Economic History of EMC

The Economic history of the server is a long and storied history, with some smashing successes, some minor victories, and some total failures. This is to remember the economic progress of the server.

## Early Economic Era

Apparently few shops, mostly just friendly face-to-face trades (from what I heard)

## IKEA Era

### Founding of IKEA and early competitors

Arganong of PWW worked with the leaders of PWW to establish a major shop for the server, eventually the *de facto* official shop. IKEA was a giant, dominating prices and having enough resources to buy out other competitors. In whatever IKEA sold it set the prices, dominating all other stores. IKEA was located just outside of spawn to allow all easy access, a feature that all major stores adopted.

After IKEA was seen by the community as a major success other nations worked to establish their own stores like IKEA. UnitedStates led GuardedCharlie worked on creating a massive store outside of spawn, like IKEA, but fell into inter-national problems and GuardedCharlie was eventually banned, all before his shop took off.

The\_Money\_Store was also established by zezima\_irl again with the goal of competing with IKEA, it did well and claimed all around spawn (serverly limiting competition) but as ZZ slowly became inactive the signs were never refilled and the prices of TMS started to be far more expensive that what other stores were offering.

IKEA survived through these competitors and pretty much dominated all trade and prices by itself until a new player emerged to challenge it.

### TroyMart vs IKEA

Troy, a town run by Shootcity, started to take great interest in the economy of the server, and by October had started to open their own store, called TroyMart. It had a spot outside of spawn as a Troy outpost and very quickly gained steam, some seeing it as a competitor to break the effective monopoly of IKEA. They undercut some of IKEA's trades but did not with others. IKEA retained its position as the largest and most powerful economic giant on the server, but TroyMart had promise and quickly rose to #2.

Sadly for many TroyMart went inactive as Shootcity became inactive, as Troy started decreasing in population so did TroyMart in economic power. It effectively all ended for TroyMart when after a long period of inactivity Shootcity and his town of Donetsk collapsed from inactivity, although Troy remained under a near-equally inactive subordinate.

### Post-TroyMart

Once people saw how well TroyMart did other started copying it. Shizen started getting in on the economy but slowly faltered after much promise. Some other shops opened up, like ShopAlania or the Crystal Shop, although these would be of limited influence until they either collapsed (Crystal Shop) or expanded (ShopCaspian). Around this time Georgia and ProvingUnique started a large publicity campaign for their shop at Georgia, which worked for a while but then people slowly forgot about it as Proving went inactive for a few weeks.

IKEA kept going, although off and on in spurts. When Arganong was on much progress would be achieved but then he would be inactive for a week or two. Shootcity joined back and joined IKEA, but then he went inactive again. IKEA still had the full power to control the economy of the entire server though and was well respected.

### Ore-to-Ingot Price War

As IKEA slowly became a tad less active a major new force was shaping the economy of the server. IKEA and others had usually a strong and steady stream of funds via their 2 ores for 3 ingots trades. These trades were the bread and butter of the shops and many shops had the identical trade. This was the established norm for ores-ingots until the town of Alania opened up a 4 for 7 gold trade. This although did not capture all the ore market and IKEA and other shops continued to do their 2 for 3 and continued to get customers. And IKEA continued to dominate in every other way than ore-ingots.

The popularity of the 4 for 7 lead Alania to redevelop ShopCaspian and ran it not as a continuous store, but to sell embassies to others withing the Shop. This and more interest in the economy led Australia to establish Aussie\_Store, and instituted a 4 for 7 ore trade like ShopCaspian and with other deals as well. This led to a price war between the two over ores-ingots trades. Finally ShopCaspian outdid the Australians with 8 for 15.

Outside of the ore-ingot market much changed also, Wal-Mart started in ShopCaspian mostly selling glass really cheap and Tyranmart was founded. Tyranmart had so much promise, located right next to IKEA but then went inactive and could not keep up to date prices in the rapidly changing economic scene. Fiji was also getting in the on the action, moving their relatively unknown store from their town to next to Tyranmart. Fiji opened up many good deals but could never get a great selection.

IKEA remained top for selection, having almost everything, but if you shopped around other stores could get you better deals.