Hazelaar
And I do want to point out that there
are likely billions of gold worth of items on no-longer-used accounts. While there are people you know who stopped showing up on gaia and gave away their items before hand, there are also people who were not so generous or who weren't as certain that they would never return. Additionally, there are many banned accounts with items that are now out of circulation.
But for every inactive account or hacked account that has billions (meaning there was a
very significant time investment involved in the account), there are probably tens or hundreds of new accounts created. Obviously all of these accounts aren't going to individually raise billions, but chances are that combined they can re-make the value of that old account! So chances are that removing those accounts from the Gaian economy isn't going to have that much of a net effect due to the popularity of the site, the only thing it does is reduces the number of rare items in circulation, which in turn drives the price of those rare items up, but since those users probably would have just sat on those items for the duration of their time on Gaia chances are they aren't removing anything from circulation that wasn't already effectively gone.
Anyways, OP, to address your points, Gaia never had a system where they charged per listing. The 2% tax was instituted to combat inflation and since there are so many ways around it, I don't see the sense in complaining. If I buy something for 120k and the next-lowest price is 140k, I'll just turn around and sell it on the exchange, where chances are I can sell it for 130k easily.
I don't see it as a penalty, either. Gaia is offering me a free service by allowing me to use their site. Having to pay a relatively small amount of in-game currency for that service doesn't seem too insane, especially because I believe it does help keep inflation under control. Individuals looking to maximize profit are deterred from using the marketplace because of the 2% tax, which discourages users from buying slightly-too-low and selling high.
Because of the massive userbase (yes, it's diminished from a few years ago, but the site is still one of the largest of its kind), I don't think it's necessary to add more gold to circulation. Back when I started in mid-2004, getting the 40k Fairy Wings was a seemingly impossible quest that took me
six months of constant posting to buy. Gold used to be
so hard to get, which pretty naturally kept inflation under control. Nowadays, I can easily obtain 500k in a day just by playing Booty Grab and fishing- and, let's face it, I'm not even the most dedicated Gaian. As a result, inflation has obviously occurred because of the massive influx of gold into the system! Why would we need to add more? If old accounts leaving affects the Gaian economy by removing gold (which, frankly, I doubt), then I honestly think that would be a positive thing by aiding in keeping inflation under control.
As Gaian gold isn't backed by anything and can be created literally at will (I got gold just for
navigating to this page) inflation over time is a natural thing. By creating expensive shops like Dernier*Cri, implementing the 2% sales tax, and otherwise forcing you to pay gold to the site, not the other users, Gaia is working to combat or at least slow this. While yes, it does cut into your marketplace profits, it helps remove gold from the system and keep inflation (at least a little) lower. Which is a pretty nice thing, in my eyes c:
tl;dr I don't think old accounts with locked rare items have an effect on the economy due to the constant influx of new users,
400
500
150
