Endelig said:
And this will stop RMT, or just make them a competitor? I would imagine they would want to try and stay in business. I suppose SE could make gil really ridiculously cheap compared to RMT prices, but then what about people who don't want to buy gil? Doesn't this put them at an even more severe disadvantage? If they make it cheap enough will people even farm anymore? Then materials become more scarce, as do products coming from them, and I think the economy crashes anyway. So everybody ends up loaded and there's nothing on the AH to spend it on.
Have you seen RMT gil prices as of late? The market is not to their advantage, as the value of gil is so high, even the smallest pocketful of gil would cost more than most people would ever be willing to spend for it. Therefore it won't be hard for SE to always keep the one-up above RMT and in essence run them out of business. RMT wouldn't be able to "compete" with a monopoly if SE ran the whole show. Also the reason why things are so cheap and are constantly being undercut is due to the lack of buyers. So the value of gil rises, and the people resort to NPCs and NPC quests to get their gil more than ever now so the AH has less materials for sale because it's not worth putting up on the AH anymore.
People having ready access to gil for those who would choose to buy it would encourage more buyers, and in turn would encourage more farming for a much more lucrative result than the way things currently are.
But this is merely how I project things could turn out if SE took over the biz. The economy is fickle and it could be 180° opposite of what I predict so I could be wrong, just throwing something out there to ponder about~