:idea: Completely New Idea - Markets in Everquest : EverQuest 2 Premium Discussions

Ok, here is an idea i would like to run past everyone.

There are lots of crafters in the everquest community trying to make gold in the game.

I would like to propose an idea. What if there was a way to analyze what was on the market currently for sale, and what if not on the market, what it was worth (ie by the material price) to make it. IE how much profit there was in any given item to make.

If you take that a couple steps further, you would kind of be making a market outside of the game.

I can program if i have to, but i dont know the programs that are being used, though i like the tault one better than the Xunleashed one.

I live with an economist who is interested in making a program and product something like this.

What do you think

the first step the program would do i think would be to go and query the market for particular items. ie all harvestable material, and then you would also have a basket of things you would check for .. but im getting ahead of myself here.. .. it would then feed it into an excel sheet that would calculate the cost of things based on the recipe and do the rest of the work, or the program could do that.

Victoria

one thing you would need would be reliable data on what a given item will sell for. currently, this is difficult to determine. You can see the asking prices, but you don't know how long a given item has been for sale- if an item was there but is no longer, is it because it sold, or the vendor went offline/took it down? IF you developed a system that automaticly collected sales logs from volunteers on an ongoing basis, it would be possible, but thats a substantial obstacle both in terms of logistics as well as socialy- you would have to convince a significant number of people to participate.

this sounds pretty kewl actually

Your right about the reliable data

however, from an economics standpoint really only the lowest price matters

collecting the data would be part of the program. ie i would run a macro that, after placing my character in front of the broker, would basically query the broker and record the lowest price of materials, it would input them into a spreadsheet, and after done, it would then start the query in the spreadsheet which would spit out data, on what the price to make certain recipes would be, then, people can check whats on the market.

Later on, i would then have a macro set up to run certain products, and what they are running for

i was thinking after doing this, it could be spit out onto a website with the results. ie for subscribers

If you are serious about wanting to program something like this, I could help write a interface for a DB of sorts that would be hosted here and accessed through a script using the new XUM engine.

just for refrence from eq1: http://www.eqecon.com/

they use some kind of loader to check market prices. I've asked them if they were planning to port into EQ2 and their responce was that eq2 developers have a "no-loader" policy, whereas in eq1 they could get away with packet sniffing. eq2 developers are actively shutting down websites that dissobey their no-loader policy. when EQ2 lunched there was a items database that used a loader to populate their DB. Apperntly it was not up for very long until SOE told them to shut it down or they would file suit. but we know DBs like lucy pull eq1 items strait from the game so apperntly there is a differnce in policy.


now since xunleashed obviously doesnt care about what SOE approves of, this would be a great place to start something up like that.

There is technically a way to do some of this -- the store log. If you could actually convince people to allow you to either read or upload their storelogs to your server, then you could easily parse the data. However, the problem here is obiviously participation. Although, from a statistical point of view you could say that a random sampling could provide useful data -- but not by much.

Thanks Wyv. I am going to be looking at this closely, and have no problem to have the script hosted here. I would just like to have it.

I have a good idea of what i want to do, and when i learn the engine i should be able to get on my way. I dont know the interfaces of everquest all that well though, so i suppose i have my research cut out for me

I had considered the store log, but unfortunately i think thats too backdated. I would like all of the data to be fresh as possible.

I think though, that if its an easy script, like the mapupdater (which i love) that has an interface that you can easily upload things, ie a file into the program that lets say loads it to a spot online, or something of that type, then as long as its easy i think people might do it.

I really like the Act tool. Though i know Wyv, you are probably used to the XU engine. I just dislike how it hooks into the game.

Is there any one who can point me to a spot that i can look at the calls and stuff into the game? or any sort of newb info on the commands usable in the and for the game?

... by the way, what are TU bucks for? ...

Victoria

The new exhume engine is very similar to the act tool but with alot more features. You should check the link on the side of the page for Exhume, what is it?