The 23rd Century Promo Ship event has come and gone. Cryptic has made a killing on the sales and the collectors and TOS fans have rejoiced. Now we’ve entered a rather interesting phase. With the promo over, supply is very limited on both the R&D promo packs and the ships themselves. At the time of this writing, the promo packs sell for 23 million EC and the ships upwards of 1.2 billion. The invisible hand of supply and demand dictates that such would be the case, and that is well and good.
However, a strange mentality has taken hold. There are those who think that the price of the ships can only keep rising. After all, as supply dwindles the price must go up, right? Well, what if no one is buying the ships any longer? We’ve reached, or will soon reach, the point where those who can afford the astronomical prices will already have the promo ships they want in their shipyards. Any other ships they obtain will sit in their inventory waiting to be resold for just as (if not greatly more) than they paid for them. There will be those who will jealously hold on to these ships thinking that if they can’t make a profit off them, no one else will have them.
The bitter truth is that, given time, the price will fall. All bubbles eventually burst. Such is the case for all promotional ships and prizes. People still want the ships, yes, but if the people who want them can’t afford them then no one benefits. Those who wish to fly the ships are denied the chance and those who possess the ships discover that they are unable to sell them. What once was a billion EC prize meant to be flown and enjoyed becomes a doorstop taking up inventory space (even less than a doorstop, considering that the item in question is nothing more than bits in a computer system).
Eventually, those who wanted the ships but can’t afford them will decide to do without and go their marry way, playing and enjoying a game that celebrates a wonderful franchise. And that is the grand irony in all of this: It’s all just a game. A Free-to-Play game with a limited lifespan. It could be in a year, it could be in 10 years, but Star Trek Online will eventually go offline. And when that day comes, it will be sad indeed if there still are promo ships sitting in inventories. Never flown, never loved, never to be seen again. Worthless.
However, a strange mentality has taken hold. There are those who think that the price of the ships can only keep rising. After all, as supply dwindles the price must go up, right? Well, what if no one is buying the ships any longer? We’ve reached, or will soon reach, the point where those who can afford the astronomical prices will already have the promo ships they want in their shipyards. Any other ships they obtain will sit in their inventory waiting to be resold for just as (if not greatly more) than they paid for them. There will be those who will jealously hold on to these ships thinking that if they can’t make a profit off them, no one else will have them.
The bitter truth is that, given time, the price will fall. All bubbles eventually burst. Such is the case for all promotional ships and prizes. People still want the ships, yes, but if the people who want them can’t afford them then no one benefits. Those who wish to fly the ships are denied the chance and those who possess the ships discover that they are unable to sell them. What once was a billion EC prize meant to be flown and enjoyed becomes a doorstop taking up inventory space (even less than a doorstop, considering that the item in question is nothing more than bits in a computer system).
Eventually, those who wanted the ships but can’t afford them will decide to do without and go their marry way, playing and enjoying a game that celebrates a wonderful franchise. And that is the grand irony in all of this: It’s all just a game. A Free-to-Play game with a limited lifespan. It could be in a year, it could be in 10 years, but Star Trek Online will eventually go offline. And when that day comes, it will be sad indeed if there still are promo ships sitting in inventories. Never flown, never loved, never to be seen again. Worthless.