Shadow of Cerberus EVE Community Forum

Year in the Life: PLEX cycle

I want to place a couple of bookmarks on today, 18 January 2014. This is one of them:

In the last two years, PLEX prices have gone through a recognizable cycle (all seasons, northern hemisphere):

• they climb in the period after the summer expansion, probably as students return to school and their outside activities are replaced by EVE;
• they peak and hold in October or so as short-term investors make their buys to get their characters through the winter;
• there's a brief further spike after the winter expansion as some lapsed players return to the game to try out new features;
• there's a long fall through the winter as exams and school and work intrude on gaming time;
• they bottom out in April, a month or so before the release of the summer expansion; and,
• they jump a bit here and there through this period as long-term investors make their buys for the next year.

It's a cycle predictable enough that players and bloggers have started counting on it. And each year the peaks escalate by 50 or 60 million ISK: the October 2011 spike was 500 million ISK. October 2012, 560 million ISK. This year, it was about 610. The valleys in 2011, 2012, and 2013 show similar trends, just with bigger escalations each year, closer to 100 million per year than 60. The winter valley in 2011 (it happened in March that year) was 320 million ISK.(1)

But prior to that first valley and peak in 2011, PLEX prices were actually pretty stable long-term, if two prior years of data can be considered "long term". Here's the proof:


So the PLEX cycle does break, and has broken before.

I bring up this moment as a bookmark because I feel like the cycle of the last two years is going to break in the coming year. I don't have any specific proof of it... just a feeling. That feeling is based on my sense that the EVE player base is becoming more and more "distilled": more dedicated long-term multi-alt vets being fed PLEXes by fewer and fewer newbies buying them trying to get a jump-start into the game. A close review of the data will reveal that PLEX volumes are inching slowly, steadily downward: supply is being reduced. CCP seems to be responding to this with more frequent PLEX sales and this will certainly help, slowing the trend.

But if I recall correctly, economics still have something to say about prices when supply is reduced.

Anyway, I might be wrong, but I wanted to bookmark this moment. I'll come back to it in four or five months after the winter "bottoming out" has either happened... or hasn't.


(1) There was also a recognizable December peak in 2010. It was 380 million ISK, if you can believe it.
Source: Year in the Life: PLEX cycle