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Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Analysis: PLEX Prices Are Falling

CCP recently announced that beginning January 1st, 2015, input broadcasting and input multiplexing (read: ISBoxing commands across multiple clients with one click) will be against the EULA.

The price of PLEX has been falling in light of this announcement. Why? I'll tell you.

ISBoxers PLEX multiple accounts to multibox at the same time. When ISBoxing becomes against the EULA, they will no longer be able to use those accounts for their original purpose. It is therefore likely that they will stop purchasing PLEX for those accounts, the demand for PLEX will fall and so will the price of PLEX in response.

But that is not what is causing the immediate price decrease. People with any sort of economic insight will foresee the demand decrease for PLEX and associated price decrease and will start trying to liquidate any PLEX that they might be holding on to, before they start losing ISK as the prices adjust. This is classic speculation at work.

Now, notably, as the price of PLEX drops, those who buy PLEX with real dollars and convert them to ISK will suddenly be receiving less ISK per PLEX than they used to. For some people, purchasing PLEX with real dollars will no longer be worth it and they will stop. This will reduce the supply of PLEX on the market, counterbalancing the impact of the decrease in demand.

What does this mean? It is almost certain that in the short to medium run, the quantity of PLEX on the market will decline. The impact on the price of PLEX is uncertain - in the immediate short run, prices will fall due to speculation and then demand declining. After that, the prices will stabilize at a new level that might be higher or lower than their initial value yesterday. I would imagine that the prices won't stabilize until after January 1st, when we see how the rest of the markets react to a lack of ISBoxers.

Buckle up folks, we're in for a bit of a ride.

Monday, November 17, 2014

Bait Mining Fleet

I managed to log in to EVE to do something other than processing applications to EVE University and processing the title requests of existing members (I'm a very busy bee). As I logged in I heard a familiar voice explaining to members of the Amarr Mining Campus (AMC) how they would gain access to Innuendo, our home wormhole. Sounds like they were going to be learning how to mine in unsafe space protected by PVP-hungry wormhole dwellers that always jump on any opportunity for a fight.

Our high-security static was two jumps from Amarr and as a result our wormhole was pretty busy. We had day trippers coming in to find themselves relinquished of their ships and shown the fast way home thanks to bubbles from HICs. But we also had a neighbouring wormhole connection that had a relatively new wormhole corporation inside.

There was some movement by this new wormhole corp as they lost a few ships to us. I think they managed to get eyes on our mining fleet and decided that they wanted to take them out. We warned the miners that they might be getting some company but not to fear as some of us were waiting on the sidelines, hungry for blood. "Bonus points if you tackle while continuing to mine," someone quipped as we reassured our visiting carebears.

It wasn't too long later that we saw a Deimos on d-scan with an Impairor and Condor. I'm still not exactly sure what that noob ship was doing there but what can I say, this is a really new wormhole corp. Shortly after that we heard from the miners that the Deimos had landed on grid after getting a warp-in from a cloaky Helios.

10 of us descended on the ore anomaly in rapid succession, including a HIC for snagging the pods. As per usual, I rode my trusty Myrmidon into battle (it's becoming a running joke that I always bring my Myrmidon even in the shiniest of fleets). It wasn't too long after that when the dust had settled and we had shown them the shortcut back to k-space.

Let's see, what else is new? My HIC training is done so I picked up my Devoter that I bought off of a friend and brought it to our home wormhole. While I was at is, I purchased a Guardian (my first one ever!) and also brought it back. I'm about 2 days from Logi 5 so I'm looking forward to having that done. Of course, now I'm space poor with less than 40m to my name. Time to make some money so I can buy my first Legion.