Edition #12 · Week of September 21 – September 27, 2026
Four studios turned the taps up in the same seven days. Albion Online more than doubled its newest loot, Black Desert sold players a way past its own drop-rate ceiling, Old School RuneScape made gathering cheaper, and EVE Online switched off the largest demand sink one of its commodities had. Supply weeks are usually quiet weeks. This one won't be.
Market Movers
EVE Online deletes Liquid Ozone's biggest customer. The Cradle of War major update went live September 22, and with it the Ansiblex jump bridge stopped consuming Liquid Ozone per jump. Ansiblexes now run on a slowly recharging internal capacitor, scaled by hull and by distance from the alliance capital — projecting outward is expensive, coming home is cheap. Access narrowed too: subcapitals only, alliance members only. Every nullsec bridge network has burned Liquid Ozone per jump for years; as of Tuesday that consumption is zero. When CCP announced this in July, Liquid Ozone moved less than 3% — the market was waiting for the date. It has the date now. (EVE Online)
Albion Online's Dragonfire Patch 2 roughly doubles Ancient Lands loot. Sandbox Interactive shipped version 32.020.1 on September 23, and the numbers are not subtle: Large Ancient Lands base chest loot up about 140%, Medium up about 50%, Dragon Sanctuary base chests up around 100%, Outlands Dragon Attack chests roughly doubled, and the Sanctuary's final chest now drops a Drake Egg at roughly five times the old rate. Drake and armour-piece drop rates are untouched — a pure input-supply increase into the Dragonfire material chain. Nothing has reached our Albion board yet — that's next week's story, and it's a downward one. (Albion Online)
Path of Exile's Allflame league currency is deflating against Standard. Week nine of the Path of Exile 3.29 Curse of the Allflame league, with no 3.29.x patch and no 3.30 date. Our PoE board shows league currency bleeding: Exalted Orb is 1.46 chaos in the Allflame league, down 38.1%, while the same orb holds 8.38 chaos in PoE Standard. Gemcutter's Prism is down 58.7% in the league and up 10.5% in Standard. That's what nine weeks with no end date looks like.
What Our Data Shows
PoE's Mirror discount narrows to 58.3%. Mirror of Kalandra prints 408,008 chaos in Path of Exile's 3.29 Allflame league against 977,517 chaos in PoE Standard — in from a 61.8% discount two weeks ago. Mirrors are holding value better than the Exalteds around them — the classic late-league flight to the one currency that survives the merge.
FFXIV's worlds sold off on the week. Our first full weekly index readings on two Final Fantasy XIV worlds are ugly — Balmung down 11.1% over seven days, Adamantoise down 12.5%. Rose Gold Ingot round-tripped to 59 gil, down 79.8% on 333 trades: the busiest item on the FFXIV board, and up 139.2% on Gilgamesh a week ago.
FFXIV's Black Star spread got wider, not narrower. Week four of the saga: Black Star trades at 1,995 gil on the FFXIV world Gilgamesh (up 398.8%) against 675 gil on Adamantoise (down 51.8%). Diatryma Felt is worse — 17,149 gil on Balmung, up 417.6%, against 2,929 gil on Adamantoise, down 82.2%. Cross-world arbitrage in FFXIV costs a trip; these gaps pay for a lot of trips.
Albion's bag trade reversed at the bottom of the ladder. Expert's Bag is 16,999 silver, up 21.5% on 205 trades and the top-volume item on the Albion Online board, after falling 28.5% last week. Adept's Bag is up 11.2% while Master's Bag went the other way — an exact inversion of last week. The Albion mount unwind accelerated: Journeyman's Riding Horse down 34.7%, Swiftclaw down 23.6%, both on a second straight week lower.
WoW Retail's gear liquidation deepened, and one item broke in two. Realm indices on our WoW Retail board: the WoW Retail realm Illidan down 14.2% in 24 hours, Area 52 down 10%, Stormrage down 5%, Azjol-Nerub down 3.8% — week five of the WoW Retail Midnight Season 2 unwind. The Tarnished Dawnlit complex finally went two-sided — Corsair's Belt up 860% on Azjol-Nerub, Sentinel's Sabatons down 80% on Illidan. The outlier is Lost Winter's Hunger: 2,500g and up 7,695.4% on Area 52, 100g and down 99% on Illidan, same day. Worth an alert.
Around the Games
Guild Wars 2 shipped no build at all between September 21 and 27, and the GW2 Trading Post index has printed 0.0% for two straight weeks, 24,055 of 27,755 items flat. Iron Ore is still the only liquid item at 59 trades, up 6.6%. Two weeks after the Guild Wars 2 Code of Creation update, the legendary-material bid hasn't shown.
Final Fantasy XIV shipped no patch, but Square Enix's September 24 enforcement report covers the week directly: 497 accounts terminated for RMT participation and 386 terminated for RMT advertising — nearly double the 200 of the prior week. Participation bans are flat near 500; advertising is what moved. (Lodestone)
WoW Retail got one economy-adjacent hotfix on September 21, granting missing Spark of Tides on login; WoW Retail patch 12.1.5 is still undated. Path of Exile ran its final PoE 1 ExileCon qualifier on September 24, Albion Online is covered above, and RAID: Shadow Legends ran its September fusion for Theimios the Everdrinker.
The Wider Market
World of Warcraft: Forever has a Black Market Auction House. Beta testers found it on September 22 in Powderfuse Port, the goblin settlement in the Riverglades, run by Madam Swyndle and listing rare mounts, old Trading Card Game rewards, pets and classic dungeon set pieces from around 400g. WoW Forever ships with no WoW Token and no paid boost, which makes the BMAH its primary designed gold sink — before the game even has an economy to sink. (Blizzard forums)
Black Desert put a price on its own drop-rate cap. The September 23 update introduced the Blessing of Agris Scroll: +50% item drop rate, stacking past Black Desert's normal 300% ceiling, for 1 billion silver each, ten per week, through October 22. That is up to 10 billion silver per player per week deleted, in exchange for more loot entering. The same patch pulled Hermesia Inner Castle out of Black Desert's highest-tier zones, lifting Twilight of the End accessory drops 11–12%. (Pearl Abyss)
Old School RuneScape made gathering cheaper. The September 23 "Further Gathering Efficiencies" update gave the Celestial Ring and Signet a 1-in-10 chance of double Daeyalt Shards and cut Poison Dynamite's cost from three Nightshade to one. No new tradeables — just more supply per hour on the OSRS Grand Exchange's resource lines. (OSRS Wiki)
Storylines to Watch
- EVE Online's Cradle of War Liquid Ozone shock — the Ansiblex change went live September 22; the September Monthly Economic Report, due around October 9, is the first clean read.
- Albion Online's Dragonfire loot increase — Patch 2 landed September 23 and nothing has hit our board yet; Dragon Bone, Dragon Wing and Drake Egg prices are the tell.
- Path of Exile's 3.29 Allflame league endgame — league currency deflating against PoE Standard, Mirror discount in to 58.3%, still no 3.30 date before ExileCon 2026.
- World of Warcraft: Forever's gold sinks — a Black Market Auction House found in beta on September 22, in a game with no WoW Token, five weeks from its November 4 launch.
- FFXIV's RMT enforcement wave — advertising terminations nearly doubled week on week while all four tracked FFXIV worlds printed negative indices.
The Week Ahead
- Guild Wars 2 — Code of Creation Challenge Modes, September 29, 2026 UTC; raid Legendary Mode, October 13, 2026 UTC
- Throne and Liberty — Colossus Vegamor and the Eye of Chaos tier go live, September 29, 2026 UTC
- EVE Online — GM Week, September 28 – October 2, 2026 UTC; September Monthly Economic Report expected around October 9, 2026 UTC
- Aion 2 — Founder Advanced Access September 30, free-to-play launch October 5, 2026 UTC
- Darkfall: Rise of Agon — beta opens, September 30, 2026 UTC
- WoW Retail — October Trading Post rotation, October 1, 2026 UTC
- Albion Online — Guild Season 34 mid-season Invasion Day, October 10, 2026 UTC
- Black Desert — Blessing of Agris Scroll event ends, October 22, 2026 UTC
- WoW Forever — launch, November 4, 2026 UTC; Path of Exile — ExileCon 2026, November 7–8, 2026 UTC