Quote:
Originally Posted by Knightmare
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Second. In any game that releases expansions there is a degree of "mudflation". This is where old items drop drastically in value. However because the Bazaar changed the entire way the player driven economy worked, it caused an unbelievable amount of mudflation. In fact it was so drastic that the term became popularized because of the Luclin expac release..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudflation
And this is why so many people are against, and hate it. Myself included [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] |
I'll take this statement with a grain of salt. And I fear the wikipedia article might not be fully accurate, either. Mudflation is not caused by new expansions, accelerated, yes, but not caused. Primary cause is, that unlike in a real world economy, goods are produced (looted) but they never disappear. You may sell them at a vendor, but you still get money for them. The impact of consumables like food, arrows and potions is minimal. Making tradeskill armor helps somewhat, since the money that needs to be paid for the materials is non-trivial.
Thus, the more hours people put into the game plus the more people play, the larger the amount of money that is generated gets. The amount of goods held by the players is limited by bank slots and other constraints. Thus, a lot of cash is available on the one hand, and a fixed or limited amount of goods on the other hand. That's inflation. The prices go up. The existence of a bazaar doesn't change anything in this equation.
But the Luclin horses do. There's now a way to dump a lot of money into. Which deflates the amount of available money and lowers prices somewhat. Of course it won't stop mudflation, because the item and plat drops keep producing money: 1 fine steel, 1 velium gets you 5plat. And nobody is using those anymore and they will be sold instantly. And the money bubble gets bigger.
In re-reading this post, it comes to mind that with Luclin also the number of available bank slots increased. Thus, more items could be stored in the bank and wasn't turned into platinum. Which has probably helped even more to keep mudflation at bay.
As an additional example, look at WOW. 5000 gold for fast flying. A money sink right there.