Final Fantasy XI Then...

[Tobal]

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3147729

An interesting read, could the end finally be in sight?

Doesn't work for me, post it on here.

[Daragon]

Quoted from Article:

Anyone who plays Square-Enix's popular MMO Final Fantasy XI will know that auction house and item prices ballooned over the holiday period, thanks to massive price cuts on gil (FFXI's currency) at notorious currency reseller IGE. With RMTs and CGFs (real money traders and Chinese gil farmers) popping up everywhere (MMOs are the new Digital Sweatshop), IGE's competition has grown fierce as of late. So in a bid to trump the insurgents in the fight for Christmas dollars, the virtual currency reseller has now seemingly shot itself in the foot. When a Haubergeon, which typically sold for 3 million gil on auction, suddenly shoots up beyond 10 million, it's suddenly out of reach for most players. So what is a level 58 Warrior/Dark Knight/Samurai to do? Most likely the answer is not "farm fire crystals for three years," and instead "buy up some gil since it's so cheap." Gil buying begets inflation, and inflation begets gil buying, and so the downward spiral of escalating item prices began. But it got so out of control, that someone is clearly taking action.

While Square-Enix recently implemented new anti-MPK measures to combat the RMTs and CGFs that would dominate an area where rare monsters would drop high-priced items, the very same gilfarmers that have threatened, plagued and chastised regular players for years now have seemingly disappeared from most servers. They are gone. While some gilfarmers were originally raised and leveled from scratch, currency resellers started buying up high-level accounts and putting those characters to work as well, adding "staff" to help farm in dangerous areas. On every server, gilfarmers could be found in Kuftal Tunnel camping Amemet (who drops the skins used in making the Amemet Mantle) and the Phantom Worm, or Rolanberry Fields waiting for Simurgh to pop (in the hopes of scoring the highly desired Strider Boots). They'd even begun camping "trigger mobs" in the area known as Sky (a.k.a. The Shrine of Ru'Avitau), making it hard for legitimate players to make their own runs at the Gods. In previous measures to control over-camping of specific mobs or treasure chests, Square-Enix removed certain item drops from mobs like Aquarius (who dropped the valuable Damascene Cloth) to Burning Circle fights, and Astral Rings from coffer chests in Castle Oztroja, to name a couple. But with the sudden disappearance of gilfarmers from their usual 24-7 presence, it seems something more significant is being done about gilfarming.

This actually came to light during actual gameplay, when various 1UP readers and teammates began sending me tells, saying "Hey, Milkman. Do a search of Kuftal Tunnel. All the gilfarmers are gone." It didn't take long to see that the usual suspects were indeed absent from their favorite haunt, although we thought it might be because of the Chinese New Year. Some discussion quickly debunked that theory but we kept looking day after day. Gone. Coincidence? A brief survey of IGE's FFXI currency across all servers reveals a dramatically dwindling supply, with many servers completely dry, offering up only the vague disclaimer "We currently do not have any currency for sale on this server. Please check back again later or contact customer support for any enquiries." While the sale of items, currency and accounts is actually prohibited by Square-Enix, it's very difficult to enforce. Currency resellers usually use the defense that they're not selling the gil, but the person's time used to farm it.

Regardless, Article 3.1 in the FFXI user agreement, filed under Prohibited Activities and Indemnification, states: "Any activities consisting of selling, purchasing or exchanging gil any other currency that may be used in the Game from time to time, characters, and/or Game items for value (including, but not limited to, any payment in kind and any payment in any currency recognized as legal tender in any country, state, territory or other jurisdiction anywhere in the world) through any means or venue, including, without limitation, Internet auctions or other online exchanges." So it's not like Square-Enix doesn't have their bases covered. Is it difficult, time-consuming, and an absolute time and money sink to farm, camp and craft your way to profit in FFXI? Absolutely. But it's been made even harder due to the unbelievable inflation the game has suffered as of late. In reality, FFXI was in danger of becoming a gilfarmer's domain, practically owned and operated by RMTs until the recent purge, if it is indeed a purge. How else to explain the disappearance of gilfarmers across all servers in the last week? While we're still waiting to hear something official out of Square-Enix HQ, the writing is clearly on the wall for currency resellers worldwide.



This was only posted the other day btw, S-E clearly had a purge after the crazy holiday period economy explosion - sounds to me like like the company is finally starting to get the hint - I wonder if they aim to have a relatively pain free market by the time ToAU is released?

[Tsingtao]

I'm betting on chinese holidays, Clo, Gimya, Sunni and the rest were all still online last week. Ran into 3 working on gold orc masks while farming up another drop and was lucky enought to receive an attempted MPK from them. Dropped 6 orcs on me and escaped, still won but was tedious.

I'll take a look later, I hope your right but strongly suspect it was chinese new year.

[Tobal]

I hadn?t noticed anything difference, but i don?t know who is and who isn?t a gil farmer as I?m not a regular farmer myself, the problem is there still to much money in the economy, to much gil in player pockets that prices for items still haven?t come down to pre-christmas levels, If I go exping even with a melee job im looking at 70-80k for sushi, attack food(all types that are useful at that level) 30-50k for singles, Sneak oils 50k, Prism powders 40k. I can?t even imagine the prices a Ninja will pay, during dynamis one ninja was talking about how he uses Carbona to exp but its 200k!!

If they are cleaning up I think it certainly an attempt to help drive prices down before the X360 and new PC/ps2 players(following ToAU) hit the main servers

I maybe go camp O.Kote again, if the main farmers have gone, 5-7pm is a perfect time to camp it.

[Daragon]

Obviously they won't have caught all the offenders yet, the article had considered Chinese new year but apparently that wasn't responsible for whatever reason.

A game wide sweep will take weeks not days and I have a feeling SE have only just realised the severity of this problem based on the holiday period.

[C']

I thought this over the last couple of weeks. Most notably 2 Sundays ago when I was exploring Castle Oztroja for NPC G1 and was surprised to see only 2 people at Mee Deggi?s spawn and none at Quu Dommi (O.Kote and F.Kyahan respectively).

Sure enough a quick search of some of the more infamous names revealed they were gone (and repeated checks over a period of time confirmed this). However, last few days I noticed that they were back and in the usual spots. Regardless of what the article says, I do think it was related to Chinese New Year, as the timeframe matches the exact same occurrence one year ago.

Certainly I?m not getting my hopes up just yet.

[Daragon]

Like I said, every server can't expect their share of sellers to be removed overnight - I imagine SE to be concentrating on one at a time if indeed they are acting on the problem.

Whoever wrote that article probably doesn't play on Seraph, who's to say the RMT populace on one of the more badly affected servers isn't being looked at at this very moment?

[C']

My issues is this:

The article says [regarding chinese new year] ?Some discussion quickly debunked that theory but we kept looking day after day?. Erm, great! So what was this discussion that so convincingly debunked the new year theory (especially when you consider the timing and previous year?s precedent). I can?t take this article seriously when it fails to back up its arguments and instead seems to take a ?just trust us on this? standpoint.

[Tsingtao]

Hmm we're I beleive in the top 3 of highest priced servers with one of the top 2 or 3 populations. I hate to say it but its the exact same as last year, everyone went nuts and celebrated, a week after Chinese new Year they were all back. Basically 1 week per year we live in a halycion time of no gil sellers, the rest of the year its business as usual.

SE have repeatedly done sod all and will continue to do so. It's all part of the fun I guess, I'll live as a pessimist on this one if it happens I'll die of shock. SE have proven time and time again they are just plain not interested in policing the game. The MPK fix was the biggest indicator of this, all the game needed was a few more GMs and admin functions to alert GMs when high value spawns were due. Instead they ruined the game play and continue to not police the game.

Just checked IGE gil is showing available on every server though they are buying so supply must be lower than usual.

[Tsingtao]

Made it after another 4 hours in Beadeaux I have 3 warding oils, thankfuly I didn't spend my time alonre Talizker came and helped. Without him I think I'd still be there, cheers dude....

Guess what went back to look for the NM, didn't find it beit first emerald kill the oil dropped ^^

[C']

Farmed a bit last night, most sold over night leaving me with 5.5m. I check Jeuno AH to see that there are 2 Nokizaru Hakama listed. I start my bids below the recent selling price with no luck but at 5.2m...



{mine}

This is how I will now look for lvl50 events:



With that purchased all that is stopping me progressing in CoP is weapons which aren't that expensive (unless I decide I want Bubuso).

Obviously, I'm skint again tho -_-;

[Tobal]

you know we could have tried take the NM! it's a Rivera spawn right?

[C']

I took the NM last week and no drop

Thing is his spawn is erratic at best and whilst I would liked to have camped him more, I had to buy the item for 5.2m whilst I had the chance as a couple of weeks back it was up at 7m.

Like you can see it isn't a rare item, so there's nothing stopping me getting another to sell and recoup my costs.

[Tobal]

Also Apa, im bit annoyed you didn?t turn up last night, you could have said you we?re busy with something so Moot and I didn?t have to hang around for 2hr?s hoping you?ll show up.

[Tsingtao]

Tobal do you have RDM 20 as well as NIN 20?

Thinking of going back to take this on again one evening in the week with Talizker and Hicory. The good news is the loss of the 1.5 million doesn't look so bad now as the Haubie has dropped from 12.5 million back to 10 and with a spot of luck could fall back to 9 over the next 3 weeks while I save for it.

Saving aren't going to well but that mostly because I'm using the speculate to accumulate apporach, first harvest of the gardenig mules last night produced a 420k profit for 5 days of not doing much. The big 3 mules hopefully growing fire ores are still ticking along to be harveted on the 25th. Tonight will replant all 4 of the other mules and hopefully see anoterh 0.5 million in 5 days time.

In addition to our fun last night Tal and I managed to kill an NM quadav in Beadeaux, Ga'Bhu Unvanquished. Didn't get the big drop but I'm going to try a bit of camping tonight for a couple of hours a drop from theis bad boy would make a huge difference.