As I stated.. There is not a solution that is perfect here. For some the current state of the server is enough and that is fine. My challenge to that is what is "hardcore" about ECC right now. No one farms, even with the melon sword, no one has done anything with any towns except for a select few, builders are running around with Max everything, and everyone has eff7 tools that are generating way too much inflation. The result.... All or most current markets have crashed. Diamonds are a joke, all other ores have declined, XP is at an all time low, and we can sit here and go on and on... Now I understand not everyone enjoys PVP, however it doesn't isolate anyone. What is the point of having 2 huge world's? There is plenty of areas to explore and mine in piece without any risk..just no XP. I believe XP should be earned and not available to everyone with out a risk. The damage is more grief then from mining anyway..As I said before you do not mine the surface. If the world looks trashed it likely because noobs are running around grieving it.

Now.. back to PvP.. it has and always will be apart of minecraft. Isolating it to areas where it has no direct influence on the markets associated with it only hurts the economy more. XP is a component of PvP or even more so PvE. It must be dependent on the system in order for the markets to work. Why have pro4 armor or sharp5 swords if there is no PvP? They serve no purpose and that is not minecraft. Now if anyone has a solution that fixes this and recreates demand...then ok no PvP. In my opinion right now it's the only thing we can do to stimulate the economy outside of revisiting areas like farming and dare I say...removing nether stars and star anything all together.. we know that can't happen.

XP controls everything. Without a stable market for it...This is what we get and it isn't working.

 

Apparently like many times before, it looks as though the idea will continue to be ignored and too be honest I really wasn't expecting it to happen anyway. Either most people dont care, or most haven't been around long enough to have seen ECC when it was a true hardcore economy. And boy was it. Making the server easy and everything available to everyone with out any effort increases server population and in turn obviously donations. If that is truly the goal then unfortunately the idea of a true "hardcore" economy is long gone and that is very disappointing.

I really don't know how to explain the impact XP has on an economy server any better then in my posts above. Yes there are other influences as well, but they only have limited impacts on the markets. XP impacts all markets.

When I joined the server almost 3 years ago I started mining in the wild (pvp) with an iron pick. Eventually I had to establish a base and LWC a chest to protect what little I had from being taken at anytime. When enchanting was introduced it took weeks before I finally got my first max pumpkin axe and that was after spending hours and hours at a blaze spawner. Oh.. and I was killed numerous times and lost my stuff more then you can imagine. When the mining world was introduced it created a chance to finally gain XP without going to the nether. There was the same risk...you could lose everything in a blink of an eye...but the reward of vast ores... mob drops...and XP farming was well worth the risk. Again.. I lost sets of max armor...max tools...and at times.. everything I owned.. it was a constant battle, but it was exciting and brought forth a need to band together with friends for more protection hence the birth of some of the greatest clans that will exist on ECC. In a sense nothing was achieved without some form of risk and it was amazing to say the least.

When pvp was removed from the mining world the entire server flooded it, builders and all. XP went from $5-6 an orb to... and it pains me to say it... Now $1. On top of that... There was now a mass influx of ores and mob drops. All markets (remember bones @ $5?) dropped to all time lows due to absolutely no demand. A builder can join the server today... walk into the mining world... find a spawner...farm xp for about 2 hours and get a max enchanted pick because now as long as you have enough XP (which is easy for anyone now) you can go to spawn and get the enchants you want. Within just a few hours this builder accomplished what used to take weeks. Not to mention there is no need for them to by a plot, no need to buy XP, no need to farm, no need to buy armor or tools, and again..it goes on..and on. What do you get with this?..

1. No one buys plots... no need to rank up really. Why get a town of your own if no one buys plots and you can mine without risk somewhere else. Some want to create cool builds maybe, but that's not the idea.
2. Markets crash. It's a fact.. read the forums..look at prices of XP and everything before pvp was removed. When markets crash an economy crashes.
3. The server goes from a bustling economy with people buying everything from each to chatting and playing lotto.
4. And yes there are incredible stories of accomplishment from the time and effort required of a "hardcore" that cease to exist any longer. They have been replaced by stories of winning lotto.

yes it would be a change that some would not like..but those same people Also Agree The Economy Is Not "hardcore" yet they offer no solutions on fixing it. And there are far worse suggestions (don't get me started on star tools). The fact is we wanted to create a server where more people joined and stayed by making it easy and less frustrating. Unfortunately at the cost of why many of us joined in the first place.

I am done with this suggestion. Time to play lotto I guess.