Quote Originally Posted by Spiritmage View Post
To be quite fair, all the money had to come from somewhere when the game first started. Quests, NPCing random items. It's not like everyone who started when the game first launched was given 1 million Gil.
Very true. And prices were relatively lower at that point, as the small amount of Gil in circulation meant that Gil was worth more relative to the items it purchased.

And brain dead "Make gil easier to get" folks aside, anyone who followed the flow of RMT's gil-pumping influence as it's gone up and down in FFXI can see the difference as AH prices rise and fall to follow it.

They can't do what they did in the old days- block access AND pump prices up - but they can still hyperinflate the market given an engine to do so, and the more Gil in the system that isn't gil-sinked back via NPC's, the larger the amount of Gil people need to get anything from others. Since blinkers got taken out as a Gil-pump, I've seen prices on some high-volume items drop by a third or more. Less gil in the system = more purchasing power per Gil.