Sam on Maui

Microsoft's Bing is their attempt to be relevant in the search market. One of the nice things with them being so far behind Google is they're trying hard to get new users! One thing I love is their rewards program - use Bing, earn points, and get goodies. One of their rewards is a gift card from Rixty . On their reward site: Rixty is a universal prepaid card for over 1000 multiplayer & downloadable games, virtual worlds and mobile games. Whether you love the hottest games from Bigpoint, Perfect World and Aeria Games, kids' games like Roblox and WeeWorld, or first-person shooters like CrossFire, Rixty is the only card you need to pay for them all. You can even get downloadable games from top web stores. Rixty – one card, over 1000 sources of fun online. So, earning 525 points will get you a $5 gift card to Rixty. Presumably, that will result in $5 worth of Zen (500 Zen). Not bad, eh? If you want to sign up, you can do so here .

Is it? Could it be? Movement! After being so flat and dull for the past few weeks, the Z:D rate has jumped up a bit to 1:115. What could have caused it? Good question. One could hazard a guess, but I suppose I could probably listen to this week's podcast to get a better idea ;) I'm currently quite interested in the Elachi Lockboxes coming up. The new ships are visually interesting, and the crescent weapons looks very nice. Between them and the Tal Shiar lockbox ships, I'll be busy for a while. Thankfully for me, Master Keys are on sale . If you're looking to buy them, now is a good time to do so provided you're doing so with Zen. Oddly enough, a quick check on the Exchange shows them being 1.49 million EC at a minimum. I suppose the combination of the sale and the Lockbox Special are keeping prices up. Normally, a sale on Keys means the EC price goes down as well. Of course, that's still price competitive with selling Fleet Ship Modules, which are starting...

Another quiet week of numbers, it seems. Massively has been doing a nice bit of interviews with Dan Stahl (part one and two ), which has some nice food for thought about the future. I've been working a little on my Romulan character, getting Lockboxes opened up for Lobi, and all has been pretty nice, really. Now, that said, the number seem pretty good to me.

Three statisticians went out hunting, and came across a large deer. The first statistician fired, but missed, by a meter to the left. The second statistician fired, but also missed, by a meter to the right. The third statistician didn't fire, but shouted in triumph, "On the average we got it!" Its been a while since I've done looked at averages. Now, I have to fully admit that my data is a merely a small slice of what Cryptic has available to them. Moreover, I would imagine that Cryptic has access to economists and statisticians if they need a consult. I've got Excel and no formal instruction in the field. But, hey, when has that stopped me? While I'll warn against looking too much into my numbers and charts, its still interesting to look at. But first, our normal compound view of things...  

Ah, computers. They're wonderful when they work, and, well, discouraging when they don't! Due to technical issues I missed tracking 6/24/13, so there'll be a hole in the data there. I also missed 6/21/13, but that's just my fault! Nobody to blame but myself... Due to some loose screw in my head, I'll be trying the Windows 8.1 preview, so if my computer blows up and there's no reporting? That might be why. In the meantime...

Steady as she goes! The Legacy of Romulus has launched over a week ago, and folks seem to be enjoying themselves. My friends are thrilled with the new content, but it seems the post-update jitters are still there with the servers. Hopefully they'll be fixed soon, so it'll be smooth sailing from here on out

   We're inching closer to the release of The Legacy of Romulus! People are playing on test, dev blogs are coming out regularly, and seems that City of Heroes alumni Matt Miller (aka Positron) is also doing some work with Cryptic ! He tweeted: If you play # StarTrekOnline , this weekend is Open Beta for the Legacy of Romulus expansion. Followed by: And if you play, you can see what I've been up to. I worked on creating the Klingon Tutorial # STO # LegacyOfRomulus I'm really looking forward to trying it out now. Apparently its a contract gig, but hey, maybe it'll lead to a full time position. As an ex-Cryptic employee, he'd be coming around full circle! And, regardless of which game he worked on, having such an awesome developer on the team would be fantastic. Maybe they could get Melissa Bianco next? But, you didn't come here to listen to me rant on like a fanboy, so here's the data!

Won't be long until The Legacy of Romulus is upon us. Moreover, Star Trek: Into Darkness is staring down upon us. All in all, I'd say its great month for Star Trek fans. In the meantime, Star Trek Online is continuing on, the economy is still going along, and Neverwinter (now in open beta) is showing a brand new economy as it tries to find its legs.

Greetings and hello! Just a friendly reminder that today will be the last day you'll be able to run the Crystalline Catastrophe event (10am, PDT)! Its pretty short, so even folks in Hawai'i can squeeze one last attempt. Provided they're up early and eating breakfast at the same time, mind you. Speaking of which, many people have already completed the special Reputation project, receiving 50,000 Unrefined Dilithium, 1,000 Fleet Marks, and a non-combat Crystalline Shard pet. Speaking of which...

Another eventful week. If you've been in the market to buy Dilithium with your Zen, this has probably been a fantastic time for you, relatively speaking. While we've not hit the same levels seen last year, its definitely a possibility at this point. If you're selling Dilithium? Its still a pro-Dilithium market, in my opinion, and I've been cheerfully selling at current prices. The Z:D rate has been steadily climbing, while the top 10 offers remain relatively low in volume. I'm still holding to the theory that the big Zen spenders who are willing to pay a premium on their Dilithium are not active in the market right now, opting to wait for The Legacy of Romulus. There was a massive drop in trading after the announcement on March 21st. It did start to recover, but then something else happened.

Looks like trading is back to normal, but wow! Z:D is at a relative high, still hovering around 1:100. Its dipped below 1:100 around the end of March, but that’s about it. Right now people buying offering to buy Dilithium is really driving traffic, though. If you go by Wednesday’s sampling, there’s 635,877 Zen difference between the top 5 pools to buy Dilithium and the top 5 for buying Zen (so, $6,358.77).

Looks like the Dilithium Exchange is trying to get back to normal after a big drop last week! Wow! Trepidation over what the surprise announcement really put a damper on trading. Of course, it wouldn’t have been so impressive if not for the relative high volume we’ve been experiencing as of late. It’ll be interesting to see how things go while the new update is in testing. Starting this week, provided I don’t screw it up somehow, I’ll be cross-posting on Priority One’s website . It’s a great opportunity, and I’m looking forward to seeing where this goes. Of course, the day I need to work on everything is the day Live Writer/Blogger go weird on me... ah well. And now, on to the data!

I’ve had a great week off from work! I got to play paintball on two different days at Maui Paintball , got to see my visiting sister, and generally just relaxed! I won’t be playing again until the end of April, but it’ll be in a charity tournament to benefit the Wounded Warrior Project. So, er, yeah, I’ll need to get in better shape in the next month... A very awesome surprise is I got to chat with Tony from Priority One Podcast . So, tentatively speaking, you’ll hear me on the April 1st show next week! Anyhow, Zen and Dilithium trading has really dropped since the Legacy of Romulus announcement. The Z:D ratio has been going up as well, and we’re over 1:100 again for the first time in a while. I suspect there’s a good number of players who aren’t participating in the market right now, opting to wait for LoR to come out. Now, are they saving up their Dilithium and Zen? Are they taking a break? I really don’t know, and I suspect your guess is as good as mine. Anyhow, now for the rest...

For the first time since December, we've hit triple digits. Will it go higher? Maybe, we'll see. I suspect today's announcement of Legacy of Romulus , the next update/expansion, will have people trying to hold on to Dilithium, but that doesn't quite explain what's going on. If anything, hoarding should cause people to pay more for Dilithium, right? On the other hand, it could also be that people are holding off buying it for the time being. Without as many people willing to pay a premium for Dilithium, the people who are buying want a little more for their Zen than they've been getting. Which, honestly, is reasonable. Also, I sort of wonder if this will signal a pre-update lull for the game, while folks decide to hold off playing as much until the update comes out. The new update will be free, but will likely have a sizeable addition to the Z-Store. I've got friends already noting they'll need to buy more character slots, more ship slots, etc. I'...

Sorry its late; been sick the past few days. Back to bed after this! 1/7/2013 89 90 95 90 89   88 1/14/2013 88 88 87 87 85 85 84 1/21/2013 84 87 90       92 1/28/2013 94 94 92 91 89 89 90 2/4/2013 90 91 91 91 92 91 91 2/11/2013 91 92 91 91 90   90 2/18/2013 90 92 94   91 90   2/25/2013 91 91 90     88 88 3/3/2013 89 89 89 90        

Onward and upward, I reckon? It seems there’s a lot more Dilithium and Zen trading hands than I’ve seen in a while. That said, it also seems that the Z:D ratio' of being under 1:100 is pretty much the new norm. I figure with people getting to where they want to be in the Reputation system, they’re using their Omega and Romulan Marks to buy Dilithium to sell or use for Fleet projects. So, why is the price not really going adjusting much? Seems that people are willing to pay the higher prices for Dilithium, and sellers are more than happy to sell at that price per Zen.

More playing with numbers! Sometimes I feel like an old druid or something, looking at numerical guts in an attempt to predict the future. Well, not quite. More like looking at the data, all spilled out on the floor, going, “Well, that’s interesting.” Average Z:D Average Buying Zen volume Average Buying Dilithium volume Average Buying Total Voume So, what can we see here? I’ll go ahead and say that this is almost like a Rorschach test due to the lack of better information. I’ve never made it a secret that my way of getting data is limited, and is at best the tip of the iceberg. We can’t see the successful transactions, nor can we get a full picture of offerings (ie, entire the 1:25 to 1:500 range). That said, I think we can say that trading seems to be up, with more offerings being up on the board than before. Now, whether that means the number of successful transactions is up or not is impossible to tell, simply because when the Exchange updates itself, you only...

Well, I think its safe to say whatever rut we saw pre- and post- Season 7 is over, at least for trading volume. Wow. How long will it last? Not a clue. But, overall, it seems there’s a lot of people buying and selling Dilithium (although there’s a sharp dip recently – wonder if I messed up recording a number?).

Happy Valentine’s Day! This time of year I’d normally be complaining that City of Heroes was rerunning the same event as last year, and that Halloween plus Christmas got all the developer love. sigh Can’t do that anymore. So, be sure to enjoy your games, whatever they are, while they’re still around. Anyhow, enough of that, and onto the data!

Last October I posted a blog on buying Zen via Energy Credits . Well, since then the Z:D rate has changed dramatically, and I wasn’t sure how the requisite bits were being priced on the Exchange. Now, both of these factors are constantly in motion, so it was, and is, a snapshot at best. So, time for another snapshot.