Market Discussions

I think we'll see PLEX prices drop and stay under 600M over the next couple of months.

CCP has been timing their PLEX pack discounts to holidays, and we are entering a holiday season. The Thanksgiving (yeah, US holiday) PLEX sale is already up. I expect we'll see another sale around Christmas and yet another one around the New Year.

There has also been a lot of blogging about the cost of PLEX, and from the comments, it seems that a significant number of players have been unsubbing or consolidating their PLEX-funded alt accounts, due to the cost of PLEX.

Over the long haul, this isn't good for CCP, since this lowers demand, so I'm sure they are going to keep offering PLEX sales to keep the price near a point where (a) players will buy them to sub alt accounts, and (b) speculators will buy and hold them in hopes of the prices going higher.

Remember that every PLEX sold is RL money in the bank for CCP, so it is obviously to their advantage to manage the in-game price such that demand/supply ratios are optimal to generate the maximum number of RL PLEX transactions per month.

On a side note, I'm sort of surprised that CCP hasn't introduced more activities which consume in-game PLEX. For example, they could run regular PLEX auctions or lotteries, using limited-edition ships as prizes. Very few limited-edition ships, such as AT tournament prizes, are ever actually used in PVP, so this sort of thing would not be seen as P2W.

Oh man, i forgot to sell @610, jobs suck, money sucks, RL sucks, etc emorage.

To put it into perspective, on the 23rd of Nov 2012, PLEX is currently available starting at 571 million.

In JITA there are multiple PLEXes available below 585 million (5 so far) and many more just over 585 million.

I am really hoping that the people who have PLEX as an 'investment' will start selling them off as well. If that starts happening I think we'll see PLEX prices drop down below 500.

Edited to add that at least one 'investor' seems to be trying to liquidate their PLEX inventory since there is a single sell order of 29 PLEXes at 585,919,999.00 ISK available at Jita. I suspect if I looked at the market buy and sell prices that there are some people trying to buy the incoming PLEX on the market to relist them for a profit - lots of sell orders of 5 to 19 PLEX at a time. There looks like there are enough new PLEX coming onto the market to foil this.

There are 216 PLEX listed between 586 million and 590 million.

Plex prices do not spike because of inflation. It's just what happens if a clever trader meets a stupid plexer.

Possible, but somewhat doubtful.

From checking around various forums and blogs, it looks like 500 is the magic resub number for the majority of players who have recently unsubbed PLEX-funded alt accounts.

Thus, as the price approaches 500, these players will be watching the market more closely - trying to decide whether it is low enough to resub their alts. In most cases, they aren't going to see much of a difference between 500 and 505, or even 515 - so, they will start buying up PLEX and push the prices back up. While the price might drop below 500 occasionally, due to a stupid seller, it is more likely to stay above that point.

It might be safe to assume that most of the PLEX-subbed players will buy as many PLEX as possible around the 500 point, with the assumption that prices will go up again during the next year. This increases demand, which pushes prices up, but, supply is likely to be increased as well, since Christmas and New Year cash gifts and bonuses may be spent on buying PLEX to sell in-game. This will deplete, ofc, and prices should start to rise again after the holiday season. The long-term PLEX investor will ride out the holiday season, buying rather than selling.

However, if CCP can keep the prices around 500-525, via PLEX pack discounts, through January or so, they should get back a decent percentage of the recently unsubbed PLEX-funded alt accounts. It wouldn't hurt their quarterly financial reports, either.

But, this is all just random speculation, ofc... :)

With the removal of the PLEX reward for buddy invites the potential profit is very low and it is no longer a viable income source.

Most AFK ice harvesters are going to be running on an alt account, to support at least one main account - ie. you are paying for two accounts. So, the actual limit on the PLEX price, based on ice, would be 1/2 of 2100M, or 1050M - roughly 1B ISK.

However, running an AFK ice harvester every day is also likely to get you tagged by CCP Sreegs' secret bot detector.

Good to know. I didn't realize that the PLEX reward for buddies was removed.

BTW - is there any incentive for inviting buddies to play? Except for watching them get pwned as noobs, ofc. :)

This wouldn't actually work. Sales tend to have diminishing returns, as people are typically willing to spend only so much only so often on PLEX.


Son, when I started playing, PLEX didn't exist, and a month of gametime was 90m.

I PLEX my accounts and I set buy orders.