Quote (TheOnlyDenny @ Oct 19 2021 06:42pm)
The stability of Jah and Ber throughout the last couple of weeks is what it's actually staggering here.
Either runes are (roughly) as expensive as they were one week into the game.
Prices will drop, but the slowness at which they do came unexpected.
I also was very surprised at first... but then I settled on the notion that the D2 economy I've known through my life is this:
1.07/LoD releases - I was fucking 11. I was like level 37. I was d2 poor as fuck. Ya'll remember the weapon switch glitch that would allow you to equip two weapons at once? good times
1.08 - I was still a god damn noob. Windforces were like 45 Sojs unid.
1.09 Start - Virtually all end game items I remember at the time were worth sojs. Despite insane amounts of duping, oculus and shako remained the same Soj price for what felt like years. The price was the price. I don't really remember too much fluctuation. *Fun Fact, 3 weeks later after 1.09 dropped, I found out 9/11 happened because somebody said "omfg a plane just crashed into the world trade center" in the channel Cowz. One of the most vivid memories of my life.*
1.09 Middle - At this point, I was in one of the cows channels, and someone randomly said "Hey i'm quitting... anybody want all my gear? It's pretty good". I message the guy, as I figured this was another elaborate scam, but I was bored this day. Jesus christ diablo 2 was really the wild wild west back then. He tells me to make a game. He joins. I'm like... dude i don't really believe you. Why would you just give me all your gear? He drops an item on the ground. It's a vamp gaze. I pick it up and look at it. It's a 1.08 Vamp gaze. This guy not only wasn't lying, all his shit was godly. Suddenly I was rich. Very rich. I remember instantly going in to the trade channel after and starting to make trades for the items I had been drooling over forever. - And i'm pretty sure, despite again gigantic duping efforts, etc etc etc, the price of a Shako then was the price of a shako a year ago.
1.09 End - Occy ring 4 15 sojs Zephyr bow for 35 - god i miss my zephyr bowazon that thing fucking wrecked
didn't play for years
Came back with a new ladder, latest patch at this point.
Play with my buddy, we farm for like a week and a half, the shit we found in the first 3 days covers enough FG to buy HRs in week 2. Lol I think a lot of people Bot now?
2 years later, same cycle, Botted some, was fun
Covid 19- got bored - played June Reset, me and same buddy farm for a week and a half. Prices plummet after 3 days. Realize that basically everyone who plays the game still on bnet is botting. Get back in to botting. Do 8 accounts. Actually have a blast, however, D2 becomes a game in which I micromanage my bot and then list shit for sale on d2jsp. Virtually 0 actual playing.
SO: In conclusion, I believe that high runes SHOULD be the price that they were over the weekend into the foreseeable future. A players 1 bot probably only finds 2 hr a week at fucking MAX. My players 8 team who cleared entire games in 10 minutes found like a jah+ber+sick ass rare a week.
Not only that, because the of the min/max nature of the type of game that us old school d2jspers play the game, They get high tier MF shit as soon as possible, and then sell it as soon as they have enough FG to make the character they actually want to play. Meaning, a lot of these items become available on d2jsp at the same time frame, leading the price to drop. I think items on the Oculus / Shako / Skulders tier are actually priced very low at this point, as they should be in a Natural D2 economy.
Two things to counterargue what I know people are going to say
Shared stashes aren't going to lead to a price crash in this game. Okay yes, you only need One enigma per account. But My hammerdin has one, and now my lightning sorc that I box while playing my hdin.... also needs one. Also let's be fucking real. The people who are going to be swapping shakos between characters aren't your average d2jspers. You autistic mother fuckers will pay 90x price over the difference of 1 fucking defense on a pair of boots because they are "perfect". You're going to buy shakos for each character you want to play. And they are probably going to be on a separate account each.
TWO: And the most important. Even if there is a chinese pindle bot out....................... first of all pindle doesn't drop shit. How many of ya'll have done 300 pindle runs and have found a 28 vipermagi as the best item? I know you are out there. Second of all. The bot economy YOU are all used to is a bot economy in which the higher end bot users are botting literal thousands accounts, and even the most casual of bot users such as I was, is going to be running 8 characters at once. Not only that, botting d2LoD required next to 0 computer power. My main computer that gets 300 fps in just about every game I play... starts to struggle a little bit and dips into the 80 fps range sometimes while running 2 characters. Basically what i'm getting at is, botting in week 4 of D2R is a SMALL, VERY SMALL fraction of what it was. Id guarantee that 99% of all players playing the game right now are real players, or people boxing 2+ characters. While before, Post 2012ish, 95% of the active characters on d2lod bnet were controlled by bots.