Knowledge is the problem.
One example is people know which items will be removed and which items will be retroactively nerfed.
Selling a fungus robe or a twig is very different from selling a fungus stick, manastone or rod of mourning. One gets retro-nerfed and one gets removed/nerfed.
We know this info in advance and price accordingly.
Another knowledge problem is that buyer-seller assymetric knowledge is shrinking.
In real markets, consumers don't have perfect knowledge. In an emergent EQ market, individuals tended to camp certain items and knew more about the drop rates, difficulty, etc. than others. They used this disparity to make money.
Have you ever gotten to a camp you've never done and realized it was a lot easier/harder and you got the item much faster/slower than you expected?
On live, by the time that info can get around we'd be past that round of loot and on to new expansions with new loot.
But we had Beta for 10 years. Knowledge disparity is shrinking.
Also, we have historical pricing from Beta for 10 years, and people
use or misuse this information.
Most people want to
sell manastones and lockets at 3-4+ year prices TODAY, and want to
buy fungus tunics and tstaffs at 3-4+ year prices TODAY.
tl;dr
- People know how useful items are, how long they take to get, and how difficult they are to obtain -- buyers cannot leverage that information for the same profits they used to
- People use blue as a price reference - they see what prices will likely be in the future for what they want to buy/sell, and if it's better than current market they go with that number
- People know what items will be retro-nerfed or removed