I started playing GW in 2008 and played consistently for 5+ years, since then I have been on and off, with the last few months probably being my most consistently active in a long time. The market right now is ridiculous and all over the place, I think everyone can agree on that. The most outrageous thing to me though are bds and e-blade prices. I understand supply and demand, but is there really a market for q9-eblades at 60-75a? I mean that is nearly 5ke, q13 and q12 are being advertised at 20-30a- again, really? 2,000 ecto for a q12 eternal blade, an item that people are getting as drops literally every day.
The same is true for bds, the cheapest bds I have seen advertised at 13 was still asking something like 350e, and q9s are advertised at 40-70a. This is just insane. As far as I can tell, UWSC and SOOSC are still run very often by SC guilds, so it's not like these got any harder. I hadn't run SOOSC in years, and the other day I hopped in a run where I basically had no idea what I was doing and it still only took like 9 minutes - these prices just do not add up.
I guess I just wanted to open up the discussion to see what people think about this. I know you can't really compare the market now to what it used to be, but in the not too crazy distant past you could get bds in the 50-150e range for attributes people didn't care too much about. You used to see high req e-blades in the 1xxe realm, and now you are seeing them advertised at more than 10 times that. If it is based on drop rates, are we really saying a Mini GH drops at the same rate as a q9 e-blade? The prices really are not insanely far apart. I mean maybe it does now (really not trying to start a discussion on botting because that is a significant separate issue).
I have a few things I have been thinking. Again, simple supply and demand could be the answer- nowadays if you want something, in some ways you just have to pay what someone is asking because you may not find someone else selling. (Like paying 5e for a +30 shield mod, a few years ago that would be like 3k, but now you're lucky if you find someone in kama that happens to have one sitting in xunlai).
Another theory I have, a little conspiratorial but let's have some fun - could the major SC guilds have gotten together and agreed on these prices to keep their runs profitable? To me this really is not that far-fetched of an idea. Again, if the people who are getting these drops decide among themselves that this is what the items are worth now, the rest of the community does not have too much of a choice. The other thing that makes me think this, are the prices of other end chest drops. Things like VS, obby edge, emerald blade, honestly even frog scepter, have increased of course, but nowhere NEAR e-blades and bds. Why is that the case? If we follow the same logic of supply and demand, q13 obby edges should be like 600-700e MINIMUM right now.
Either way, it just seems crazy to me and would love to hear what other people think.