Auction Rules Could you please extend the allowed items as follows? Enchanted items in unused condition and in any quantity EMC Special Items such as Voters Block, Vault Voucher, Valentine Rose, New Years 2012 Special Fireworks, Membership Vouchers Dragon Egg, Beacon Block, Nether Star, Wither Head Any item in bulk (Double Chest ONLY with STACKED items in each slot, or 54 unstackable items) About Membership Vouchers I would like to see the Empire Shop selling: "1 Month Iron Membership Voucher" for like 50'000 rupees "1 Month Gold Membership Voucher" for like 100'000 rupees "1 Month Diamond Membership Voucher" for like 200'000 rupees (You might scale the price, but I think the value I suggested is fine.) (Eventually you could somehow automate the Activision of these vouchers?)
I think IcecreamCow said that the auction of supporter was a one time thing at the moment. So far it's been a test. People already auction off the special stuff as well. Other than that I don't really see anything wrong with the rest of your post
Well, the voucher selling would get the ''support'' the Empire away. Because with rupees we can't get the servers up. That is what supporters are for.
Well, in reality, EMC still receives the money as the person who is auctioning off the voucher is still paying for it.
The OP isn't asking for this though, he's asking for Supporter to be an item that can be bought in the Empire shop for Rupees, completely defeating the purpose of the Supporter levels. The only change I'd like to see to the Auction system, is that you can have +1 Auction running at the same time per level of Supporter, in the normal Auction forum. So non-Supporters have one Auction at a time Iron two Gold three Diamond four Would certainly save a lot of time for some people.
Hmm ok I see that's an Issue. Right now there are only ways to convert from $ to rupees. (Supporter / Donate: e.g. 210$ -> 195'300 r) Having a backward way from rupees to $ would: Influence economy and gameplay in an interesting and (I think in a positive) way. Depending on the backward exchange price it would lower the $ to keep the server running. My thought was if Diamond Membership would cost enought rupees e.g. a factor of 10 more than the donation $->r exchange price, then EMC can not lose more than 1/5th(sup) or 1/10th (donations) of the $. Imagine Diamond membershop would cost 1'000'000 rupeees then. How many $ would EMC lose? Math says 4% / 2% at most. (Well for this math I ignored the fact that rupees can be generated for free with referrals and voting.) Auctioning "20$ Diamond memberships" and gaining like 200'000 rupees this way would be bad too as the auctioner gets too cheap to rupees. Here EMC loses $ indirectly too I'd say. It should be like Auctioner pays 20$ and receives only 10% or 20% of the bidden rupees.
EMC makes the exact same amount of money as it would. The Auctioneer is already, or is not already, a Supporter. The Auctioneer auctions off a month Diamond Supporter. The Bidder is already, or is not already, a Supporter. The Bidder wins, and if they aren't a Supporter, become one, with EMC still earning the single amount of $20. If they are already a Supporter, EMC loses a months membership from the Bidder, but gains it straight back from the Auctioneer. Thus, breaking even. Honestly, you're starting to complicate things beyond reason. If ICC lets us auction Memberships, EMC will earn a lot more money this way, as people will be bidding on a membership they may not have bought in the first place as it cost real money, but with auctions, it costs Rupees. So EMC will profit from this. If Diamonds keep going for 150,000+, I know I'll be running a fair few of those Auctions myself, and that's money EMC wouldn't have got from me otherwise.
No, that is wrong: If I want to buy rupees for $, and a lot of it, then as it is today I would either Donate or get many alt accounts to diamond supporter for 1 month to get the daily rupees. If I need 200'000 rupees for my project, EMC would gain 210$ if I donate or 100$ for my 5 Diamond Alts. BUT only 20$ if I could auction a diamond membership.
You're not being realistic with that example though, and it falls out of the norm. It'd be interesting to see what level of Rupees have been purchased through the system, but the vast majority of players wont have five Diamond alts, nor will they spend $210 on buying those Rupees. There will always be exceptions to everything.
Diamond sub only get you like 40k a month. If you go supporter for rupees then its kinda foolish as any small shop and generate a income, and with voting its easy to get rupees nowadays. Honestly i don't think supporter ship should be able to be bought with rupees in any form auction or in game shop. For the reasons -its auctioning off for a sub for the extra rupees takes away from donations as every one and their dog we'll want to do this due to the current auction for diamond " IMO is you have the money to auction off a sub then just donate for the extra rupees since we wont see any more diamond member auctions" -iIf subs can be bought in game with rupess, you'll see more people focusing on econ based game play just to go sub for another month " IMO if you allow sub's to be bought with in game rupees, the server would turn more towards an econ , and in th elong run we would see more complaints about things effecting the markets" looks @aikar
$20 in the Donations scale gets you 7,200r. 211,000r in the Donations scale costs $210 The two don't quite add up eh? You can't expect people to try and gain the same value through donations. The whole purpose and point of a Diamond Membership auction is that it allows people who cannot afford that $20 to get Diamond for one month. It doesn't take anything out of the economy, it doesn't skew the balance of the economy, it changes nothing, and the chances of that person who bid on the Auction actually donating to buy Rupees? I'd hazard a guess that due to the poor returns, there was either very little, or no chance, of it happening. I honestly don't see why people are getting so excited about this. It's going to generate more money for EMC unless there are a lot of people out there spending hundreds of Dollars on the Donations scale which I highly doubt. So what's wrong with that? Until the Wild gets all the bells and whistles that keep being promised, EMC doesn't really have much more going for it other than the Economy aspect. Look at the Auction threads, look at the Products threads. This is pretty much an Economy server regardless how people like to spin it. I don't see how you can substantiate your last claim. What complaints? A complaint that they can't afford to bid for a Diamond membership? Not really a complaint, more a gripe. A complaint that someone has auctioned off ten Diamond Memberships and made a million from it? It's not as if it's the Germans during WWII printing money off as they need it - it's Rupees that were already in the system. There are players out there with Rupee amounts well in excess of one million, so people bidding on memberships for 200,000r doesn't change anything. I think people need to relax about the whole thing. ICC has said they're having long and indepth discussions about Membership Auctions, so we may very well see them being allowed in the near future, and when that happens, I'll be lining them up to the highest bidder. I think there is a bigger emphasis put on Donations than may actually be the case. We don't know how much money Donations make. There will be some whales out there chucking a lot at it, but for the returns, as I've said, I don't think it'll be making that much. I could be wrong, but I feel that with Membership Auctions, EMC will make a lot more money.
