P99 Auctions is Closing

[paulgiamatti]

The tone I'm getting from P99 Auctions is that they just don't want to have to deal with it, which is understandable, but I hope they change their mind(s) and take Throxis up on his offer.

We could try some more defensive coding strategies and hope the spammers give up as well...but, this is an elf sim, not a job.

And yeah they could probably prevent the issue by just shutting down the ability for players to upload logs altogether, and setting up a system with their own client on its own IP address, but I'm sure that'd be way more work and way more maintenance than changing code and there'd be significant drawbacks like more downtime, etc.

[Baler]

I'm not sure if english is your first language. But what you described is not the opposite experience.

Also I can't believe that joining a guild made your experience any worse then playing without a guild. Maybe it was a toxic guild or just not the right fit for you.
On top of that those people in that guild will affect you and people you group with whether you were in that guild or not.

[paulgiamatti]

The actual in-game community on P99 sans the raid scene is tolerable at best; the forums are a cesspool.

And yeah I mean I have to take what you're saying about these guilds with a grain of salt given how much I disagree with you on a number of things. There are douchebags in every guild, but if your attitude about intraofficer elitism is anything like your attitude about P99 Auctions, I'm gonna guess it wasn't as bad as you're making it sound.

[Lhancelot]

Originally Posted by paulgiamatti [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The actual in-game community on P99 sans the raid scene is tolerable at best; the forums are a cesspool.

And yeah I mean I have to take what you're saying about these guilds with a grain of salt given how much I disagree with you on a number of things. There are douchebags in every guild, but if your attitude about intraofficer elitism is anything like your attitude about P99 Auctions, I'm gonna guess it wasn't as bad as you're making it sound.

Well you are taking what I write about P99 auctions and only reflecting on what you want to disagree with. That's fine.

My take on P99 auctions is that it had pros and cons. I never said it was awful. I simply explained the good and bad of it.

The fact is that it was manipulated easily by ingame players.

Another fact is it provided a very convenient way to watch a live stream of ec, and it did provide some baseline average price on all items auctioned.

Whether that price was always a fair or accurate number is up for debate.

[Lojik]

Originally Posted by Lhancelot [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Well you are taking what I write about P99 auctions and only reflecting on what you want to disagree with. That's fine.

My take on P99 auctions is that it had pros and cons. I never said it was awful. I simply explained the good and bad of it.

The fact is that it was manipulated easily by ingame players.

Another fact is it provided a very convenient way to watch a live stream of ec, and it did provide some baseline average price on all items auctioned.

Whether that price was always a fair or accurate number is up for debate.

Not to sound condescending, but judging by your join date you joined the server after p99auctions had already been around for a while. How can you really have a sense of how p99 auctions changed the server? Before p99 auctions buying/selling in EC you had assholes already. Here are a few random things I have noticed peddling a lot of farmed goods in EC before and after p99 auctions began.

1) It seems like the site facilitated trade more easily: people on both ends were pretty confident with prices being around what they expected, particularly with commonly sold goods.

2) Before p99 auctions, if I auctioned something at 3k, even if it was below what I almost always saw it for sale for in ec, I'd get tells for buying at 2.5k and reject. These people would almost always insist that 2.5k was fair price, or they couldn't afford more, or their dog died so please help them out etc. After p99 auctions, I'd say 75% of the time I reject a lowball offer they just say "fine I'll buy at 3k."

3) Prices seem to have a much lower variance: Schnickusaurus even made a thread about how he can only turn 1k profit buying/selling on Fungis and he was going to "retire" from this market.

[Tuurin]

Basic economics: Traders rely on price variation (buy low, sell high). If everyone pretty much agrees on a price for an item (historical and average price data provided by auction site) then trading becomes much less lucrative, since nobody really sells for less than value and nobody really buys for more than the value.

But if there's no set price (no auction site, no historical data) then it's the wild west again and those with more information (tunnelquesters) have a big advantage.

[Lhancelot]

Originally Posted by Lojik [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Not to sound condescending, but judging by your join date you joined the server after p99auctions had already been around for a while. How can you really have a sense of how p99 auctions changed the server? Before p99 auctions buying/selling in EC you had assholes already. Here are a few random things I have noticed peddling a lot of farmed goods in EC before and after p99 auctions began.

1) It seems like the site facilitated trade more easily: people on both ends were pretty confident with prices being around what they expected, particularly with commonly sold goods.

2) Before p99 auctions, if I auctioned something at 3k, even if it was below what I almost always saw it for sale for in ec, I'd get tells for buying at 2.5k and reject. These people would almost always insist that 2.5k was fair price, or they couldn't afford more, or their dog died so please help them out etc. After p99 auctions, I'd say 75% of the time I reject a lowball offer they just say "fine I'll buy at 3k."

3) Prices seem to have a much lower variance: Schnickusaurus even made a thread about how he can only turn 1k profit buying/selling on Fungis and he was going to "retire" from this market.

I started on P99 in 2012, took a long break and came back less than a year ago. Originally, I never verified through email my forum account, and lost that email sent from P99, so had to use a new email and do it over again when i came back to the game. The join date you see doesn't reflect accurately how long I have been on the server.

When I first started on P99 I used to use wiki for prices, there was no P99 auctions. I learned about P99 auctions when I noticed wiki prices were not updated frequently and the prices were old, so I started asking how people checked prices.

Your examples and what you use as proof of how P99 auctions made prices fair and less varied are strictly subjective personal experiences of your own. You have no hard data that proves your case, only what "seems" to be the case. That being said...

I personally could manipulate the P99 auction prices without even putting hardly any effort into it. I did it. This isn't subjective, this is fact.

You can stand by your opinion that P99 kept prices regulated fairly etc., but that's not really the case because the fact is P99 auction prices were being manipulated by sellers.

That "monthly average price" of items, where do you think it came from?

It came from prices that were collected from EC that were set by the players, and I know it's hard to fathom, but many players understood this and put up false advertisements for the sole purpose of setting the price for items they commonly farmed and sold.

You are correct when you say prices had a much less variance I agree with that, because the prices set were easy to go look up and read from P99 auctions... That doesn't mean those prices were not fixed by players selling specific items or that those listed prices gave a fair price for an items actual plat worth.

[Lhancelot]

Originally Posted by Baler [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I'm not sure if english is your first language. But what you described is not the opposite experience.

Also I can't believe that joining a guild made your experience any worse then playing without a guild. Maybe it was a toxic guild or just not the right fit for you.
On top of that those people in that guild will affect you and people you group with whether you were in that guild or not.

Interesting.

I am not in that guild, and they have had zero affect on me since leaving them. I am sure you know my experiences and understand my position better than I do, though.

Large raid guilds on this server all share the same composition from what I can tell.

They have a core group that operate and run the guild, and a zerg of followers that do their bidding like pixel gathering slaves.

The pixels gathered are distributed in a way that core members and butt-buddies of core members have first dibs on such items, always.

"Fringe" members, or members who are anonymous nobodies all gather around hoping some pixels slip down to them after the core group devours what they deem they need for themselves, or their 5 other alts.

Eventually after months and even years, even fringe members will get leftover pixels.

They are content with this process because they have a raid guild tag that shows how superior they are to those on the game without such a tag, also it's the only way they can get high end pixels.

As long as they put in a couple years of soaking up DKP they too will finally have raid gear that a core member happens to have on 5 or more alts, and they too will have finally reached pixel heaven that non-raiders will never have a chance of reaching.

I realize it's a matter of perspective, honestly. However, This is my perspective on it.


Since leaving two different raid guilds over a span of a few years I am back to enjoying the game again, playing it as I like without having to worry about raiding and the shitty process involved with it.

Oh, and my interaction has improved with players in the game because my activities are not revolving around raiding and running from one raid target to another every day.

Now I can leisurely chat any time I am on with players about faction grinding, lesser known quests, and I can level my lowbie alts in peace now.

Simply put, my time in the game is relaxing and fun again.

[Triode]

I'm happy to learn about ahungry for its live feed, but sadly it appears that the search function is not as reliable on that site and the database incomplete in so far as lower tier items?

By way of background, I am relatively new to p99 and, due to the inevitable passage of time since my heyday on live, a casual player with limited time to play. In addition to the simple joy of convenient nostalgic window shopping, the marvelous thing about p99auctions for me was that I could run quick searches, a few times a day off my phone browser, for unremarkable mid-level gear that pops up only rarely in EC (frankly, none of it is priced high enough to be worth the time it takes to sell for affluent players). The site has been hugely beneficial for me to be able to see who was selling these items so that I could then login, when possible, and message the the sellers in game to see if the items were still available. Often they were, and the sellers with whom I communicated always seemed grateful that the site had facilitated these transactions.

As a test, I just ran searches for a few such items I have been following on ahungry (e.g. conch shell horn, unicorn horn, thunder runed war spear, symphonic saber etc.) In certain instances, the items are not recognized by the database at all. In others, ahungry is failing to display numerous instances in which these items were actually auctioned in EC over the course of the last month or two, as reported on p99auctions and confirmed in my exchanges with the sellers.

For those of us who simply do not have a lot of time to spend in EC, I really hope that there is some way to preserve this search functionality on one of these sites. That said, even if there isn't, my thanks to the admins/devs at p99auctions, ahungry and others who have dedicated their time and efforts to improving the transparency and efficiency of the p99 economy. The vast majority of the player base who are not scammy resellers truly appreciate it.

[Lhancelot]

Originally Posted by Triode [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The vast majority of the player base who are not scammy resellers truly appreciate it.

Resellers can be annoying, in fact I even put some on ignore once I seen their spam too much in EC and just wanted to minimalize the /auc spam.

That being said, reselling on eq1 is classic. I don't see it as being "scammy".

I also suspect the hate for the P99 auction site went far deeper than just "scammy resellers."

Those resellers did fine while P99 auctions was active, it did nothing to stop them from buying/selling.

In fact, I am sure some of the resellers appreciated P99 auction site too, and no need to keep beating this dead horse on how or why they would.

My point is, resellers flourished while P99 auctions was up, and it most likely was sabotaged by people making far more than some extra 100 plats on some low tier items here and there.