I'm moving yet another continuation of the discussion about the health of EMC economy over here. The original thread - please read at least the relevant posts - covers several topics, the discussion veered towards the health of the economy (https://empireminecraft.com/threads...t-the-emc-community.82563/page-2#post-1556629) I hope we can distill the matter and concentrate on the concepts to see what are the problems and what are possible solutions. This discussion has a deeper meaning (also IRL). I want to invest some effort to better understand the problems and ideas. Are you saying that some people are not able to cover their needs because of supposedly unhealthy economy? Can you give examples? Who are they and what are their (unsatisfied) needs? Are you saying that the production should somehow be regulated to prevent overproduction of some items and keep prices of that (specific?) items stable? If yes, can you give an idea of how that might work? Are you saying that the demand should somehow be regulated to push people into buying more stuff? If yes, how could that work? If a buy & sell shop is overstocked, that means that either there is overproduction, supply is higher than demand, and/or that the shop owner is doing less than a good job. Good shops do compete, I can tell, so it is not true that there is no competition. Again, a shop can't compete with a high margin, often 100% or even more, that is ridiculous, such shops are not even a serious attempt. Yes, most of the shops aren't good enough to really work, there is competition and it is everything but easy. It does. It is quite demanding to run a good shop, when you get up the air is thin, it is hard. A good shop has to: - monitor the market, know what is going on - constantly adjust prices according to supply and demand - have spare stock to cover temporary changes in demand, be able to sell higher quantities - have enough funds and chest-space to bulk-buy when someone decides to produce a larger quantity (e.g. mine obsidian) - have a wide range of items in program - make it easy for buyers and suppliers, save their time, have easy navigation in the shop, open /tpreviw - have pleasant looks If you look for innovation, consider that list and you will see it, it is there, both on EMC side and on shop owners side: /tpreview, shop maintenance tools, stock indicator lights, different types of ads, market chat, auctions and reverse auctions, bulk shops, exchanges, specialized shops, ... It is healthy. - Yes: on one side it is personal (or company) decision about what to produce and how. Normally, people invest in production if there is demand. If some people build huge bee or iron or whatever farms no matter the demand, it is for their fun. If those products get cheap as a result, it is a delight for everyone who's buying. That's not making the economy (or more specifically its setup!) "unhealthy". - And no: if the market is contracting overall, if there is less and less turnover overall, if tehre is a recession, that means that there are less players and/or that the players are less active, but that is NOT a problem of how the economy is set up! Free trade, free economy isn't managed. We are getting to a very important point here. Generally, any idea about how to push or force people to change their economic activity is bound to produce more damage than do good. People must look themselves after their needs and must bear consequences of their decisions. Any action trying to change that can only make the economy unhealthy. Specifically, if you have an idea for improvement, please describe it and let's think about how that would work and what would probably happen. So, it has to be demand and supply - and convenient, low cost ways of trading. Eh? I don't understand you point there, you're saying that demand and supply are working and are making the price, but that this is somehow "strange" or has a "strange" effect? Oh, they can and they do rise. Consider obsidian and how the price has fallen with "mineral mincers" and is again increasing afterwards. It is healthy for the game if the old items get easier to get and thus cheaper while there are new items which are hard to get. That change is good and brings an interesting development. People will concentrate on what is new and interesting, that stuff will achieve high prices. 1.16 will again bring ton of new interesting stuff. I see this as normal and healthy development. People also change, EMC is much more mature now (and I enjoy that), we're all a bit older, our abilities and preferences developed and changed. That's also healthy. (You've misunderstood that - it is not profit, it is turnover and yes, it shows a decline which is both due to me neglecting the shop and due to decline in overall economic activity in the period before 1.15, and increase again both due to my effort and the boom due to 1.15.) That activity is not "fake". It is real, live activity, real economic boom, people are enjoying new stuff, building, investing, trading. New people are joining. I expect that to continue with 1.16. My conclusion: the current setup of the economy on EMC is not perfect, but it is very good. It is free economy and free market with many useful tools and quite convenient and low cost ways of trading. Many details can be improved, but overall it is very good. The problems are not there because of how the economy is set up and they shouldn't and can't be solved by "tweaking" the economy. Any "tweaking" of the economy setup, any attempt to "manage" the economy would cause more damage than do good. The problems need to be solved by tackling their real causes, not by tweaking the economy setup.
This is not how I remember it. Back then, the EMC economy was everything but balanced and stable. There was high inflation, the prices were constantly rising and the /shop was the limit at which people stopped to produce items that were cheaper in the /shop than relative effort to produce them. The /shop was making it ridiculous. Running a shop was a nightmare because of constantly increasing prices and grave lack of suppliers. There was no incentive to invest effort and time to produce stuff. This was highly unhealthy and damaging to the EMC economy and gameplay. That is why /shop was removed. And, thanks to EULA, the massive selling of rupees for $ for cheap an then even cheaper has stopped. It is working perfectly. I can tell, see 12221. People set prices, make decisions and bear consequences. This is healthy and it is exactly how it should be. First it wouldn't work - as described above. Second, it would damage the economy because it would make players effort ridiculous. It would bring disaster in the long run. If items are easy to produce their price will drop. This is normal and healthy and there is neither a way nor a good reason to try to change that, especially not through some /shop.
Agreed. I am not sure why people think that bringing back the EMC shop would have a positive influence? I'd be interested to hear why. It seems to me it would just take money out of the player economy. Or are they suggesting an EMC shop you can sell to? In which case I'd think it would have to buy at very low prices and even then I can imagine ways the impact would be negative. Am I right that voting is the only way new money is introduced into circulation? I wonder how much goes in each week and how much goes out of circulation by players going derelict. Of course the economy is more than rupees, it is promos and blocks/items, and labour and prime real estate. I am surprised that the mega mall format is so common and there aren't more specialist shops (eg redstone, wood). It would certainly make running and stocking them an easier undertaking.
I had a response to you typed out, but it's not worth it. I cannot debate with people who refuse to accept the things that are right there in front of them. You blatantly disregard my points several times in this post, and then preach about the free economy. I will leave you with this - if you think the EMC economy is healthy, you are either part of the problem, or oblivious to the world around you. Edit (21/05/2020 2:25 PM BST): I thought it would be fair to note that I've been warned about my behaviour, regarding these debates and some other incidences. Since I'm not looking to get banned, I'm going to be dropping out of this discussion all together on EMC. If you want to continue on this discussion with me in any way - feel free to message me on discord: Alice <3#1712, where I am more than willing to talk with anyone one on one about this - I promise to be nice.
I am not the original poster, but, what?? I certainly would be interested in your response. I skimmed through your original post again and it seems like he touched on every part that was in your original post.
I was reading, but not responding to the original thread because I didn't want to involve myself in the context of the overall discussion, but I'm more than happy to respond here. Any attempt to defend the current state of the EMC economy is based on false principles. While apparently this is more controversial than I expected it to be, I have to agree with Runder and others that the current state of the EMC economy is not nearly as healthy as it was 3+ years ago. There seems to be a few issues at hand here, so I'll try my best to hit all of them. Not quoting anyone in particular here, just taking a general point that has been made a few times. But, simply, no. That is not how you determine if an economy is healthy. Anybody that says that could say since Walmart and Amazon are still selling stuff during the quarantine, then the US economy is doing fine, but the exact opposite is true. Here is the main problem at hand: every reference to the state of the EMC economy's performance is based on personal experience. We have no method to be able to monitor the global economy properly, so all of our arguments are inherently biased and faulty. That being said, I think that our combined experiences can give us a better picture of what the economy looks like for everybody, not just a few specific people. No. You actually are asking exactly the wrong question. The problem isn't that there are too many needs. It's that there is a sheer lack of them. Ask most players on EMC what they need and most people will tell you nothing. Everybody today either has a farm or has access to a farm to mass produce their own items. Assuming that they need to even produce anything, since many players have large storage systems of items on-hand. No. I'll state for Runder here that this was never the point of his discussions, nor should regulation be part of the discussion. There is nothing EMC can do to regulate the economy the fix the issues at hand. I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that the reason most shops fail is because of high margins. I could see this with shops ran by brand new players who don't take the time to look at what an item's value is on EMC, but any player who has been here for longer than 100 days is aware that iron is worth no more than 2r an ingot, with even that being a little pricey. The reason most shops failed on EMC is due to two reasons: The shop owner lost interest in the game and left. There is such a low demand now for items that the malls have shut out the competition. More on this later Except none of what you listed, is unique to your shop. Everything you talk about is done by every large mall on EMC and by many of the smaller shops. Most of it isn't even necessary for a shop to function. Innovation means uniqueness or offering something new that others don't offer. Everything you listed has been around on EMC for as long as I've been here. And here is where we get to the issue at hand. What you describe is indeed a "free market" and at no point has anybody made the claim that this should be changed. There is no good alternative. As Runder has stated numerous times, there is nothing that can be done by EMC to fix the economy, because it's a free economy. The reason the economy is broken is because the cost of entry is too high. That cost being time. You say... But this is exactly why the EMC economy is unhealthy! Let's take iron as an example. Iron farms are probably one of the most commonly found large-scale farms on EMC. There are probably a dozen of them on every SMP owned by different players. Due to this, iron production has been so high, there is more iron sitting around than could possibly ever be used on EMC. In fact, when 1.15.2 broke iron farms for many people, iron prices didn't even fluctuate. This is because there is such an abundance of it available, nobody could even begin to work through their stock on hand. In addition, because everyone has such an abundance of iron already, most people weren't even buying it anyways! To make it even worse, let's bring in my point from earlier: Continuing with iron as the example, shops like yours make it impossible for a new player to effectively sell iron. Why? Because that new player either has to mine iron using waaaaaay more time than it takes for an iron farm to produce it, but still sell it at the super low value due to iron farms. Or, they have to take a month to build an iron farm of their own first, just so they can compete with you. It's not worth their time to even attempt to compete with the half dozen malls and shops on EMC that can out-price and out-supply them. And this goes not just for your mall or just for iron. This goes for every single large mall or shop on EMC and most Minecraft items. Gold is another great example with an even higher time barrier, since gold farms are way more difficult to do than iron farms, since the materials required are a lot more work to get. Again, nobody is promoting regulation. The very idea of regulation on EMC is not even remotely possible. Things are what they are and there isn't a way to fix that. Actually, this perpetuates the problem. We get all these new items in an update that are expensive because they are new. Everybody that is aware of this on EMC, is able to take advantage of it and make tons of rupees early on. Then over time, prices drop as supply ramps up and the farms are created. Once all the malls have their supply meeting or exceeding demand, the prices start to drop until they hit the floor. (Emphasis mine) Your numbers exactly show the problem though. 1.15 has artificially improved the your shops turnover because demand went up! Not only did demand increase, but because there are so few shops on EMC anymore that actually can compete, the few shops that are around saw that increase the most. And to conclude, nobody is suggesting tweaking anything. There's no "tweaking" the EMC economy. The very fact that the only time EMC's economy sees high activity and large movements of rupees is after a Minecraft update shows exactly what the problem is. The economy should see a boost after an update, but be able to maintain stable activity for the months afterwards. It used to be able to do this, 3+ years ago. ------------------------------------------------------------- You can't take the experience of a few successful shop owners and auctioneers and use that as the way to determine the state of EMC's economy. That's not how you determine overall economic performance. You have to look at the economy as a whole, for everybody. The only thing that would help EMC's economy is a consistent increase in demand. Meaning not just after the 1.15 update and then slowly tapering off back to the levels it was before. EMC has to see a continuing growth in demand in order for the economy to improve at all. Even with that, it only improves the situation for the shop owners that currently exist or for players that have the ability to compete. Because here's the real kicker: The reason that there is so little competition on EMC is because it's so hard for new players to enter the economy. Unless they are willing to put in months of work building farms and establishing supply methods, they can't keep up. The real cost of entry into EMC's economy isn't rupees - it's time. And the expectation that new players should have to put in that amount of effort just to be remotely relevant in the economy is too much. They can't even begin to compete, so a lot of players don't even try. The demand isn't nearly high enough that the economy would necessitate any more shops, anyways. The current mega malls and shops spread across EMC are more than enough to handle the current needs of the player-base. That's just the way it is.
JD did a very good job of responding to it. Hits basically all the points I made in response, just with less anger and frustration.
Thank you for that! We have several aspects here, I'll try to tackle them separately. #1 Economy setup Let's first clear that most important one: I've seen mentions of (mis)managing supply and even call for the return of the /shop. You can understand that makes hair on my head stand up. If you also check few other threads you can see a number of calls for "tweaking" of the economy. I'm glad we agree on this point. It can't be "fixed" because of simple natural laws: if making something takes a lot of skill and effort, it will have high value, otherwise it won't. Can't change that. So I guess we agree that the economy setup is very good as is, that it follows natural laws and that no (fundamental) change is needed. #2 - What can (new) players do I understand what you're saying here, but comparing to RL isn't good, because on EMC, if people are less economically active no one will experience major shortage or starve, while in RL people will get sick and/or potentially have major shortages. What you're talking about is how EMC economy is experienced by different groups, especially by new members and I want to explain why i still think that EMC economy is healthy and that while there is room for improvement, there is no need for a fundamental change. That's a very interesting thought that deserves some contemplation. Imagine being put into a world, like a new player, and there is no one around, or even worse the people around don't need anything you're able to provide. That would mean you are totally and completely poor. The only thing possible would be to die. I get that. (This has, unfortunately, quite some parallels with RL.) But for one, this would be a wrong attitude, and for two, luckily, this is not the situation on EMC: When I'm following the community chat, I almost always greet new players and try to talk to them, to answer their questions, even to give them few tools they might need for free and, if they ask, to give them advice on what to do for a quick start on EMC. For example: I ask them if they know how to collect sand, sandstone or packed ice. I borrow them a pick for free, give them an enderchest, sometimes even few shulker boxes - if they are talkative, if they show some manners, if they seem trustworthy. Sometimes I go with them on their first mining trip and mine together. Afterwards I show them where they can sell the stuff if they want to and how to buy what they need. It's not that hard if they care to ask for guidance and try to understand, as many, or at least some part of new members do. a) just looking at few good buy/sell shops, you can quickly see that there is a lot you can gather and sell. It's sad that most shops, for whatever reason, don't care to pay suppliers a fair price. I do and several other shops do, some of them even trying to go for zero margin. b) A new player is not alone, there are other new players around they can cooperate and trade with. There are needs there, and people do cooperate, many old members do help. I claim that a new player who has skill and some patience can make a very good start with as little as 10-20 hours of play. #3 Why do shops fail They do. Who would sell diamond for 70r? No one who knows the price. Who would buy diamond for 109r? Also no one. So margin here is over 55%. Why doesn't the owner lower the sell price and increase the buy price when there is clearly enough room for that? Because they either don't care about actually getting suppliers and/or actually selling items, or because they are not able to put the effort in checking the market and knowing the right price, or because they are tired of adjusting prices over and over ... or for whatever other reason, but such shop won't have many customers. Look around, here's a list of high volume items where there is a bad idea to have high margin if you really want to buy and/or sell: Sand, Netherrack, Coal, Redstone Dust, Quartz Block, Packed Ice, Gravel, Glass, Concrete, Shulker Boxes, Iron, Wood, Exp Bottles, Leather, Sandstone, Diamond, ... Ehm, not really. My shop isn't that interesting at all among iron factory outlets around selling cheaper and in bulk. Shops like mine help the new player to get quick orientation about what has high value and what hasn't. Almost everyone will (and should) give this advice to new players: don't go mining for iron, gold and diamonds. Get sand, sandstone and packed ice instead. #4 Innovation Innovation means something new or done in a new way. I didn't claim that what I gave above is unique to my shop, but that are still innovations. I claim, for example, this two innovations: - system for multiple-chest stock indicator lights that actually worked before the corresponding bug was (recently) fixed. - fish tanks for selling tropical fish (/v 12220 ocean) #5 Overproduction Exactly. And so what? That isn't a problem. When iron price is low enough people will trade iron for emeralds, emeralds for books, armor, tools and other stuff villagers sell. Everything you can easily get doesn't have high value. People will concentrate on more valuable stuff that isn't easy to get. And that touches something I'm "preaching" for years: don't make the game easier! Make it harder, make stuff more valuable. But the solution is not to stop farming iron and similar stuff, the solution is to bring in new, interesting and creative stuff. 1.15 did bring some, 1.16 will bring more, we on EMC can also think of new creative challenges. #6 How to actually improve the life on EMC Create new goals and activities. Be creative, inspire others, lead by example, make it fair play. We have a really decent community here which has a distinct culture, which has some manners. And that really is something!
Thanks for your reply JD! I'd like to reply to some parts. I'm not sure I agree. I have a lot of stuff, but I still need to buy some items, like shulker shells, beacons, and gold. The main reason I don't have to buy a lot of other stuff, is that I've bought it in the past. I am an exception in that regard, though. Either way, I don't think most "regular players" have stacks of everything they wish for ready to go. Items like obsidian and diamonds are examples of this, I think. I have a bulk cobblestone shop, and even that gets used more often than I would expect, seeing how little I advertise it. I also, if not especially, see already item-rich people shop there. I think that there's also the issue that owning a shop can take a lot of time, rupees, and items. I've worked with a friend on a big shop, but we never properly opened due to the fact that pricing and stocking takes a lot of time to set up and maintain. I disagree. Many shops don't have /togglepreview enabled. Many shops don't have stock indicator lights. The features are there, but unfortunately many people don't use them. Or they could go to one of many public iron farms and sell the iron they get from there. I don't think that mining iron to sell it should ever be the standard, we just need too much iron for that. (edit: fixed "never" to "ever") True, gold is indeed a hard market to enter. I don't think all markets are hard to enter, though. Items that cannot easily be farmed (or that aren't farmed much) will be more approachable to "less rich" players. Think of things like custom mob drops, obsidian, diorite/granite/andesite, gravel, sand. Yes, that makes sense, doesn't it? More people playing = more demand = more sales. That's exactly what he says, isn't it? It's only been about two months since the update, so we don't yet know how this will turn out. Also, if the player count decreases and the shop activity decreases with it, then I don't think the issue lies with the EMC economy, but with the decrease in players.
There are a lot of shops that a new player can sell to. I think they can participate in the economy quite quickly once they actually find those shops. But what do we mean by participation in the economy? Some people like to build and trade on an industrial scale but not everyone does. I actually wonder if some of the reason people feel the economy doesn't work is because EMC is "play your way" and we don't all engage the same way? Some players operate on such a large scale it changes the price of items, others barely interact with the economy. I don't see that as a problem though. I think I've played for about 6 years ish(?) but I don't actually know what people are talking about when they talk about the way things used to be?? My memory is not great though!! Maybe specifics would help - what could you do then that you can't do now?
Agreed on the principle, though our reasoning I think is a bit different. I believe that there's nothing we can do to change it, not that we shouldn't if we could. That being said, I think that there are things EMC can do that would help at least stabilize the economy. Though, it'd be hard to determine what specifically and how to implement it without having actual numbers to work off of. As an example, let's say we could determine that there were too many rupees in the economy. Well, adding an additional rupee sink could help. Or the opposite, if we find that there aren't enough rupees. These are the type of things that EMC could do to influence the economy in a healthy way, though I don't think that these are steps we necessarily need to take right now. While I agree that comparing EMC to real life isn't the best example, there are still enough similarities between EMC's economy and the real world economy to at least make anecdotal comparisons. That was my only intent with my example, just to provide an anecdotal example to clarify a point. I think the issue your addressing here is something that is more of an EMC problem than an economic one, though. It's actually something that Tom addresses more directly in his post, so I'm going to address it there more thoroughly. Simply put, I think that we're addressing two different issues, though. My statements were about the difficulty a new player faces when entering the EMC economy. You seem to be referencing a players ambition or motivation to do things, how to get started on EMC, steps they can take to grow and improve, etc. These are two different issues, imo, that while often go hand in hand, would need to be addressed separately. Your helping a player get started on EMC may give them a better basis to understanding EMC and being able to move forward with their gameplay. However, it doesn't change the fact that EMC economy is drastically different from other servers in that you can't just "play Minecraft" to compete. I'll explain this more in a bit... I'll concede the point that some shops fail due to poor pricing standards, however, that was a point I never intended to contend with. My interest is more so with the dozens of shop owners who used to run successful shops on EMC, but have long since shut them down due to not being able to compete. In these types of situations, that's where my original two points come into play. Either the shop owner lost interest and the shop got out of date, which can result in the issue you describe. Or the shop owner continues to try to compete. But if they don't have the same farms everybody else does to mass produce items, they won't be able to compete in the long term. There are so many items that used to have a value based on the time a person put into gathering them that are now valued on how hard they are to farm. As this continued to happen with more and more items over the years, it became more and more difficult for normal players to compete. Their time just wasn't worth the amount of rupees they were earning anymore. I'm gonna be honest - I don't see how this is really relevant to the discussion though. You can have the fanciest shop on EMC, but if the shop next door has the same items for cheaper, people are still going to shop there even if it's confusing and ugly. Sure, some people will choose to shop at yours still, but majority of the active players have been around long enough to know how to find the best deals. Stopping farming was never my intention. I am 100% pro-farm. However, that doesn't mean that I still can't see the negative effect farming items has had on the economy. If farming didn't have a negative effect on the economy, why would server owners spend so much time worrying about "game breaking" bugs that allow item duplication and/or high production farming that is outside normal game mechanics? EMC drew a line in the sand, saying "This is as far as we're allowing farming to go." They didn't just do that arbitrarily or because they enjoy sand art (my attempt at a joke, forgive me ). They knew that level of farming would destroy the EMC economy beyond how "normal farming" already hurts the economy. Yes, yes and yes. I agree wholeheartedly. I always tell people that the only way EMC is fun, is if you have a project to work on. We're not a minigame server. The server does not put a ton of effort into keeping the player base entertained. It's up to the players to entertain themselves. ---------------------------------------------- I didn't go into too much detail answering your reply, simply because I have already read Tom's and noticed some things he discussed more that you had also mentioned. I'm going to spend some time replying to those now...
Haha. Well maybe people who don't agree with you should just get banned for cheating and troll the forums.
I do see people auctioning iron and it seems to get good prices. But I have a question. You reference shops versus malls. Like shops do badly and malls do well. What's the difference? Aren't they both operated by players and really just shops?
I've never been more confused in my life my guy - you genuinely make no sense. What are you trying to say?
Everything is 2r, 2r is Everything!! The Pebble Horde will survive fixed prices set if a shop union is formed.....
The economy on EMC still exists. I'm not saying it's pointless to run a shop or that there's no way to earn rupees on EMC. As I'm typing this, I'm also thinking about some things I need to do in-game in relation to gathering items for me to sell later for rupees. However, the problem I'm describing is that at this time, the current offering of shops and malls is more than enough for EMC. The market is so saturated with items that there isn't nearly enough demand for any more shops or malls. There are still plenty of ways to make money on EMC. However, times have changed, and you have to be a lot smarter today than you had to be in the past. This is true, too, and is true for many shops. However, as I mentioned earlier in my reply to Miner, I'm more interested in the shops that were making it until the economy changed on EMC. While may be true, this doesn't have any effect on EMC economy. It may make your life more difficult as a buyer, but you likely will spend the same number of rupees no matter how "innovative" the shop may be. Which is why I'm 100% pro-farm. I agree that having that high level of supply means that my "demand" is always met when I need it. However, over the past 3 years or so, there has been a continuing increase in supply while demand has continued to decrease. This is partially due to players becoming more self-sufficient as everybody gets their own farms, but also relates with a point you make later... Exactly. And this list gets shorter and shorter. I'm not blaming EMC for it, either. A great example of this - packed ice. It used to be that the only way to get packed ice was to find an ice spikes biome and gather the packed ice by hand. It was a great way for players to make a lot of rupees by selling the packed ice to players back in town who didn't have the time/ambition to go gather it themselves. Now with the updated to 1.15.2, packed ice is craftable! Anybody that already has an ice farm, now has a packed ice and blue ice farm by default. If they haven't already, it won't be long before packed ice prices fall and blue ice becomes a commodity. It is. Except it's what I consider an artificial increase. Explained more below... This is probably one of the best points made so far, though I would say it's neither for nor against a broken EMC economy. The increased activity due to the 1.15.2 update did have a positive impact on the economy, no doubt. Player activity is probably the largest factor in the health of EMC's economy. As a result of the 1.15 update and its associated player activity increase, economic activity has improved. However, that doesn't change the fact that for most players, the easiest markets to enter into are going to be either the few you and Miner listed or any items added in the most recent update. However, update items have a tendency to self-regulate after a few months and fall in line with other pricing, as supply methods meet and then exceed the demand like all other items. Once that happens, those players are now stuck attempting to gather the same short list of items that everyone else is gathering, or join the farming game in order to stay relevant. Essentially, I think the difference of opinion falls into the idea that farming as a replacement of playing the game is ok for EMC's economy. Farming is one gameplay style that many players on EMC enjoy, myself included. However, I view the economy as broken when I see that farming has become the only viable method of item gathering for a large majority of items in order for a shop to stay relevant.
Malls are exceptionally larger and sometimes offer a wider variety of items. In reality, they do overlap a lot.
