What is/should be the price of platinum?

The purpose of this thread is to discuss where the current rate of platinum is at and where it should be based on supply and demand. Please keep this discussion on topic and free of trash talk.

Platinum is an end game currency that everyone is after. Who doesn't love Ethys, Blessed Rune Books and House Deco?! For a very long time (2 years +) It sold at a going rate of 6k per. Slowly Plat prices jumped to 6.5k then 7k, 8k and where ever it's price is at now.

This is a link to population growth of uor since its beginning in June 2012 http://www.uorenaissance.com/serverstatus
Population has been steadily growing with several notable plateaus around 100, 300, 500 and currently 600.

Keeping the population of the shard in mind take a loot at the platinum available on the server currently: http://www.uorenaissance.com/itemgraph/EED/PlatinumCoin/single
Platinum amounts have steadily increased since the beginning of the shard.

My final question to ask before needing your input is this... With population being in a plateau @600 currently and the amount of plat on the server increasing over time... What should be the price of plat and why is the price of plat rising over time if it is increasing at a faster rate then population?

It is very easy to get rich. Powergame just one holiday event and you can earn 10-20m of loot (look at xmas and halloween for example), there is so much rewarding endgame content for stuff like fishing, treasure hunting, champs, and BODs, and very little risk. If you have time, you can dip your hand in each of the deepest honey pots. I think if you take the amount of wealth our player base has, and its ability to create new wealth relatively quickly, it only makes sense there would be an army of people who want more plat than the server population has to sell to them.

Everybody wants it. Many can afford it. There is not enough to fill the constant requests. Price goes up as more and more people become more and more desperate to get their ethies and RBs.

What would I do? Glad you asked. Seriously tone down these rewards and/or add more risk. Stop giving out server births every year. Stop rewarding people for just logging in during the server anniversary with bombass mask dyes and sandals in their bank boxes. Stop letting people load up an army of VPNs to make a KILLING selling clothing and dye/sandal drops. Stop giving away uber wearables as rewards during every stinking event. If you took the scarcity of uber-high-end rewards from Voldershard and UOR's Monty Haul reward systems and averaged them together.... you'd probably have a very stable economy. But if I'm being honest I have no idea, just my best guess.

I'm curious how you came to the conclusion that plat is increasing at a faster rate then population?

Y = mx+b

This is an interesting question but I think we're lacking information. To compare apples to apples you'd want to know the average amount per active account, not total amount.

I think there is a certain difficulty (cost) to gain platinum that will keep it anchored to some extent. Further, people are willing to pay the 8.5k+ so no reason to offer it at a discount.

Also, I think it's a commodity where the more you have the more you want. If you save up to buy a blessed runebook, you'll probably want another one for a different purpose across your 15 allotted characters.

I'm fairly new here and could be completely off base but this is my observation/experience so far.

@ 3rd anniversary I watched a guy log in / out 10 accounts to sell his bags.

I think these x-mas / Halloween type events are a potential problem. The rewards are too easy to come by however you cant just simply decrease the rewards because it'll be boring / unpopular. I was always in favor of a progression system (maybe once or twice a day) that would allow hard working individuals and no-life's to walk away from an event with the same amount or chances of drops. Off the bat the easiest system would be a quest. Go kill 100 zombies and at the conclusion of the quest you get X chance at rare drop.

Platinum's value is solely based on what people are willing to buy / sell it for (obvious statement). I don't think there can be a set value without a central source controlling the price (Simeou Trade is responsible for some of the increase IMHO). I spam "selling @ 13k per" all day long and I get messages all day telling me it sells for "6-7" "7-8" 7-9". I think to myself "who the hell are you to tell me what I can sell MY platinum for". What I find most amusing is the thread Bart had up which effectively had a 9k buying price and nobody responded for days. Either you all suck at maths or platinum is going up up up.

I have no real expertise in economics but I can attest to my personal experiences.

I've sold roughly 400 platinum in the last 5 weeks. The minimum amount I have sold for is 10k/ea, the max was 13k/ea.

It seems that most people tend to hold on to platinum rather than sell it, even if they aren't striving for any platinum rewards (take a look at the amount of players in the bank box photo thread with 100s and 1000's of plat). The only time they tend to liquidate is when they get in a pinch for fast cash. Just as you've stated @bart simpson ive seen the price go from 6k to upwards of 10k now per in the last 2 years. With no ceiling in sight, it's a definite investment.

With the changes to spawning you have much less access to platinum by non-spawning players. You still have a large influx of platinum but it's being brought in by the same hands every time. Unless you're in a guild that spawns you will probably never see a spawn or harrower since public ones have been nerfed. I'm not saying I'm against the current spawning rules but it plays a major role into why you aren't seeing platinum prices go down, plat value is being controlled by those who have an abundance, and will always have an abundance, of it.

1.
In the last two months total platinum has dropped from 128,000 to 121,000 (a 5% decrease)
gold has on the other hand increased from 1.25 billion to 1.37 billion (an 8% increase)


2.
Every day last year 1.65 million gold was created.
Every day last year 175 platinum was created.
At a 6k-per-value gold entered the economy more than 50% faster. For plat to have entered at the same rate it would need to be valued at 9k per.



also, in my opinion, gold has very little inherent value to established players outside very minor reagent costs for most (or in a few cases relatively high ingot costs.)


I think established players have very little use for gold outside of trading for things they desire more. Large houses have doubled in gold cost in one year's time. Tying up your wealth in gold is not likely to be a wise investment over time.


I think the reasons platinum is increasing in price is pretty obvious.

I personally do not sell platinum but if I were to give it a value I think it should be in the 10k-12k range and be re-evaluated every couple months.

Another comment - You may have seen one or two auctions in the past year where players were only willing to accept platinum or holiday coins as payment. Expect to see this more frequently. And this should be evidence to you that the value of gold is going down and quickly.

also i don't care about this it's all monopoly money. But I think that may help explain the current economy to those who are concerned with it.

The spawn system is much more harsh than it was, people who were making a lot of platinum are now too scared to spawn. While all this is happening, player population seems to be increasing.
This leads to more demand.

There will always be fluctuations in the platinum market. People are entering and exiting the market at all times in unpredictable ways. A new player needs ethys and runebooks, but the other side of that coin is that established players are getting these things and becoming less frequent consumers of platinum or exiting the market entirely.
Another issue to note is that platinum is essentially a luxury good - you exchange it for runebooks and ethys, which while nice, are not necessities. Luxury goods tend to have more volatile prices than necessities.

Basically, it's a recipe for an unstable market. And that's really fine, I think attempts to set prices are misguided (and harmful) and that if you're in business you should probably just learn to negotiate if you're going to be in business. I've watched from the sidelines for years, and I've noticed a lot of the more prolific buisnesspeople in the community attempt to set prices for goods in stone, usually at low prices. I can only assume that this is so they can browbeat people into selling them for low. I notice a lot of the people trying to establish a price for platinum are the people who now don't do any spawning due to fear of being raided, it's not hard to see what's going on here.

Don't we have any economy professionals here? Supply and demand?

People are finding ways to make gold without farming, doing champs and harrowers. Plat is the end game currency so therefore should be more desirable and more expensive. This shard is heavily divided into groups and hopefully those groups will start doing champ spawns and harrowers. Some people will just do tmaps and amibs if that is their thing.

In most MMO's you always want to have a goal or something to work towards. If plat was plentiful and cheap then there isn't much of a goal to have in UOR.

To answer the question, I think platinum should be 1:1 with gold. Blood pentagrams for all. So there.

Since platinum's inception back in Feb 2013, the growth rate of platinum appears to be only slightly higher when compared to the growth of the player base, until around March/April 2015. Although, over the past month or two, the player base growth rate is back on par with the platinum growth rate.



Also, I would like to point out that the gold and platinum growth rates are extremely similar since February 2013. If the rate of gold generated was far greater than the rate of platinum generated, I would agree that the "worth" of gold currency should be decreasing compared to platinum, but this isn't the case. The only reason I see platinum increasing in cost is simply inflation, not because of a difference in the rate of gold generated vs. the rate of platinum generated.

Cynic has a really good point though. If the same core group of people are raking in all of the platinum, then supply and demand will drive the price up like a mawfucka. If this is what is happening, then all this talk about the gold/platinum/population growth rates correlating to platinum prices is garbage. That correlation would only be valid if the platinum was distributed fairly even across the population.

1) Once you are established, gold comes easier then plat (to the majority), so why sell what becomes a more desirable trading currency.

2) Once you are established, you figure out and have experienced the best ways to obtain plat.

3) Changes to Harrower have achieved its goal of limiting the huge plat dumps onto the server.

4) With an influx of new players, the most common goal to be considered established is blessed runebooks and ethreal mounts.

5) Once you are established, most have their plat "needs" (few blessed books and mounts) the rest is for fun.

Conclusion - W/o larger gold sinks completely removing more gold, the more difficult currency to obtain (which is also more desirable) the price will continue to rise, no telling where the cap may be.

Example: - I rarely buy and never sell plat -
As an established char I may never pay more then 7.5k because I know for a fact I can go out and obtain the plat I need for the misc items I want (because I have the "needs"), as fast or faster then paying 10k per. As a new player "needing" books and mounts those high numbers of plat seem unacheivable without buying huge portions.

plat is expensive because full bookshelves cost 150 plat per.

I didn't read entire thread but did the first and looked at the graphs
Plat (and other items like mask dyes) will be what people will pay
Plat has kinda skyrocketed but that is because of changes and the lesser/lower chance of capturing them of late
I think rate for plat is prolly around 9-11k now; people who get more than that is great! Those that complain, well - welcome to economics 101

Bart we both know the problem of plat FUCKING PREYAS!!! I told that douche to stop driving the price up now we got this bullshit. Honestly tho the price of plat should not be 9-11 its more like 7-8 BECAUSE guilds like D.C are mass farming it there is not a supply shortage, and i dont buy into that population bs the pop is about the same as last summer maybe a few different people trading off but no more no less (don't trust those graphs).

Selling plat 16k per