on the older servers, prices will only continue to increase. as more and more players reach max level on all technologies, gold only becomes useful for resources. those same players are also constantly farming NPCs, and NPCs give significantly more gold than they do resources. if you have a higher supply of gold than resources, and gold is only useful for resources, gold by definition is worth less than resources. add in the fact that more and more high level players are building multiple cities that have 1 each of mine, sawmill and quarry and the rest farms. this leads to significantly more buyers of lumber and iron than sellers, further driving up the market. lumber and iron on server 4 have been skyrocketing for several weeks, and honestly i suspect they won't level out until it hits 2:1 or higher. eventually, all populated servers will get to this point unless there's another significant change to game mechanics.