Among the flurry of usual gripes is often the offhanded comment that the economy of this game is 'broken'.
No it isn't.
The fact that a pound in Victorian Britain had the purchasing power of 70-80 GBP today has no bearing on the purchasing power of the average person.
To give some specific in-game examples:
There is a blitzer over in the Market Forums who is successfully taking commissions to roll items at 20m a piece.
Lcory offers a service to roll nano crystals at 10m a piece, which is popular and widely used.
Tradeskillers, even for comparatively easy combinations, are often generously tipped, and in a position to require it.
I sympathise with the argument that there are crooks out there who exploited to gain vast sums and manages to squirrel away their winnings from FC. The permeation of those misbegotten funds are why we are all so rich today.
The fact that we have a large sum of credits is no reason to expect to be able to buy what we could some years ago with it. Because some years ago, the same efforts would not have yielded that many credits to us.
Yes, the bunch of zeroes can be oppressive for a new player. But then all unguided new players will find AO pretty oppressive to get into at the very start compared to most games, and I don't feel it was any better half a decade ago.
At least as it is now, the new player is very quickly freed from the burden of having to consider the cost of store-bought items.
It is a big deal for a newbie to have a yalm. And they'll be able to afford one very quickly now. And perhaps that's a good thing.
There is nothing inherently wrong with GA IV costing two billion credits, as long as people are able to earn that sort of money within a similar timeframe to being able to obtain GA IV some years ago. And we are. So nothing need fixing. Exploiters just need banning.