I'm bored at work!

[Ihealyou]

I was thinking about virtual economies in MMOs like EQ and WoW. There is a huge amount of in MMOs. Every mob killed brings plat into the game, and killing named mobs brings more items into the game. At least in EQ, short of buying food and gems, or deleteing items/characters, there really isn't anything taking items and money out of the game. As people play, currency is worth less and less, and items sold to players become more common, lowering their value in real plat/gold/whatever.

In the real world, this would be devastating for the economy. At the same time that people's money is worth less, their assets are losing value in real terms also. So why do people put up with it in MMOs? I don't believe that its because they don't value ingame currency, since buying currency for real money is common. New players absorb some of the inflation, but is it enough to keep it at a reasonable level? Or is there not enough wealth signaling in games for poorer people to feel poor, causing players to be unaware of the problem?

I'm just curious if anyone has any thoughts on this. Don't turn it into rants about the national debt or abolishing the fed please. Rants about abolishing gnomes however, are always welcome! [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Senadin]

I'm bored at work too, but i got just a few hours to do....

Not bored enough to get into this kinda topic! It makes my head hurt just to think about it!

[Kraftwerk]

MMO economies are a very tricky thing, the moneysinks you discuss the lack thereof are sometimes crucial to the success of an economy in a game in which new money pours in. Looking at EQ live historically is curious. Around classic and Kunark, the massive stacks of cash were not too common, seeing 10k was still relatively "whoa". Progressing into Velious and onwards cutting edge items (the 35k manastone of our server) breached 100k and soon piles of around 25-35k weren't so rare afterall. Then PoP came out, this was my last xpac so my last firsthand experience, I was far from rich but still maintained 200-250k. Stories of multi-millionaires weren't so uncommon and basically the economy was more or less a joke. The only true moneysinks to speak of were spell reagents and post-Luclin era mounts. Along with this was the astronomical devaluation; SSoY classic 11k, SSoY in PoP I gave to my pets for long farming sessions.

While most people consider the game blasphemy, I still enjoyed the economics of WoW, by the time I finished playing it, it was the only fun thing to do. The largest difference between WOW and EQ economy is the moneysinks. WoW did very well in this sense: you pay to repair items, buy massive vanity mounts and items, train skills, perform quests. Money in WoW is being regularly removed permanently to attempt a counter to the money being brought in. Items don't devalue nearly as massively or quickly as they did in EQ due to items binding to character. Watching auction house markets was an incredibly intriguing aspect of WoW that came close to rivalling the thrill of pre-bazaar EQ trading. I guess I'm just a nerd for MMO money that I never spend.