As the issue of merchant minimum pricing has come up yet again, I will take
this oppotunity to address the issue again for those of you new to the guild.

Contrary to what some might think, minimum pricing exists to help those in the
guild with less experience, skills, boons, or complimentary guilds. Without a
fixed pricing mechanism, those with the best skills/stats/boons/levels will be
able to profitably provide services more cheaply, easily locking out those
with lesser abilities. Just think about it, if there was a price war only two
types of people will win: those that can provide services at the lowest costs
(i.e. high skilled people) and those willing to play tons and not care about
how little they make for their time spend (i.e. stupid people as they could
make more money as a ranger).

Now we have yet another merchant newbie coming by advertising their own
"minimum prices." For me personally, I couldn't give a shit. I easily sell
what I make and have a stable of regular customers. These lower prices though
do harm the lower level merchants. The ones with maybe less than maxed skills
and no complimentary guild levels. They can't afford to make chests (in this
case) at such low prices, hence they have been forced out of that business.
Not a particularly friendly situation.

Next, why would any merchant want lower prices? Why would you want to make
less money? It isn't as if chest making follows a traditional supply-demand
curve. There is a relatively fixed demand for chests and all that lowering
the price will do is drive down supply (so I as I said above this is good for
those that can produce cheaply). Personally, I rather see a situation where
all merchants can responsibly profit from our skills.

Lastly, why in the heck should we listen to non-merchants when it comes to
setting prices? Can we control the xp and eq the get from parties? No, we
don't - so don't let these non-merchants tell us how to conduct our affairs.

Dwilgar
Master Merchant
De-facto Merchant Guildmaster (by way of time in guild)