A Stupid Question From A N00B

[Zadok001]

I'm a solo-only player. I play offline. Despite my broadband connection, I despise playing under laggy conditions. Even a 100ms ping tends to throw me off my game. Hence, I don't often participate in the online community for D2, and I never trade.

For a long time, I considered the SOJ-base economy to be the most idiotic move imaginable. I know it wasn't the fault of anyone in particular, but an economy, to function, needs to provide a way to acquire currency in a consistent manner. (You couldn't do anything to find SOJs other than "Get really lucky." Hence, the economy was essentially a non-entity until you got your first ten or so.)

Today, I discovered to my suprise that the SOJ economy has effectively crashed. The replacement currency? Chippies. Chipped Gems. What. The. Hell? Chipped Gems. Why on EARTH would someone barter with or for *CHIPPED* gems? Perfects, I could understand. (Indeed, aside from Gold, which was unlikely due to balance reasons, I always figured Gems would make the best currency - Just not CHIPPED gems!) So, would someone be so kind as to explain to this poor, uninformed newbie why CHIPPED gems seem to be the new trading standard?

[Sporky Smurf]

Basically they are only traded for so that they can be abused in the Sword Recipe. This sword recipe is:

1 Magical Sword + 3 Chipped Gem = New Magical Sword with Sockets (it re-rolls the affix/suffix and gives it sockets)

With a Cruel Colossus Blade it is possible to get a three socket MONSTER of a sword.

[Count Duckula]

Please keep in mind that I haven't been on Battle.net in 2 months. :D

My thought is that a screenie got leaked at Dii.net or someplace about a cubing recipe involving chips or a great sword that could be even better with the 3 chip cube recipe.

Also keep in mind that you can take the collective intelligence of public realmplayers, stuff it into a flea's bellybutton, and still have room for three poppyseeds and an agent's heart (as the old joke goes). Maybe the D2 Trading Illuminati all decided to go after chips, and the bovinical herd blindly follows.

[Arutha]

I don't know if the soj economy has really crashed or not. I've been staying clear of the D2 "market" for a very long time now.

But chips have been used as a currency for a very long time now.
Consider Sojs as the dollars, and chips as the "cents".

The reason why people want chips is that barring hacked items, what is considered the best sword in the game is a cruel colossus blade, preferably with a great second mod (like "of quickness") and with 3 sockets available.

You get such a sword by using the Magic Sword + 3 chips cube formula.

It takes a lot of attempts to cube such a sword (the mods are random, and you want "cruel" to spawn), hence the need for a lot of chipped gems.

By the way, this is another instance of Blizzard screwing up. They claimed that they wanted to encourage diversity, and indeed with LOD they rebalanced weapons rather nicely. Axes in particular were now very competitive.
But by making that formula only available to swords, and further favouring sword with the whirlwind breakpoints formula, they ensured that swords would still be the dominant weapon for barbs.


PS: When I left bnet, the few paladin players out there also figured out that a cruel mythical sword with the runes eth + 2 x lo made for a very powerful duelling weapon (ignore enemy defense thanks to the eth bug, and 40% deadly strike). So that cube formula was starting to be used by paladin players too.

[DralaFi]

The reason why SOJ's and now gems have become the form of currency can be explained by Smith's theory of the Invisible Hand.

Taking a look at our world economy. We have governments that established over time fiat currency. For example dollars.

Now imagine we didn't have an established fiat monetary system. As was 500 years ago. Rare and expensive metals (ie gold, silver), and gems were used as commodity money. Now not everyone could afford these and everyone wanted them. Just like on Bnet with SOJ's.

You had a chance to find some of these by digging in the ground for gold or finding gems. As is finding an SOJ.

Now blizzard said oh we will have gold coins in the game as a form of currency for all players. Which is ofcourse useless. When you have Trillions upon trillions of these coins they are worth nothing. So something even more valuable had to take its place. The SOJ. So players by them selves just threw away money and decided to trade SOJ's. Now when you go to the trade channels you will find people with 100's of SOJ's. This is ofcourse a minority, as the average player has very few SOJ's. Just like in the real world you have very few Billionairs.

Given time, SOJ's will be as abundant as gold and become worthless. And another rare and small and expensive item will take its place.

That is the case when there is no established Fiat currency like in our current world. Had blizzard done research and did make up a smart Fiat currency for D2. Then this probably would not have happened.

[kier]

I think the use of chips in trading is GREAT. Want to know why? There is 0 point in duping them, as indevidualy they ae worthless, and people who are not rushed will usualy have 30-40 chips by the end of act3 norm. People who are poor and have just started the game can afford nice items by simply playing through norm, and they have no need of mf. The day the soj market crashed was when duping boomed. I had a friend who was away, and had saved up 2x soj for a wf or eagle. These are now pretty much worthless, yet they are legit and good items.