Oh, you made a post while I was typing that last one. Let me tackle it.

"The profit margin maybe low, but the amount is not. The price difference between the highest buy and the lowest sell in that picture is 200 and if he manages to sell all 2790 offers for the current lowest price of the sell offers, he'll make 583110 crowns, something some people will never see. all he has to do is continuously do this, and it adds up over time."

Are you talking about the OP's picture? This one? Because the profit margin per sale is not 200. After the 2% fee, the profit margin is 45 per trade. That's 126k. Now I know that seems like a lot to some of you but it's not to someone who has 20 million crowns. Their time is better spent doing more worthwhile things.

If your argument is that they get more crowns, then that's more reason to not price wall that side. I've said this already. Why would they want to devalue crowns if more of their wealth is in crowns, or if the method in which they make wealth is via crowns?

There seems to be this huge misconception about raising the price of CE benefiting the rich. IT. DOES. NOT. Higher CE price benefits people who have more CE than crowns and/or gain more wealth through CE over crowns. If someone is rich and has more crowns than CE, they are losing their wealth by the rise of CE costs.

Remember: said CE blocking person is a jerk. And what does Jerk do? Yes, you got it, being a Jerk of course.

Money isn't everything. Once some people have enough, they would want to exercise their "influence" on other people. That's what make them jerks.

Make love, not World of Warcraft?

It's a fun episode to watch and the whole thing began with a jerk on the Interweb playing World of Warcraft.

So the SK version of it will be... Make Jelly, not CE wall blocking?

Got My math wrong if you read it before, you are right.

Regardless, buying low and selling high does not always work. I even tried it once out of boredom. It did not work. Remember Njthug's post about trying to control the entire CE market? Despite having bought all the CE and trying to sell it at a higher price, people put lower offers, and they bought those instead. Same thing happened to me. I bought some CE using crowns and when the price started going up, I tried to sell it at a higher price. Only a few sold before someone beat my price. So I went and changed it to beat their price. My price was beaten again. It kept going on like this till the price was back down to what I bought the CE for. There is too much competition to work the market like that; too many people selling CE. So, to help eliminate this competition they setup price walls like the one in the picture so that after awhile people cannot compete with each other price-wise, which keeps the price up, cause unless someone makes a higher bid to buy CE, no one else will get it. Since people need CE, they WILL bid higher and of course, drive the price back up.

You notice this does not happen in the auction house. The only fundamental difference between these two things is that in the AH, only the sellers set the price (even in bidding, they set the lowest acceptable price then it goes from there). In the energy depot, the buyers can also set the price which can create problems like this.

Also, if a person can pay for video game consoles, games for them, and controllers (which easily adds up to more than $600) then I'm pretty sure someone can use that money on CE, even if it's over time. Like I said before, this person could be a steam trader, which means he'd value his CE as well.

And the price is slowly rising too.

http://i.imgur.com/VMIyz.jpg

Maybe it's just a 3 crown increase, but it's still an increase.

Beta is still a bad example. Not only were you guys given more incentive to buy CE at the time (any CE you bought you also got when it went live) there's the fact that everyone knew there was going to be a wipe/reset eventually, at some point in time, meant no one really cared about what their character had in the beta by the end. Most people had plenty of CE because of the first mentioned promotion and just didn't care so they did whatever with it. I bet plenty of people gave money/stuff away to new players at the time, too.

@AH walls: they're definitely doable. The reason you don't see them on SK is because not everyone in the game is interested in cutters/brandishes/whatever. Everyone has a stake in CE. There is always a large demand for it, thus someone raising the price of it when it can only be sold is guaranteed profit because demand is guaranteed. If you played any other game with a strong economy where there are basic commods (read: mats that are used for nearly everything and there isn't an overabundance of it) you'll easily see this. Outside of the Crowns/Energy trade, SK does not have a very strong economy though.

Pdtopgun:

"I don't think that a theoretical player with a massive amount of crowns would also need a corresponding massive amount of CE in order to benefit from the practice. You could theoretically have someone who has a bunch of crowns and plans on making a significant CE purchase in the near future, which would give them the incentive to drive the CE price higher in order to get a better return on them. Another possibility is two or more players working in concert: if a friend of the crown-rich person has a lot of CE they want to convert to crowns, the first individual could create a price wall in order to get their buddy richer."

In all of those examples, the person that has more of their wealth in crowns than CE loses wealth value through the raising of CE price. The only part of what you said in that above quote that could be valid is if they planned on purchasing CE with real money. In which case, again, they would have to purchase over 20 million crowns worth of CE with real money in order for it to be worth it, otherwise they are, overall, losing value in crowns.

Wealth accumulation is a game in itself to many players (such as myself). I enjoy the accumulation of wealth. It is like a 'high score'. For me, making ce/cr is more fun as an endgame, than running vanaduke again. I enjoy the thrill and the rush and the satisfaction of making crowns/ce, of a deal well-brokered.

@ Dorael, anyone who has 200k ce (or has had 200k ce) does not buy it with money---similarly no one in the world has 20 million US dollars because they worked 500,000 hours at McDonalds. The secret is positive cash flows, find your niche, and do it on as large of an economy of scale as you can maintain.

@ Aumir, and there is no one with infinite crowns from that bug that did not have them revoked.

P.S. i think the ce price market fixers/fixing/and-OOO-allowing-to-be-fixed is immoral, unethical, and should be a ban-able offense, and illegal for a for-profit company to do it. TBH i believe it is no different than saying wts 20k ce ctr vh brandish, then crying wtb ctr vh brandish 25k on an alt. It is scamming (in my opinion). I could easily make a 1000+ ce a day 'fixing the market', but i believe it is fundamentally wrong. Repugnant. Disgusting. Shame on anyone who does it, i would not want u as a friend.

Pawn, Wed, 08/15/2012 - 15:27

Dorael, anyone who has 200k ce (or has had 200k ce) does not buy it with money---similarly no one in the world has 20 million US dollars because they worked 500,000 hours at McDonalds. The secret is positive cash flows, find your niche, and do it on as large of an economy of scale as you can maintain.

Dorael, Tue, 08/14/2012 - 18:21

The only reason I can think of that someone would have that much CE given what I already know is that they didn't pay for it through real life cash but amassed their wealth in game somehow over a length period of time. In which case, most of their wealth was originally gotten in the form of crowns and, likely, still is crowns. Why would they want to devalue crowns relative to CE?

And yet you're also ignoring the argument that price walling only hurts the currency that is required to do it. Again, how is that profitable?

Also, I would love to see you easily make 1000+ CE a day "fixing the market."

The way I see it, at least, anyone who has over 2 million spare crowns to fling around in price-fixing won't exactly care much about a temporary crown inflation. If they're doing it to help a CE-laden friend make some bank, they can drive up the price, take their crowns back off the market, and just sit on them until the inevitable next promo or special event drives prices back down. If they're just working on their own...well, as Pawn noted, there are a bunch of people out there who have managed to make obscene amounts of CE via various methods, so they might just have that large amount you mentioned. Or if they're going the buying route, they can play the sit-on-the-crowns game too. Obviously, if they're just being a jerk, they could care less about profits. :P

Honestly, the more you think about the existence of buy offers, the less sense they make in general. I mean, look at buying regular goods in real life. Different stores selling the same product set their own prices for it, and then the consumer chooses where to shop for that product. Some people will always wait for the best possible deal to buy, while others are willing to pay a bit more if they're already at one store buying something else. Either way, it's essentially a customer-driven economy, as their buying habits are what determine which prices generate sales, and which don't. In contrast, when the customer is the one setting the price points, there's essentially no incentive to avoid overbidding each other. One person might say, "I'll pay $5 for that bottle of detergent!", and then someone else will come up and yell, "I'll give you $6!" The act of shopping has turned into an auction, and no seller in their right mind would pick the lower offer. As someone noted before, imagine the chaos if this was how things worked at your average Wal-Mart. It's completely counterintuitive to the standard consumer process.

Pdtopgun, Wed, 08/15/2012 - 15:47

The way I see it, at least, anyone who has over 2 million spare crowns to fling around in price-fixing won't exactly care much about a temporary crown inflation. If they're doing it to help a CE-laden friend make some bank, they can drive up the price, take their crowns back off the market, and just sit on them until the inevitable next promo or special event drives prices back down. If they're just working on their own...well, as Pawn noted, there are a bunch of people out there who have managed to make obscene amounts of CE via various methods, so they might just have that large amount you mentioned. Or if they're going the buying route, they can play the sit-on-the-crowns game too.

And I am telling you: it doesn't work that simply. No one goes "Oh, I want to sell some CE. I'm going to ask one of my super wealthy friends to spend time and energy doinking around the system so I can get a few hundred more crowns for my CE." The richer people are, the more these things are small change. There is an amount of time and energy that needs to be invested to do these things and people who argue that suchandsuch is profitable are constantly ignoring this factor. It is not worth the effort to do a lot of the things you might normally think of doing once you are wealthy.

Also, this quote.

Dorael, Mon, 08/13/2012 - 14:44

Let me clarify. The price of CE would be worthwhile if it were immediately changeable from one to another without cost or effort. That's not the case though. I could sit on the CE market all day and sell energy at 8395 (getting 8226) and then buying at 8206 for a 20 crown profit. This seems to always be profitable whenever I check, I rarely ever seen it not be the case that I could make some crowns if I sold some energy and then immediately bought the same amount of energy. It's just not at all worth the time or effort to do so. Someone that rich is likely in the same situation and doesn't go around slashing every single bush on a level. It's cheap change.

You should just take my word for it.

Nobody on the game understands the in-game economy as well as rommil and I. It is a fact. I have seen 700k ce and 40m crowns on one screen before, generated not from a surplus of original rose regalia or some measure of luck, but generated from cold, hard, ruthless understanding and mastery of the in-game economy. NOBODY, understands the in-game economy better. To the point where OOO themselves have followed and copied our models.

Rommil and I were sorta racing to see who could get 1000k ce+100m crowns first before we became so disenchanted with the games direction.

You should just take my word for it.

It does not matter if you decrease the value of the economy if you use your proportionate increase in wealth to invest in your own projects that give a higher ROI (return on investment) that easily outpaces the the rate of inflation.

Imagine you create 20k crowns, but the decrease in the value of those crowns is directly proportionate such that you are actually no more wealthy technically. But imagine that you can generate a 3:1 return on investment for all of your cashflows. Every iteration of devaluing your own currency also increases the amount of that currency that you own for the purposes of investing at a 3:1 return, and thus makes you significant profit.

In the simplest of examples that ignores a compounded devaluation; for every 20k u made but broke even on actual wealth, you'd still be able to then use that 20k push of wealth to create a very real 60k revenue (a 40k profit!). The key is you have to have an investment plan that allows you to turn that 20k (not new wealth truly, but additional cashflow) into real profits. So long as profits % exceeds inflation%, you are golden.

And very important is what NJthug said below. If prices do shortly return back where they started, then you made even higher profits.

Pawn, Wed, 08/15/2012 - 16:30

It does not matter if you decrease the value of the economy if you use your proportionate increase in wealth to invest in your own projects that give a higher ROI (return on investment) that easily outpaces the the rate of inflation.

No, I already understood all that. What I don't understand is how that contradicts anything I have said in this thread.

Njthug, Wed, 08/15/2012 - 16:29

The example shows that prices will always go to its natural "rate" regardless of what players do to the market.

That is where we disagreed. I didn't say you were wrong but that your example was wrong because it was in the beta, where player motivation and concern over wealth is different than it was in live knowing that a reset would happen versus keeping everything.

It's not what you said that I disagree with but your reasons why. "Because it worked this way in beta" without examining all the differences between beta and now.

No, back up. What part of your explanation on economics contradicting anything I said about economics.

I understood why you gave the explanation. I don't understand why you thought that explanation mattered to me in terms of this thread, or at what point in this thread you thought you and I were on differing sides of an argument.

Edit: Is it because you thought I was arguing that market manipulation doesn't happen? Or it's not profitable? Because I never argued either.

My argument was that price walling devalues the currency used to do the price wall, and that price walling, by itself, doesn't make someone richer unless they either have more of their wealth in the other currency or their primary means of wealth gain is from that other currency.

There are plenty of ways to manipulate the market besides (and/or on top of) price walling though. This is just that one that everyone freaks out about and I think it seems silly to freak out without thinking it through.

^^ same as above.

interface is confusing and lousy.

Go back and reread stuff. Pawn, Rommil, and I weren't arguing about price walling. Rommil and I were discussing the merits of moving the CE trade to the auction house or a similar system where you could only put Offers to Sell, not Buy (or alternatively, adding a listing fee to both, which is what I agree on). I didn't really get into arguing the merits of price walling in itself until later on. Pawn and I weren't really discussing anything. I'm not exactly sure what's going on, I think he mistook my stance that price walling itself isn't profitable for market manipulation doesn't happen, which isn't at all what I was arguing.

1) Aren't Featured Items up for two days? I would think that would be plenty of time to buy crowns with CE. If people are passing up a good deal then either they're terrible merchants (only applies if the item in question were resell-able) or we're missing some information.

2) Yeah, that's simple "buy low sell high." That doesn't mean that price walling, in itself, is effective or profitable though. Consider this: You would naturally buy low and sell high when the market is naturally at what it should be. When CE is high because of inbetween promos, every time you actually sell crowns (buy CE) via Offers to Buy you are effectively losing money.

Finally, on assertions. Asserting things is natural in a discussion/argument. There's a difference between making a simple assertion that nearly everyone can agree on (it's not efficient for a super rich person to pick up pennies off the street), especially when I explain the reasoning behind it, to a complex one (the market works how I say it does) without going into it and saying to take your word for it. It doesn't matter who you are or what you've done, you shouldn't be able to get away with the latter if you want to take part in an actual discussion. I can understand people not wanting to discuss how to manipulate the market but either they should find some other way to explain things that gives us what we want (answers) without giving up what they want (exploits) or not bother at all.

Postscript: Someone please explain to me why I saw a 2k Offer to Sell Energy for a couple of days.

I don't have anything to contribute to the earlier discussion of the proposed AH mechanism. I am addressing myself only to your most recent exchanges with Rommil. If they were themselves off-topic, or if you were talking at cross-purposes within that exchange, it is not my fault.

Moving on:

"Aren't Featured Items up for two days? I would think that would be plenty of time to buy crowns with CE. If people are passing up a good deal then either they're terrible merchants (only applies if the item in question were resell-able) or we're missing some information.">

This was not a featured auction.

"Yeah, that's simple "buy low sell high." That doesn't mean that price walling, in itself, is effective or profitable though."

I'm not sure anyone ever proposed that it was. We are not Underpants Gnomes. The point is that walling is a piece of the puzzle. It makes the activities it supports far more profitable than they would otherwise be.

I am sorry if my point was obvious, but if it's so obvious, I don't see the point of your observation that walling "in itself" isn't profitable. That's like pointing out that stealing credit card numbers isn't, in itself, profitable. Of course you have to do something with what you get afterwards.

"Consider this: You would naturally buy low and sell high when the market is naturally at what it should be. When CE is high because of inbetween promos, every time you actually sell crowns (buy CE) via Offers to Buy you are effectively losing money."

Yes. Of course. Point being?

Re: assertions, Rommil made a simple empirical claim: there are, in fact, very rich players who price wall. (Yes, he made other, explanatory claims as well. those do require reasoning, no doubt.) I do not see why his reasoning, if unconvincing, should detract from the reliability of his claim. I know that there are rich players who do this. They have told me that they do it and I have seen them do it.

I don't know if his explanation (since redacted) was convincing or correct. I only know that, contrary to your very convincing sounding reasons as to why no rich player would ever bother price walling, there are in fact rich players who price wall. I'm sorry that I cannot claim any bonus points by providing an explanation to go with it.

"If they weren't Featured Items then my point stands all the more. They were definitely resell-able then. Are you saying they were up for less than two days? Less than a day? How little time did they have to be up for people to not be able to turn CE into crowns? If it were so cheap, it should have been worthwhile to do, and sell later. I don't quite get what the point you're trying to make here is."

I thought I made it quite clear. It was simply an illustration of the tendency for rich players to store their fortunes mainly in CE, such that one of the conditions you mentioned earlier for price walling being worthwhile (having more resources stored in the other currency) is met. This is in direct contradiction to your earlier assertion (which I'm not sure if you've abandoned--have you?) that players who made their fortunes within the game would have most of their wealth in cr, which is simply not true.

"Let's say, instead of letting CE be at where it is naturally, I try to fight it and keep it high. I do this by, presumably, putting up a large bid ticket, thus price walling. For every bid that I (unintentionally) sell this way (that is, every CE I buy with crowns) I am losing profit. Given how long non-promotion periods are versus promotion periods (or more specifically, how long relatively high CE prices are versus to relatively low CE prices), how much do I lose by inadvertently buying CE in trying to keep up the price via a wall over that lengthy period of time?"

Like you, I have no data, but I'd say: probably not very much. It doesn't take very long for genuine buyers who actually want the CE to bid up. Have a look at the next wall you see: how many blocks of bids are above it? It's rare that I see a wall without at least three layers of other bids (each ranging from a few to a few dozen) above it. In fact, I've never actually seen a wall just sitting there being eroded.

Plus, about half the time, there is actually a tiny profit to be made buying via buy offers and selling via sell offers--even if done simultaneously. Your return per inadvertent purchase is realistically going be + or - a few tens of cr.

"My argument isn't that it doesn't happen, but that there isn't sound reason to."

But how do you know this? Have you crunched the numbers and confirmed that the losses from unintended high buys in fact outweigh the increased returns from sales? I don't see how you could have.

P.S. Sorry, I meant "your recent exchanges with Pawn".

Derpules - Wed, 08/22/2012 - 04:38

It was simply an illustration of the tendency for rich players to store their fortunes mainly in CE

And my counterargument for that illustration was that it isn't that hard to convert CE into crowns, and your example made no sense given the provided information because one could easily convert CE to crowns and ought to do so in order to get a highly valued item for cheap so that they could sell it for much more later and profit. I can't think of a reason people wouldn't do so which I think means we're missing some information here that you're basing this conclusion on that you shouldn't. For example, did people know that item would be as valuable as they are? Did they know that this was "cheap" and wouldn't be the general value of them? There are too many unknown variables to just make a broad claim about this.

Derpules - Wed, 08/22/2012 - 04:38

Plus, about half the time, there is actually a tiny profit to be made buying via buy offers and selling via sell offers--even if done simultaneously.

That have been answered three times over already. Here, here, and most recently by someone else, here.

Anyway, I've seen walls being eroded before. Generally they don't stay long as I think they cancel the bid when it starts getting picked at. The point still stands that they are buying high when it gets picked at at all, and this is a loss in potential profit.

But fine, let's talk numbers. Let's say I have 8 million crowns and no CE. Promo hits, CE prices drop down to 8000 per 100, or 80 per 1.

Scenario A: I use all of it to buy 100k CE (1000 bids). I sell it later for 8674 per 100, after the 2% fee that'd be 8500 per 100, 85 per 1, making 5 crowns per CE sold. Doing it this way I've made 500k crowns for this "promotion periods," which is to say the time the promotion took place and the time inbetween it and the next one.

Scenario B: I use half of that to buy 50k CE (500 bids) and save the other half to price wall. With 4 million crowns at 8000 per 100, I can put up a 500 bid price wall. At 9000 CE per 100 crowns, it'd be a 444 bid price wall. In order to make as much in Scenario B as I did in Scenario A, I would have to sell at a profit of 10 crowns per CE sold, or 9184 crowns per 100 CE. Assuming I used price wall mechanics to get prices that high and assuming I bought no actual CE via my price walling, this would yield the same profit as Scenario A.

Those were simplistic examples. You wouldn't buy or sell all your CE at the same price, and I ignored the impact on the economy that buying or selling would have but not what impact price walling would have. This favors A more than B, and in return I ignored the loss in potential profit from inadvertently buying CE through the price wall while still assuming you'd be able to raise the price an addition 500ish crowns per bid, which I think is a rather generous assumption.

Granted 8 millions crowns isn't a lot but I was trying to keep things simple. The higher you go the bigger the impact you have on the economy which makes things trickier. This also sort of ignores other people doing the same thing you're doing, which makes things even messier. For example, say you're price walling as per Scenario B and someone else was doing the same, but decided that 9000 per 100 was sufficient instead of 9184. You now likely have someone driving the price down on the seller side by uploading what they've bought. This is, of course, also a potential problem in Scenario A, but slightly less so as you need a much lower CE per crowns ratio to profit than in Scenario B, and you're not investing in a price wall which is likely now being chinked at by those people who think that doing this is worthwhile.

The biggest difference between these two examples is the effort and time involved. Scenario A really doesn't take much. When prices are low you start putting up a lot of small buy offers. When prices are high you put up a lot of small sell offers. In Scenario B, you spend less time in these two points (roughly half as much) but have to babysit the market for the entire time between when you buy and when you sell. I haven't been back long enough so I'm not sure what the time difference between promos are but I'd hazard a guess at a couple of months between each. I would imagine to price wall effectively what you need to do is set a large wall as fifth in line of what is getting filled. If your wall starts getting picked at, you set it back more so it doesn't. When prices go up, you, again, set the wall higher, to whatever fifth is. A lot of people might not think of this as much of a big deal but how time is invested and how it makes or cuts into your potential profit is a big factor in the equation.

Also again with Pawn: I don't think he and I were actually discussing anything.

Oh, and I'd still like for someone to tell me what's going on here, instead of all the ignoring it's getting.

@Thorfinns: Or 3) they don't think anything's broken. Sorry, people have been complaining about how unfair the economy is since CE hit 3k.

Derpules - Wed, 08/22/2012 - 21:34

It started on a Med timer at a bad time

Yeah, it had to be something like that. It was an exceptional case and shouldn't be used to make a point then. Like, what is a bad time anyway? Med is 4 hours so are you saying like 4 hour auction in the middle of the night? What kind of point does that make?

Derpules - Wed, 08/22/2012 - 21:34

I am merely pointing out that when a player walls--devaluing cr and increasing the value of CE--it will generally be a gain for him/her at that point, as s/he is likely to have more CE than cr at that point.

Actually this was my position for the latter half of the thread (when I started bringing it up). No, seriously, that is my position you're stating right there. It is why I earlier said that price walling by itself doesn't increase wealth. More specifically, as per the numerous times I had repeated it previously in this thread, price walling is only a gain if you have more of the other currency than the currency you are using to price wall. It is otherwise unrelated to wealth. You can be poor and benefit from a price wall. You can be wealthy and be hurt by one. I'm not sure where you're getting this stance you think I'm taking from.

Derpules - Wed, 08/22/2012 - 21:34

You and the other poster were addressing the feasibility of making money through that arbitrage. I am addressing your claim that every time one accidentally buys CE (because of an attempt to wall), one makes a loss.

No, they are not losing money. They are losing potential profit. There's a difference. As has been said, you can make money this way but it is far less than what you could make by doing other things. Thus it is a loss in potential profit where your resources (time, effort, money) are better utilized elsewhere. So again, my argument isn't that you're losing actual money by doing this but that you could be making more doing something else. At no point in time did I question whether arbitrage was profitable. Quite the contrary, I brought it up because it was.

Derpules - Wed, 08/22/2012 - 21:34

I'd like to request that you revise them before we discuss them in-depth.

Go for it. You can do the math yourself as well, can't you?

Derpules - Wed, 08/22/2012 - 21:34

In fact, it'd be worse, since the CE price would (all else being equal) be lower for lack of the other seller's walling.

That is kind of my point. If you put all your money into scenario A and don't bother walling, you benefit either way. If someone else starts unloading their energy first you can just wait it out (unless you waited so long that the next promo is just around the corner, but then you may be doing it wrong anyway). Conversely, if you're trying to wall you can be hurt by someone putting up large amounts of Offers to Sell energy as you may actually find your Offers to Buy at rates that are profitable for others through arbitrage and end up buying high. Again, this requires a lot more babysitting the market and is more time and effort consuming.

It's like you think I'm saying it's unprofitable to buy high and sell higher. That's not my stance. I'm saying you should buy low and sell high, where there's a huge difference, and merely buying high and selling higher is a much less efficient an investment of resource for the profit it yields.

Derpules - Wed, 08/22/2012 - 21:34

as for the big block of sell lots in your screenshot

I'm not sure how to put it nicely but if that's their goal they're being rather dumb about it. They're effectively price walling when they should be putting up smaller bids so as to try to not encourage people to underbid them, costing them offers and driving the price down for their CE. I find your last possibility pretty unlikely as well.

1) I wouldn't call it conceding the point since I was making that point way back here. In that example, my argument was that if there were a 20M crown price wall so the person in question had to have had a larger sum in CE for it to be profitable (otherwise they are making the larger portion of their wealth worth less and may arguably be better off buying more CE first).

2) To me, the key word you used there was F2P. I don't want to turn this discussion into a F2P vs P2P one but if I were to give a personal opinion on it, I would say that I don't care if it does hurt poorer F2P players more. One could even argue that it is a good thing for the game in the bigger picture, but, again, that's outside the scope of this thread. Also for the record, outside of buying OCH I am a complete F2P player and have never paid for energy.

3) Regarding the short portion: wouldn't they be better off investing more of their resources into buying more CE (or in your example, holding onto the CE and selling higher instead of lower and using it to wall)? Keep in mind just how many crowns you need to effectively wall. It's not an insignificant amount.

4) How much CE are you saying needs to be sold? Very close to the answer I gave for 3), but it needs to be a considerable amount to be able to wall effectively. This cuts into what you could have sold it instead for higher. To answer your question: I'll repeat myself. It's not an issue of losing money but losing potential profit that you could have made otherwise.

5) I brought up the walling for the Offers to Sell CE because you can make the exact same arguments for either sides. You just need to flip some things around. The discussion ought to be the effectiveness of price walling in general; that people arbitrarily pick and only focus on the buy side is because most people want the price to go down for personal reasons and less because of any desire to figure out why things happen.