of giving their kid money to buy fake game money.

You can't honestly think RMT were doing a booming business dealing with soccer moms, not when your average FFXI player has a job and a credit/debit card (based on who I've met in 5+ years).

[altwight]

Lol, fishing rusty caps method was done away with well before the christmas inflation. Anyone who says otherwise is a fucking retard. That method was like 03-04. It was waaaaay early in NA release because I hadn't played that long (and i started 5months after NA release) I had a 34monk as my main and was able to buy Okotes due to this method. Soon after that it was nerfed and I bitched at my friend for telling me to level smithing to 34. Rusty caps had nothing to do with the 05 christmas inflation. stfu if you think it did. Gil duping? I've never heard about that but with the salvage dupe and the selling . to npc for 10mil method a long time ago also I wouldn't doubt a gil dupe.

I remember the Dbox dupe. Pull out your ethernet cord and take out whatever you could before you couldn't anymore. Come back and duped.

As stated many times it was the huge population of RMT back then. Prices were already sky high before christmas of 05 however during christmas time they lowered their prices a shit ton to bring in more customers and it worked throughout all servers im sure. 5$/mil was just too good to pass up. Selling Kirin's Osode for 55mil was way better than spending 110$ in my opinion ^_^

[SephYuyX]

I really hope the inflation happens again, it was such a great gil maker.

[urat]

If I recall correctly the christmas inflation was rmt's favourite time.

It was actually caused by a very simple glitch, in witch a person could sit and endlessly take items out of their delivery box, DC halfway, get it, but still have it in box, thus duping it.

All they had to do was send themselves 100K and they could make about 5-6 million gil a minute.

Was patched like a day after it was discovered, and not a few weeks later yet another glitchw as found, almot identicle but using the AH instead.

Just take item out of ah your selling but Dc, and it stays their and you dupe it. But the individuals who discovered it were smart and isntead of flooding market, duped stacks of items that NPC sold well, and NPC sold them for huge profit.

Result was a few hundred trillion gil total being made in one night, and a few hundred billion total over another week before the secodn trick was discovered and abolished too.

Then, with all that money, only one thing was left to happen, inflation beyond belief...

[gandorf]

I really hope the inflation happens again, it was such a great gil maker.

I thought I was the only person who enjoyed the inflation. It made wearing some equipment feel like a accomplishment. Like when a whm got their nobles tunic for the first time. You truly felt like you deserved.

No, it wasn't. It was patched sometime in 2006; I started playing around RMT Christmas (2005) and used to farm in Pashhow till like June 06- there were rusty cap bots there all that time.

I had a friend who during Rmt Xmas would spend hours upon hours in Pashhow. It got to the point where we nicknamed him Mr.Pashhow as a joke.

[Absolutely Virtue]

This is random, but I was reading the 'shitty economy' thread, specifically a post about items once being worth a ton that are now basically worthless. I paid 8m for a Peace Cape +1 for my WHM on Fairy in 9/05. At the time, Errant Capes were something ridiculous like 30m. While -Enmity for WHM at 66 (or any time, really) is kind of lol, there weren't a whole lot of other options and that wasn't a gigantic sum of money at the time.

Of course, I hung onto it until the economy crashed. It sat in the AH history for literally years as proof of how much money I wasted. My own sad, very public joke. I was surprised to see people started selling them again almost exactly three years later (for 1/20th the price). By the way, why do people want this item again? PUP, maybe? I have no idea.

Anyway, what makes this relevant is that in January '06 some guy sold one to himself on Odin for 868m. That's the most gil I've ever seen on the AH before, although I imagine someone sold something for max at some point. I thought the timing of that sale vis a vis this conversation was interesting.

Peace Cape +1 - Bahamut - FFXIAH.com

[Tubbers]

You want &sid=12

Peace Cape +1 - Odin - FFXIAH.com

[Arthars]

FU epic Xmas make me buy 12.5M nobles for wife

and oh my kikoku suffered major blow on fucking byne 20k bynes on my last 5000 currency

FU FU FU shoudla sell currency that time and make more relic than minidragon

[Apelila]

I'm convinced that there was some specific exploit taking place at the exact same time of the hyperinflation. And since it happened on every server and average players didn't know about it, I suspect RMT.

I remember the Dbox dupe. Pull out your ethernet cord and take out whatever you could before you couldn't anymore. Come back and duped.

CoP Gil making scheme

1: I don't believe you could dupe gil, but you could sure as hell dupe items. Not that I ever did, I found out after it was fixed from a friend who's long since quite how he made all his money.

Basically, Dboxing used to be like character POS: The server used to trust the client, but didn't verify certain things if there was extreme lag.
If you knew what to do you could temp interrupt your connection, empty / close the Dbox and recover from R0 to open your DBox again and have everything still in it. Also, You couldn't do it with Gil (or I never knew anyone who tried / admitted it).

You can still do it with POS hacking to an extent. You can only run for 30 seconds, but you can move without aggro / mobs in a zone until you reconnect and the server recognized where your character is instead of putting you back to where you were.

2: Combine this with things that sold for 10's or 100's of K to NPC's = rusty caps contributed, but in the end did not near the amount that this did.

Its part of the reason theres a bit of lag when you take something out of your box now. Its confirming with the server it was delivered instead of just saying 'oh here you go' and then 'oh look, your inventory is full of scorpion harness +1's'.

3: Don't forget quests

An Explorer's Footsteps - FFXIclopedia - a Wikia Gaming wiki
Cargo - FFXIclopedia - a Wikia Gaming wiki

And many, many others that have been nerfed all to hell becuase RMT used to fly through zones to exploit the ever loving hell out of them.

[Kaylia]

weskits were never 30k before the inflation. dragon talons were still rare back because isnms didn't exist

A few months ago, I got a dragon talon doing chocobo hot and cold. Made me go irl. Paid that shit 3m for NQ before inflation.

[Pergo]

my friend once had to choose how to spend his 8mil... an nq weskit or jupiter staff. he always brings up how he can't believe they're so low now lol

[Sobie]

For the record, I remember *by far* the worst inflation was Christmas of '05. I remember buying my Pent rope for 4 mil. I have never seen prices skyrocket quite like they did then (and most of my friends who still play and I joke about it).

In some ways its too bad.. People actually made money farming beehive chips and slime oil and it was worthwhile for the newbies.

Also, I die a little inside everytime someone mentions the 3 mil wesqit. I got BLM to 73, bought a wesqit for that price out of pocket and within a week they introduced talons in ISNM's. Ever since I have been paranoid that anything I buy from AH will auto-devalue right after I buy it

[Guyverarmor]

A big chunk of that gil source was because of the rusty caps and the Tavnazian NPCs. Buying gear for 4mil but selling it for 8mil wut?

And on the weskit topic, I bought mine when it first got introduced into the game...4mil on midgar when it came out , fuck now they are 20k

[ninjafox]

Man I remember that, fire crystal stacks were 5k and light elementals were a rare mob lol

[Keria]

Also, I die a little inside everytime someone mentions the 3 mil wesqit. I got BLM to 73, bought a wesqit for that price out of pocket and within a week they introduced talons in ISNM's. Ever since I have been paranoid that anything I buy from AH will auto-devalue right after I buy it

This is a lie because you don't have BLM unlocked

I paid like 1mil for hume rse2 gloves around that time lol ; ; though making like 120k per stack from beastman blood was winar for new players.

[Absolutely Virtue]

I paid like 1mil for hume rse2 gloves around that time lol ; ; though making like 120k per stack from beastman blood was winar for new players.

Using current Fairy prices:

Marine M Gloves: 400k median (357k average)
Marine F Gloves: 300k median (250k average)

For the sake of argument, average those to 350k median and 300k average.

Beastman Blood: 18,800 median (19,837 average)

Today, you'd have to farm 18.62 stacks of blood to get your gloves.

Assuming your numbers from the inflation are accurate, you only had to farm 8.3 (repeating, of course) stacks of blood to get them during inflation.

All things being equal, the 1m you spent then was a much better bargain. This is the basic concept behind inflation that most people fail to grasp. The true price of what you're buying is not what's listed on the AH. It's the amount of time you spend to get it.

To the people longing for the days of inflation, remember that a Peacock Charm was upwards of 20m at one point. Using your numbers again, that's 166.67 (again, repeating of course) stacks of blood. In 2008 today's prices (median PCC on Fairy 1.65m), you need to farm 87.77 stacks of blood. You can get one twice as fast today.

I'm simplifying the argument, but I hope you see my point. The total price you pay for something has little value in determining what something is really worth. What you want to watch for is the ratio between what you farm and what you want to buy. The lower the ratio, the higher your purchasing power, regardless of price.

[Ziero]

I guess the question I'm trying to find an answer to is:

Why were RMT able to charge $5/mil then, but signficantly more now?

Because back in 05, they had near total control of every possible way to make gil. Anything players could do to make money, RMT could do better, faster, longer. But unlike players, RMT would sit on that gil, let it pile up, and then sell it to you. Then once you got your gil, you'd go to the AH, buy the fancy, new, super expensive item and be on your way. The only problem is that you bought the item from the same people who gave you the gil. So while they continue to farm these expensive items, players keep giving them back the money they just bought, effectively doubling a RMT's income.

But they can't farm the same things anymore. They can't kill sky gods or fish 24/7 or pos hack gil quests. Their farmers get nuked and they're left with only lowbie options. And those are no where near as effective as high level methods of money making.

I've always laughed at the suggestion that the RMT explosion was fueled by kids getting gil from their parents for Christmas.

Maybe my parents are specifically retarded, but I don't think they could have managed to navigate an RMT transaction when I was a kid. I don't understand everything about how RMT works, but from what I gather you buy the gil and have it delivered in game (how else could it work?). So were kids giving their parents their user/pass so they could log in and do that?

Kids get lots of money for X-mas, guess where they spend that money. Hint, it's not food/clothes/shelter. Parents wouldn't buy the gil directly in most cases, but kids with dispoable income will dispose of it.

Inflation is not caused by people buying and selling gil to each other even if an RMT and gil seller are part of the transaction.

Its caused by MORE gil than there was before. In this case a LOT more. SE removed like 300 billion gil in 1 month. (See playoneline Feb 2006 archives).

Feb 06 was when the inflation started to crash, because SE started to finally step up to stop it. But RMT *ARE* the reason it got so high. In a normal economy, players would build up to XX amount of gil and spend it, circulating it through-out the system. But RMT hoarded it, held it and kept large sums of cash out of circulation. At the same time they artifically inflated prices on expensive items by cornering markets and monopolizing NMs and Crafting fields due to sheer numbers. Once the prices were high they'd sell you the cash in excessively large chunks and you the player would give it right back the moment you bought one of their items. It doesn't specifically need to be "more" gil then before, it just needs to flood in all at once, which is something RMT tried very hard to do. If the only options you had was to buy their gil so you could buy their items, it was a win win scenario for them.

Using current Fairy prices:

Marine M Gloves: 400k median (357k average)
Marine F Gloves: 300k median (250k average)

For the sake of argument, average those to 350k median and 300k average.

Beastman Blood: 18,800 median (19,837 average)

Today, you'd have to farm 18.62 stacks of blood to get your gloves.

Assuming your numbers from the inflation are accurate, you only had to farm 8.3 (repeating, of course) stacks of blood to get them during inflation.

All things being equal, the 1m you spent then was a much better bargain. This is the basic concept behind inflation that most people fail to grasp. The true price of what you're buying is not what's listed on the AH. It's the amount of time you spend to get it.

To the people longing for the days of inflation, remember that a Peacock Charm was upwards of 20m at one point. Using your numbers again, that's 166.67 (again, repeating of course) stacks of blood. In 2008 today's prices (median PCC on Fairy 1.65m), you need to farm 87.77 stacks of blood. You can get one twice as fast today.

I'm simplifying the argument, but I hope you see my point. The total price you pay for something has little value in determining what something is really worth. What you want to watch for is the ratio between what you farm and what you want to buy. The lower the ratio, the higher your purchasing power, regardless of price.

Question: What is the major difference between RSE hands and the Pcharm circa 2005?

Answer: Pcharm could be botted and controlled by RMT.

Though your example does try play a fairly decent point of comparing how difficult it was to make gil then versus how hard it is now, it fails to consider the fact of where the gil was going. RMT controlled the prices of Pcharms, but not RSE. Now Pcharms are much rarer to find while RSE is actually more wanted then before. While it's true that the real "measure of inflation" is how much time it takes to obtain something now vs then, you also have to take into account how certain items change in availibility.

The short answer to the OPs question is simply: RMT caused it.

[sleekmotorwurkz]

FU epic Xmas make me buy 12.5M nobles for wife

and oh my kikoku suffered major blow on fucking byne 20k bynes on my last 5000 currency

FU FU FU shoudla sell currency that time and make more relic than minidragon

20k you serious?
I remember during the xmas inflation and for a while after selling single bills for 100k each

[Vodou]

Ziero

I would have to quote almost everything you said, but basically, you don't seem to understand how either RL or game economics work.


1) Gil sellers are not NPC. They are RL business people that make money by selling things for money. They don't pay their bills with gil... they pay in RL money. Absolute asked:

"Why were RMT able to charge $5/mil then, but signficantly more now?"

The answer is that RMT had purchased large amounts of gil recently from the gil dupes and or other in-game hacks. Perhaps they had duped it themselves. Either way, they had huge amounts of gil. So why didnt they sell it for $30 / million instead of $5 / million. If Joe Blow wanted to buy a PCC for 20 million gil and the Gil sellers owned the PCC, then by selling the gil for $30 / million, Joe would just have to give them $600 for the 20 million gil, right?

Of course, so why did the Gil sellers let him have it for $5 when it should have been $30? The answer is because Joe didn't have $600. He only had $100. The point: the price of $5 is the price the gil sellers had to drop the price of gil to get their inventory moving. Its not rocket science if you understand business. Or economics. They don't make more money by giving away what they have for 1/6th of what they COULD sell it for. If they could have sold it for $30, they would have.

2) Why did the gil sellers have all this gil? You said:

"RMT hoarded it, held it and kept large sums of cash out of circulation."

This would work if the RMT were teenagers playing a game. But they aren't. They make $$ by selling gil at the highest possible price. Your logic is this: I am selling gil at $30, so let me hoard it until I have a lot and then sell it all at $5. I guess NPC's or gamers do this. RL people don't do this. Your theory fails. They sold it at $30, because that is what the market would bear. When duping became rampant and they had tons more gil to sell, they could could not sell it for $30 because no one in RL wanted a $600 PCC.

3) How did gil sellers control the markets and force recirculation of the gil back to them? You said:

"At the same time they artifically inflated prices on expensive items by cornering markets"

But no. Every market inflated. Even fire crystals. MOST of the auction house then as well as now is not in gil sellers or RMT hands, yet when the inflation happened it impacted everything. Inflation ALONE was why prices went up on everything, rmt and non rmt alike. I know they did not do it in staves on my server because that is the market I was in. That for certain did not control that and yet we were selling staves for $6-10 million each. Moreover, how did they CONTROL markets when there were people who already owned the items and could re-sell their kotes or PCC, etc.

The basic tenet of your post is your short answer that RMT caused the inflation.

The problem is your theory requires assumptions and people to act like teenagers in a game instead of like business people in RL

a) you have no proof (you assume this)

b) the EXACT same thing would have happened as it did even if there were no RMT on the planet (just from duping and hacks)

c) RMT would have to act like idiot business people to act the way you proposed ( you assume this)

The obvious answer is the simplest one.

1) There were hacks which created gil (we already know this is a fact)

2) gil was sold to gil sellers or duped by RMT or duped and spread by players (any or all of these could be true. at least some are facts)

3) gil sellers re sold it at $30 (fact)

4) inflation caused items to increase in prices, causing the value of "purchase" gil to decline (fact. only requires a modest knowledege of monetary theory to see this)

5) gil sellers had to lower prices to to accomodate faling demand at growing stock of gil ( common buisness supply and demand theory... fact)

repeat steps 2, 3, 4, and 5.

That was the Christmas inflation. None of this theory requires stupid business people, made up facts or genies. Its all based upon facts.

In February and March, 2006 SE plugged the major hacks and deleted 550 billion stocks of gil. In February 2007, the last major hack (rusty caps) was plugged and another 184 billion deleted.

[Kerberoz]

I'd rather have inflation back than deal with this economy... used to be able to actually profit consistently from crafting. Hi there 15m v.claw, 14m nq harness, 30m hq harness. Hi 5m talon, 6m nq weskit, 150m genie weskit. 1-2m tips just for synthing an NQ cursed armor...