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I have no clue what this really is. It isn't really a guide to anything, rather, it's more like a reflection on the fine art of swindling people out of as much money as humanly possible.



I haven't played Neopets in, what, over a year? But I've played other online games where there's a central economy which nearly everything revolves around (read: WoW), so I'm not spouting total BS... so here goes.


So I quit playing World of Warcraft in the summer of 2006, but before I quit, I managed to pull an insanely large profit simply by taking analyzing something called "supply and demand". You see, many characters used a gun as a weapon. Guns require ammunition, and ammunition is in fairly high demand. However, the higher end ammunition is incredibly expensive for your average level 60 (level 60 was the level cap back then), so the majority of level 60 players used Thorium Shells. Thorium Shells aren't the most powerful bullets, but they are the most cost-efficient by a long shot. (Plus, the most powerful bullets were inherently very difficult to produce. To a lot of people, it wasn't worth the effort.) However, they were still rather expensive. Why? They required a rather high level of Engineering, a trade skill that not many people took up. Now I was a level 315 Gnome Engineer, the highest possible level.

If I recall correctly, people making Thorium Shells could buy the raw materials for 70 silver, convert them into shells, and sell the shells for around 300 silver. That's a LOT of profit, considering shells can be made very quickly. So in a nutshell, what I did was slowly flood the market with less expensive shells. I started by selling them for 290 silver a stack, and then slowly lowered it over a span of two months to 75 silver a stack.

Now, people, namely other sellers, began to get angry at me. This makes sense, because I was cutting into their market. They complained, threatened me, but they were, in a sense, too late. Why?

Because through selling Thorium Shells reliably and at a cheap price, people began to notice me. They began to go "Hey, that level 60 Gnome Mage named Lazarus sells Thorium Shells cheap, and even if he's not on, just drop him an IM and he'll get back to you." I had an advantage over other sellers - even if they dropped their prices lower, I still had a large base of loyal buyers.

Now this is where things get fun.

I had researched everything out - I had timed my two month countdown to coincide as perfectly as I could to the new dungeon Blizzard released. I took a look at how much time had passed between previous dungeon releases, I looked at speculation, and I managed to time my countdown nearly perfectly.

Because roughly 70 days after I started my market takeover, Blizzard released an impossibly tough new dungeon called Naxxramas. For elite guilds, this was their chance to prove that they were indeed the best guild on the server. Just like wars in Neopets create heavy inflation, this new dungeon created inflation in high-end items. You know where this is going...

...yep. Combined with my large costumer base and the rise in prices, I was able to jack the prices of Thorium Shells back to nearly their original price and still manage to sell a very large amount of them through my connections. Although this was just in a small fraction of the game's market, I had achieved a monopoly. I had amassed enough wealth and infamy on my character for me to sell it on eBay for excess of $1500.




Now you might be wondering how any of this applies at all. Well, like I said, all of this can be applied to any game with a central economy, given you have enough capital and knowledge. If anybody manages to do this in some niche market in Neopets, I'd be incredibly impressed.

Since World of Warcraft is fragmented into hundreds of servers, creating a small monopoly is inherently easier, as a smaller market means a smaller initial capital required. Neopets' user base spans millions of people... you rich Neopets players out here, go pool your money, go think ahead, go predict, go take advantage of the mentality of the masses.

Break free of the "the ultimate way of making money is making a great mall" mindset. Ascend.

This is insanely late, but well-written.

Quote:go pool your money,

That's the part that's a freezeable offense on neopets.

The timing is also trickier on neopets, but I've seen people work similar things one various retired and expendable items - most recently Munsterpoo with the "defeating the master" plot prize book.

drspyder Wrote:Break free of the "the ultimate way of making money is making a great mall" mindset. Ascend.

It never has been that way. Anyone who actually does mall (with a couple of exceptions who do make incredible profits) realizes that it's just a supplement, or a very nice consistent profit. "Very nice, consistent profit," doesn't translate to, "tens of millions of NPs very quickly," though.

The common issue with Neo is supply well exceeding demand (except in Plot-cases, and a problem arises in that most weapons restock, and at the higher-end are Towerable). That leaves the Retired and speculation route (Rabid's example with Munster). Personally, I still haven't predicted anything accurately, and by the time anything is obvious, it's too late to jump on that boat since everyone else on the site is, too. Which leaves restocking during plots, when competition is increased anyway.

I didn't mean that to be a criticism of the article so much as a, "It doesn't feel like Neo plays by the same rules due to its scope (and TNT's way of handling it)."

Quote:It never has been that way. Anyone who actually does mall (with a couple of exceptions who do make incredible profits)

And the exceptions on the other end in the "joke" mall with me. In the week I've been part of it, I have sold exactly one item in my category. (w00t! 750 NP profit!!), still the entertainment value is high.

Quote:The common issue with Neo is supply well exceeding demand (except in Plot-cases, and a problem arises in that most weapons restock, and at the higher-end are Towerable).

This is the big difference between WoW and Neo. On WoW, there are craft skills per character, and not all characters have the same craft skills, so you can take advantage of specialization to profit. On neopets, there are only three ways to get items that aren't immediately replicable by everyone else on the entire site,

• Being a "leet restocker" with a fast connection, a lot of time and a large bankroll. If you know of a useful 95+ item (preferably expendable) and can regularly restock it in its shops and have enough NP to buy out people who try to sell for lower than you, you can impose a price floor on an item.
• Having a level 250+ Pet, and selling the Secret Ninja School Items. You're in competition with about 4000-5000 other neopians, but that's still a small enough segment of the population to keep wiz prices above buying prices, especially during wartime. Additionally the buying limit per time keeps the supply from getting too large.
• Learning a cooking pot (or blumaroo chef recipe) and not sharing it with anyone. If you can figure one out before anyone else does, you get to be the only source of the resultant item until someone replicates it and spills the beans. This seems a big if, but with pretty amazing short-term profit potential
  

Otherwise, your only bet for monopolization is to try to horde a given retired item and hope demand remains constant as your shrink the supply. I can name a number of weapons that is actually worth doing with, but the risk there is that neopets may release new, better weapons at any time. For example: hording Florbix Blasters may have looked appealing once, but there are now new weapons under 50k which deal more icons, so they are consigned to the realm galleries and collector demand only now and won't spike with plot battling events.