"Miners' Discount" welcomed its first customers on June 30th 2012. Rewind 3 Months. I think I've started playing on EMC in March 2012. We're a family with quite a few kids, including cousins and close friends who play together. We've started with one MC account for all of us, so we would take turns in who would play on EMC. The whole MC experience was new to me, so during the first months I was just exploring and learning MC together with my broader family. Almost all of the time in the wild, far from the town chat, the social, community and economy aspects of EMC were at first completely unknown to me. Something is strange in the Towns of EMC After some time we have accumulated a lot of mined stuff, so we started to bring it to the town, sell it to few bigger shops and see what we can buy for the rupees we've got. Oh yes, we wanted a Silk Touch Pick and we've constantly had bad luck while enchanting. That's when I've noticed something strange: all shops where we could actually sell stuff have had a very high margin, mostly around 100%. That means, for example, that they were buying a stack of Cobble for 15r while selling it for 30r. Setting up a shop is easy, so why is that so, why can't anyone do better than that? To open a shop or not to open a shop It was not an easy decision for me because I was already in love with the Wilderness. Either we're going to forget about the town and its strange economy, or we'll try to become part of it and try to find our place there. Few family members talked me into trying it, into starting a shop and so "Miners' Discount" opened with mined goods, with the stuff we had in surplus. Being better than other shops was so easy - I've just set the sell price somewhat below others and the buy price somewhat above. As their margin was usually 100% it was an easy thing to do. Griefed Somewhere at that time, we've experienced several griefings. Our Jungle base was destroyed. It wasn't really far away from the spawn. On one occasion, 3 or 4 members were hunting me using the live map, trying to kill me with fire and lava. On another, a diamond supporter blew up my first grinders' spawner with TNT. (Back then, only diamond supporters were allowed to use TNT.) That were big setbacks and for a part of the group the interest in EMC has faded. The interest in the new shop made me stay. All together, from a Wildernes-only person, I became a Town-mostly person... Sometimes, I try to imagine what would have happened if I / we had decided just to move far, far away from the town. Boom During the first 4 months, Miners' Discount quickly became popular, used by over 400 people it made a turnover of over 2.4 M rupees. That was year 2012 rupees! Some average prices from June to September 2012 (Sell : Buy): Diamond 42.7 : 39.8 Emerald 26.5 : 24.6 Iron ingot: 6.90 : 5.94 Sandstone: 1.18 : 1.06 Obsidian: 9.00 : 8.02 Cobble: 0.48 : 0.43 That experience was astonishing and it made me wonder even more. I've started using the Forum and the auctions. More strange things surfaced up - you can auction most stuff, like both dirt and diamonds, only in multiples of 3456 items. Quite strange, isn't it? But well, ... Fair Play? Quite some time has passed before I've realized that you could buy rupees for RL money on the website. How could they? How could they have full mouth of community, no cheating and what not, and then spoil the game like that, with a big shiny gate wide open for cheating? (Oh, no, no, that's not cheating because, you know, we need the money...) "Yeah, welcome to the world of online gaming" - wrote one sincere member in the Forum. Corruption and inflation? Oh well, that's something I know from RL, that's something I know how to deal with. Up the prices! It didn't take long and the effects were more than visible. The player base decreased, and the people that still played were producing and selling less and less. The inflation was high and was speeding up, the shops got more and more empty. Some average prices in 2013, 2014 and 2015: Diamond 53.7, 66.7, 115.0 Emerald 29.2, 26.0 (let's trade some paper), 40.4 Iron ingot 4.8 (the start of farming), 3.2, 3.54 Sandstone 1.8, 1.39, 1.33 Obsidian 9.26, 10.6, 18.3 Cobble 0.54, 0.56, 0.59 Fairshop That's when the "Fairshop" idea was born - to make shops that would allow EMC members to exchange stuff conveniently and at low cost while being unappealing for players who bought rupees on the website. Low margin and high prices will favor the players who produce stuff. If the shop owner does not have rupees, then any buyer that doesn't also sell to the shop pays a very high price. The price can be so high that actually nobody would do that - making a convenient barter shop possible (/v 12163). Derelict, bad guys and friends I was on a longer trip and it happened that I was just few hours late to vote or log in. There was a member who was waiting for the very second to force-claim and reset 12220 "sellshop" with the "color shop" and the "horse shop" sections of the Miners' Discount - just to offer the residence to me to buy it back. That made me very sad and I didn't respond to the offer. After some time, few friends on EMC have collected the money, have bought 12220 back and gave it back to me as a present! Yes, you can have real friends on EMC, friends that show themselves in hard times. 12221 Further months passed and eventually 12221 was derelict, but I didn't want to claim it and destroy a small but quite nice castle that was built on it. Someone else did, and then it went derelict again. That was after a longer break (more than 5 months) that I took from EMC, so I claimed it and with some fresh energy, started working on the new mall that shall replace the old one. 4k and 300M All together in this 5 years, Miners' Discount has served over 4,000 members and has made a turnover of almost 300,000,000 rupees. Thank you! Changes EMC has changed considerably through the years. It got somewhat more mature, more stable. Map hide is available to everyone - no more stalking via live map. Rupees can't be bought on the website any more. For that occasion, a small poem came into mind: Millions of Rupees were selling on the Net. Millions were sold without bumping a thread. EULA came and it said: No more Rupees selling on the Net. EMC got the Momentus, but unfortunately, it couldn't keep the momentum of the former days. 400,000 "members" were celebrated with less then 1% of that being really alive and active players. Less than 2,000 people actively play the game (according to TEXP), but that's still something. Future? Here's my suggestion: openness, humbleness, sensible, meaningful and mature rules, serving the community, and always: fair play. Thank you! To all of my EMC friends. You knew when to encourage me not to give up, you knew when to vote for me to prevent derelict status. Thank you for all presents and friendly notes. Thank you for your companionship and support! We're open! Miners' Discount is open on SMP6 /v 12221 and /v +mm, with new sections added on 12220. Happy to serve you and promoting fair play. Welcome!
What a great read! I agree on many points of your post. And I'm sorry for your misadventures you went through. I wish I could of been around then to help. I've been there myself. . . Miners' Discount has been my #1 mall for quite some time. I will continue to be a supporter of the shop and it's growth. You got my vote. Thank you for your time and efforts. I appreciate it and you!
<stands and applauds> as it was a great read... I have both purchased from and sold at +mm. It is really a great shop. The sad part in that story is how some people can't enjoy games without making it unenjoyable for others. Almost can't believe you lost your shop like that, especially that way. If EMC is to make it back in any form of it's former glory it will take not only new players who take interest but the strong backs of players like you (and plenty of others) I really like your post so much because it tells the same store I have read over and over, but it has such a better feel to it than most of the others screaming death and the end. I'm glad you are still standing strong with EMC!
mm is one of my preffered shops. Everything in stock. Very useful for a guy like me who doesnt have as much time to gather materials and likes tl spend tome building. Thanks!
I love Miner's Discount. It's been a reliable source of almost any material I need and has helped me accomplish some of my goals. When the 100k forum member celebration took place and /shop was selling the armour and tools for 10k a piece, +mm was where I made my money. In a mere 3 weeks, a player like me with no real established means of making rupees made over half a million rupees and purchased almost a double chest of those promo items. I am currently building my own mall and this has really inspired me to try and work to one day make it have a legacy that even somewhat resembles Miner's Discount. For that, I am grateful. Keep up your amazing work M4ster.
Super great read. Nice to see there are still some older members who are still a big part of the market playing as well.
Gg miner! I use your shop often when i need stuff that i can't find on smp3 shops, your prices are pretty good and affordable and I love that! Also thanks for sharing your history with us it was fun and informing to read ^-^ I hope you continue to have fun on the empire and I'll get to see you around more -ches Edit : can't believe I wrote all that and forgot to say congratz on 5 years!
Miners Discount at /v 12221 is a great designed mall, I even use it myself at times and M4ster is a good friend to have on EMC and congratulations on your five year anniversary as a mall owner.
Congrats on 5 years! I had no idea you were the owner of fairshop. A lot of us on smp8 voted for it to keep it from going derelict for a while, and I remember when that certain person force claimed it just because they didn't like fairshop.
That was the Minion shop, yes that was a sad day and a reminder that there are some mean ppl out there. Overall a good design and well laid out.
One thing is the "Fairshop Project", that's originally my idea, but there were also other people on EMC at that time that had somewhat similar ideas, or that at least tried to create good buy & sell shops. The other is the "+fairshop" on smp8 - that was a joint venture - - Silken_thread made the exterior design and building (the minion) - I did the interior design an building - The shopkeeping was meant to be shared among several people and also through inter-shop trade, but it turned out that the effort is too big, partially because of the inflation and constant need to adjust prices. There is a story attached to that. As the price of diamond ore went up, at some point it reached the price in the "Empire Shop" (back then it was the "/shop"). While buying one piece was much more expensive there, buying a full stack wasn't. If I remember correctly, +fairshop was buying for 245r per piece, while the "Empire shop was selling for 15.360 per stack = 240 per piece. So one player has bought in the "Empire shop" and then sold to "+fairshop" for profit of 5r per piece until the shop was out of money. Not long after that, the prices in the "Empire shop" were updated and the price of diamond ore went up beyond 245r. It was my fault that it did went derelict - i should have organized someone to take care of that while I'm away. Again, I'm very sorry about that. At the moment I lack time and energy to rebuild it.
It was a lot of work and at the moment I don't think the player base is here to make it worth the level of work effort required to rebuild it. I often think about building Minion's around my res but again like you lack the motivation and time right now but who knows I get the motivation at some point. I like the new colours and think we could do a lot with them. Long live the Minion
Don't have much to add, but then again that never really stopped me before Awesome read, thanks for sharing. I'm always interested in hearing other player experiences, especially if they've been around longer than me (and with that I also mean being active, I also know a few players who are basically older than me but only started playing more seriously at a later point). And I'll try to keep your shop in mind. Probably going to have a look around later on.
