Sunday, June 7, 2009

End of week, and something I noticed...

So, another week in Vana'diel come and gone:

Sunday Dynamis:  Windurst.  Win.  A fairly decent one too.

Wednesday Dynamis:  Did not attend (errands for roommate plus a rare thunderstorm -- our complex's electrical system is not that well built to stand up to lightning, and I am (quite correctly!!) ordered off the electrical grid when it happens -- unplugging everything so we don't get a surge if the grid takes a direct hit).

(Which someone in Fontana, just north of us, did -- and died as a result.)

They went to Sandy, win is assumed.

Been seeing some of the Dynamis/End Game LS Drama lately.  Too much of it even on our shell, and even more on the TTTO, which you can read going over there.  As I said online today during another bout of it:  I can understand the frustration with the grind coming from that you don't get a drop for quite a while.  I'm down with that.

But this is another team event.  Do one's part, and the rewards (of various kinds) will come.

NIN 39 (basically using it to start farming some tabs so I don't run out using Kulili to level DNC to at least 65).

Didn't play that much this week, for various reasons -- did get back into FF X-2 International -- Rikku's got legs and she knows how to be delicious with them!!  (And Paine and Yuna aren't half bad either...)

----

But I noticed something in the continuing Onslaught of the RMT:

The prices for gil.

The reports we've been getting have had the cost of gil about half of what it was about 3-4 months ago.

This would indicate supply is up.

This would indicate, given the two updates this week dealing (first one partially, second one completely -- even involving a two-hour cessation of play!) with the acquisition of gil through improper manners, that RMT now have several additional exploits at their disposal.

It is time to treat RMT as the criminal offense it is and PROSECUTE IT!

4 comments:

ixthyse said...

I like to take the other stance and believe that gil isn't being bought as fast as they can make it. Supplies are exceeding demand but not because supplies are up but because demand is down(for RMT gil). I do not mean to say gil is no longer being bought, just not from the RMT corporations.

Gilbuying was rampant when it was 8$ per million from RMT, but now not so much. The reasons for this I believe are that whatever they're charging these days(I don't know what, I use the illegal tool chatmon to block the spamtells, it comes packaged with the illegal windower), is too expensive for all but the more hardcore gamers to pay.

Secondly, the RMT PWNER V1.337 may not actually be doing anything, but square said this can track the train of gil to get the buyers too, this frightens people out of buying to some extent.

Lastly, there's a fairly booming trade between players on certain forums where gil is bought and sold for less than RMT prices and in larger quantities.

Starcade said...

I'm not so sure about that -- this is not to say you are wrong, though...

The problem I have with that statement is, as I made reference to, that we have had two different times last week where Square-Enix has had to update the game (and one where the game has had to be shut down entirely for two full hours) for (at least in part in the other case) a manner of acquiring gil which was improper.

That appears to indicate that RMT factions (whether they be as you suggest or as I am -- or both!) are finding numerous (and very severe!) ways to acquire large amounts of gil.

Reference: The update which took place to finally deal with the Salvage dupes (this was in November, two months before the mass bannings) required nothing more than a small-scale update which took place while the game was still running.

Four months ago, when I started getting these messages in earnest (and I have this information because I retained the first ~10 messages I sent to the Special Task Force on these fuckers), gil was going for about $48/million. Now it's down to about $25/million.

It's one or the other: It's either supply is up or demand is down.

And I'm not so sure the RMT PWNER actually works for the process. If it did, I really believe we'd see many more prominent players expelled for RMT.

ixthyse said...

I think the exploit the RMT were using were involving NPC mechanics of some sort, and thus they needed to bring about a real maintenance as they can't edit extant in game objects while the servers are up(ie, the information being sent to the client needed to be altered). The salvage duping was a 100% server side problem where the normal action on breaking alliance(losing treasure pool) wasn't occurring.

I don't disagree that the RMT gaining an exploit could have been dire, I harken back to the days of mass inflation when they had hacks that let you fish up gold beds and NPC them for 100k in your mog house. I just believe that there is more of a give and take this time. It's not so much that the RMT have an unlimited supply of gil(if this was true the RMT tell prices would have shot up after the exploit got borked), it's that the RMT are amassing quantities of gil, and people aren't buying it.

Starcade said...

That's why I think we may be looking at other exploits on top of it.

There's been talk of a significant expansion of RMT activities in recent time. I've seen a significant increase in the false-name character-runner shit going on in Bastok Mines in the last number of weeks.

I think it's pretty clear _something_ is going on. I don't think the supply of gil for them is _unlimited_, but something is going on...