You must extremely luck and extremely efficient to make that much money in such a short period of time. Or you deposited. Either way, gratz on that.
As for the angry ramblings of the anti-"whiner" cult, who complain about anyone who criticizes EU, even legitmately; shut up. Reality, or in this case, virtual reality, may be bleak, but an honest assessment of the state of the game is better then mindless cheerleading, bring up the hopes of newbies, only to have them dashed, have them get utterly disgusted, quit AND spread ill will towards the game.
At least those reading the ciritcisms will understand the game has issues, so they will know what to expect when they get inside. That's how we GET the large number of hard working individuals in the community that we have always had. The healthy doses of virtual reality sift out the get rich quick crowd, for the most part.
Now on to said bleak dose of virtual reality.
As I have stated previously in the month, the EU economy as it stands, might as well be dead. For those of you who need a history lesson as to why this is so; and how it used to be, here we go.
There used to be LOTS of active trade cities; now this is before we even had CP. The common trade network was Port Atlantis, Fort Troy, Fort Ithaca, Jason Center/Centre, Nymphtown, and Twin Peaks.
Port Atlantis handled newbie gear, and low level mineral sales. Nymphtown was the major miner's sale point, you wanted large quantities of minerals/enmatters, you went here. Twin Peaks was the highend guns and armor point. Fort Troy, Fort Ithaca, and Jason Centre, you picked up some combination of the above, as well as other various wares.
There were a number of small changes that made things harder, running speed changes for one. Adjustments to hit ratios on weapons, decay, etc. However, the biggest blow to the economy was the introduction of the "no loot" mob.
Why was this so bad? Two reasons, one it meant that hunters needed to hunt longer to increase the odds of success, this means the need for more money, making the amount of active mid to high level hunters drop. Two, because the supposedly increased loot for loot carrying animals was an effing LIE. Loot did not improve in fact in many cases, particularly on mid level mobs it was worse.
Without hunters, there was no incoming gear, no incoming gear meant that existing gear became more valueable, and that crafters took hold of the gear market, both things meant inflated prices. Now for the crafters, it was great for a while, and that picked up some of the economic slack for a bit. But slowly, people just started running out of the money to afford, anything but the cheapest stuff.
This in turn damaged the miners, who were additionally suffering from changes in the frequency and sizes of deposits; a variation of the "no loot" mob. If crafters stop crafting because they can't sell what they craft, people stop buying minerals. These two things, deposit adjustments and lack of demand, crushed the mid-level miner, if not most miners in general.
Enter the reseller. I don't mean your average street merchant who buys and sells for a couple % under and over. I mean the guys you see now who take advantage of desperate miners and hunters, buying for sometimes 5-6% off the market price, and they buy EVERYTHING. Thus they consolidate the remaining wealth floating about into hoarded pockets of the few that eventually dissipates into MA's hands through decay; thus tightening the noose of poverty.
Sweat gathering did little to alliviate the problem, if anything at all. The sweat cap provided incentive for higher prices for a time, but with it removed, the price will inevitably drop to 1 PED/k in time, if not lower. The problem remains, the "no loot" mob. Gather 4-5k sweat, after several days of work. Buy a cheap a gun in ammo, lose everything in a short hunt, unless you are extremely lucky. Two options, rage quit, or back to the sweat fields and gatherer for even longer periods, rinse and repeat.
(L) items didn't help much either, because while the items did improve efficiency, the mid level individual couldn't continuously afford to replace their items+markup. It was a non-starter, that only managed to drive the inflation on non-(L) items even HIGHER. Once again, short economic injection that lost steam because the original problems killing the economy were not fixed.
The combination of all these things over time annihilated the middle class from our society. The number of active trade cities dropped from the above list to PA and Twin Peaks, to now, just Twin Peaks, with minor trading in Ithaca and the Sweat Camps. The sort of trading you find at said locations are usually just sweat, and resellers. Every other city is practically deserted.
Now, why was the middle class wiped out? Simple. Most of them were non-depositors who had, by various means, found ways of building wealth. To MA, who at the time believed in solely slash and burn, short term profits, and who only worshiped investors(ubers); the middle class was an infestation of leeches. What the morons did not realize was that those leeches made demand for the economy, produced decay just like anyone else, and moved money around, keeping things vibrant and flowing.
Now, of course this is an incomplete history, lacking in all the specfic cases of economic stupidity. However, it is a clear enough picture of why we are where we are now. So do not tell me EU is doing "fine" because it's not. That said, if the level of fairness with which cars were implemented is applied to other new content, and GAMEPLAY adjustments are made to hunting and mining to return them to a somewhat less money intensive form; then there's hope.
I don't complain because I dislike EU, I complain because I want to stop seeing its potential wasted. This is THE BEST sci-fi game platform I have ever seen. It's a fabulous idea, you just need to stop letting the accountants make all the frigging decisions. Accountants should NEVER make long term decisions, I took an accounting class, the stuff brain washes you into translating people into numbers, and it doesn't work in the long term.
There are no more notches on our belts to tighten. No more "ones for the team" to take. We are running on fumes, because honestly, only people high either on the game or something else, would stick around for this long.
So yes we "whiners" will continue to "whine" proudly, and bash our heads against the proverbial wall, and continue to actively piss off the cult that despises us so and wishes we would all shut up, because it's the right thing to do. Hopefully we'll also accomplish some of the changes we set out to make.