Merchant Archive

I do not see this happening in SWG, at least on Wanderhome. I think your premise is flawed for a few reasons:

1) There is no real barrier to entry.

2) The ability to craft as well as the current masters is easily available, but it will take time to get the resources and skill tapes, just like it took time for the current masters to acquire their resources and skill tapes.

3) The existance of guilds to help their budding weaponsmith,armorsmith or whatever makes the affectof the "oligopolies" minimal.

I think it is mental gymnastics at best to assert that there are monoploies or oligopolies in SWG.

For example, on Wanderhome, we have had many great Weaponsmiths. Some have left the game, some have quit the profession. Some have gotten to the edge of greatness and decided to play with different skills. Right now we have, what I consider. a glut of great weaponsmiths all with 12 points of experimentation. No one has tried to stop them from coming up through the ranks, in fact, older Masters WS have helped the newer ones with resources and advice. Our discussion threads are littered with comments from the newer smiths to the older ones, thanking them for their help and advice.

I do not know how you perceive an oligopoly in this game. Is the glass half full?

From Dictionary.com

mo·nop·o·ly

1. Exclusive control by one group of the means of producing or selling a commodity or service: “Monopoly frequently... arises from government support or from collusive agreements among individuals” (Milton Friedman).

Idisagree with thesecondary part of that monopoly definition (as well as with Mr. Friedman on a few issues), but have left it in for thoroughness. If attacking monopoly's is a strawman, then its one that developers have put up. I refer to this thread, http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Developers&message.id=18573, where Thunderheart says...

For the sake of argument, the question is whether a few top level crafters/merchant truly affect the price of things? Crafter's are limited by what they can sell and how efficient they can become due to game rules. In real life, Non-coercive monopolies can exist, if a company can become so efficient that nobody can match their efficiencys. But because of game rules, after reaching a certain point of efficiency,the only way to become more profitable is to raise prices. And a non-coercive (i.e. non-government protected) monopoly has no power to raise prices past what the market will bear.

I can understand its tough to new crafter's to break in, but I think the majority of failed crafter don't put as much energy into the game as they need to be succesful.Cottage industrys (non-master and new master crafters) will never be able compete with Industrial crafters (with factories, employees,etc), until they can get to that stage themselves.Let's look at ways to make business easier to start (easier interface, useful non-master goods), rather thancreating production/sales caps (which is what vendor limits essentially are).

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joined42904 wrote:

Is there a good reason why 3-4 crafters per profession SHOULD be permitted to dominate server economies? Hmmm? And all that money being sold on ebay....where does it come from? I think I know....

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I have yet to see any server where 3-4 crafters dominate the economy... In dec I started AS with 3mil cr I had saved in the previous 6 months... I had no extra points and there were at least 10 otehr big AS I was going to be competing against.. I worked.. gathered reosurces and put in my time... when I quit 6 months later I had established myself as one of hte better AS on the server.

In the same time I personally knew at least 20 other players try AS..... at least 5-10 of those "made it" even though they started with very little like me. The ones that didnt make it were ones that complained it took to much time and energy and they couldnt do anything but craft, not because "joeblow" was to big and powerful. Now that is my experience. Sorry you cant be successful if you dont put in the effort.

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joined42904 wrote:

This is a game. The object of a game is to have fun. The most fun for the most players including hopefully the most crafters. This is to be accomplished by shooting down the means that make oligopoly possible. Kudos to the devs!!!

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I think it is the other way around... crafing and selling items wont be more fun..it will be a larger burden and players will not bother because what was once fun will have become evenmore of a time comsuming pain.

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The folks who will consider it a time consuming pain are the present oligopolists.

For those who claim there are no oligopolies,

How many top quality weaponsmiths are there on your server? Docs? Chefs?

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