2013 Q4 News and Meta Game effects on In-Game Markets

I was going to include this review of news items in my Q4 market report but there is enough information here that it warranted its own post. The review of some of these out of game happenings is important to the overall market analysis as I am coming to conclude that players actually logged into the game and activity in the game has the greatest effect on the market at large.

Over the past quarter there have been lots of scandals and all around bad press coming from several sources. The first of these is Terms of Service change dropped right at the start of the forth quarter. I don't think it helped that they dropped this right in a slump of what was August and September with their low player numbers. But could they help it? I did a short post about the TOS change and if for nothing else read this entertaining article on the scam that might have brought all these changes about.

After all of that news it couldn't have possibly gotten worse for CCP could it? Yep it did it got a lot worse. The Somer Blink Scorpion incident put another bad taste in everyone's mouth and then the Real Money Trade allegations started bubbling over on to the picture and just made things even worse. Its been said once but I will say it again internet spaceships are serious buizness. Now I can't prove that these news events slowed down the economy in-game but all of these things start to paint a narrative for potential players and old players in the form of potential re-subscribers.

The last bit of bad news for the quarter that has a more real market effect was the Amazon PLEX price mess up. It should be noted that the effects of dumping mass amounts of PLEX on to the market has the effect of curbing a natural supply and demand price increase especially considering this was the month before an expansion was due to drop. See PLEX Intervention.

To round off the Q4 a couple of great things happened. The Rubicon Expansion dropped on Nov. 19 and if there is one thing a trader loves more than anything else it is increased player and market activity with speculation surrounding an expansion.

The last thing to take place during the quarter was the Sister of Eve PLEX for Charity Event. This needs some carefully examination as wealthy players cash out isk for PLEX to donate to the charity this could very well have the same effects as a PLEX Intervention and would also help repair the Amazon PLEX dump that took place two months previous.

No one event during the quarter seems like it would have much effect on in game markets but tied together things begin to paint a picture of player sentiments and directions of large cash injections into and out of the market through PLEX. Or I could just be tin-foil-hatting this all way to far. As a trader keep one hand on your wallet and the other on your news feed because in Eve Online even the meta game can have an effect on your trade volume.

Wow that was way to much meta for the morning see you around.