The Economy of WoW

[Malakar]

Was the economy at or near a state of ruin and did the offering of expensive yet useless buffs save the economy?
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In general it was the best economy I've seen. It had its flaws, mainly due to certain items not being upgradable while not being sold by vendors for a set price. But it was pretty darn stable during normal game flow. Certain events skewed it, but that's beside the point.

What did the people who bought those buffs give up to buy them?

Some players would give up certain nicety items like Cloaks of Invisibility, others opted to instead save up more cash and buy the items as an addition.

What percentage of the people bought into the scam and what did the rest of the people do with their money?

I would say approximately 9/10 bought into it. Seeing as how the other stuff to spend your money on didn't really improve your character, even the nominal gains were attractive to most players. And like I said, almost all players *believed* the upgrades did more than they actually did, just because they put so much time into it.

If the problem of inflation making it impossible for low level characters to buy their own gear isn't solved by exponential cost goodies, then just *what* problem is solved?

What is solved is soaking up *most* of the high level players' gold. It's not a one-time sink, and it's not negative, so it's an attractive long-term gold sink. It solves the problem of high level players having 9000 gold with nothing to do with it. But it does not solve the problem of high level players income being 10x higher than low level players, giving them the ability to easily make more money on a whim to buy low level gear for new characters at inflated prices.

To keep the low level items from being inflated, have them available from vendors. But then the mid level items get inflated. Same solution? Then the high level items become inflated. Do it again? Then you've fixed the economy by abolishing it.

I'm not really following what you're trying to say here. Could you explain this in more detail please?

[Malakar]

You really cant worry about low end economy though after a year. Each server  probaly has less that 7000 active players once most of them hit 60 and start focusing on the end game, their wont be enough true newbiesto have a viable economy.
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While true for players who stick to one character, there are those out there like Bolty and myself that get bored with one character and play many of them. For us, the low-end economy affects us much longer. You could say I should just make one level 60 to supply for my low levels, but for me this would probably deteriorate the game's fun more than a broken economy.

[Guest]

People without at least 1 level 60 will be smal minority after a year. People who have played since start and dont have a lvl 60 will be freaky rare.

If you want a long term active economy for low lvls you are going to be disappointed in any MMORP. This wont change until MMORPs move beyond the concept of lvls.

"Mourning" when it finnally comes out may do this.

[Malakar]

People without at least 1 level 60 will be smal minority after a year. People who have played since start and dont have a lvl 60 will be freaky rare.
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Regardless of timeframes, certain players will obtain 60 far before others. For those who play 2 hours a day, it'd take a year to equal the play time of 2 months for someone who plays 12 hours a day (ignoring rest bonus). So for those players, that's 10 months of a skewed economy.

If you want a long term active economy for low lvls you are going to be disappointed in any MMORP.

Just because it is difficult does not mean it's impossible. Just because 95% of them have screwed low level economies does not mean good ones don't exist. It does mean that most players probably haven't played one with a decent low level economy though, and you're probably one of them judging from your viewpoint.

This wont change until MMORPs move beyond the concept of lvls.

How is there a correlation between levels and the economy being jacked up?

[--Pete]

Hi,

An open question to anyone:

I said "normal". When you looked at the contrast between your and my suggestions I believe its clear what I meant by "normal".

I have no clue what you mean by normal. Now it may be that I am slow or it may mean that you are unclear. So, anyone that wants to chime in, please feel free. Is Ghostiger's stance clear? Am I the only one who can't understand his crystaline logic?

Oh, and the 'well, I've played MMORGs and you haven't' line is wearing very damned thin. If all you can muster to the argument is superior authority, then I charge you to remember the catholic church's position on Aristotle -- and what a bunch of a-holes that made them look for centuries. Authority is no argument.

--Pete

[--Pete]

Hi,

Thanks for that detailed response.

I'm not really following what you're trying to say here. Could you explain this in more detail please?
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Basically my point is that if you kill the low-level economy (by having everything low level sold through vendors) to even the playing field, then the mid-level economy gets bent. That gives you a new field to level. And the only solution is the same as you proposed for the low level. The process just escalates and pretty soon there's no economy left at all.

--Pete

[Guest]

Its only "wearing thin" because you are talking out of your butt and dont like being called on it.

You are completely speculating on how people act in MMORPs and you know it. I at least have personal observations. Its entirely possible that new elements in WoW will make my personal observations irrelevent over time.

But my observations from similar games do hold more weight than your complete speculation and second hand anecdotes which seem to lack perspective.

[Guest]

You misunderstand - there are many different economic disfunctions.


"How is there a correlation between levels and the economy being jacked up?"

In this case I was only refering to the low lvl economy problems.
This particular problem is that high and low levels share the same money pool. This problem is then compounded by many low levels being alts of high levels.
Its not worth the high levels or the alts time to both selling low value newbie gear.

There is simply no way to have a working low level economy when a small number of low levels share the money pool with a large number high levels. You can have a funcational low level game, but its economy will be largly supported by NPCs,and living off the land, or by high level charity.



On the other hand I feel there are good solutions which make for a fun and functional high level economy.

[Malakar]

Oh, I see. You're saying that by selling the items from vendors, it kills the economy.

Well, in a way, yes. Players would no longer need to trade between each other to buy the items they want.

But in a way, it stabilizes the economy. Players will still be getting item drops from monsters that they can't use, and will want to sell them. But vendors only buy items for 1/4 price. As it is, the auction house is so easy to use (though not very accessible location-wise, but that's another topic), that players are willing to auction items for only 50% more than they'd get from vendors. So I'm sure they'd be willing to auction the items for say, 3/4 of the price, still allowing for a 1/4 discount compared to buying the item from a vendor.

Edit:
In fact, this method stabilized prices so effectively in Lineage, that even bots had little effect on prices.

[Arnulf]

I support Pete's argument. Which basically is this: Inflation is inevitable.

All suggestions I've seen up until now won't have any long-term impact on it. Every time you kill a trogg or gnoll or defias bandit you create some coppers in one way or another. That will eventually add up. All proposed money sinks are not obligatory. Players can choose to ignore them. This will lead to inflation no matter what.

And to add my take on Pete's question: virtual economies are not normal in any sense. And they won't ever be. They are an artificial construct and as such, everyone will see something different in it. Examples: Some will despise it but will put up with it because they enjoy other parts of the game. Others will enjoy participating in it, brokers and traders like Greg Cato. And others will be using it on a regular basis, but don't enjoy it. But they need it for their fun part. Those would be the crafter types.

The question that remains is: will the inflation (some call it mudflation or database inflation[1]) have detrimental effect on the fun in WOW? It could very well be that it does not matter, because you can come by and have your fun without buying stuff for inflated prices. I'm very interested to see this. It's just yet too early to tell.

-Arnulf

[1] database inflation because that is what essentially happens; the game-world database gets inflated with items. http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2004...l.html#c3133574

[Guest]

DAoC has no inflation.

It only has 1 cost of living money sink. Items can eventually wear out and need to be replaced if they do.
BUT, in three years of playing DAoC I only ever wore out 2 items. In DAoC most people upgrade gear long before it wears out.
The main advantge of DAoCs gear wearing out is that it keeps it from being traded for ever(much like souls binding).
DAoC actually has deflation(but its rather slow and steady). Because people work toward new gear with every exspansion and the old stuff i s less attractive.

The main money sinks in DAoC are crafted gear and housing and they work great.
Most people in DAoC wear some crafted gear of 99% quality. Itsnot cheap but anyone can afford it. Power player types wear 100% quality which is 10 times harder make and thus much more exspensive.

Also DAoC has houseing, it doesnt effect the core game, but it does give people more storage space and consignment merchants. Anyone can afford a small house with modest effort, but bigger houses are increasingly exspensive.

[Walkiry]

This impacts everyone, because once the servers start filling up with level 60 players, the economy will fall badly to inflation.  Too many characters will be walking around with hundreds of gold, devaluing everything that isn't a level 55-60 item heavily.

Well, once you reach high levels you start finding items that you have no use for, but are otherwise desirable for the lower level population. To put it in D2 terms, what yould you do with a Lycander's once you found a Windforce? It's useless to you, but it's a good item.

Fact is: You no longer have the need to improve your inventory, and with higher level loot you can flood the market with good items that are, nevertheless, useless to you.

What would you do to fix this?  One-time costs do not solve the problem, and never will.  Only recurring costs can stem the tide.  What recurring cost could you implement that wouldn't drive everyone crazy?[right][snapback]63138[/snapback][/right]

:lol:

That's like asking how to drown someone without them getting wet :)

You can put tons of sinks, but invariably you can't stop inflation without them. You can do something with housing, then houses themselves will be a commodity and sold around left and right, and high level characters will still have the wheel of that market. Items? See above. Skills? Then you shift the inflation towards fighting, you'll have to make enemies insanely powerful to stand up to ultra-powerful PCs. :)

IMO, the only way to keep a semblance of an economy is to cut supply, make items that don't last forever (that, in fact, need to be replaced quite often), and make them scarce enough so that they're valuable.

That, of course, means disgruntled players. You can't have an unlimited supply and hope to keep an economy going :)

EDIT: Eep, I just saw Ghostiger's post above me. So, um, I agree with him ^_^

[Occhidiangela]

I like the name of this site - it's kinda like this one here.  :)

Anyhow, link to the article:
http://www.overanalyzed.com/portal.php?topic_id=19

He's very accurate - the economy works very well up until levels 40-50, after which the monies really start piling up for characters who make good use of the auction house.

This impacts everyone, because once the servers start filling up with level 60 players, the economy will fall badly to inflation.  Too many characters will be walking around with hundreds of gold, devaluing everything that isn't a level 55-60 item heavily.

What would you do to fix this?  One-time costs do not solve the problem, and never will.  Only recurring costs can stem the tide.  What recurring cost could you implement that wouldn't drive everyone crazy?

One idea of mine is housing - that there would be a recurring cost to this that would keep draining you if you wanted to keep one up.  Make there some kind of point in having one, and players will line up to get it anyway.

-Bolty
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I will offer a comment on this whole thread .

The WoW economy is not self contained. When I was a DM in D & D cammpaigns, the influences I set up "in the world" as game master would occasionally backfire, and occasionally work. Other times, the changs would be irrelevant. However, the whole structure was in my control, a closed system. Such a micro does not appear to scale up with MMORPG's. :P

There will probably exist a parallel economy, though I hope its influence is small.

Will These guys get attacked like BNET-D did?

Even if Blizz puts stronger controls on what is sold/traded via E bay or straight Paypal transaction agreed during an in game chat -- talk about your caveat emptor -- there will be a commodity market outside the box that may influence the inside the box game. Gold does not appear to be a soulbound item. <_<

Is it the end game level that is Blizzard's greatest concern? The post 60 condition wherein folks will be going after the juicy high end content?

One game factor / commodity that is unequal, like oil resources under the ground in the real world, is time. By investing more time into the game, one can acrue more in game material, and since it is a Role Playing Game, not just a combat exercise, some players will apply their talents in trading for their guild, or themselves, since it appeals to them.

I see little utility in over-tampering with a playing field that is heavily influenced by the skill and ingenuity of the players. Ya don't make Michael Jordan wear weighted shoes. :huh: I also don't see WoW as being attractive if it is static.

And as to the very nature of the games involved:

Twinking, or within guild sharing, seems to be a natural feature of on line games, and it is the exception rather than the rule that a no twink condition would exist. Therefore, I would expect that the standard economy in an on line RPG is, by the nature of the game, inflationary. What appears to be under discussion here is the matter of degree.

Closing thought: Wasn't "Frodo's ring," the mithril coat, and Sting a series of twinks from Bilbo? :blink:

Occhi

[--Pete]

Hi,

But in a way, it stabilizes the economy. Players will still be getting item drops from monsters that they can't use, and will want to sell them. But vendors only buy items for 1/4 price. As it is, the auction house is so easy to use (though not very accessible location-wise, but that's another topic), that players are willing to auction items for only 50% more than they'd get from vendors. So I'm sure they'd be willing to auction the items for say, 3/4 of the price, still allowing for a 1/4 discount compared to buying the item from a vendor.
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Good point. That would fix the prices for items that vendors sell. And to that extent it would stabilize the economy. But that would then liberate that much more gold for the high level characters to spend. Would that lead to even greater inflation on items not available from vendors? I don't know -- have to think about this some more.

--Pete

[Guest]

No. You said - "I would expect that the standard economy in an on line RPG is, by the nature of the game, inflationary. What appears to be under discussion here is the matter of degree."

As I have said you can have an economy that isnt inflationary(or at least the inflation is so low as to be ignored) and other game have already proved this.
We are argueing about inflation here, but not simply about degree.

Many MMORPs over a year old dont even have a functioning market for low level items. Mainly because the people who want to buy newbie gear cant pay enough to make selling worth a high levels time. But fortunetly most MMORPs have generous old timers who will help strugleing newbies.

You can only have a active play economy for the level at which most players can earn cash and find items for. But for those end game players, it is possible to have a working economy.

[Malakar]

But that would then liberate that much more gold for the high level characters to spend.&nbsp; Would that lead to even greater inflation on items not available from vendors?
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Yes that would be one effect. But it would be simultaneously counteracted to some extent by the exponential cost high-level item sink.

In order for this system to prevent inflation across the board, all items must be available from vendors in some form.

This is why in my first post, I said I was not sure if there could be some form of this that could fit comfortably into WoW. In WoW, each item is individual. You'd have to list loads of items in vendors shops to sell everything. Then you'd have to make sure the price of it all is balanced.

In Lineage this system was easier, because the item system was different. All they had to do was sell all the base items, categorized in different shops, and then two scrolls: scrolls of enchant armor, and scrolls of enchant weapon. The cost of items was balanced across the board by the enchant scroll costs and probabilities, while individual item costs were controlled by base item costs and probability modification.

To do something similar in WoW, they'd have to change the way items are created to be more like Lineage, in that you "craft" the items. You could have items used to increase an item's stamina +1, etc, with a chance to blow it up. But this would require a drastic change in the item system, and would've been suited for Alpha or Beta.

Perhaps there is another form of this system that could work in WoW, but I haven't thought of it.


Oh and Pete, thanks for giving my posts some consideration.

[Skandranon]

Hmmm. How about gambling? I liked it, conceptually, in Diablo II. Didn't work, but I think we can fix that.

The positive of DIIC gambling was that it made money valuable again. Definitely a step up from D1 where I regularly tossed 5000 gold piles on the ground and let them get cleared away with the game. Of course, the downside was that players quickly found an exploit: gambling rings for SoJs. With DIIC's high unique/set rates, the economy exploded with them and we all know what happened there. We certainly don't want the same thing to happen in WoW, just with Staves of Jordan instead.

LoD beta introduced circlets and their enormous pool of desirable affixes, which led to predictable results - mass gambling on circlets, often for greater sell value than price. Blizzard then introduced price scaling to counter that. It didn't change the fact that only circlets (and occasionally amulets and rings) were gambled, just slowed it down. Mostly, it was flawed in two ways. Firstly, no one gambled on anything that wasn't a circlet, ring or amulet. Secondly, it was a surplus money sink - people gambled, but they gambled with money that they really had no other use for anyway.

Both of these flaws, I think, stemmed from a single cause, which was the large number of worthless items in D2. I was once asked by a new player a long time ago as to why rolling for technology wasn't usually a good strategy in Axis and Allies. After all, if you get a good roll you can hit Heavy Bombers, or Industrial Tech. It's not about Heavy Bombers or Industrial Tech, I said. The reason you don't roll for technology is Super Subs. For those unfamiliar with the game, rolling for technology is a moderately expensive tactic with a low chance of success. If you don't get a success, the wasted cash is likely to lose you the game. But the fact that you can succeed at technology and still get one that will basically have no effect on the game is what makes it such a bad move. It makes you want to spend your money on other things.

You can't lose the game in D2, but the ratio was much different. Instead of a two-to-one ratio of relatively useless to relatively useful, there were forests of Garnet Clubs of the Jackal and the like, a massive ratio favouring uselessness. That gambling still occurred was because there was really nothing else to spend the money on. If D2 had contained some other profitable way of using cash, gambling would have fallen by the wayside. Of course, this ratio was needed because if gambling useful items was easy, every player would be lavishly equipped in no time, also passing useful stuff down to lower-level characters. And since magic finding was a better way to get the same result, no one really pursued gambling, just flushing cash at the gamble screen whenever they got some extra.

The challenge: with all the other useful ways to use money, we need to provide a compelling incentive to gamble, but without letting gambling flood the market with items and obliterate the economy that way.

One thing in our favour is that WoW has no magic finding; no quick item runs. All the "bosses" that you can run drop bind-on-pickup blues reliably and nothing else. Green drops are not frequent and can't be improved by doing anything specific.

Another bonus: there is no junk in WoW. Everything has a use, and this is by design. If every suffix could appear on every item, useless items could be created - i.e. "of the Owl" on plate - but they don't. In fact, useless conjunctions like that have been specifically weeded out by Blizzard. Already, there are powerful incentives to gamble, since you're guaranteed something at least somewhat useful and it's a way to get more green+ drops, which you can't do any other way. Naturally, blue and even purple drops have to pop up from time to time, though very infrequently.

Of course, we have to make this mostly a high-level sink, so we scale the quality of the drops to the level of the gambling character. We don't, however, scale the cost, setting it at something like 100g or more. This prevents high level characters from shipping gold to lower-level characters and abusing gambling that way - if you can spend 100g on a 60 character to get level 60 quality items, why spend 100g on a lower level character for lower level items? High-level characters need to be interested in the items, so all of the high-level instance-only stuff should be available at a vanishingly tiny percentage, even smaller than the post-patch chance of gambling uniques in LoD. The potential has to be there, however, or high-level characters will lose interest.

To avoid the problem of some item types being over-gambled while others are under-gambled, we remove the option to choose what specific type of item you're gambling. This also keeps players from finding an exploitable item type to repeatedly gamble. Instead, players gamble from a category. Armour is gambled from "Plate", "Mail", "Leather", and so forth, which again, ensures that what's turned up is useful. Weapons are either warrior class or caster class, which means that occasionally types will turn up that you can't use (maces for mages, bows for paladins) but that most of the time you'll get something that you can use.

Finally, the part that we could only do in WoW: each and every gambled item binds on pickup. This protects the economy by ensuring that all the decent-to-good quality items turned up through gambling can't enter it except by being turned into a handful of gold pieces. You can't twink anyone with it or auction it. The Auction House therefore remains useful as the odds of gambling any one particular item are very small - AH is still the best way to get what you want. For higher-level characters, though, gambling has the thrill of the lottery and the promise of the big win that keeps people spending on gambles of all kinds in real life, as well. Those obsessed with maximizing their characters will pour all their money into gambling, which will essentially just make money disappear. Yes, some lucky few will score one of the high-level instance-only things, but you'll still need more than one to go playing in the super-high instances and gambling won't provide that for more than a tiny subset of the lucky few.

To summarize, what I'm suggesting is a gambling system with the following features:
- High cost, not scaled to the level of the gambler.
- High item quality, scaled to the level of the gambler. Small chance of blues and purples.
- Exceedingly small, but present, chance of gambling a very high powered item.
- No direct item selection, only selection from a broad category of items.
- Every item binds to the gambler once it is gambled.

Comments?

[Occhidiangela]

No.&nbsp; You said - "I would expect that the standard economy in an on line RPG is, by the nature of the game, inflationary.&nbsp; What appears to be under discussion here is the matter of degree."

As I have said you can have an economy that isnt inflationary(or at least the inflation is so low as to be ignored) and other game have already proved this.
We are argueing about inflation here, but not simply about degree.

Many MMORPs over a year old dont even have a functioning market for low level items. Mainly because the people who want to buy newbie gear cant pay enough to make selling worth a high levels time. But fortunetly most MMORPs have generous old timers who will help strugleing newbies.

You can only have a active play economy for the level at which most players can earn cash and find items for. But for those end game players, it is possible to have a working economy.
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I understand your point. I suggest that the balance between "fun-playability" and "how perfectly balanced the economy is" is a matter of subjective game balance. Each development team has a different intuitive feel for its game. (Remember the discussions on that score in re PvP DII?) Not everyone considers the game economy's balance of key importance, though many devoted players do.

Thanks for you insight.

Occhi

[Thawwing Light]

Only one: What about enchanters? The cost you proposed made this sound like a highly inefficient way of acquiring reagents or whatever enchanting supplies are called, but I'm not sure if that makes this a good or bad source.

Also, will this devalue enchanters as a useful profession? Will their reliability stand up to the potential gains of a gambling system, or will they act for an entirely different market?

[MongoJerry]

But it does not solve the problem of high level players income being 10x higher than low level players, giving them the ability to easily make more money on a whim to buy low level gear for new characters at inflated prices.

I don't see how this is a problem. First, a high level buying equipment for new characters is an uncommon enough event that it's not likely that such purchases will really affect the low end economy. It'll just be a blip on the screen. Second, even if low end equipment prices were consistently inflated this way, this gives low level players a fabulous opportunity to participate in the inflated economy by selling the low-end equipment they find. Thus, they will be able to purchase those items you mention or at least be able to buy their mounts and spells that much easier and faster. Finally, I again need to emiphasize that the auction house is merely a market for second-tier goods. The best goods in the game for most levels are bind-on-pickup items that drop off bosses or are quest rewards. In months of beta and retail play, I've only ever bought one piece of equipment of the auction house -- a bow back when hunters had only been recently added and when high level bows and guns were very rare and were almost never quest rewards.