So lately (the past year + lol) I've noticed that people seem to have A LOT of money. Like many art pieces that would've rarely hit 100k back in the day are being snatched up for 500k+. Many/most T1 even T2 artists can sell their art for millions. Embryos to top mares are having huge bidding wars, reaching 4-6 mil, and upper stallions are 100-300k a breeding. However, if you jump down just a handful of places on the board (lets say #15-30), you're lucky if you can sell a straw at all, or an embryo. But for artists, tier 4 is basically non-existent, while artists in tier 3 either sell a lot or very little. It's just odd/interesting to see the changes after being on this game for 6 years.

I've noticed this too. Top boy I wanted sold out in 3 hours instead of me getting a game mail he was even open for next year. I never even think to look for straws on rollover itself. No broods or embryos sell if you're not top ABLB or rare colors it seems. Straws or studs too. Everyone has so much money, but the poor ones like me, have to fight it out with only shows. Then the matches don't even work more than half the time because of random factor.

From an artist:

My art pieces that used to sell easily for 700k and HIGHER, consistently AB'd for 1mil+, rarely sell for more than 300k ish anymore unless they're special. I have to try a LOT harder than I used to for my ABs, and it's... frustrating. It's not viable anymore to sell a simple, well-polished piece for a horse. The economy is crazy at the moment, and even us T1 artists can feel it.

I've noticed this a lot too, the economy is very challenging now adays, especially art and embryos, i've noticed it's crazy hit or miss, and if it's not amazing, there isn't even a chance for it to be a hit >.<

I absolutely agree with this post. I've been playing this game for years and it seems like unless you are an 'established' player or have an extremely large number of ebs, it's very difficult to be successful. I've put most of my ebs into buying barns and filling them with geldings for showing, but it doesn't get me anywhere close to the amount of ebs that the 'richer' players have. It's definetly frustrating.

My art is my main source of income, I would not be able to afford my breedings if I didn't make millions off of my pieces. But like you say Versa, the art market is just so strange right now, everything is. I make a bit showing, but no where near enough to afford the lifestyle I live on this game through my art funds

HEE is really interesting to me, because despite the difficulties pointed out in this post, it has the most stable economy of any other online horse game I've played.

So many other games have folded/shut down because shit economies lead to players abandoning the game/discouraging newbies from joining, but after almost 15 years HEE is still going relatively strong. There's always new faces joining the chats and sticking around, and the leaderboards do swap around a bit- there's no one monopoly on anything.

However, in the past year or two I have noticed that there's a bit more of an 'income gap', so the TOP stallions get used, the top artists get paid, and there's not enough of a middle economy to support the middle stallions and artists (not to mention the brood market is..... strugglebussing). I'm not an expert in economics by any means, so I'm not sure what's causing this or how to help it, but it is really interesting that this seems to be a slightly newer circumstance in a really, really long-running game.

Thats a really interesting take! I wonder if we could find some economists to do a deep dive on the issues surrounding this and how to fix it lol.

I've noticed this too. Like the art market in particular is so so weird. And it also fluctuates? Like I often do have pieces AB'd but then I had an Appaloosa stable page that got very little attention in compared to random WIPs I had laying around in my gallery 😅

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But it really has been weird coming back after a break. I also feel like the quality tiers of art have shifted with the addition of tier 4. It's much more blurred between T1 and T2 with what feels like fewer power house artists making art In the game (RIP Jello, Trigg, Belle, Dense, etc. 😭❤️).

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I also wouldn't be able to survive breeding and RO without my art and even afterwards, I'm often decently broke despite my art making a decent amount of profit. And watching which pieces from other artists go for a lot and which don't is always variable. Crazy