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Norrath Economic Report Now Available
Posted by
Hemos
on Thu Jan 24, 2002 07:31 AM
from the follow-up dept.
from the follow-up dept.
Edward Castronova writes "Some months ago, Slashdot posted a note about on a survey I was doing for a report on the economy of EverQuest. The report is done and can be downloaded (Scroll down for the Document Download button). Tidbits: Norrath's GDP per capita is higher than that of China and India; its currency sells for about a penny per platinum piece, which makes it more valuable in $US than the yen; a typical person can make about US$3.50 an hour working there by farming the bots and selling the loot; the deflation rate is almost 30 percent annually. There's also some microeconomic analysis and an overview of the MMORPG market. Comments and reactions appreciated. Thanks, Edward Castronova, Associate Professor of Economics, Cal State Fullerton."
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Need for interest rates like ECB (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Need for interest rates like ECB (Score:2)
I mean, when monsters appear, don't they carry some money you get when you kill them? This would cause inflation. I'm curious to know how the value is being taking out of the EQ system, and still allowing new players to make enough money to get good equipment.
Re:Need for interest rates like ECB (Score:3, Insightful)
But the main reason for *deflation* is that fact that items that were rare, and therefore people would pay a premium for become more common over time, and therefore lose their value.
Prices become cheaper over time, not more expensive. Money needs taking out of the system to make prices stay *up* not to reduce them. This works because if people need money more, they are more likely to sell their stuff. Otherwise people don't bother.
Re:Need for interest rates like ECB (Score:4, Informative)
It requires a quest which involves killing a fairly tough dragon. So, only people who are high level and can call on a few other high-level folks to help will have the item. Also, the dragon only shows up ("spawns", in the lingo) infrequently, so this further restricts supply.
Ok, so you have very few of these, and they're hotly contested. This jacks up the price and people who do the quest get well rewarded.
After a few months, however you start to get secondary sales. People get better weapons (their "epics") or they decide to stop playing a class that can use such a weapon, so they decide to sell it. This creates a second wave of availability from folks who expect to take a little bit of a loss from what they paid (sellers rarely expect to make more money than what they paid in EQ).
So, now the price bumps down a notch, but it's still fairly high, and rewards those who do the quest well. However, as time goes by and more people do the quest, you begin to reach an equilibrium where there are more folks selling Wurmslayers second-hand than there are doing the quest. Now, the price can drop BELOW the level where it's worth doing the quest at all!
In the end, an item that started selling around 5-10k is now down to about 2k after just 2 years since the expansion's release.
More dramatic drops happen when items first come out in an expansion though. The recent release of Shadow of Luclin created a flood of neat new items people were willing to pay a great deal for until they realized that they were relatively common.
Parent
Re:Need for interest rates like ECB (Score:3, Interesting)
The fact of the matter, however, is that EQ is not designed for PvP and so PvP sucks.
Scarcity of resources is a nifty concept. It'd work great for my guild - since every other guild on our server is 9 months behind us. But that's rather unfair to others.
Currently items are removed from the economy by making them NO DROP - that is, once you loot the item off the monster's corpse, you can't trade it, sell it, give it away, drop it, etc. You either wear it, keep it in your inventory/bank, or destroy it. It's not a perfect solution, since it just means that all the droppable items of lower quality get sold more often, but it does keep the highest end items restricted to those who have earned them and reduces twinking.
Oh, and interest would be bad. Deflation is GOOD for the EQ economy. It's the ONLY way things fall out of the game really. I currently have over 600,000 platinum in my bank, and have another million or so worth in items to sell (I'm the guild treasurer). At one point my guild controlled 40% of all the platinum on the server. You really want us earning interest on that?
How do we spend all that cash? Well, burning 10-20k per day in peridots and other reagents is one way. On the rare occasions that a total wipe out demands necro's doing corpse summons that costs another 5k or so. And there's the odd items, quests, etc. that can suck up plat. I expect for there to be many large money sinks in Luclin still.
Re:Need for interest rates like ECB (Score:2)
Well.. this will never work in EQ because there is little or no player vs player (so players can't kill each other for the items).. but they tried something similar to this in UO and it failed drastically.. basically they said there will be X amount of resources in the world, in order for those resources to replinish they must be used to create something and that something must be used until it wears out.. which makes sense.. but they ran into a major problem.. people would stockpile ANYTHING.. it was crazy.. you'd have people with 10,000 useless woolen shirts stored up in the bank, and that would be the ENTIRE wool supply for the whole world.. sitting there.. collecting dust.. in some guys bank..
So what will happen is, people will start getting items that aren't as good as their current weapon (or armor or whatever), then instead of returning it to the game, they will put it away and never use it.. which will keep access away from the rest of the world.. eventually there will be a clan or guild that owns all the best equipment in the world, AND they will own all of the crappy equipment also, hidden away.. so that no one can ever get an item..
Re:Interest rates are pointless in deflation (Score:2, Interesting)
>as fast as they can recieve it.
Actually, no. Deflation measn the amount of "goods" or "gear" or whatever a given amount of money buys INCREASES over time.
--therefore, if I have 10k pp and I keep them for 1 month without spending any of them, I will be able to buy *more* after that period of time than at the beginning.
To simplify, *money increases in value over time*
This means that everCrack players are better off never spending their money, as tomorrow they would be able to get more for the same $$.
You were thinking of inflation. No normal economies have deflation. In fact, I cannot think of *any* economy that has had deflation in recent times.
Exchange Rate? (Score:5, Interesting)
But the idea of these virtual economies is quite interesting. How about using them to experiment with possible economic models? Why not set up a modern-day game with different shards representing economic models and see which one works best? The US government or the EU could fund it. Players could play for free and the government could see how they'd react to e.g. different interest rates.
OK, it's a bit stupid, but it would be a cool experiment.
Re:Exchange Rate? (Score:2)
This is the usual thing that happens when central banks or governments try to print money to solve its financial problems -- at best its inflationary, at worst its runaway inflation that leads to wheelbarrows of money being required to buy a loaf of bread.
It's been a while since I took economics, but I think the reason that printing money is inflationary is that it only increases demand but not supply, which pushes prices higher.
The best way to cheat would probably be creating both money and goods at the same time to keep inflation in balance somewhat, but that may lead to deflation as you're oversatisfying demands.
Of course the best way to cheat would be to steal or corner the market on a needed commodity.
Economy Schmeconomy (Score:3, Interesting)
Deflation rate? (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, theoretically, as more people play and level up characters, wouldnt that increase the general money supply, thereby causing *inflation*?
Plus, from the macroeconomics courses I have taken it seems like deflationis really hard to pull off, and requires people not to be buying stuff and a *loss* of overall money as compared to overall goods/items.
Maybe deflation is possible if less and less people are playing everquest (less *active* money available, therefore prices go down) but from talking to my evercrack addicted friends it sure doesnt seem this way...
typo? or more explanation?
Re:Deflation rate? (Score:5, Informative)
Tradeable items do not decay, and their appearance rate is either constant, or increasing as avatars gain in average level, therefore the offering grows while the market is roughly constant.
Secondly, new items are being discovered as avatars gain in level or as the world is expanded, reducing the value of older items.
Parent
Re:Deflation rate? (Score:2)
-lowbies from getting killed by other players up to a cetain point,
-you should not be able to kill some one that is more than 10 levels under you, unless they are the aggressor.
-you should be able to kill a lowbie if they are in a group of players comprable to your level,
-lobies should not be able to carry a weapon, not even pick it up to transport it, until they are with in 5 levels of being able to weild it.
-geting playerkilled should not result in a loss of experience level or points.
institute these rules allong with a finite scarcity of special weapons, and you have a very interesting game with interclan war, a growing economy, and interesting stratagey.
Re:Deflation rate? (Score:3, Insightful)
In a persistent world, when you encounter such situations, you have no option but to pull the plug. That's probably why out of 40ish EQ servers, only 4 of them allow PvP, and most of them are in the lower end in the number of players.
New games such as DAoC are trying to change this by allowing you to decide when you want to engage in PvP combat, which is probably a good way to go.
Re:Deflation rate? (Score:2, Interesting)
Admittantly, I haven't read the article... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's very possible that more money is spent than what is brought into the society. This would lead to deflation. Just like in real life I'd think this was bad for a game-world economy, but unlike real life Everquest has every opportunity to change it if they feel the need, so if it works for them, fine.
Kjella
Re:Deflation rate? (Score:2, Informative)
Since the same amount is avalible to a greater number , (Supply and demand are eaqual) and more money is in the economy (like a drop in the interest rate) inflation goes down.
Re:Deflation rate? (Score:5, Insightful)
When the game started out, relatively mundane items were pretty powerful because no one as yet had gotten to the high-level areas with the "phat loot". Early on, a guy running around in simple bronze platemail was a rare sight. Weapons with a damage/delay ratio of 1:3 (or 1:2 for two-handed swords and the like) were godly and commanded godly prices--if they were sold at all.
As time went on there was inflation, as people gained thousands of platinum pieces (the EQ currency) and bid up the prices of those items. But the inflation reversed itself after a while.
Items don't decay in EQ. They don't wear out. The only way they leave the world is if they are destroyed by a player, on a character when it is deleted, or poof when a corpse poofs. So as time went on, more and more of the items entered the economy, and better and better stuff was found. Verant has added three expansions over the past two years, and each one has had better toys and phatter loot. As that stuff enters circulation, the former "godly" stuff becomes less valuable and typically gets passed down to lower-level "twinks" (alternate characters equipped with hand-me-down or purchased loot that's better than what they could get on their own) or sold.
Using an example--there's an EQ weapon called a Short Sword of the Ykesha. It looks like a Ghurka khukri knife, and will occasionally hit a target with a 75-point damage spell. In the early game, it used to be the bad-ass one-handed sword, a rare drop off a tough level 40ish monster in a very tough dungeon (Lower Guk). When they would be sold, which was rare, they would go for 8,000+ plat.
Well, since the Kunark, Velious, and now Luclin expansion packs, there's stuff out there that makes the Ykesha look totally lame--plus, the number of Ykeshas on the server gradually increased over time, as more and more people entered that dungeon and killed that particular monster. The price of the weapon spiked up on my server as people started scoring a lot of money, but once the better weapons entered the picture the price went into freefall. Now "Yaks" go for 1000 plat or even less.
It's an odd combination--people have more plat than ever before, but prices are simultaneously falling. The result is that there are level 5 twinks running around in gear that my warrior didn't have at level 40 18 months ago.
The same thing happens as new servers are brought online, but it happens faster there because people already know exactly where to go to maximize their income and their chance at items.
Verant has tried to introduce money sinks to reduce the amount of money in circulation (horses that cost 110k plat, for example), but that won't solve the deflation. Item decay might, but it's way too late in the game's lifecycle to introduce that. If I end up spending 15 hours of my no-life to camp the Frenzied Wumpus for the Ass-Kicking Widget of Doom, there's no way I want my widget to break or wear out in a couple months.
In short--the deflationary aspect in EQ doesn't seem to have much to do with the money supply, it's got more to do with the supply of items that people want to trade for.
Parent
Re:Deflation rate? (Score:3, Informative)
You missed one thing though -- The lack of items wearing out, is part of the problem, but it's not the cause -- an INFINITE supply of items, is. This is the *REAL* reason we have deflation in MMPRPGS. Once the market "saturates" -- enough people acquire enough extra items to trade, and the item becomes common -- the price will start dropping.
UO, and D2 have the exact same problem of deflation. (D2 has a completely USELESS gold economy, but that's another rant.)
Now resource gathering in UO has sort of "stablized" because
a) it still takes a relatively lot of time to gather a huge amount of them
b) not too many people find mining, Lumberjacking, gather of hides, etc, fun.
Ironically in UO, you pay more for a bigger order, because it takes the supplier longer to get the raw goods.
Last year in UO, ignot prices doubled because the miners realized they could get away with it.
A working virtual economy on a large scale is very difficult to do -- I haven't seen anyone do it right (yet).
Re:Deflation rate? (Score:2)
I think the point is, as the games' economy becomes sufficiently sophisticated to interest gamers, the ramifications will become increasingly sophisticated.
Interestingly, this has been a problem since MUDs in the late 80s. For example, at one point, my brother started a large casino in a MUD, he programmed all the machines in Forth, etc. etc. After a few months he had something like 40% of the money supply of the entire world. They reset the money supply, but they didn't take away the casino..
Re:Deflation rate? (Score:3, Interesting)
One approach was broadening the currency base: 100 copper = 1 silver, 100 silver = 1 gold, and so on up through mithral. It is much harder to accumulate the higher denominations for a given high level character. The combination of hard to earn plus depth of economy helps slow down the deflation. So, in EQ a platinum piece is almost worthless, in DAoC it is a real measure of wealth.
Another DAoC economic feature is the variety of money sinks. The most prominent of these is loss of Constitution Points when your character dies. To gain these points back, you must visit a non-player character healer in a town or village. For a fee, the healer will restore your constitution points. The fee is tied to level, so, as your character gains levels, it costs more to restore constitution. In addition to being a money sink, this is a mechanism for encouraging grouping, since several character classes get the ability to resurrect dead characters without loss of constitution points.
One of my favorite money sinks are dyes. Most clothing and armor in the game can be dyed. This is a huge money sink for characters who wish to maintain a certain color-coordinated look. Dye prices go up dramatically based on the color. Many players can and do spend an inordinate amount of time and money fooling around with their character's appearance.
I think Mythic's biggest attempt to stabilize the DAoC economy is item decay. As noted above, EQ's economy suffers because items never leave service. All objects in DAoC, on the other hand, experience decay with use. The items do not disappear with decay, but they do lose effectiveness. This process can be delayed by frequently repairing items (another money sink). It cannot be stopped though. All items have a finite usable lifespan. After that, they lose most of their effectiveness and are usually sold or given to low level characters. This disturbs the economy very little, since the effectiveness and worth of the item are very little. Most of these devalued items eventually end up being taken out of the economy by being placed in storage or sold to a non-player character vendor.
Also because of item decay, lower level characters are harder to "twink" with high level items. Items that are too high a level decay and become worthless at a vastly accelerated rate. Items thus tend to get passed down slower, thus slowing economic deflation. Low level characters can and do receive "twink" items, but the very high level items are generally placed in storage until the character is at a level they can effectively use the item. This item banking serves to further remove items from the economy, thus slowing the deflation rate.
Mythic's approach isn't perfect, but it does point out that there are techniques for balancing a virtual economy and thereby improve game play.
I.V.
reminds me of Descartes (Score:2, Interesting)
who said more or less that "after all,
the world is maybe just an illusion
that devils move in front of our eyes".
(the point being that the only certitude
is that we think).
The confusion of virtual and "real" worlds
is indeed a step in that direction.
Re:reminds me of Descartes (Score:2, Interesting)
The reasons he says it is impossible are pretty lame though, basically he says "God wouldn't let that happen".
Not That I mind... (Score:5, Funny)
But I must say this is the geekiest thing I have ever read on slashdot over the past 6 years...
You guys can still surprise me.
Re:Not That I mind... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Who offers me $3,50 a hour to play EverQuest ? (Score:4, Funny)
Quazion.
Trade barriers (Score:5, Interesting)
Would economic trends in the real world influence the virtual one? In this case yes, to some degree; if people can't pay their subscriptions, they can't exist in the virtual world and production will fall. Consider this quote:
> It is important to stress that the external
> market for Norrathian goods is
> underground. Sony has stated that Norrathian
> items are its intellectual property
> (Sandoval, 2001). Trading these items for US
> currency is considered theft. Nonetheless,
> trade goes on.
Scary, no? Enforcing such a law would be equivalent to forcing the devaluation of the virtual currency. So, the virtual world economy would continue to function, but with its ties to the real world (partially) severed.
Does that bode well for Entropia? If the virtual items and currencies are the (intellectual) property of one individual, or corporation, or government, then can virtual economies be any use at all?
Or, to turn that on its head, can EverQuest be used as a model for the distribution of intellectual assets in the real world?
Having read that last sentence, I'm sure I've had too much coffee.
An Interesting Excuse (Score:2, Funny)
Re:An Interesting Excuse (Score:3, Insightful)
First, recognize that the original article is wrong. The game does not have deflation.
It has inflation, coupled with fast item depreciation. The depreciation occurs faster than inflation. Thus, you do not have the ideal situation in which to bank money... you have the WORST situation in which to bank money. Any goods you buy will be worth 30% less in a year... you did not gain money, you lost it.
Your best investment, as an EQ player, would be to sell your character, then buy it back in a year for 30% less than you sold it for.
Raven
I'm sorry, but that's incorrect (Score:3, Informative)
What you've suggested is that there is depreciation of the value of items coupled with inflation (meaning depreciation in the value of money). These are opposite trends, and are mutually exclusive. Why? Because item values are defined in terms of the value of money, and the value of money is defined in terms of what items it can buy. A change in one means an opposite change in the other. (Note, once you start stating the value of items in other terms, like how quickly an item helps a given character kill a monster, that's another matter entirely.)
This is like the well-known equivalence of mass and energy. They are the same thing, just different forms. In the same way, items and money are the same "thing" in terms of fungible value, just different forms. And, just as in physics, you must pay a price to change from one form to another. However, the shoe is on the other foot here--the seller pays the price instead of the buyer (by selling at a lower cost than the item cost initially).
What the author suggested was that items become cheaper over time because there is an influx of items of increasingly greater value over time. There is no similar influx of money into the world (AFAIK)--you must sell items to make money. If you could mine platinum to make money, then things would be different. What this all boils down to is that making money is predicated on finding items. Since the influx of value based on money into the world is small compared to the influx of value into the world based on items, there is a pressure on players to only spend within an absolute range of money for any item. In other words, you have a range of money valuation that ranges from 0 to X, and you have to fit increasingly more items within that range in a marketplace.
I believe all of this was exactly what the author described--if you keep a given amount of money, it increases in value in terms of items over time. Meaning, over time, you can buy more stuff for the same amount of money.
Again, it's another matter entirely if you start stating that a given amount of money buys an increasingly smaller amount of "badass-ness" for your character. This is thinking of item values in terms of their utility. And this is exactly how most characters think of items--that's where the fun of the game is to begin with. But, it's the switching between the two valuation models that confuses everyone I think.
Dragon effects on economy? :-) (Score:3, Funny)
Their greed and the threat of extortion ("Give me all your town's treasury or you will all be eaten") could have some very interesting effects on the economy of any population center in that world. Dragonslayers will be paid handsomely, that's to be sure. ^_^ The closest Earth equivalent is a protection against what amounts to piracy.
What have horses done to this? (Score:5, Interesting)
For those that don't know, the latest upgrade (Shadows of Luclin) introduced horses to the game. You can buy a horse which lets you travel fasters. (And look cool).
The thing is, they are *very* expensive. The cheapest one is about 10000 platium for a slow horse going up to well over 100,000platinum for a fast one.
Even the cheapest one is more than the vast majority of players can afford and the expensive ones only a few people can affort at the moment.
I'd be interested to see how this affects the economy.
Obviously it's a huge money sink, which should reduce the prices of things. (If people have spent all their money, they won't pay so much when they want to buy things)
But also, it means that many people have got all the old junk they had in the bank and started selling it. So does this reduce prices as there are more for sale, and people want whatever they can get, or does it increase prices because people want the money to buy a horse and so are unwilling to part with items for a bargain price.
It's interesting. But I have no answers.
Re:What have horses done to this? (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't believe horse have taken much plat out of circulation... at least not as much as Sony hoped.
Re:What have horses done to this? (Score:2)
Different servers are different (Score:3, Informative)
For example, I play on "Antoinus Bayle". Which is the only server outside of the USA (it's in the UK) and people transferred to it from all of the existing servers. The economy on there is now weird with prices fluctuating dramatically from day to day. I suspect because people have different ideas of what things are worth brought with them from their old server.
Re:Different servers are different (Score:2)
Part of this is due to the ever-present threat of an item wipe or character wipe due to beta problem concerns. Part of it is becaue there is such a low population, barter and outright charity are more common.
UO & EQ are done, is D2 next? :-) (Score:4, Informative)
We have an analysis of the (broken) economy in Ultima Online @ The In-game Economics of Ultima Online [totempole.net]
And this story describes EQ. We just need a paper discribing the history of D2's economy (i.e. the ramifications of the massive dupes this last weekend will have, the SOJ gamble trick in the early versions, etc.)
Inflation vs Deflation (Score:4, Informative)
30% deflation means that the currency of EverQuest can buy more EverQuest stuff every year.
30% inflation would imply that your same amount of EverQuest money would buy you less EverQuest stuff.
Thus, the value of items in EverQuest depreciate drastically over time, in opposition to the real world. As many people have pointed it, this is because items in EverQuest that were once scarce become phased out by new items that are better and replace the old high value items.
Thus, if you hold large quanitities of money in EverQuest, its better to hang onto it for awhile before making a purchase, because you will be able to buy more later. However, if you hold large quantities of valuable items, you'd better sell them fast, because they are only going to lose value over time.
Re:Inflation vs Deflation (Score:2, Insightful)
I would get better use out of the money by sticking it into a MMF and gaining 4-6% annual interest. But at some point in time, I will absolutely have to upgrade my computer to do everything that I want to do.
So, on some level, the EverQuest economy does mirror a certain segment of the "real" economy.
www.playerauctions.com (Score:2, Interesting)
Or the EQ currency Platinum.
For referance. A level 1 character loots about 2 silver a kill. 10 silver are 1 gold. 10 gold is 1 plat. 10k plat ~ $75-$100. A level 60 can make about 300pp a 'night' ~5 hours just from the money that drops, that does not include actual items that can sell for as much as 150k+ (We're talking VERY rare dragon lvl drops such as cob bp etc)
Player Auctions [playerauctions.com]
eBay removes all EQ auctions due to them being against the EULA. (All EQ items are property of Sony etc..)
How has EQ affected the real-world economy? (Score:2, Interesting)
For everyone who *hasn't* read the paper... (Score:2)
But unique items suffer inflation (Score:2)
But I'd be interested in seeing how the prices are changing for the few items that are truly unique in the game. Manastones and Rubicite armor are two examples that come to mind -- they were discontinued a few years ago, and they cannot be found anymore. But the original pieces still exist, and are floating around somewhere. I'd like to see what price they're going for these days -- I suspect they will have been subject to very high inflation.
Re:But unique items suffer inflation (Score:2, Interesting)
Take rubicite armor. Rubicite, early in EQ's life, was considered to be excellent armor. It only dropped in one place (the Temple of Cazic-Thule), very rarely, and when compared to the armors existing at the time--banded, bronze, etc.--was strong. C-T turned into a campground with people trying to get rubicite. It was a mess.
So they yanked it out of the game and replaced it with various mid-level class "quest" armors--crafted for warriors, darkforge for shadowknights, etc. They didn't do anything with existing pieces of rubicite, but it simply disappeared from all the monsters' loot tables.
Nowadays, rubicite is crap compared to what 2/3 of the twinks on the server are wearing. But it's red, and it's rare, and it has a sort of old-school legendary quality, and people are willing to pay a lot of money for it. So, players that have the stuff hang onto it and sell it when the price is right. It doesn't sound any different than the real-life equivalent of buying rare art or collectibles--by themselves, they aren't "useful", but for whatever reason there's people out there willing to pay excessive amounts of money for them.
There's other no-longer-dropping items, like manastones and pre-nerf Circlets of Shadow, that keep their value because they're actually useful. (Manastones let you turn health into spellcasting mana instantly, and the CoS used to allow the wearer to instantly turn invisible. Verant changed it to have a 5-second casting time, but they left older ones as instant-cast.) Rubicite just looks cool as hell. Personally, on my server (Innoruuk) I don't keep up with trading that much because I'm bad at it. But from what little I know, manastones, rubicite, super-rare stuff from zones like Temple of Veeshan, etc., are subject to inflation. They don't enter the economy faster than the money supply increases, unlike 99% of the other items in the game.
Really, the problem seems to be that items enter the economy faster than money. It's hard to earn more than a couple thousand plat in a night's play, even if you're camping things like hill giants that carry a lot of coin and sellables. (And remember, you'll probably have to split that money among your group, up to six ways.) But it's trivial to go into, say, Old Sebilis, sit for a couple hours and score 10k worth of items to sell.
Ecomonics 101 people (Score:3, Insightful)
The way to tell that there is inflation : Compare the tier-1 item prices at any given time.
For example, a year ago, what was the best one handed weapon, and what price did it go for. Today, what is the best one handed weapon, and what is it going for. The price is more correct? Thats inflation.
There is no deflation. There is depreciation, coupled with inflation.
How it all makes sense (Score:2)
I'll fill in further details later to as replies to explain away everyone who tells me I'm wrong...
Star Wars: Galaxies (Score:2)
The developers (and the thousands of fans trolling the boards) are spending a lot of effort analyzing the fountains (things that bring money and resources into the economy) and drains (things that remove money and resources from the economy) in an attempt to make a relatively stable player economy.
In current Massively Multiplayer Onling RPGs (MMORPGs) nearly everyone is a fighter, and those that are not fighters are usually mules to help support the player's fighter character. One of the primary goals for the developers is to make crafting, and associated skills (such as mining) interesting enough in their own right to be viable alternatives to fighting characters. For this to work, they need a viable, working player economy... so they have far more incentive to get it right than most MMORPGs do.
You can read more on the developer's forum [sony.com] or in the FAQ [sony.com]. It is not expected to be out till late 2002, or early 2003 if it slips a bit, so we'll see how it turns out in reality... but I can hope...
Raven
A possible solution (Score:2)
TWW
Not a Nerd? (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know how one could be on slashdot and miss EverQuest, or not know what an MMORPG is. So definition time.
First, MMORPG - Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game.
Everquest - Although I've never played, Everquest is a huge fantasy role-playing game which has monsters, characters, a running economy, etc. I've avoided it primarily because I used to blow enough money on Magic: The Gathering cards and know and addictive game when I see one.
Everquest characters at least used to be auctioned on EBay for quite a lot of money.
Re:Not a Nerd? (Score:2, Informative)
Individual items sold for upwards of £500 on Ebay.
I knew a few people who sold their accounts (sometimes even single *characters*) for upwards of £10,000 ($14,000). Eventually there were people who only built up accounts, then sold them... They could get an account to ~$10,000 in value in around a year.
~$10,000/year, for a kid who's in college, it's not a bad salary at all.