Visiting other worlds, economy effect?

[Mikki]

So I noticed that selling on other servers will not be permitted, however BUYING will be. I'm wondering what kind of effect this will have in the long run.

My initial thoughts were this:
1) Everyone will go to bigger servers in order to make purchases, since supply is larger there and thus prices are lower. This will leave small servers struggling, even if they were to adjust their prices since the bias will have been firmly planted that purchasing cross server is best. Even if smaller servers were to match the price, players might go to check the big server first and see it's the same price so meh. Why not just buy it there since you're already there?

2) Perhaps supply on bigger servers will dwindle and prices will increase there, due to the higher influx of players purchasing from there. This may lead to increases in prices which would make poor players unhappy. This would also create more gil on larger servers, thus further devaluing gil. At the same time, it moves gil away from smaller servers.

And,

3) Bots will ruin the economy of the entire game. Obviously my previous statement probably won't happen in this case (as far as the supply dwindling and prices increasing goes).


But maybe I'm overthinking it. Maybe most people would prefer to stay put where they are and would see purchasing on other servers to be too much of a hassle? I'm not sure. What do you guys think? Would you make the trek to a bigger server to check out prices and see if it's cheaper? Especially for big ticket items? How about for items that you buy frequently (mats, food, etc)? Would you check smaller servers?

On Zalera, the economy already feels quite dry. Things tend to be way overpriced, so I think prices could stand to drop. However, even when prices are quite low, the volume of sales still remains quite stagnant for many things. I'm concerned that this change will make it even worse for us on smaller servers and am considering if I should just jump ship and swap over to a bigger server?


What are your thoughts? Do you think this will be good for small servers? Big servers? All servers??? What are your plans?