I’d like to start with the fact that whoever came up with the idea of the Galleon is pretty damn smart.
Here are some points about why the Galleon is a scam/ripoff, whatever you’d like to call it once you read all this
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Power in numbers
They contact AO YouTubers to promote their trading hub. I don’t want to call out any people in specific, but look if some of you are going to witch-hunt people who got mentioned in a forum post about renown, I won’t imagine what else you angry Arcane Joes will do.
But anyway, if you watch slop content about AO, you’ll see that now and then, they’ll shout out the Galleon and post the invite in their description. Now I respect hustle, but this becomes more interesting the more you think about it.
The way the Galleon works is that they are a relatively popular server with a lot of people. This is why they are so eager to “sponsor” (in quotations because it is just a discord server and not a real-life business) Their popularity in a way validates their Value List even more. Because of this, people in the marketplace will look at someone using the Galleon Value List as a way to base prices. After all, why not trust The Galleon? They have thousands of people in there and everyone else seems to be using it.
Now what’s wrong with their Value List?
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Decision-making on the value list is done by a small group of people, who are all rich in game
When you look deeper into how they set up the value list, you’ll notice some things. First, the people who decide the value of this list are some of the richest players.
At first, this seems to be no big deal. The rich analysts own a mass amount of items, and they trade frequently. It’s their thing, they’re experienced in the market and they see when the value of an item goes down, or people just in general have a lack of demand or increased demand for something.
However, this line of thinking is inherently monopolistic, let me ease you into my third and biggest point here with this info,
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The value list is made in such a way as to benefit the biggest traders
I’ll get more on topic but bear with me and read this
The Galleon has a millionaire/leaderboard list. Let’s look at everyone on there.
And now their latest one,
There are far more people on this list however, notice how for the top 10-25 most wealthy people, none of the rankings have changed. Sure they might have lost some net worth, however most of it is acrimony or seasonal value going down (seasonals of which are worthless and propped up by value lists like this, I’ll get into this later someday on another post)
Earlier I mentioned analysts being rich and being in near complete control of the trading economy. If you take your time and scavenge through the arcane millionaires list, you’ll find that a good few of these rich people are also analysts on Discord. This becomes a concern.
A small group of people being able to take control of the economy of the game is a concern for the long-term health of how the game’s economy works, especially when they are representing only their interests instead of just sticking with the classic “bartering system” a game should run on. This bartering system is one where two players approach each other, and make a deal based on what they want from each other.
- They essentially third-party their way into trades
Now you might just say to yourself, but by definition that is basically how the game’s economy is working right now. And you’d be a little wrong. With the value list being the reason items are the prices they are, the bartering system becomes rigged in a way.
It becomes rigged because instead of two players making a mutual deal through a “barter”, the value list has already negotiated on the price or value of the items they are already using.
As more and more people begin to use the Galleon’s value list, we will see a trend in the market. Almost all new items that drop in the future will remain expensive for around 1-3 months.
Don’t get quick to jump on me for that though. New items are always going to be pricey, but with the Galleon’s value list, prices are most likely to remain stagnant until the next update, given how the prices are set and how often they’re updated.
conclusion paragraph
So to make my misery end, I’m calling it here. Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten all my ideas and feelings out about the Galleon in just one more cohesive, and readable post. Because of this, I am 99.9% sure that this will read as a rant instead of a conspiracy post or whatever, a schizopost even. I just wanted to get this out there quickly.
If you have any questions for me or just an opinion you’d like to say, definitely contribute in the replies. I think this is worth talking about because the more you think about this situation, the deeper the rabbit hole gets.
