krono questionFollow

My friend and I have been trying to figure out krono's. We are on FV and there are so many kronos in play, well I just looked in the bazaar, and there are only 5 total atm, but I have seen over 30+ in the past. We just wonder who is buying them? A standard monthly sub is $14.95/month and a krono is $17.95...I guess the one question is why would anyone buy krono, I thnink my answer would be to trade money for plat by selling them, and sony would like to get plat out of the system (I guess). Is that about right or is there "more" to it?

I started thinking about it after the comment by Sony that the 500SC bonus was only for recurring subscriptions that kronos (even they cost more than a sub) did not get the bonus.

Hell some people even pay with Krono for a beaming/swarming PL. crazy methinks this Krono. I have been tempted to buy some then resell on /baz just to boost my PP stash. But i have been doing well recently in the bazaar with selling some junk, so im not really willing to trade real money for PP at this point. I guess to as was eluded to in Hex's reply is that sony is undermining the PP sellers( i dont know of many out there anymore but i suppose there always will be) which is great because this is the safe way to get PP if you need it. Plus all those crazy rich people that have all the PP can continue to play for free as long as the make enough PP in the month which im sure a bunch of people do..

Some people may not have Credit cards or access to one. (kid, bad credit, military etc) and so paying someone Plat for the Krono is easy. What is also happening is people are playing the market.. they go to servers that have Kronos cheap.. like on Fippy I have seen Kronos as cheap as 50k... while on Xegony I have seen them 350k+ So what people are doing are server transfering to these other server with tons of plat. Buying up all the kronos then can, Then transfering them off to High value servers and selling them for profit. Or in some cases selling the Kronos on websites for cheaper than SOE,....

Yea, I guess I didn't think that all the way through, lol So now it's even more confusing "why" Sony added it. One thought we came up with is Sony is playing the crack dealer, get players addicted to Krono then as the prices rise people have to transition to paid subscription if they want to stay Gold. I have watched kronos going from 240k to now over 500k in the Baz on FV. Heck, buyers are paying over 500k for krono now...

Kronos have NOT destroyed the plat-selling business. A little Googling can make that clear. The cost of Kronos, which is "fixed" by Sony, is factored into the pricing schemes of plat dealers. That's the only impact the introduction of kronos has had. As a former business major, and an amateur "student" of economics, I find the whole EQ economy intriguing because it's pretty darn close to a pure supply-and-demand economic system, with little "government" manipulation---aside from the government (Sony) fixing the initial price of a Krono and the government loosely enforcing rules against selling plat directly for RL money. That's analogous to real national governments printing money and enforcing laws regarding how banks can handle money in the national economy. It's really pretty fascinating if you study it. I watch the buy/sell prices in the auction house on the servers I play on and sometimes you can make some pretty easy plat just taking advantage of the spread when some sellers or buyers get "generous" with their pricing, probably because they're either eager to raise some quick plat selling kronos, or desperate enough to GET a krono that they offer more than market value.(This happens a lot when a player's sub is about to run out and for whatever reason---no credit card, can't find a Walmart gamecard, for examples---they can't or don't want to extend their sub by conventionsl means. For this person ANY price for Krono effectively below $14.95 is attractive since it's cheaper than the conventional method of extending a sub with credit card or gamecard.)

OR it's just due to ignorance of market value. In the stock market making money off this is called arbitrage. If you buy kronos from the auction house any time they're offered on the cheap, and you can wait awhile and monitor the market, you can re-sell in a few days or weeks at substantial profit in plat.

The introduction of Kronos was actually a very clever move by Sony. But I am surprised how cheaply Kronos are resold, considering their initial cost of $17.95. They regularly are offered for plat at a price which in RL$, based on what plat sellers are charging, runs around $9-13.That difference between $17.95 and $11-ish is basically due to game players needing plat who would prefer to pay that rather HUGE premium to be able to acquire plat via entirely safe and legit means. Not to get too far afield here but I predict that this is what will follow from the legalization of marijuana which is occurring in the USA now at the state level, especially once the feds decriminalize possession entirely. "Illegal" pot dealers won't go away... they will just have to adjust their prices low enough to encourage people who could buy pot legally from licensed vendors to risk being caught buying it illegally from pot dealers. This happens NOW somewhat with tobacco cigarettes but I think it will be MUCH more extensive with pot because there already exists a huge underground network of pot dealers and they're not going to want to go away if they can avoid it.

Just my 2cp, hope I didn't ramble on too much!

After reading Sippin and Jophiel's posts (#9 and #10 respectively) I just went and checked a plat site and was surprised ..That the Kronos are indeed for sale (16.99 USD ) on the site yet they are not purchasing them on their buying side. Which may indicate that they have a glut and/or get them in game from people who have them reasonably priced in the bazaar.. They also sell plat and one can buy 300KP for approx. the price of a Krono by their sites pricing.

Heh, I guess now that my cc problem was solved, I have 9 unused Kronos across 3 accounts (yes I panicked and bought a load of them) that I can sell quick if under 275KP ish on my server atm as their asking price is in the 300-400 range these days. I also noticed that the asking price is slowly but surely rising by the month in the bazaar.

You guys are right...It seems like even the plat sellers and some players have adapted re use of the Krono.


Edited, Jan 29th 2014 4:20pm by hexeez

Guy offers 375k and you put the item up at 300k??

I wanna do business with YOU!

Simple Supply and Demand.... if there is competition in bazaar for them then the price wars start....if there is one selling he can ask his or her price and if someone pays that, more power to him. I buy them with plat so I play and pay with pixels. Just each his own. But if there is no kronos, then I will buy either a game card if on sale or game time through market place... but I am not buying a Krono.
Price on Zek seems to be stable between 900k and a mil...

I feel like they are a double edged sword. Great that it hurts the plat sellers but they have completely ruined the experience on the recent TLP servers. They have put too much value on items to the point people have no respect for camps and blatantly kill steal anything that drops an item of value. Not to mention said farmers can box an infinite amount of accounts by simply farming up the Krono Before they would have had to pay out of pocket for each account and chances are the average person wouldn't pay for more than 1 or 2 of them.

Hello Geroblue,

The original thread is almost a year and a half old so those prices that I had referred to earlier in the thread are way below market prices nowadays.

Presently on my server the asking price in the bazaar has escalated from the 300-400 KPP range then, to around 1.1 - 1.5 million Plat for a Krono on my server now (AB).

So at current asking prices, in most cases it would not be feasible to buy Kronos via bags of plat (approx. 15 KPP per bag for well over 400 crowns iirc) at the loyalty vendor..

Edit: Almost Forgot: If plat poor I'd sell the Krono for a little below bazaar's average asking price.. i.e. that would be a price like 999 KPP for a quick sale on my server if the low end in bazaar was 1.1 million.

Just my two cents.



Edited, Jul 24th 2015 5:21pm by hexeez

Yes 250K for a Krono are great memories of yesteryear now lol.

At this rate of inflation, I wouldn't be surprised if the asking price for a Krono would reach 2 million by next year.. on my server at least.

I hope your right as 2 million for a Krono would be even more difficult to some who even manage buying for 1 - 1.1 million plat atm.

On my server I noticed one of the three main Krono traders (traders who always tend to have multiple Kronos on hand) pushing the top end at 1.5 million for a month or so. Even when the other two main Krono traders had set the bottom around 1.1-1.25 million.

For all I know, maybe its one of the other two Krono traders stealth trader who is purposely trying to raise the high end to inflate the bottom price indirectly for his real Krono trader...