Posts by Captain Krompdown

  • Kromp

    Ascalon days

    Like so many others, my road to collecting began by admiring the beautiful items that I saw around Ascalon, Lion's Arch, and Drok's back in 2005. I hadn’t played much of the game but I loved the idea that these were rare items from parts of the world that I hoped to reach someday. Unfortunately, the items I admired most came with incredible price tags and seemed destined to stay in the hands of certain players who, I learned a little later, were around for the first ecto trader glitch. This explained a lot of the wealth disparity I was seeing but left me with two choices: give up or try any catch up. At the time, 1750e was an inconceivable amount of money -- enough to buy anything you wanted. Just as importantly, if you could put 7 stacks of ecto up in a trade window, that meant something around town. Getting my hands on 7 stacks of ectos became my first real goal.

    The education of Kromp (and making a business out of the pre-nerf 20% Rockmolder)

    I spent some time straight-up trading, trying to buy low(er) and selling high(er). Along the way, I learned from many people, but two in particular stand out. Chaos Theory Pvp (aka Shantel Melina) was always gracious enough to allow me to pick his brain, even though he was one of top shield traders in the game. The Herbalizer was also generous with his time and considerable knowledge. I consider both Chaos Theory and Herb to be my teachers and they would both eventually be invited to be officers in [PhD]. I made some progress and my inventory became shinier, but it was relatively slow going -- until Sept. 7, 2005.

    On that luscious autumn day, Grenth's Footprint was added to the game and with it came green items and the market for them. Malinon's shield was a big seller, as were Victo's items. But Rockmolders were what made it all happen for me. The Rockmolder was (still is) a green illusion offhand with Illusion +1 (20%). What made the Rockmolder special was the 20% HSR that applied to all skills, not just Illusion spells. This was simply too good to be true and, on Oct. 7, 2005, The Rockmolder was nerfed. After that update, all Rockmolders dropped with a 10% HSR, yet the "old" Rockmolders remained in-game. This was the niche that I found for myself.

    Rockmolders were (still are?) plentiful and you could buy them for 500g-1k very easily. After the nerf, I started hoarding old Rockmolders and selling them for 100k at first. Then 100k+10e, then 100k+20e, and so on. Given the number of Rockmolders around, it wasn't long until I had maxed out my gold stores and amassed the 1750e I needed to become a player. The Rockmolder market was so hot that, at some point, my brother O Kabongolina O joined the family business as Associate Sales Representative and made an impressive living, despite the predatory nature of Kromp, Inc.’s Rockmolder selling pyramid scheme. On July 13, 2006, every old Rockmolder in the game was "corrected" and the days of the 20% Rockmolder were over but a collector had been born.

    [Dark] times and the founding of [PhD]

    Around this time (mid/late 2006), I decided to focus on trading and collecting. I left The Doomsday Device, the guild I had co-founded and was co-leading with my friend Max Xavier, and joined The Brethren of Chaos [Dark], a high-end trader/collector guild co-led by Chaos Kurupter and Akhilleus Pthius. Eventually, [Dark] disintegrated for reasons that I won't get into here. When [Dark] fell apart I founded [PhD] on Jan. 12, 2008 with the simple purpose of preserving the history of the game, as manifested in its items.

    Because of how [Dark] fell apart and the rifts that became apparent, I decided that [PhD] would be a guild with a zero-tolerance policy on RMT, ebaying, etc. We would be a gentleman's guild -- preserving the history of the game while respecting the game enough to play it the right way. Several former members of [Dark] migrated to [PhD] and can still be seen on our guild roster, including Stza Erza (RIP), Chaos Kurupter, Jason XII, Wazza The Mighty, Rahl The Outlaw, Joe is Beastly, and others. Our success -- and the way it was obtained -- has made [PhD] the premiere destination guild for collectors throughout the game. I have many things to be proud of in Guild Wars, including whatever items I eventually post below, but the thing I am proudest of is my little guild. Thank you to all of you who wear the cape so well.

    A first peek

    With the guild's mission in mind, my personal inventory contains very little in the way of a traditional "collection". I was never out to satisfy any OCD tendencies (except in my early frenzy to collect ectos and max out my gold). My purpose in acquiring and holding items has always been to preserve distinctive items -- items that showcase the beauty and history of this game and the world we all share. There is perhaps no better example of this than Teh Axe, which allows us to peer directly back to the earliest moments of the game. You'll find Teh Axe displayed here, together with several other top-shelf axes from my storage:

    You can see that, in addition to appreciating unconditional weapons, I’m a fan of stance axes. I’ve always been a firm believer that stance gear is the best gear for warriors (outside of unconditional weapons). With that in mind, as you scroll through the images below, you’ll find components of what I believe is the finest collection of stance-based warrior gear ever assembled. Feel free to see if you can spot them.

    Another thing that you’ll notice my preference for curating a small personal museum, as opposed to a traditional collection. Rather than creating a bulky collection filled with obligatory pieces (for the sake of completeness) or standard "collector" items (for the sake of checking off expected boxes), I set my sights on creating focused sets of items that distill the beauty and history of the game by preserving museum-quality relics. For example, here is a small set of Req 8 Magmas shields that are pre-nerf in a variety of ways:

    Mag_3.png?raw=1

    Just in case there's anyone seeing this who's curious about what makes these Magmas shields special:

    • Req 8 (Gold, Max) Magmas shields don't drop anymore
    • Dual reduction shields don't drop anymore
    • Max health while hexed was raised from +45 to + 60 about a billion years ago.
    • That stance Magmas is, imo, the single finest warrior shield in the game. Others may have their favorites. This is mine <3

    Keep an eye out for similar clues about the past as you peruse images lovingly created by our local artist. I'm sure you'll be able to tell which were homemade and which were crafted by more capable hands. Over time, more and more images will be upgraded.

    More to come. Discuss amongst yourselves.

  • Your Beloved Collections

    The 15th anniversary celebration may be over but that can't slow down the nostalgia train. Here's a small tribute to one of the Guild Wars-iest shield skins of all time: Magmas shields.

    86 of our finest and favorites, plucked from the [PhD] vaults. Thanks to everyone involved, especially the shadowy mastermind with the patience and obsession necessary to make these images possible. Enjoy!

    MAG_POSTER.png?raw=1

  • The impact of minimum expected values in a price check

    PyroLobster This is great. I love your proposed revision to the PC forum. It's similar to a suggestion I made on this thread almost 2.5 years ago. Your suggestion is different (and more realistic) because in that thread, I was trying to figure out how to get something similar done while eliminating all words from PC threads in order to appease a certain mod.

    I also agree 100% that I did conflate the "price resulting from a public sale as information regarding the current state of the market" with "sale price".

    Finally, I agree that the price information produced within a sale thread and the seller's decision about whether to sell are indeed two different things. The proposed price can turn into the sale price if the seller find the proposed price acceptable. Since the ultimate purpose of a sale thread is to produce a sale, I think that the connection between those two things is extremely important. That connection is really what my post was about. Maybe a psychological/sociological look at PCs will help us understand how PCs play a role in creating the conditions under which a potential seller can reasonably (and reasonably accurately) judge whether the market price is acceptable. I was thinking more about the value of PCs in general terms and less about the format in which they should be given.

    But, in the process of trying to think about the value of PCs, I did try to first establish them as valuable by holding up a strawman version of your argument. I'm glad you called me on that and I apologize. It wasn't intentional. :heart:

  • The impact of minimum expected values in a price check

    PyroLobster and MaxBorken , I love you both and am proud to share a cape with both of you but I think this conversation has gone too far in the "sell it and see" direction.


    I'll try a different gambit and see if I can make any headway. Maybe I can’t, we’ll see. I've argued in my other posts for the role of various types of knowledge in (accurately) shaping people's expectations about prices. Here, I'm going to try to be clear about why those expectations might matter.


    The argument for obliterating the PC forum is that PCs add nothing of value and are just noise. The market will always yield a price and that price is the reality of the situation, regardless of what price-checkers might say about it. Fair enough. Simple, straightforward, saves a lot of hassle.


    But the other side of the same coin (and several people have mentioned it in passing) is that the seller has to find the price acceptable before an item is actually sold. It's not just the case that the highest bid automatically triggers a sale. Maybe it would be more fun for buyers (and maybe there would be less noise on this site) if that were the case. In reality, though, this isn’t how it works. Before a sale actually happens, the seller has to decide that the price they're being offered is acceptable.


    This is important because people when people sell items, there is something at stake. People sell items in order to continue participating in the economy. They're usually selling so that they can turn around and buy something else (a different item, armor, HoM crap, whatever). Selling is (mostly) about accumulating buying power. There are exceptions to this, of course, and I'd be happy to discuss those another time but they might be a distraction now. I'd guess that, generally speaking, selling items for cash is mostly about accumulating buying power.


    So, with that in mind, when people sell, they have an interest in somehow knowing (or trying to know) that the price they're receiving will allow them to have the buying power they need (or the increase in buying power they want). I think this is the minimal criterion for finding a price acceptable. Without the sense that selling this item will improve their ability to do the things they want in the economy, the motivation to sell (and comfort with selling) dwindles. Simply receiving a price from the market doesn’t provide this. It only puts the seller in the difficult position of having to decide whether the proposed price is acceptable.


    How do people decide whether the proposed price is acceptable? I think it can happen in at least a couple of ways:

    1. If someone has a specific purchase in mind, then maybe they can judge the proposed price for their item in light of this concrete goal. Will selling for this price allow me to buy what I want?
    2. Regardless of whether has a specific purchase in mind, maybe they can judge the proposed price in light of where it would place them on the scale of buying power (as it is known through recent sales of a wide range of items). If I sell for this price, that would allow me access to this tier or level or kind of item. That's the financial neighborhood I would be living in. Is that where I want to be?

    Again, I think this is really the minimal criterion. By answering "yes" to one of these questions, someone can sell a Req 8 unconditional axe for 10k because it allows them buy those two pieces of wood they've been wanting. The "buying power" criterion alone can't be the whole story. There is much more to it. Maybe the next set of questions is about whether the price is high enough relative to how other similar items are priced by the market. Sometimes people don't bother going beyond the buying power issue because they're so fixated on what they want to buy next. Buying power isn't the whole story, but it's probably the starting point. But even this minimal set of questions (focusing on buying power) rests on a tricky assumption – that market conditions at the time of sale will match up (at least approximately) with market conditions at the time of their next purchase. Everyone reading this thread knows that the economy in reality is dynamic and confusing. How do people make sense of a dynamic, confusing market – at least to an extent that allows them to act and not be paralyzed by fear that they are crippling themselves financially and relinquishing buying power instead of enhancing it?


    They talk to each other. Why do people talk to each other about prices of things? They may talk to each other for information, but a lot of information about previous sales is available anyway (although not a complete database like we have for weapon damage ranges or other research into loot tables). Something else happens when people talk to each other. They manufacture consensus (or pockets of consensus, or pockets of consensus that fight with each other, I don't know). In any case, they manufacture a layer of “knowledge” that helps to stabilize the random fluctuations of the economy (at least within a community that produces the talk and believes in it) and reinforce the meaningful relationships that provide us a way of valuing items relative to each other and forecasting sale prices. The talking that people do with each other is what sets the scene for certain prices to seem “right” or “wrong” or “high” or “low”. People use this kind of trick to make sense and find their way through all kinds of unpredictable and chaotic situations, including everyday life. People generate all kinds of cultural communities that allow the people participating in those communities to manage the inevitable unpredictability that comes with the fact that we are always moving into the future and that's always new. We've talked ourselves into living our lives as if things like "Christmas" and "middle age" exist, but they don't...at least not outside of the communities of people who talk as if they do exist and believe in that talk.


    Without this kind of talk – if we strictly relied on what the market spit out when an item goes up for sale – there is none of that. Every price is right simply because it’s the one that happened this time. In this vision of the world, there is no way for a person to make any judgement about whether a price is acceptable. Actually, there is no need for a person to make that decision (really, anybody who decides that the market's price isn't acceptable would just be wrong). And that contradicts one of the fundamental things that we think we know about how buying and selling actually happens. People don’t sell unless they find the price acceptable.


    So, my argument here is that price checks are important -- but not because they are predictions of what the market will yield. The market will yield what the market yields. I don’t think PyroLobster is that far off when he wagers that PCs are frequently off by 50% or more. But I’m also not sure that this is their true function. I’m arguing that price checks have a place within our economic system because they’re just one kind of talk that people engage in in order to give an understandable shape and a certain amount of predictability to the economy. This layer of knowledge and pretense of predictability is what lays the groundwork for people to be able to make the judgements they need to make in order to decide whether a proposed price is satisfactory. How can a seller decide if a price is satisfactory if the prices of other items (including the one they might want to buy next) are simply unknown and unknowable until the moment they're sold? There is no way. That would be crazy-making. Do price checks accurately predict what the market will yield? Not always. But I think PCs (good, honest, knowledge-based ones) will continue to be valuable to people because they are at least some indication of whether, in light of how the economy has behaved in the recent past, this person can reasonably expect to get the kind of boost to their buying power that they’d like to get out of the proposed sale. PCs are psychological tools but they're also tools for social coordination of the market. PCs have a psychological purpose – to give people a sense of being able to wrangle the underlying unpredictability of the economy. But PCs also have a social purpose -- to maybe make things a little more predictable through the generation of consensus. Together, these two functions provide a way for people to get a sense whether the best offer is also an acceptable one.

    Just telling someone that their item has value and then throwing them to the market doesn't help them make a decision about whether the resulting price is acceptable.

    Allowing one (or very few players) to steer the direction of consensus creates discrepancies of power that can lead to the disintegration of communities that generate economies in the first place.

    Just an idea. As my mother likes to say at the dinner table, “Take what you want and leave the rest.” Fire at will ^^

  • The impact of minimum expected values in a price check

    I do like Coffee Man 's idea of tagging every pc automatically. This is what's done for all kinds of investments in real life where people are also tempted to treat past performance as an indication of future value.

    I don't like the confusion, arrogance, and total lack of self-awareness in Pleikki 's post. There's a huge gap between suggesting an expectation for a potential seller to have and actually setting a minimum price for an item. You seem to have a vision of yourself (and maybe others, I don't know) as holding the markets in the palm of your hand. This is exactly the problem.

    I think PyroLobster 's main point is that given the choice between letting the market speak for itself and letting megalomaniacs continue to attempt to control the markets, we would all be better off turning the volume down on the megalomaniacs. I think a better option should be possible (or maybe this is just a wish) because there clearly is some knowledge available beyond the prices produced by an auction. There should be a 3rd option that would allow that knowledge to be used productively. But, like you said, PyroLobster and Coffee Man , the issue may be in how that knowledge is used.

    PyroLobster and Coffee Man are right that there has aleays been abuse of the PC system. jimbo32 , you (as a former PC guru on Guru) have expressed the same idea privately and have even linked some of that corruption to one of the prominent names in this thread (and I agree 100%). It's the worst-kept secret in trading that the PC forum is a cesspool. It seems that, for as long as there's been a PC forum, those who are most active in it are the ones who should be trusted the least.

    Assuming the PC forum isn't going to be shut down, I really think that it's up to the rest of us to do better. I know that seems simplistic, given the thought that's been put into some of the posts on the thread but maybe a multiplicity of opinions will have the same effect as forbidding PCs altogether. Both will encourage people to put their items up for sale and see if they get a price they find acceptable. The danger zone is if we allow the PC forum to be dominated by a small number of voices. jimbo32 mentioned the idea that the current situation is a function of the small community size (and presumably even smaller pool of active PCers). This is also where I agree with Coffee Man most. An active, informed community is the best antidote to the problems that come with having only a small number of active PCers. In think this is the same idea behind a certain, struggling political system that is, so far, the best we have. Without that, maybe PyroLobster should get his wish.

    It's really up to us to do better.

  • The impact of minimum expected values in a price check

    PyroLobster I like your brutal, straightforward analysis. I think it makes a lot of sense. The price that the market bears is the item's price, regardless of what anyone says it should/could/would be. The bids that you get are the reality of the situation. The talk is just talk. From the perspective, the talk is basically pointless, especially if someone just wants to sell and item *now* because they need the money for some reason, and the PC forum should indeed be burned to the ground and forgotten about. If a seller wants to know the price of their item, they should simply put it up for sale, advertise it in as many channels as possible (legacy auction, Kamadan, whatever) and see what bids come in or what prices they can negotiate. They can take the offer they like best and rest assured that, by definition, they have received market value for their item. After all, it's only the market that can tell the market value of an item. Talking heads just talk.

    I think your analysis really does apply best to people who have an item that they just want to sell right now. But not all sellers are motivated that way. For example, imagine a collector with a large store of presumably valuable items who has decided on a new direction for their collection. To start moving in that new direction, they decide to sell off some of their stash in order to stockpile some cash just so they can be ready if something they like suddenly appears. This collector is flipping through their storage, thinking about what might be good to sell. From your perspective, there's really no way to know other than to sell the items. That's undeniably true in some sense. There is no price for the item until a sale is agreed upon. But we also know that certain items have value apart from their specific price at any moment. Req 8 sephis axes are worth more than feathers. We don't need to sell the sephis and the feather to figure that out. We can know these things in general and that kind of knowledge can help guide us toward an expectation about an acceptable sale price.

    The sephis-feather example is hyperbolic but I hope it helps convey a point: The value of items isn't simply unknown or unknowable until the moment they are sold. Another way of seeing this in action would be if the hypothetical collector pulls a particular skin out of storage that isn't especially popular right now. Maybe it's not the right time to sell that particular item. Things go in and out of fashion. Specific skins might be hot shit for a certain amount of time (sometimes a very long time, sometimes not so much) and then become cliche...and then become popular again. There are plenty of examples, especially (I think) with shields, for whatever reason. Even though it's 100% true that we can only know the price of an item when we sell it, it's possible for someone to (accurately) say that a particular item is out of fashion now and that it may be smarter to hold onto that item (and maybe sell something else more popular) right now. This is another way that knowledge can creep into the process of determining what kind of price you might want to get for an item, apart from what the market will bear at the moment.

    So, while I agree with you that:

    • selling an item is the only way to learn its price, and...
    • market conditions are changing constantly, so previous sales can't be taken as a straightforward indication of current price

    ...I think that there has to be some place for knowledge in the process of evaluating the prices of potential sales. How do I know not to sell my Req 8 Sephis Axe for 15k even if that's the best bid/offer I get? I know because items aren't really completely independent of each other in terms of value. Sales aren't really completely independent events. There is a system. Whether it's rarity, aesthetics, or whatever, items are valued in relation to each other. Nothing makes that fact clearer than when those value relationships are violated, when they change, or when groups of people don't agree on those what those relationships are like in the first place. In the guild, we've had people wonder aloud how an item of Type X can really sell for more than an item of Type Y. A pair of sales can be surprising in relation to each other (and becomes a topic of conversation) because we have implicit ideas about the relative value of kinds of items, independent of the specific prices that the market might bear at any given time.

    I know I've gone on for a while here and I've gone in a couple of different directions. Sorry about that. I just wanted to post to keep the ball rolling on the constructive conversation that's been intermittently happening in this thread. I hope at least something is clear. I agree with your point about the emptiness of talk compared to the reality of the market. I think PyroLobster has done a nice job of pushing us to at least consider some pretty substantial changes to how we do things. But I also think there's more to it than just that. And, maybe unfortunately, the fact that knowledge, experience, and perspective have something to contribute to our price expectations means that asking people who may possess some of that knowledge for advice on prices is likely to remain a valid activity for the foreseeable future.

    What we need to be careful of is people taking advantage of any reputation they may have for being knowledgeable or experienced. It is naive to ignore the power that comes with that kind of reputation. And it's naive to think that those who actively try to wield that reputation do so out of altruism. But it's too much to ask new/returning players to be critical of who they receive price checks from. They're just happy to get some help when they feel like they need it. It's really up to the rest of us to do better if we want to see better done.

  • The impact of minimum expected values in a price check

    Quote from jimbo32

    Are we talking about overly-optimistic PC's creating unreasonable expectations, or are we again talking about PC'ing with a personal agenda?

    These aren't really separate issues. Extreme PCs (either high or low) can be given in service of personal interests. But like I said, that gets into trader ethics and is the deeper problem that Max may have been alluding to when he made his original comment.

    Quote from jimbo32

    Is it the framing of the educated guesses that's the problem?

    Well it all comes down to this, doesn't it? The function of. PC is to provide the potential seller with a set of expectations. The least we can do is say what the basis is for the expectations we are providing. Recent sale? Failed thread on Legacy? Your general impression? Something you remember from a year ago? What you think a frantically motivated and infinitely rich collector might pay if he's in a giving mood?

    Or should we just listen to you because you give a lot of price checks? Listening to someone because they talk a lot is a bad policy in every universe I've ever lived in :)