Sounds pretty sensible. Whether it's feasible, I think, depends on how large the footprint is -- that is, how many honest players were affected and to what degree -- and how far the money's been spent down the line. I think the idea of a targeted reversal is likely to go over relatively well in the wake of the outcry over this issue, but it has to be done with surgical precision and a whole lot of communication.
I'm with you until point 3. I understand if you don't want to be overly specific, but if there were to be an actual cash wipe/reset (which, by the way, I think would do far more damage to the game than this incident), what would position that small percentage to manipulate the presumably-equalized market?
Detaching from the hue and cry for a moment, I have to say that at an academic level, this whole thing is rather fascinating -- in my head I'm imagining some hybrid of the cleanup from the Bernie Madoff scandal and something like Zimbabwe's currency crisis a few years back. Thankfully it's not as deeply-entangled as either, but I think it's going to be rather interesting to see what shakes out. I think in most any case it'll be a good lesson in what makes an MMO tick.
The problem with a non-regulated currency reboot, in my opinion, has to do with the lack of control of pricing. In most currency wipe situations, initial prices are set by the government, and although the market will determine future prices through supply/demand, it is less likely that the previous, inflationary prices, will carry forward immediately. These kinds of controls are not required at the start of a nation/community, as there is relatively equal opportunity access to the vast amount of resources available.
I'm going to base "Point 3" on a few premises:
1) The "wealthy" I'm referring to earned their money legitimately, by taking advantage of the recent inflation.
2) That they will be allowed to keep the items they purchased through their participation in the market.
3) That the items they are allowed to keep maintain the same level of availability (supply) as before the inflation happened.
4) That the "printing" of zeny will remain the same rate it is today, without the exploits.
5) That "equity", are items which cannot be gotten w/o spending real life cash, as well as being part of some sort of luck based system (ie. costumes, capes, and karnium).
So let's say there is a currency wipe. I believe a lot of people who defined in "1", seeing a possible currency wipe, may have converted some of their liquid assets to equity already. At level 50, without selling items to other players, so ONLY NPC's, how much money can you make? I believe the monetary policies of this game have already been discussed ad nauseum. Let's say you are Mr/Miss Wealthy. After the reset, you have 5-10 costumes, or whatever. Are you just going to throw them all in the market at 100Z each? I believe most would probably not settle for anything less than pre-inflationary prices--but the problem is, of course, no one has this kind of money--supply and demand, right? The other problem is, when it comes to scarce resources, supply and demand is tricky. I doubt very much that everyone getting costumes and capes is planning to sell them, especially now, in this new market, where people can't afford to pay more than say, 100Z. In the beginning, we probably won't see these "big ticket" items move very frequently, and even when they do, it will probably be very wildly fluctuating prices. After a few weeks, maybe a couple of months, some grinders are finally able to afford say, 1000Z. You finally decide to sell your costumes, and now have 10,000Z. Because there's really nothing else to spend money on in this game other than repair bills (with zeny, at least, not Kafra points), people will buy your costume/kranium. All you need to do now, is what you did before to have made this money--buy low, and sell high again. There will always be a small supply of "cheap" equity, but you'll hold out for at least the average prices, since you hold so much--and as we've seen, once prices are set, people don't want to settle for less.
This is, of course, just one possible scenario, but considering that there are definitely a small percentage of people with a lot of "legitimate" cash, it is possible.
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