| Author |
Topic |
Cista2
Hydra Investment Fund |
Posted - 2010.07.09 14:42:00 - [ 1]
Here is the first chapter of my writeup of the history of the financial markets of EVE. Developments in the primary and secondary markets are supported by mentioning of landmarks in industry, and occasionally political events like the great wars.
This is only a work in progress, and the reason I am posting it here is that I can hopefully benefit from your corrections and additions! You can help me finish this chapter, which I should then upload to Evelopedia.
A special thanks to Caleb Ayrania and TornSoul whom I interviewed in my quest for information, and all the other wonderful and horrible people that have posted on MD in my time and the ages before.
Cista
|
Cista2
Hydra Investment Fund |
Posted - 2010.07.09 14:43:00 - [ 2]
2003 May: EVE was first released on May 6th 2003 and the market, as everything else, was trying to find its own feet. Tech 2 did not exist yet. Industry and trade skills hardly existed, all players were able to produce ships with what little skills they had. It is hard to believe today, but the market interface did not allow trading of most items, trading among players mainly took place in the Trade Channel forum and local chats. And worst of all, the Market Discussion forum (MD) did not exist!! The main gameplay dynamic of Eve was to go mining in belts (in your frigate or cruiser), and also kill the rats that appeared there. There were no agents or missions. Bpos were readily available on npc sell orders, with the purpose of distributing ships to as many players as possible. In the beta game a T1 bpo could be copied just two times, but that was changed so they could be copied many times. Also, production runs on bpcs were unlimited, just like on bpos. The economy quickly boomed, but prices were low. The minerals you mined were sold to npcs at a fixed price. Trit was sold at 1 isk and pyerite at 4 isk. But you could sell the minerals to other players at higher prices, since they could not be bought from npcs. T1 ships (below battleships) and equipment could be bought from npcs at a fixed price, but they could also be bought from players. Players could thus produce the items and sell them to other players, but only *below* npc prices. But a majority of players were already using bpos and bpcs to build their own stuff. If you wanted a Rupture, you didn’t want to buy it from a player, you just got a bp and built one. This stunted market dynamic, with bpos held by most players and a heavy supply of ships and mods, resulted in prices on manufactured items quickly dropping waay below npc prices. All meta items were banned from the official market. Instead there was the Escrow system, a precurser for today’s contract system, but more primitive and less secure. It was seen as a sort of Wild West of trading to have your items in Escrow. June: The EVE-O forums were up and running. From the beginning the “Trade Channel” forum was supposed to be everything about the market, but it was mainly the location for sell orders and buy orders, and posts here rarely received 10 responses. Market related discussions were more often held on the General Discussion (GD) board, or CAOD or even other boards. The most prolific posters on Trade Channel were thus salespeople like Barbicane and Kel ‘dra from Techell corp. Efficient corps had already emerged in the game, their function was mainly to gather up enough people to buy the expensive bpos and copy them, and produce and sell ships. One such corp was Tornsoul’s BIG, which began the tradition of posting business results right from the start of the game. But hey, this was posted on the Intergalactic Summit board! That’s right, it’s the roleplaying forum – having financial ambitions was viewed as a severe case of role-playing by many, and sometimes still is. Ambitious industrialists were not happy with the low prices on their products, and the first animated discussion in the Trade Channel was, unsurprisingly, on how to control those darn price undercutters! A “Trade Federation” aliance emerged that worked for more decent prices, but on the other hand was accused of bullying and price fixing, and downright acts of war against other miners and manufacturers, and they soon dissolved. |
Cista2
Hydra Investment Fund |
Posted - 2010.07.09 14:44:00 - [ 3]
July: Suddenly the markets shifted gear, and a price inflation began. It was CCP that was aiming for a transition to a more healthy industry-based economy, and therefore turning some knobs. One major change was simply that mining harvester drones was now not found as a common npc drop anymore, this was enough to rebalance the economy of the whole mining industry, and then everything else. Tritanium pvp price rose to around 1.5-2 isk, and pyerite 5 isk. But this also meant that modules became much more expensive. At this point industrial corps began to accrue large wealth, and then the next thing that happened was this most significant landmark: A player encountered a Jovian GM in game and after a chat the GM gave him a souvenir: the (too) powerful Niebelungen Mining Laser (see also more details) This gift to a specific player and corp led to some grinding of teeth in the playerbase and it was quickly decided to trade the laser with a Miner II bpo; the first T2 items in the game were thus miners. August: A new patch put a limit to bpc runs, only bpos now had unlimited runs. This change of course further helped concentrate the industrial market in fewer, wealthier hands, leading to some discussions on which solution on bpcs would have been most fair for all players. In these first months of the game it had somewhat condescendingly been labelled as a “miner simulation game”, as other forms of gameplay were poorly developed yet. And there was no metagaming and little cooperation among corporations or other entities. The most expensive objects to buy were battleship bpos. These were only affordable by corps, not individual players, but all the strong corps were able to get them. So noone really thought about opening up their industry for investments from outsiders yet, the idea of launching public ventures was not fostered. That said, there was one remarkable exception: on August 10 TornSoul launched the BIG Deal in Trade Channel. In this project you could invest 1/10th the price of a bpo, BIG would then buy the bpo and you wpuld get bpcs from it in return. Investments ranged from 62 million for Dominix to 112 million for Apocalypse. It was a completely trust-based enterprise, but needless to say, this was a BIG succes, and TornSoul became a key figure in EVE. Share no. 100 was sold in April 2004, and the BIG deal continued through 2005, with the the thread reaching 250 posts before moving to a website. Also starting in August there was the NAGA corp sell thread, their shop kept selling pirate looted modules, bps and other products throughout 2004 and much of 2005. But perhaps even more important, this month brought the first serious scam to haunt the EVE (GD) forums! It was the player Morbor who ran the first Ponzi scheme on an unsuspecting playerbase. Although the forum info is scarce, apparently he managed to scam 1 billion isk, quite a lot in those days, before he mysteriously fell ill. CCP had decided to distribute more Miner II bpos in “Jovian events”, and the T2 race was soon on. The Techell corporation quickly became infamous for selling T2 miners on the open market with great profit. Price was upwards of 10 mil per unit. |
Cista2
Hydra Investment Fund |
Posted - 2010.07.09 14:45:00 - [ 4]
September-November: As meta items were still not hosted on the market, and the Escrow system was dangerous, people were trying to come up with better ways to market and trade your stuff out-of-game. Likewise, Caleb Ayrania and the NAGA corp created the Bazaar channel as an alternative trade channel for those (meta) items that could not be sold through the regular market. Since player to player trade was so difficult, hauling npc goods from station to station was the real trade profession, and a lot of players were living well off that. The goods were seeded during every downtime and then quickly consumed, and prices varied a lot, resulting in some very lucrative trade routes. Part of the trade goods market was also player driven, because the items were sometimes needed in missions. But more businesses now began to use threads on Trade Channel as their base. Many were signature sellers, and ads for the out-of-game market functionality websites, but the aforementioned Techell and NAGA corps and other bp dealers had their own threads. One interesting campaign was from M.Corp, where the player Velios offered combo deals on bpos and bpcs and toured around New Eden with them. He happily kept bumping his thread, amongst customer responses and the now familiar accusations of scam. Despite admitting that his hauler alt had been among his first “satisfied customers”(!), he was succesful in offering the game a genuine and unique service, which lasted until 2005. December: The Castor expansion. Castor began the distribution of a variety of T2 items to the playerbase through the infamous T2 bpo lotteries. Players qualified to the lottery through research points gained with high-level R&D agents. Every now and then, a "lottery draw" was made for a random blueprint, and the player could choose to accept that particular bpo or wait for another. Castor also brought a new options for trade on the regular market, but it’s unclear exactly what happened, maybe just a few more items that were marketable. There was a big change in the business of hauling npc trade goods, which became much less profitable. Npc prices became fixed, and items were no longer needed in missions. In other words it became close to the modern proces of trading of npc goods, with replenishable items and little variation in price. But this was a major upset, and the trading profession was even declared dead by many, since player manufactured items were still not efficiently traded through the market interface(?). |
Cista2
Hydra Investment Fund |
Posted - 2010.07.09 14:46:00 - [ 5]
2004 In the beginning of the year, prices of T2 items were very high. Lottery winners often sold their T2 bpo to powerful industrial alliances that gained a near-monopoly on some items. Here’s a link to some sample prices from the Xanadu corporation. Another issue with T2 production was that the components were scarce. Moon mining didn’t exist yet and components only came from npc drops, so manufacturers had a hard time getting them. Mission runners, or agent runners as they were called back then, had a very lucrative business selling them to the rising industrial corps. Meanwhile, the T2 bpos themselves were in the beginning auctioned on the forums for what is now ridiculously low prices, like 300-500 mil isk for module bpos that in 2010 would sell for 10-15 bn isk. The low prices was a remnant of the early weeks of the game where a bpo investment was expected to be profitable when just 5 items were produced. February: The game had seen prolonged inflation for half a year, and Zydrine peaked at 4k and Megacyte at 14k, after which came a small period of increased competition on products and lower prices. June: EVE celebrated its first one year and was in a good state. By now tech 2 prices had already declined as more producers were entering the market, and price wars ensued. The economy was sprawling, and Yulai was the main trade hub of EVE at this time. But Trade Channel forum was still mainly a marketplace. Because of all the sell orders, threads quickly diappeared from view. There were no ingenious business models presented here, and noone had yet thought about providing any secondary market products. Discussions about economics often took place in GD or outside the forums, on sites like EVE Guardian, run by a wellknown marketeer called J'Maybe Keens. The average player was getting wealthier, many individual players had billions of isk. The early Band of Brothers alliances had also launched the Great Northern War and were crushing the Phoenix Alliance. The war activities further boosted the markets and even more isk flowed into the game as insured ships were being blown up. Tritanium had reached 2.3 isk per unit, and there was worry that the lack of isk sinks was leading to hyperinflation August: The player Saris from Goonswarm announced sales of enormous amounts of zyedrine and megacyte, enough to disrupt the universal market prices. It was speculated that the minerals were the product of an exploit, and one of his sales threads was locked, but it is unclear what the outcome of this story was. One of the first original business innovations of EVE emerged, the Deep Space Service run by the player Oron, a courier service that ran succesfully for at least one year. October: The WTS and WTB ads were finally being moved out of Trade Channel and into their own forum, and TC became Market Discussion! Many of the posts on the forum were now simple pricechecks, but nevertheless, the MD as we know it today was about to take shape. The most active posters on TC/MD in 2004 were Barbicane, Harisdrop, Feta Solamnia, Morkt Drakt, Ray MacCormack, FunGuy of Xanadu corp, and J'Maybe Keens of The Guardian. In anticipation of Shiva and improved mining methods, and after the Northern war had ended, there were signs of deflation, as prices of all minerals began to drop. |
Cista2
Hydra Investment Fund |
Posted - 2010.07.09 14:47:00 - [ 6]
November: The Exodus expansion, until then known as the Shiva expansion. Exodus brought the market interface up to more or less how we know it now(?). It introduced trade skills and broker fees, meaning that for the first time there was a challenge to do good trading, and fewer people could flood the market with buy and sell orders. Absurdly high and low orders now had a cost, and market escrow on buy orders was also introduced. The casual, opportunistic trader was more or less eliminated with this expansion. Enter the tycoons. Not everybody was welcoming this development. Said one MajorGeneral Ponsonby: “Specialisation might be good, but these trade changes SUCK. I'm probably the one with the most orders in the whole game (2000 or so, how can you count). And I will NOT learn any of these new skills. Whats the point, even if I learn them all, 170 orders? Tax? Money upfront? You gotta be kidding me. The market was what I found most fascinating in this game, but now...screw trading.” Also POS and sovereignity over 0.0 systems were introduced with Exodus, and mining barges like the Covetor, with new ore specific crystals, increased the mineral supplies. One relic of of the old days remained in the markets: npcs still bought your minerals at fixed prices. But these in the most cases remained lower than the actual market value of the minerals. For instance the npc price on Tritanium was still just over 1 isk, while the market value was around 2.5 isk, so npc orders had little function now. At this point the MD really came to life with a flurry of discussions on the merit of the new market interface and trade skills. Also, with the POS and moon mineral reactions people started to become aware what the scale of industrial enterprises demanded of a corp. A significant post came from the NAGA corp, which discussed the necessity of cooperation to achieve full-scale operations. This was a a prediction of things to come. Corp shares were probably(?) also introduced with Exodus, since a few weeks later there was a post asking whether any corporations in Eve were actually selling their shares and distributing dividends. In the thread there was mention of one corp having done so already, but this is not confirmed, and the first major ipos came almost a year later. |
Cista2
Hydra Investment Fund |
Posted - 2010.07.09 14:47:00 - [ 7]
2005 April: Despite the new mining tools, and despite CCP also having turned some isk sink knobs like broker fees and office rental, inflation was once again prominent. And especially with the T2 components no longer being dropped in missions, but now having to be produces from players running POS, prices on anything T2 exploded. This also meant that T2 bpos again became increasingly lucrative to own, and this was the time that T2 bpo prices soared to the levels we know in modern time, where expected profitability of your investment can be 4-5 years away. In a clever move, NAGA corp launched the Stepstone Project, where T2 bpo owners shared their bpos with the corp to maximise profit. NAGA had been one of the dominant industrial corps ever since launch, and were famed for providing T2 items cheaper than its competitors (“NAGA prices”), and they were continuing to do so for some time still. June: The Exodus: Cold War expansion brought freighters and player outposts. Also there was a serious rearrangement of gates. While Yulai had until now remained the major hub of the game, the new racial capitals Jita, Rens and Dodixie got an advantage from the changed route patterns, and by August it was over for Yulai. Magma Corp made the first serious market bragging thread on MD when they disclosed they had manipulated Isogen from about 85 to 128 isk per unit: July-August: Another public venture, one of the few besides BIG, was launched on MD. The player Habigor from the Black Ops Corp asked for a pool of 2.5 bn isk to buy “expensive” bpos, that were then to be copied and distributed to each investor. They got some investors, but how the project ended is uncertain. Other advanced business models also got advertised, such as producer/reseller partnerships. The player base has reached 30,000, and after 9 months of moon mining the market for moon minerals was in decline, prices were crashing even for the most elusive minerals like Promethium. The prices of T2 components were also beginning to drop, since a horde of corps and individual players had been running POS all year. Shorter POS cycles introduced with the Cold War expansion also accelerated the oversupply situation. Dreadnaught production was the big thing in 2005, and the flux of materials to thousands of dreads was a main factor in keeping the markets going. MD was thriving with the increased playerbase, and more relevant discussions took place here rather than on GD. The most active posters on MD in 2005 were Dark Shikari, Feta Solamnia, Droidster, Barbicane, and Harisdrop. |
Cista2
Hydra Investment Fund |
Posted - 2010.07.09 14:48:00 - [ 8]
October: Interstellar Starbase Syndicate (ISS) had emerged as a major factor in Eve. They were a non-political industrial alliance working to open up deep space for starbase colonisation and industrial exploitation. To reach their goals of building outposts in several regions, they were to launch a series of major ipos, the first was the Marginis ipo in October that raised 36 bn. And at the end of October, Eve University, NAGA and other corps publicised there common Big Blue project - - "the next logical step in business development". This was in the shape of a large multi-regional T2 industrial alliance, which was also set to cooperate with Interstellar Starbase Syndicate and their Marginis outpost. The Big Blue later managed to build outposts of their own, before falling apart in late 2006(?). November: Inflation was still a hot topic. Now that the regular market was thriving through the market interface, there were no more projects trying to move the trading business out-of-game. Instead we started to get tools for analysing market history like Eve Trade Analyzer (and an earlier one). December: The Exodus: Red Moon Rising expansion. More T2 ships were introduced, as well as capitals and titans. Also introduced were Game Time Cards, where you can buy isk for real money, which were soon accused of corrupting the market. And ISS launched their second ipo, this time for the Borealis outpost, which easily raised 34 bn isk The succes of the mega-ipos of ISS was signaling that the golden age of MD was just about to begin, with a huge wave of ipos being introduced in early 2006. It was the arrival of the secondary market, and the age of the great scams! (to be continued) |
Guilliman R
Gallente
Northstar Cabal
Important Internet Spaceship League |
Posted - 2010.07.09 15:06:00 - [ 9]
Amazing read :o, thank you for this. Very nice to see how the EVE economy evolved. |
Dezolf
Minmatar
DAX Action Stance |
Posted - 2010.07.09 15:10:00 - [ 10]
Interesting read. Will read again when I have more time. Also, I didn't know BIG was that old.  |
Teavan
First CityWide Change Bank
|
Posted - 2010.07.09 15:42:00 - [ 11]
Edited by: Teavan on 09/07/2010 15:42:58
"Corp shares were probably(?) also introduced with Exodus"
Corp shares have been around since the beginning. I, or one of my alts, has shares in the first corp I was in, created by a group of friends within the first couple weeks of starting the game. I know it must have been at the beginning, because that corp didn't last more than 2 months.
Edit: They may not have had much of any functionality back then. Of course, they still barely do :D |
Raziphan Rebular
Caldari
Metaphysical Utopian Society Explorations
|
Posted - 2010.07.09 15:55:00 - [ 12]
 Originally by: Dezolf
Interesting read. Will read again when I have more time.
Also, I didn't know BIG was that old.
ya big has been around for ages, honestly I think tornsoul is a little underrated given how long big has been around. |
Vaerah Vahrokha
Minmatar
Vahrokh Consulting
|
Posted - 2010.07.09 16:11:00 - [ 13]
Quote:
That’s right, it’s the roleplaying forum – having financial ambitions was viewed as a severe case of role-playing by many, and sometimes still is
Auditing ambitions too. You can find an audit of mine done in character in the role play forum too (not in 2004!). |
Shar Tegral |
Posted - 2010.07.09 16:11:00 - [ 14]
Edited by: Shar Tegral on 09/07/2010 16:13:25 Originally by: Cista2
May:Bpos were readily available on npc sell orders, with the purpose of distributing ships to as many players as possible.
Something vastly overlooked is NPC merchant traffic. Anything, and everything, that was sold by an NPC could, and would, fall as loot when you destroyed an NPC convoy ship. This would include BPO's of all ship classes. PS: I seem to notice that Eve Guardian is not mentioned though it did a lot of market reporting - before there was an MD or Trade Forum. |
Magnu Stormhawk
Stormhawk Enterprises |
Posted - 2010.07.09 16:25:00 - [ 15]
Excellent read Cista, thanks! |
Samroski
Games Inc. |
Posted - 2010.07.09 17:46:00 - [ 16]
Amazing work! Thank you.
Where do you get the motivation for this? |
flakeys
The Great cornholio's
Paper Tiger Coalition |
Posted - 2010.07.09 17:50:00 - [ 17]
Verry nice read.At that time i was playing the game but not into trade/business so only some of it rings a bell like ISS offcourse.
|
RAW23 |
Posted - 2010.07.09 18:25:00 - [ 18]
Great read! Looking forward to reading it again and following all the links that I skipped this time.
And your written English is excellent, btw. A good deal better than that of many native speakers. |
TornSoul
BIG
Gentlemen's Agreement |
Posted - 2010.07.09 18:36:00 - [ 19]
Originally by: Dezolf
Also, I didn't know BIG was that old.
The BIG Lottery has been running since the beginning - and even a single pilot round in beta  BIG it self was founded 2002.08. So yeah, I/we have been around for a bit. And the mentioned BIG Deal still runs to this day as well  (just a little FYI) |
TornSoul
BIG
Gentlemen's Agreement |
Posted - 2010.07.09 18:44:00 - [ 20]
Originally by: Shar Tegral
PS: I seem to notice that Eve Guardian is not mentioned though it did a lot of market reporting - before there was an MD or Trade Forum.
Twice actually Originally by: Cista2
Discussions about economics often took place in GD or outside the forums, on sites like EVE Guardian, run by a wellknown marketeer called J'Maybe Keens.
Originally by: Cista2
and J'Maybe Keens of The Guardian.
(and no edit in the post at this time - so it's been there all the time) |
Shar Tegral |
Posted - 2010.07.09 21:37:00 - [ 21]
Edited by: Shar Tegral on 09/07/2010 21:41:10 Originally by: TornSoul
Twice actually
Okay Mr Smartie Pants answer this: Where do I get better glasses!!! Neener, neener, neener. PS: Sorry about not noticing the Keens reference but I still think that the NPC 5 finger discount had an enormous impact. Made cruisers and battleship production available to players way earlier than it should have been. Also I should add that Eve Guardian was opened for business late 2003 and run not by J'Maybe Keens (I was his editor) but initially by Morkt Drak, Leo Grats, and Lou Zeta. I took over running it months before I asked Keens to sign up and take over Business Reporting. I missed the reference as the "time frame" is way way off. |
Caleb Ayrania
Gallente
TarNec
|
Posted - 2010.07.09 21:54:00 - [ 22]
As I recall there was two major players on the scene in regards to production and retail early on.. TTI was one of them if I am not mistaken.. Not sure exactly when but EVE radio and EvE Tribune was a rather nice addition to the permadocked pandas.. Cant remember if Tribune overlapped Guardian..
Oh and can someone do a recap on "when bees where cows?" GOons and Moo?
|
Shar Tegral |
Posted - 2010.07.09 23:08:00 - [ 23]
Originally by: Caleb Ayrania
Cant remember if Tribune overlapped Guardian.
Not even close. Also, simple search on eve search netted this. |
Menkaure
Amarr
LEM0N
|
Posted - 2010.07.10 00:24:00 - [ 24]
Great post. Look forward to reading more... Although I am surprised you didn't mention the cap recharger II monopolies?  |
Nordstern3
M. Corp
M. PIRE |
Posted - 2010.07.10 01:04:00 - [ 25]
Originally by: Cista2
But more businesses now began to use threads on Trade Channel as their base. Many were signature sellers, and ads for the out-of-game market functionality websites, but the aforementioned Techell and NAGA corps and other bp dealers had their own threads. One interesting campaign was from M.Corp, where the player Velios offered combo deals on bpos and bpcs and toured around New Eden with them. He happily kept bumping his thread, amongst customer responses and the now familiar accusations of scam. Despite admitting that his hauler alt had been among his first “satisfied customers”(!), he was succesful in offering the game a genuine and unique service, which lasted until 2005.
...... We still do this... Join channel MCORP_SALES |
Shar Tegral |
Posted - 2010.07.10 05:41:00 - [ 26]
Originally by: Nordstern3
We still do this... Join channel MCORP_SALES
I really love this project here but I wonder how much actual research was put into it? I think a few eve mails spread around, more than just two people, would've given you more valid data to include in your "histories". |
Xylopia
Gallente
Center for Advanced Studies |
Posted - 2010.07.10 06:08:00 - [ 27]
It's amazing to see few really old faces are still hanging around here. Good read.  |
Ambo
I've Got Nothing
|
Posted - 2010.07.10 08:00:00 - [ 28]
Thanks for this Cista. Although my char is pretty old, I didn't get involved in the market side of things till at least mid 07 so hearing about all this stuff is pretty interesting. Thanks for all the work you've put in. |
Cista2
Hydra Investment Fund |
Posted - 2010.07.10 09:22:00 - [ 29]
Originally by: Samroski
Where do you get the motivation for this?
Actually pretty exhausted right now. Thanks for all the comments folks, it's much appreciated, I will begin making corrections soon. |
Icanti |
Posted - 2010.07.10 12:29:00 - [ 30]
Originally by: Cista2
Originally by: Samroski
Where do you get the motivation for this?
Actually pretty exhausted right now.
Thanks for all the comments folks, it's much appreciated, I will begin making corrections soon.
Thanks for the great read. One thing though, you mention that at the start there were no missions/agents, but you don't mention when they were brought in. I could probably look this up but it would be nice if it could get a mention in the story above! |
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