EVE General Discussion

Well, considering one plex costs $19.99 or 800m ISK. I don't know where real life money can be convered into isk.

28x Plex for $489.99 valued at 22.4 billion ISK.

Now the ISK per $1 is lower than that, but the above are he straight conversions with current sell order value and buying directly from the Eve Online site.

It's fairly simple to put RL currency value to PLEX since you paid 14€ for it, obviously you can't exchange that plex back to € (legally that is) but it doesn't stop people from pretending they could.
Since PLEX prices fluctuate from time to it's easier to count value to things through plex prices because that ratio stays constant unlike ISK to effort ratio which is also dependant on personal opinions.

Isk has real money value as soon - and also only as long as - you can spend Isk instead of real money to buy something, mostly game time or maybe the collectors edition.

Based on this, being space rich (quite unspecific) has a very specific value when you safe real money for your subscriptions (or other stuff). This worth has of course an upper limit, because there are only so many accounts you can use in a meaningful manner and plexing more than 10 years in advance might be a little too optimistic.

I can buy ISK any time I want.

Step 1 go to bank
Step 2 change euros for Icelandic krona (ISK)
Step 3 role around in the millions of ISK I get thanks Ito inflation

This/

Pretty much this. You don't have to be able to turn isk into RL money for isk to have RL monetary value. You only need that one common denominator, PLEX, which has both RL value and in-game value.

$20 = 1 PLEX = 800M isk

Thus

$20 = 800M isk


Even without a PLEX, any in-game currency can be given RL monetary value. The problem here, however, is that it now gets it's worth based on the individual player.

Opportunity cost. What it boils down to is isk/hour vs $/hour that you could be making. If you can make 100M isk in an hour but could be making $24/hour working that same hour, then 100M isk is worth $24 to you because that is what it just cost you.

The PLEX gives everyone an equal footing on the RL value of isk regardless of what each player could be making if they were spending their time working instead.

Actually the RL price of a PLEX vs the isk price of a PLEX when comparing it to the above opportunity cost says quite a bit.

With the above 100M isk = $24 but with the PLEX its 800M isk = $20

For the person where 100M isk = $24, then that 800M isk = $192. So for this person to spend $20 to get 800M is a really good deal. Based on the PLEX driven worth, it would be equivalent to an individuals opportunity cost of just $3/hour.

It's messed up with individual players having multiple accounts but if every character represented a player (1 character per player) then with the current isk value on PLEX, the average opportunity cost would be $3/hour. In other words, the average income of the EVE player base would be $3/hour.

Nope, you lose what compares to X amount of real money for the guy who bought the plexes, which can for comparing reasons be looked at as losing 5 bil isk in real money. If the guy hadnt lost 5 bil, it could potentially save him 7-8 months og sub paying, which translates into a potential real loss.

It's spin.

It's also a detriment to EVE. While people playing EVE know that these losses really convert to years of game wasted, no matter what conversion system they use to identify it, people on the outside see insane numbers in the quarter million up and cancel EVE out as anything they ever want to play.

I know because I did it after a publicity stunt in Entropia Universe where some guy "lost" $50K US in the blink of an eye. Responsible people (most of us) don't embrace that kind of squander. They avoid it.

The same reason why Gold has "real" monetary value. Some one else is willing to accept it as just that.

Sort of ironic how you could work a minimum wage job and earn more ISK through buying PLEX than mining ISK.