As Expected...

Extremely high pricing is self defeating. While I can certainly appreciate the difficulty of attaining some resources, pricing things too high, will just make me want to craft even better, get the resources myself and all in all progress my avatar to the point of complete solo proficiency. Now if that is the intent of the seller, to goad the fellow player into getting better, cool! It works, but I am guessing that doesn't translate into sales for said vendor. Eventually with such a mindset the global effect will be most if not all players attaining self sufficiency to the point where no one is going to buy anything. And the lower "level" players can't afford such high prices, they will just be driven to just give up, OR become better. There is one vendor in SolTown that actually gives reasonable prices for resources that lower levels can't attain on their own, I like that, that really does incur growth and a social responsibility to encourage low "level" players to develop thier skills with a desire to probably (as I don't obviously know the SotA collective) want to help other players also once they get a vendor themselves. Honestly one of them will be me. I truly appreciate a conscious vendor that I can tell is trying to expand and help out the community in such a way. Just my perspective, neither right or wrong, just my personal observation and experience.

 

Ah the perks of living in the backwater town of Harvest, where my neighbors are chickens.

 

Supply & demand in any market dictates pricing policies in life, choice in the free world gives you the 'shopper' the ability to shop elsewhere therefore swap where you buy goods from to maximize your gold coins stretch that little bit further. In real life I pay over the odds for fuel at least twice a month purely as I try to support a local garage as as a consumer I love the fact their still in business battling the big boys.

In UO many folks bought regs up around the world using recall runes to different npc shops then sold in bulk on their own vendors at a slightly higher margin to cover their costs and make profit and dependent on how lazy you were you either stuck with one mass seller or shopped around as they would cut each others costs saving you not only time recalling round yourself but sometimes as cheap as NPC's.

In short I'm all for price fluctuations it makes me plan ahead and if I don't more fool me!