The Great Neopian Depression? by slushie31 |  |
Lately, people have been talking about a recession/depression looming. I'm
here today to tell you that they are absolutely right.
It all started when the kind folks at the The
National Neopian Bank decided to start cutting interest rates. A 2%
cut to the interest rates corresponds to a large drop in daily income. Let's
say we had 1 million Neopoints in our bank account. Before the cuts, we would
get 12% interest, corresponding to 328 NP interest per day. With a 2% rate cut,
we now only make 273 NP in interest each day. This is a 55 NP drop, which doesn't
seem like much, but in a week, we just lost almost 400 NP. And think about how
much we would lose if we had 2 million. Or 3 million.
And it's not just the large bank accounts that are affected. Let's say we only
had a Silver Saver account of 5,500 NP. At the old rate of 8.5%, we'd get a
yearly interest of almost 470 NP, which would be enough to get 1 NP each day.
However, now with the rate drop to 6.5%, we'd only get 358 NP interest in a
year, which is not even enough to get 1 NP interest daily.
So interest rates, and therefore income, is down. But I can still get a lot
of money from the games, right? The answer is yes and no. The games have not
gotten any easier, so unless you are pretty good at a game, it's challenging
to make a lot of money through the games. As well, many of the easy moneymaking
games have been taken off the site--Bullseye, Kiko Match (the old one)--and
the NP team have been effective in removing bugs in the games that were useful
in making easy money--the Hot Wheels game, for example. So in this respect,
income is down too.
Which brings us to the Stock
Market. Lately, the stock market's been taking quite a tumble. Many
of the high-ranking stocks have become bargain stocks now. And inversely, the
old bargain-priced stocks have started to take off--look at CHPS,
which was hovering around 6-7 for ages, and now is around 20. This is good news
for the people who have bargain stocks, but not good news for the high-priced
stock holders.
The only really stable income-driving device is the Shops. Millions of people
stock their personal shops each day with items bought cheaply from the main
NeoPets shops. This is a very easy way to generate revenue, and therefore income.
However, this is about to change too. With the introduction of the two new
clubs, the Book Award Club, and the Gourmet Club, prices for certain items have
skyrocketed. You probably are sitting there, thinking, how is this a bad thing?
Well, first of all, unless you are lucky enough to grab the good items from
the main shops before everything's gone, it is now much harder, and much more
expensive, to find that item you are looking for. Let's say you get a Water
Faerie quest for a specific book that used to be worth 200-300 NP. You go on
the Shop
Wizard only to find out that it's now worth 600 NP! Now multiply this
by many quests, as well as your desire to educate your pet... see what I mean?
As well, food items that we got for free from the Advent Calendar last month
and probably sold off right away thinking we could always get more, have also
skyrocketed in price. For example, the Turkey Dinner, which I sold in my shop
for less than 10 NP, is now worth 10 times that. Unless you happened to keep
Advent Calendar items (which I had done for a couple weeks, but figured it would
be safe to sell them) you lost out on a huge profit, thereby also cutting income.
Or take the retired items for example. With both PetPets and paint brushes,
now that certain items have retired the supply has dropped, thereby increasing
demand and increasing the price. However, if you've been following the paint brush
prices, which retired first, they seemed to have peaked a couple weeks ago,
and are now dropping again. So people hoarding retired items lose out as the
price drops back. And I predict the same thing will happen with the retired
PetPets. How long will it be until the now unbuyable Flizzardos are buyable
again, causing many people to miss out on great income possibilities.
So where am I going with all this? By cutting interest rates (thereby lowering
wages) and introducing huge price raises (thereby increasing costs), we are
bringing a Depression upon Neopia.
And what can we do about it? Not much, I'm afraid. If old trends repeat themselves,
the expensive items should drop back to more reasonable levels eventually. And
hopefully the bank will raise interest rates. But we might be facing a Great
Depression... better start stocking your shop. |
