To the best of my knowledge, Menewsha was built on the principles of a friendly community. While single player games are available, the gamers' main source of income is based on communication with members. I have been a member of Mene for six short months but I have immersed myself in the wonderful community that I enjoy today.
We all know how hard it is to be a newb. When we first join, it's difficult to accumulate enough gold to cover ourselves and it takes forever to buy that first really cool item. We have all seen how many users leave after a few short weeks or even days. Look at the list of Menewshans and you can see how many people have a last visit date just after their sign up date. You can see the number of people with less than five posts. Why would we do anything to scare away new-comers? We are such a friendly community but what I have witnessed in the markets is bound to scare away newbs.

When you look at an item's page in the market, you can see it's lowest/highest/average price. When I usually sell an item in the market, I sell just above the average price, or just below it if I really want to get rid of something fast. I have noticed several Menewshans sell items well above the highest price.

For a while, I assumed many of these were to get donations or store their items. To be honest, I didn't think about it much until it happened to an item I wanted to buy. I messaged the seller to see if I could barter the price down and they refused. They wanted to wait until someone was desperate enough to buy at the higher price.
I do not disagree completely with their methods. I understand that in the real world, the common mark up of an item is 100% of what you produce it for. But here in Menewsha, we do not produce the items. We earn our gold through posting on the threads, we buy items, and when we no longer need them, we sell them at a slightly higher price in order to make a profit.

I am not promoting communism, but I would like to point out that Mene is not founded on the individualistic wants of the elite. If this process spreads, buyers and sellers will continue to expect to buy and sell above the last highest selling point, each time, raising that price more. It can only escalate. Instead of the slow but steadily rising prices that are healthy for a market, the prices would sky rocket, creating unrealistic costs that would hurt our community as a whole.

I realize that we do not exactly want a large society but we should do nothing to discourage new members and that is exactly what we're doing in the market. This practice of over pricing goods is threatening new members. Only the elite and the wealthy will be able to afford non-shop items.

Is that the kind of precedent we want to set? That Menewsha is a nation of individuals bent solely on their own gain?

I do not want this for our community.
Please comment, and show support by not buying over priced items.
It's simple.
Keep Menewsha friendly.

Sellers don't sell items to be friendly and provide for buyers. Seller sell items for profit. Is that wrong? They work hard to earn the money, real or in-game, to obtain those items. And if someone out there wants to pay me a huge amount of money for that investment I made, I'll take it.

Before this goes any further, I'd like to state that for a number of reasons, I am not completely attached to my argument. But because I've been cooped up in my house for the past few days due to a stupid cold, I would love some friendly debate.
I hope this is nothing but friendly debate and I apologize if for some reason it gets out of hand.
I doubt it though.


Anyway, there's a difference between selling for profit and selling at a 250% mark up. Mostly I'm just miffed I couldn't afford the item I wanted.


I'm also not going to edit the original post to conform to my views whenever they change. My opinion will probably change.

If the seller is desperate enough, the price will come down, or you can always wait it out yourself and find another seller.

There's an item I've been wanting for a while that's listed for well over what I'm willing to pay, so I advertised in my exchange thread that I was looking and another user agreed to the price I was offering, which was under what the market listing was.

So really, it just boils down to patience.

i am one of the 'traders' in the exchange.
i love to trade contribution item for contribution item.
i will never be rich, and i really don't want to be.
i'd be bored if i had every single thing i wanted.
i exchange to help my friend get what they want, too.
a lot of us do, actually.
i have a friend that will hunt down items for me,
and other exchanger,
and not make a single goldie of profit!
I LOVE THAT!
but, i do know there are exchanger who buy from people,
and, then jack up the price and sell it for a major profit.
for instance, a friend just sold a male pumpkin tee-shirt for fifteen hundred goldies.
i saw one up for auction and that was at five thousand goldies!
prrofit much?
it's cool no mater how you do it,
live and let live.

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what item did you want, Ali♥?

That's cool, hummy :) But I suppose that for the sake of the seller, I won't reveal the item in public.

I won't buy anything that I feel is way overpriced. I'm like that in real life too though. What I think is really funny is when people buy commons then try to sell them way above store prices. It's like Really? You don't think someone is going to check the store price before buying it? :XD

Haha I know. Sometimes when I'm done with a common, I'll try to sell it below store price but above 50% of the original price so that someone can buy at a discount and I don lose as much gold. It's not that often though.

Commons used to "traditionally" be sold for 75% of the price. :)

Originally Posted by Dystopia

Sellers don't sell items to be friendly and provide for buyers. Seller sell items for profit. Is that wrong? They work hard to earn the money, real or in-game, to obtain those items. And if someone out there wants to pay me a huge amount of money for that investment I made, I'll take it.

I agree, and quite often it's because the seller's have things they want to buy as well. Old items are rare and expensive. It's human nature to be competitive for things you want.

I'm guilty of charging 6000g for an item when it just comes out, waiting a week then selling that same items at a price that under cuts everyone. I take advantage of the MP to the fullest to make further effort n my quest. It depends on if your the only one selling the items too.

People look at my gold count or what my shop has made and just see the gold. Not the huge amount of money, time, brains, and effort behind it. Anyone can be rich in RL and at mene. Don't blame others when "Your doing it wrong" Perhaps I've spent to much time on MMO and avatar forums and it's made me a meanie face.

And while I am for my own gain, and often charge ridiculous prices one moment and undercut at the next, I'm also for others. I randomly donate items. I don't have a real charity or anything I just do. So I think a person can be both "out for themselves" in questing and toss out a helping hand now and then.

i am glad there are generous hearted souls out there,
and you all know who you are ♥ ♥ !

To be fair (and I'm not saying that the marketplace prices don't scare off some new users) - I see a few things wrong with your basic assumptions in the first post:

1) You either forget or are not aware that the Marketplace has only been in effect for a year (the 26th of this month marks the exact year).
So, while it may be part of what drives away some of the new users now, it's not likely the reason everyone is driven away.

2) There are a lot of people who make accounts and forget about them - it's like that on any website, not just Menewsha.
In fact, there are plenty of websites that allow as many accounts as you like, so you would have to believe that on those websites, account turnover is even larger.

3) Menewsha's economy isn't that bad, compared to many.
Most people come to Menewsha from finding out about it from another avatar website or have had experiences at other avatar websites. Compared to most avatar websites, our economy is pretty stable and our prices are fairly low. A newbie can start a few threads and play a few rounds of games and make a nice outfit for themselves without ever going to a Charity. It becomes a larger struggle when they're trying to get a rare item they want, but we have a relatively small number of items that are very difficult to get. Most of our items on the site are under 10k.

Again - I'm not saying that our marketplace conditions don't scare away some newbies or that people pricing above and beyond the high end of an item's MP value isn't happening (because there are many times when I see someone list an item on the MP and I laugh outright or say they're dreaming if they think anyone will pay that much for it), but I don't think it's the main reason people struggle to say on Menewsha. :)