Prices rantFollow

From what I read Shiva used to be one of the cheapest servers, gil wise, I remeber reading on some of these boards where other servers were paying 5x at the AH what many of our items where going for. That was until recently. It seems that especially recently I have seen many items jumping up over 20k gil a week. This is a slightly sore topic for me since I origionally started saving for Ochido's kote when the prices where 500k and thought that won't take me to long and when I turn around they are 700k, brown belts have also risen from 300k to about 400k last I looked. Now many people will say farm/mine/garden/ect but some of these increases are starting to push what a person can do in set amount of time (no I don't mean I can't make 20k a week the 20k was an example don't jump on it).
No the conspericy theorist in me sees that it seems many of the servers prices are begining to look simular (which they shouldent considering that they are completely isolated economic systems). This could be due in part to the recent migrations of people used to higher prices on other servers to shiva, some global gil seller conspiricy, or the return of high level JP players with a lot of gil needing lower level equip for the new COP missions (I really don't know). Needless to say it worries me becouse reading these boards I see that there are still servers with much higher prices on some items than we have (so I wonder how high they will go). Personally it resulted in me giving up in my endeavor to buy Ochido's kote and brown belt for now.
I have also noticed a change in the atmosphere of my gil making enterprises. I have begun to notice more and more miners who often seem to be online at all times. One of them Quincy I believe (the spelling may be wrong) actually put autofollow on me when I was running from mining point to point in gusgan mining at every spot I came to. They are one of the two people I always see in either Bastok or Gusgan mines at all times I log on. This bothers me too, but mostly out of my own greed, as it makes it so that a mining run to Gusgan which used to net me 30-50k for maybe 2hrs work nets maybe 10k tops in 3hrs simply becouse of lack of mining points and point thieves.
I have no real solution to these probles, hence the term rant in the title, but rather wanted to get this off my chest and waste time writing it.

actually this guy kept reinitiating auto-follow until I threatened to call a GM. I didn't know about the armor but I would just zone quickly and next time he saw me he would auto-follow again.

Mary's Horn was never 7k o.O

Mary's Milk on the other hand has always been 5-7k, the horn has never been less than 80k I dont think.

I've noticed the huge prices as well, but I believe its mainly due to the gilsellers. Many of them have suddenly appeard out of nowhere, and have been camping NMs like crazy. I tried camping Stroper yesterday to no avail. The gilsellers were there in PTs and using dirty tactics to ensure they got the NM every time. I was getting really pissed so I left. I wanted to camp another NM but my friend said that one was owned by them too. >< This is getting ridiculous.

I think in part the influx of gil sellers is due to the oppurtunity supplied to them by SquareEnix. I looked at the IGE website (before emmigration) and it used to be that Shiva was one of the top paying servers becouse there was not many Gil sellers on it. Then when Square allowed people to go to any server I see a lot of the gilseller type names (the Oo** come to mind) and prices skyrocket on NM drops and other things but the NM drops have really risin. The way I figure is that the Gil sellers saw that they could move to Shiva, a better paying server, and make more money with the same amount of gil.

Although the basic problem is people who pay some of these prices for these items. I was optimistic the other day when I saw 8 Kotes on AH and thought finally they have hit where people won't pay anymore but I was wrong as a little while later several were sold for 800k.

Boycotts tend to work the best when it comes to price changing.

That means, refuse to buy something until the price drops. And get all your friends refusing to buy stuff.

Unfortunately, I don't see this working since a lot of the stuff that jumps up (such as the kote) are considered standard gear for many jobs. They'll be looked down at if they don't have them.

Or just figure out a secondary set of gear that will work for a job but doesn't cost as much.

I wanted an elemental torque (level 65). When I first decided I wanted one at level 62 they cost 250k. When I hit 65 they were up to 400k. Now I'm 70 and they cost 800k. All the other torques are under 300k. Beats me why this one keeps going up except that black mages are willing to pay the price and therefore they keep getting jacked up. Needless to say, I don't want to spend 800k (not that I actually have that) for 7 elemental magic points so I will do without.

I'm not complaining. =P Good to see I'm not the only WHM that noticed that. Maybe by the time I hit it's level it'll be even cheaper >.>

The more people come, the higher the prices get.

I've been gone for a week or two, so i dont' really knwo what's up withthe gilseller thing... but one thing i'm wondering.

The recent release of EQ2 and WoW, not to mention sundry other games (apparently Lineage 2?)... does it not stand to reason that the "fad gamers" (namely those peopel that play the new games with tos of hype on them) woudl go to these games?? now on teh same note, with a large influx of peopel to these otehr games, that woudl mean an influx of gilsellers. with people leaving FFXI, that measn there's less people to buy gil.

so maybe these people who are jacking up prices aren't gilsellers, but people who have adpoted gilseller tactics to make their money??