Board Thread:LOC General Discussion/@comment-108.35.154.66-20130911165857/@comment-5686362-20130912191543

The sudden and constant increase in card prices is attributed to 2 main reasons, both of which have been mentioned already.

First is the out of control "cloning" of pp/ed. It was always present but in the last few months, it has become rampant. For those who don't believe pp and ed were being cloned way before this whole mess, just stroll over to Neoseeker forums and you'll see people were selling infinite amounts of items for real cash from as early as last year.

Secondly, the "elite" guilds control the market whether we believe it or not. The way these top guilds work is; say you can have 40 members. 20 out of 40 are actual players where the other 20 are alt dummy accounts meaning, these dummy accounts just get the minimum required scores to guarantee themselves the rewards. This way they hold all the top reward cards and can basically ask whatever they want for them. Sure we can say "just don't buy so and so cards" but you know if there is a market, people will buy. It's the same as people wanting to boycott gas prices. They say "on this date, everybody don't gas up your cars" well sorry if I need to get to work and I'm out of gas, I''m gassing up. Lol! As soon as you have one buyer, you can kiss the idea goodbye because they'll say "no deal, I've already seen it sell for this much..."