So, let's talk Gil.

[Synfrag]

which suggests that legacy players might have huge reserves of gil which'll make entry into the high tier item market extremelt difficult for a post-ARR entry player

Overall I find the monetary dynamics of MMO's quite fascinating to watch, makes me wish i had some formal education in economics.

I won't deny that some certainly do have high reserves but I still believe it is the minority. Most of my legacy players started ARR with well under 200k. SE really handled the re-denomination very well. Most of them have earned more in the story line than they had to begin with so it put most of us on par with the new players or at least not too far out of reach. I do know some people that started with 2,000,000 but to make 20 mil in 1.0 was really reserved for the hard core or craftaholic crowd.

I do actually have a formal education in Economics and it very much applies. Economics at it's root can be summed up as the laws of supply and demand and identifying those characteristics in an MMO is simple most of the time. You have to understand the curve of means to really leverage it though. On legacy servers this is really high as a large portion of the population have the means to offer the supply. But, at the same time there are new players which artificially curves the demand in a secondary slope.

At a basic level one need only look at what they can supply and then find a demand that fits in that. For most new players that is going to mean farming mobs for the majority. Investing your time in gathering and crafting is still smart but it will be slower until you reach the higher levels. We are about at a tipping point back to low level gear as many of the new crowd is approaching 50 on their main class/job they will be starting over on lower levels again.

Additionally, supplying crafters with gear itself is another great option to make money. Crafting unlike grinding is hard to do without the proper gear, you can't just run or take advantage of other players to help. And the rewards from the quests don't cover it all. Most of my money comes from actually making HQ versions of lvl 50 crafting gear.