MMORPG Economies Explored in Depth 203
Obscure Economist writes "The Social Science Research Network (SSRN, http://www.ssrn.com) has just posted a free download of "On Virtual Economies," a new broad-focused study of the market for MMORPGs. Think of it as a less descriptive, but more predictive, follow-up to my paper on the EverQuest economy of last spring. The link, for those interested:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id =338500. Comments and criticism appreciated. Edward Castronova, Associate Professor of Economics, Cal State Fullerton"
So much simpler than the real thing (Score:1, Interesting)
MMORPGs are fantasy. They are artificially created by game makers and players are bound by the limitations that the game makers put in. If fake money is always created and never destroyed, then there is essentially an infinite amount of fake money and any item can eventually be attained. If there is a scarcity of money, then the game would be uninteresting because newer players would always be at a disadvantage to older players who have amassed more wealth and can thus buy more powerful stuff.
It's just a game. Play it for fun. Repeat until it sinks in.
Re:So much simpler than the real thing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So much simpler than the real thing (Score:1)
Re:So much simpler than the real thing (Score:5, Interesting)
The way it works is this. MyBank (insured FDIC) has a certain amount of money on deposit with its local Federal Reserve Bank (NY, Phillie, Whatnot). The Federal Reserve then sets a multiplier, allowing MyBank to loan out Z*Deposit where Z is a number chosen between 1 and however many Cherios Allen Greenspan ate for breakfast this morning.
MyBank then lends you that money. It just up and lends it to you. It didn't have the money to lend, but the Fed said it could so it does.
The key to the entire system is the ASSUMPTION that money is scarce. Or rather, that money has inherent value.
In the case of a MMORPG money is created (typicaly) by killing stuff. This killing of stuff is work, and requires the player (or a cleverly written bot) to spend time persuing this activity.
This time is equivilent to work. As long as people feel that they have to work to get money and that money in turn can be used to get someone else to work for them (or something else) the economy will keep going.
So in essence, as long as the player can not randomly create money (but can work for it), it really is just as valid as any other national currency (except perhaps the old Lira, which was so worthless as to require several million to buy a mellon)
slave (Score:2, Funny)
(except perhaps the old Lira, which was so worthless as to require several million to buy a mellon)
"Lira" was the currency of Italy until it switched to the Euro. "Melon" is either a fruit or a large female human breast. "Mellon" is either the M in CMU [cmu.edu] or the Sindarin word for 'friend' (pl. "mellyn") and is the password to the Doors of Durin (topical: the Doors of Durin are in a fantasy world [google.com] that just hasn't been MMORPGized yet [ign.com]). I assume that you aren't referring to "buy a friend" because as far as I know, slavery is illegal in Italy and the rest of the European Union. Or "buy a friend" as in a campaign contribution on the part of a political action committee?
OK, that was a bad joke.
Re:So much simpler than the real thing (Score:2)
The key to the entire system is the ASSUMPTION that money is scarce.
Unfortunately, that assumption, when taken to its logical end (i.e., that a national or world economy is a zero-sum game), is responsible for a great deal of the childish and dangerous class hatred in the world.
My monetary success does not mean somebody else has to fail so I can continue to make money. Likewise, my monetary failure does not guarantee that someone has succeeded where I should have. Or, to paraphrase P.J. O'Rourke, people assume that an economy is a pizza and, if you have too many slices, I have to eat the box.
And regarding the Lira, a couple years back one of the local radio stations here in Omaha had a game: "Who Wants to Be an Italian Millionaire?" If you answered three questions right (or something like that), then you got that day's equivalent of IL1,000,000, which if I remember correctly worked out to about forty or fifty dollars when you performed the "neon-bumwad --> real actual money" conversion.
Re:So much simpler than the real thing (Score:2)
Since e-cash is, at some point, going to become a reality, and MMORPGs are small scale models representing this, this is an important area.
Besides, where else can an economist find as interesting a research area?
Re:So much simpler than the real thing (Score:2)
No, it is not about games as we know them, but about simplistic economic models and how people responds to them and how they develop.. As such MMORPG are excelent speciments, especially because they through ebay and such now has an exchange-rate between real and virtual money.
MMORPGH realties (Score:1, Troll)
For example, the interaction between human beings are very nicely mapped in a MMORPGH. It's true, the newbies usually play the games as a game, but after a while they fall into place and build a sense of reality. When this happens, they try to model the MMORPGH based on their real world. This is very interesting no?
Unlike the Sims, MMORPGH's actually put you in the place of the character, thus you are more attacched to your character than with Sims. You tend to be a lot more emotional and a lot more envolved. We have done several research among Sims vs MMORPGH. It would be interesting when the new Sims MMORPGH game comes out.
Thank you.
Dr. Thakiro Nagoobalhu.
Re:MMORPGH realties (Score:1, Troll)
Hawaii (Score:2, Funny)
In case you missed it the first time around... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:In case you missed it the first time around... (Score:2, Informative)
These games are very rentable (Score:4, Insightful)
At least anarchy online allows you to test the game for free
Re:These games are very rentable (Score:4, Informative)
so you end up with a net surplus of 10 dollars in your wallet for those 2 months.
it's a pretty decent deal if you like those games.
DAoC is another example (Score:2)
When I bought my first copy, it was $30 - Most good games are $50+ these days.
When I bought my second copy recently, it was only $20 - Take into account that the game comes with a free month ($13 if paid a month at a time), and that means the game cost $17 and later $7 initially.
Re:These games are very rentable (Score:2)
Now that they're finally going to start banning combat macroers next month, it's even worth trying out.
Re:These games are very rentable (Score:5, Interesting)
Now for a regular game, once the game launches, there's some followup (patches, fixes, etc.) but the amount of effort is small compared to the amount of effort that went into creating the original game. But with an MMO, once the game launches, the company is also providing servers for you to play on. Providing that service is an ongoing cost; you have to pay people to admin and maintain the servers, pay for new or replacement hardware, pay for bandwidth, electricity, etc. It's a significant chunk of change, which is why there's the ongoing fee. In addition, MMOs tend to have additional (free) content introduced down the line; the monthly fee pays for this as well (although full expansions are usually Sold Separately, and the development costs for the content in those expansions are paid for by the box cost... in theory).
AO allows a download of the client to test out the game, but if you want to play the game, you still need to buy a game box (in order to receive a registration key). Most MMOs don't have this option, since downloading a 1 gig+ client just to test would be an additional huge load on their bandwidth.
There is a reason for the up-front cost plus the ongoing monthly cost; it's just odd that so few people seem to understand that running servers that can handle thousands of simultaneous players for months at a time is an expensive thing to do.
Re:These games are very rentable (Score:4, Insightful)
Bzzt... No comparison (Score:2)
Napster had no problem commanding massive bandwidth overloads all over, but their servers themselves were not strained much at all.
MMORPGs require the client to be connected directly to the server, which means the server and connection have to be a LOT beefier.
Re:These games are very rentable (Score:2)
Nonetheless, Blizzard's closed servers require a lot less maintenance than, say, EQ does -- for one thing, a single server box could probably host a few dozen separate D2 games at once, at the very least. Second, with EQ, a single world server is actually comprised of around 40 boxes, and each box has *different* code on it (each box hosts 1-5 zones). With D2, all Blizzard needs is a single instance of the server code which can be duplicated multiple times.
Yeah, it still costs money, but battle.net is a loss-leader, something which attracts more players to buy the game, whether or not they take advantage of the online service.
Re:These games are very rentable (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:These games are very rentable (Score:2)
Why can't they do both. I the real world, this is very common. You sale a product and then have a services arm ready to service that product for your customer. This seems like it exactly parallels that. It makes tons of sense if you stop and think of it. You have a product, you sale your product. People need to have the product serviced, so you sale the services.
If they didn't charge for the product, the service rates would have to go up. It's not like you're looking at saving money by not having one or the other. Likewise, if they didn't have a service rate (monthly charge), the product cost would be through the roof as it would more than likely be hundreds of dollars per copy. Not to mention you'd probably have to constantly buy upgrades...something which is already included in your monthly service fee.
Re:These games are very rentable (Score:2)
Everquest is $10 right now (Score:2)
https://store.station.sony.com [sony.com]
Jurisdiction of Virtual Economies (Score:5, Insightful)
It will also raise certain constitutional issues, since it is not clear, today, exactly who has jurisdiction over these new economies.
Don't the games already dictate the control of these economies? MMORPG game makers decide the rules of the economy according to what they think makes them enjoyable. Granted, if you are selling EverQuest items on Ebay, then you are subject to U.S. economic laws, but why would any government care about the economic activities in a virtual world, except in areas that affect their own economies? There may be an answer to this I don't see. If so, what is it?
Wrong.... (Score:2)
That is the sole motivation.
Gov't Jurisprudence in Virtual Economies (Score:3, Interesting)
"Granted, if you are selling EverQuest items on Ebay, then you are subject to U.S. economic laws, but why would any government care about the economic activities in a virtual world, except in areas that affect their own economies? There may be an answer to this I don't see. If so, what is it?"
If you think about the selling of "plat" (platinum) obtained from Everquest on eBay, you're basically talking about a commodities market and the people running the game are essentially printing money.
Re:Gov't Jurisprudence in Virtual Economies (Score:3, Insightful)
The only commodity being sold is the time that it takes someone to gather the plat to sell on ebay. Since the vast majority of us sell our time (and expertise or muscle as well in most cases) to make a living, this doesn't seem very different.
Re:Gov't Jurisprudence in Virtual Economies (Score:5, Interesting)
"The only commodity being sold is the time that it takes someone to gather the plat to sell on ebay. Since the vast majority of us sell our time (and expertise or muscle as well in most cases) to make a living, this doesn't seem very different."
You are 100% correct
Whether the item in question is lawfully obtained by the sweat of your brow has nothing to do with the problem. Everquest isn't regulated. An admin could, conceivably, give themselves or others plat. Yes, there might be internal safeguards in place, but are they adequate? Can someone code a script to do that work automagically? Or even worse, can the system be hacked outright?
The result of "printing script" (ie, money) is that it devalues the legitimate money and this leads to inflation and relative devaluation. In other words, if there exists 1,000 units of money in an environment and we both have half, if you can print yourself 5,000 units, we now have 6,000u of money in circulation and my lot is significantly devalued.
Granted, this is an extreme example, but it is only provided to illustrate the point.
Re:Gov't Jurisprudence in Virtual Economies (Score:2)
Creating plat out of thin air does not devalue legitimate money, it only "devalues" plat, and if you think that has any real value in the first place you have a problem. If you buy 1000 plat for 1000 dollars, and then the EverQuest administrators create 5000 plat and give it away for free, you will end up looking like an idiot, but those of us who are REALLY not "in on the deal" in the sense that we don't even play EverCrack will just point at you and laugh for taking a mere game so seriously. At no point is actual real-world currency ever created, destroyed, or devalued by this process.
Buying plat is like buying video game tokens: when a sensible person does it, they understand that they are basically just throwing their money away, but they expect to at least have a little bit of fun doing it.
Re:Gov't Jurisprudence in Virtual Economies (Score:2)
No they're not. They're printing virtual money, in a vitrual world. They can make all the virtuamoney they want, and sell it for real world money, but only when people still want it. There is no net gain in the amount of real money, thus no devaluation of existing real money.
Saying they're printing money is like saying that since my time is valuable to some people, being a live is printing money.
not gonna happen (Score:5, Insightful)
Think stamps/baseball cards/collectables (Score:5, Insightful)
Heck compared to a stamp an Axe of Power or a level 99 character seems much more interesting and useful for entertainment. As long as it is sufficiently rare and useful, people will attach some sort monetary value to it.
Brian Ellenberger
Re:Think stamps/baseball cards/collectables (Score:2)
This is two lines after you were talking about stamps and baseball cards? How about:
"As long as it is sufficiently rare, people will attach some sort of monetary value to it."
Very true.. except.. (Score:5, Interesting)
The most obvious object which a virtual economy could manage is time. You can't turn time into an encoded form on a computer which can be played back at any moment. By farming out your own time that you are willing to spend on some problem, you could get some credit that would be useful to negotiate time off of someone else's hands for a task you need completed by a certain time. It'll be the ultimate in specialization, where you need only know one thing well, because you can use that skill to aquire the credits that you use to buy the time of other people who specialize is some task you need completed.
If this sounds a lot like your day-to-day job life, it is. But it breaks down if you look at it from a non-time perspective. Things that are not direct people services aren't scarce in a digital world. You need to move to something else for the creation and release of digital knowledge, something like the street performer protocol [firstmonday.dk]. Then the goods (which, when released, are not scarce) can have the creators of those goods still benefit.
Traditional models of scarcity and resource utilization do not apply in a virtual economy. Once one copy of something is released, infinite copies may be made at any point. The only thing you, as a content producer, can do is set how much you want to release that product. This is the next step (IMO) in the evolution of economic theory because it'll allow people to make things on their own, without a big corporate body (RIAA, MPAA) taking a cut off of everything. Prices will go down, and creations will go up.
How Scientists justify wasting time (Score:4, Funny)
Re:How Scientists justify wasting time (Score:4, Funny)
Everquest Economy Threatened with Inflation (Score:3, Interesting)
No real value (Score:3, Insightful)
Uh, it's pretty obvious, Sony (in the case of EQ) "owns" your gear and gold pieces, etc. There is no value to it - it's just 0's and 1's on their server, and when you sign up for an account, the licence spells this out.
Why does everyone have to take something fun (a game) and try to assign real life value to it? It makes MMPOGs less interesting when you know there are people who "cheat" by buying and selling items in real life. That's not the point of a game!
Re:No real value (Score:2, Insightful)
Because people spend tons of real life time on the game, which is worth real money. After someone works 5 hours for an item, they expect to have some ownership of said item. That doesn't always work out, but subconsiously they feel they own it.
Re:No real value (Score:3, Insightful)
Imagine this, the first MMORPG that actually has it's own auction site where players are even encouraged to trade game items for real money. Of course that creates all kinds of legal hassles, but some sort of in-game escrow would be pretty trivial to implement, reducing arguments.
The way I see it, in real life, money can buy you better equipment, etc, but it can't make you a better player of the game. When these games evolve to the point where it isn't centered around equipment (and the quest to get better equipment), but rather on real game skill, then is when we will see the really big things happen.
Re:No real value (Score:2)
Project Entropia will be the next generation of interactive entertainment. In Project Entropia you will able to enter a whole world with amazing three-dimensional environments using a computer and the internet. It will be a massive virtual world where millions of users can interact with each other at the same time. Project Entropia will have a real economy system that allows you as a user to exchange real life money into PED (Project Entropia Dollars) and then back into a real currency again. Project Entropia will be free of charge with no monthly costs, which means that aside from the fees for your own local access to the internet while you are connected, the client software will be available with no payment to MindArk. All you need to do is get hold of the software that will be distributed in various ways, for example through the internet or on free CD's in computer magazines.
Re:No real value (Score:5, Insightful)
"Value" is simply what somebody is willing to pay for something.
Obviously, people are willing to pay to play the game. They value the enjoyment they get from playing more than they enjoy spending that money on something else (or holding on to it). So they purchase a game subscription, trading real money for access to the game.
Some people value the status (or the ease, or whatever) that comes with a more capable "avatar", more than they value having real money, so they're willing to trade real money for game money (or experience points, or "lore" or "fungi tunics")
Recently a forty year old can of an artist's excrement was bought for several thousand dollars by a museum. It was "valuable" not for its potential use as fertilizer, but as "art".
A original copy ("original copy"? An oxymoron or not?) of the American Declaration of Independence was sold for over eight million dollars, despite the fact that anyone can download the exact text -- or a photo reproduction -- for free. Are the words valuable then? Not, apparently, as much as the context they are in.
Even real money is simply a social convention: its utililty for any use other than trade (its "intrinsic value") is virtually (pun intended?) nil. Real money is useful only insofar as people will trade goods and services for it. When real money is perceived as not being as useful for trade, its value collapses, and we have the super inflation exemplified by Weimar Germany or present-day Argentina.
Which is more valuable to you, a dollar or a month of game play? What if it's your only dollar, and you're hungry? Which is more valuable, a million dollars or a month of game play? What if you could only buy cans of artists' excrement with that million? What if you know you'll be dead in a month? What is more valuable, a million dollars or the Declaration of Independence? What if it's an electronic copy? What if it's the only remaining copy (electronic or not) remaining in existance? What is more valuable, the single remaining copy of the Declaration, the single remaining copy of the Bible, the single remaining copy of Moby Dick, the single remaining sequencing of the human genome?
What's the value, to me, of the last letter you even got from your high-school sweetheart? How much money would you charge me (i.e., what's the value of it to you) to sell me that letter, if I told you I planned to burn it?
"Value" changes with circumstances, with the surplus or scarcity of what you have and what can trade for, and with your, uh, "values". "Value" is what you can get for something, less what it's worth to you not to part with something.
Obviously, the single copy of the genome... (Score:2)
Re:No real value (Score:2)
*I'd* be impressed.
Economic crisis (Score:5, Funny)
On art and games (Score:5, Interesting)
This is an interesting observation. As many of us know, cheating takes all the fun out of the game for most normal people (15 year olds that crave attention and respect in an unhealthy way excepted). In art, self-imposed contraints are what makes good art. Without contraints, the games become meaningless.
I think when bugs are discovered in games that allow rampant cloning of items or free money to spread, is parallel to what would happen in society when and if we discover a way to make a "replicator" type device.
These games do make an interesting microcosm for sociologists to study. Identifing the differences is more interesting, since once we identify how it is different from the macro-society, we can use it as a model.
Flea Market (Score:1)
Don't be so sure (Score:2, Interesting)
If you like virutal reality stories... (Score:2)
Giant's Star [global.org]
It's part of a very interesting series of novels.
Could Inflation threaten the EverQuest economy? (Score:3, Interesting)
A funny read on the BBC [bbc.co.uk].
I'm sure some people take this stuff waaaayyyy to seriously.
Eh? Are these people serious? (Score:4, Insightful)
As such any talk of jurisdiction over these "new economies" is just a pipe dream by over-addicted players; there is quite simply no such new economy at all, merely players (and sad, cheap addicted ones at that) within the current economy, trading their resources for ever more ephemeral rewards.
Indeed it seems like such talk of new economies is nothing more than subliminal advertising; trying to talk up the game to make it more important than it is. After all, it certianly suits the makers of the game if it's seen to be more "real"... even this sort of "negative" publicity is good for it since the sort of person that has such a pathetic life they get addicted to online games seems to be craving a reality of sorts, preferably one where they can overcome the crippling social, mental and physical deficiencies that plague them in real life. There is no genuine MMORPG economy. There's just a fringe of people who really need to get out more, trading within the regular economy on sites like EBay.
Re:Eh? Are these people serious? (Score:2)
However, the author of this (and other) papers about virtual world economics is a Associate Professor of Economics [fullerton.edu] who probably knows a little bit more than the average Economic 101 student..
Perhaps he's researching virtual world economics partially just for the reason that current economics theories don't cover MMORPGs well and thus aren't able to predict the amount of (real) money involved in the games.
Did You read the paper? It was interesting reading, although I admit that most slashdotters probably just can't take a 44-page paper on one sitting, as even short one-page articles go unread by many posters..
Re:Eh? Are these people serious? (Score:2)
Re:Eh? Are these people serious? (Score:2)
Only on Slashdot could we have Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage, dinner making, and EverQuest all rolled into one. If only you could have worked in how Adam Smith's "invisible hand" makes EverQuest more fun because he and his mother trade dinner for garbage (essentially inputs and outputs, when you think about it).
Again paraphrasing P.J. O'Rourke, I don't know whether to shit or go blind. :-)
Maybe in ten years we'll be seeing this on CNN... (Score:4, Funny)
Dow down by 8.21
EverQuest SE up 1.50
"Wooden game pieces do not...immersive experience" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:"Wooden game pieces do not...immersive experien (Score:3, Informative)
Re:"Wooden game pieces do not...immersive experien (Score:2, Interesting)
MMORPG ARE 5 min thrills w/ 10 minute worlds. Its the same reason chess (with a board) will be here 500 years from now and everquest will barely be remembered.
Re:"Wooden game pieces do not...immersive experien (Score:2)
7 years in one Starfleet Battles Game? Yikes! And I figured my week of doing a StarBase assalt with a friend was pushing it.
Now, I'm reduced to playing Interplay's interesting but somewhat lacking StarFleet Command Orion Pirates. It's almost but not quite what SFB was.
Just wait till I get you in the sights of my Andromedan Mauler my friend. You will wish you were somewhere else.
As for Everquest, I played that game for at least 2 full years. Very immersive, very nice - I just hate Lady Vox though... she sux... can't kill her... she wont die! Die dangit! Jeez.
Oh sorry... got a little carried away there. EVAC!
Star Wars: Galaxies (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Raw resources only exist in a set quantity. When a resource runs out, it is replaced by a brand new one, and the old one will never be available again. All the designs and items using the old material will become rares, meaning: a) designers stay busy, and b) prospectors stay busy.
2) You only get crafting experience when an item is *used*, not when it's made. Therefore, you are naturally motivated to make things people want, not whatever increases your skills the most.
I'm really interested to see how it turns out.
EQ Platinum is a tradable commodity like any other (Score:5, Insightful)
EQ money is the same as real dollars - it represents production of a tradeable product.
When people buy EQ "Stuff", what they're REALLY buying is the TIME of the people who generated that stuff (or more accurately, they're buying the time they now don't have to spend getting the stuff themselves.)
EQ Platinum *IS* money, moreso than real platinum. Can't do anything with dollar bills, can't do anything with EQ platinum, but people will give you stuff for both because they believe other people will do the same. That's where it gets its value - not because of any useful properties, but just because people BELIEVE it's money.
One of these days, people won't play EQ anymore, and EQ money will be worthless. You'll be able to buy billions of EQ platinum pieces for $1 because no one will believe they have any value anymore.
Its exactly the same reason you can buy millions of Afghans or Lira for $1. People stopped believing the money was worth anything, so you needed a lot more of it for someone to trade you a dollar for it.
Re:EQ Platinum is a tradable commodity like any ot (Score:2)
I'm sure this is true. But doesn't it strike you as odd? Someone pays to play a game and later pays to to avoid playing the game.
Re:EQ Platinum is a tradable commodity like any ot (Score:2)
It's just a way of avoiding the boring scut work, to jump to the nifty bits.
Re:EQ Platinum is a tradable commodity like any ot (Score:2)
I wasn't talking about inflation in the game... (Score:2)
Modders and cheaters.... (Score:2)
This actually caused issues to the economy in that platinum was now rather worthless...Quite interesting on how this effected the economy of EQ.
StarTux
Value Judgements (Score:2, Interesting)
The whole point of value is that it is subjective. What one person would pay a lot of money for another would happily throw away without a thought. Clearly then these virtual economies are presenting value, albeit in digital form, to some people and there is nothing to indicate that this phenomenom will not continue to grow.
Value and quality are interesting topics for programming geeks and engineers alike, but the best book I have ever read on the subject is Robert Pursig's 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance', which should be made compulsory reading for any first-year computer graduate (IMHO).
Earth & Beyond economy (Score:5, Interesting)
Basically, the best items are player-made versions of loot-only items. Players can make better-quality items than the NPC merchants sell, but the best overall items aren't sold by merchants at all, but rather are dropped off NPCs that you have to go out and kill. So player crafting is important, because it yields the best items; but hunting is also important, because in order for the crafters to make those items, they (or others) have to go out and kill monsters to get those items in the first place. A big problem with EQ's economy is that *all* the best items are dropped off creatures. The best player-made items are pretty good, but do not compare to loot items.
Not quite there yet (Score:3, Interesting)
This all changes in 6 days, when Spellcrafting and Alchemy (The ability to give items magical bonuses and make potions) finally goes live. At that point, Mythic's original promise that players would be able to MAKE the best items in the game will finally become reality.
That said, DAoC's economy is a bit more robust than EQ's - The problem with EQ was that certain crafted items sold for more than they cost to make. This is what the free-money exploits take advantage of. In DAoC, EVERYTHING is a loss except for one of the lowest items, which will net you 7 copper per build. (Note: Macro this all you want, it would probably take a day just to make one gold, whereas a player could make that much in a few minutes solo farming.)
Also, DAoC has a couple of inherent "cash sinks" built into the game. While EQ's economy primarily consists of buying "rare items" that enter the game but rarely exit, probably 50% or more of the cash in DAoC's economy is used to buy wood.
Wood, you say? A key part of DAoC's endgame is realm vs. realm battle. Part of RvR is taking over enemy keeps and holding them.
Upgrading a door to level 5-6 usually costs a few hundred gold worth of wood. Holding a keep for two weeks against attacks can make an entire guild go flat broke. (This happened to my guild - People are just beginning to recover their cash reserves well over a month later.)
Re:Not quite there yet (Score:2)
Being able to buy a Dai-Katana at the market for 100 gold and then enchanting it with soul stealing and high fire and shock damage for 5 seconds on a target (the amount of time in between my swings) was a very cool experience
Re:Not quite there yet (Score:2)
The new crafting types to go live on DAoC's servers on the 29th (note: www.camelotherald.net has lots of DAoC news) are Spellcrafting and Alchemy.
Spellcrafting:
Adding magical bonuses to crafted items. (Equipping item gives +5 intelligence, +2 Cold Magic, etc.)
Alchemy:
Ability to craft armor dyes cheaply
Ability to add particle effcts to weapons (Make em' glow - Pretty much useful for eye candy)
Ability to make statbuff potions (Adds points to an attribute for 10 minutes)
Ability to add "procs" to weapons/armor - A weapon with a proc will cast a certain spell when it hits in melee combat. (A guildie of mine has a sword that procs a fire DD spell, aka fire nuke pretty often). Reverse procs will cast spells (5-sec armor buff, etc) when armor is hit in melee.
There's a lot of info on spellcrafting/alchemy on the Herald, and on many other sites. (People have been playing with it on the DAoC test servers a lot)
Re:Not quite there yet (Score:2)
Re:Not quite there yet (Score:2)
Glowing effects - You can probably see that if you go to various sites (camelot.allakhazam.com, daoc.stratics.com, etc.) - Since these are already implemented on dropped items. It just happens that soon players will be able to customize them.
There used to be a really good friar staff shot at camelot.mmorpg.net, but they've reorganized the site and I can't find it anymore. (Entire staff glowed red. My staff only has a green glowing ball at the tip.)
Sort of off topic... (Score:2)
It would be more sensible to charge $20 for the game along with the inclusion of a free month. That would spur first and second month sales by removing the hint of caution that $50 puts into people when they go to buy a game that they know they cannot return, might suck, or might lag horribly for them.
Define "Real" (Score:5, Interesting)
What is real, when we're talking about economics and communities? Is the community of baseball card collectors real? Are the economics of fine art auctions based on rational decisions?
People "live" in these worlds. They have friends, lovers, rivalries, and the *emotions* are certainly indistinguishable from "real". You may smugly sneer at the inconsequentialness of it all, but what would your ancestors of a few hundred years ago think of you? How many of you make a living directly producing something you can hold in your hands? How many of you have jobs you can't quite get your grandparents to understand?
How many people who read /. routinely hunt and kill their own food, or till the soil to grow the wheat for their daily bread? How few people actually make things *essential* to daily life in this modern age?
The worlds I build are virtual. The communities that appear in them are real.
--Dave Rickey
they appear real... (Score:3, Interesting)
Comparing emotions to the value gold is ridiculous.
Re:they appear real... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:they appear real... (Score:2)
My impression (Score:5, Insightful)
When I first started playing Ultima Online, 10,000 gold pieces was a considerable amount of captial, and real estate of the lowest kind ran one roughly 55,000 gold pieces. Even with a considerably large user base, supply and demand of the various core resources (wood, cloth, ore) of the game was in a remarkable state of acceptable flux. Inflation was well controlled. The demand of "rares" (items that varied in degrees of difficulty to obtain) drove their prices high, but never to unreasonable levels.
This all ran smoothly, much like a real world economy of small nation might run. But then came factors that real world economists do not have to fret much over, factors that only exist in the virtual world. The most significant was that people started cheating. Specifically, a considerable amount of people found clever ways to mass produce gold by the tens of millions.
You might ask "why didn't the admins just remove all of the excess gold?". Well, they didn't know exactly who cheated, and therefore could not effectively enforce an across-the-board gold removal without losing valuable customers (where the real $$$ comes from). I stopped playing for a short period of time, and when I came back it was a new UO. Houses that were once 55,000 gold were now 1.5 million. Much sought over rares sky rocketed to values of 10 million gold (or more, I am told). New players (and long time players that decided not to cheat or purchase wealth off of Ebay) were now rendered "impoverished" for the duration of their UO life. Basic materialistic goals that players could pursue, goals that were promised to new players on the back of the box, were simply unattainable.
OSI, the company that runs UO, tried a plethora of schemes to make the economy bearable again. They failed utterly, and UO subscriptions continue to dwindle. What differentiates a make believe economy from a real one is the fact that people can do make believe things in a game. No one can dupe 1.5 million dollars out of thin air in the real world.
Let's forget duping (Score:2)
I'd blame the designers' lack of understanding with regards to gold faucets and sinks for UO's situation. Only recently have they started to get a handle on it, and it's far too late.
Re:My impression (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, this is not quite true. Central banks have almost always done this. The Federal Reserve "creates" money out of thin air, buys government debt with it and thus tries to alter the various interest rates to what the Board of Governors desires. The central bank's control of the volume of dollars is nothing more than a monopoly on counterfeiting. This also shows that increasing the volume of money is the cause of inflation, both in the real world and the virtual.
The laws of economics apply to people no matter where they interact with each other and counterfeiting is still counterfeiting no matter who does it. It is a distortion of the economy and will eventually lead to its collapse. It's happened in the real world and evidently has happened online, too.
Inflation is evil, it is theft, it is a stealth "tax" (when used to buy government debt), and it is caused by government monopolies on the production of "money". Only a hard money system (much like an online system where people can't cheat) can save us from these problems.
Think about it, they don't call it "gold" in the games for no reason. It's been money for 6000 years all across the world until the beginning of the 1900s when governments banned its use and started cranking out pure fiat money. And look what has happened to its value. $1 today buys what 5 cents bought in about 1913, the year the Federal Reserve was created. Even at the "low" rate of about 3% inflation today (according to the Cleveland Fed) every dollar you earn today will only be worth 17 cents in 60 years. That's a tough hill to climb when planning for retirement.
Inflation is theft.
Bryan Baskin
Gold Standard (Score:2)
How many milligrams of gold did it take to buy a loaf of bread in 1913? How many today? What about a motor car? What about a computer, which actually has a higher gold content than either of the other examples?
Re:Gold Standard (Score:2)
Ah, a deluded Slashdot arm-chair economist. (Score:2)
Now lets say over the course of the year, everyone spends their $100. At the end of the year, that means that on average, everyone also received $100 and has $100 at the end of the year. Per capita income: $100. GDP: $10,000.
Now lets say that the next year everyone produces the same amount, but spends their money once in January, and then after they receive it, spend it again in February, and then after they receive it, spend it again in March.
That means that on average, everyone received $1200 over the course of the year, for a GDP of $120,000.
But since production didn't increase while velocity increased 12x, everyone has 12x more money to buy the SAME amount of product with, so you get 12x inflation.
Even though the SAME 10,000 $1 bills were involved.
Point is, inflation is not a simple matter of printing more money. It's a matter of how much there is and how fast it's spent, coupled with how much your production increases. Inflation/deflation is ACTUALLY (change in amount of money*velocity of money)/(change in production).
Ideally, your change in the amount*velocity of money increases at the same rate your production does and prices remain stable. If I produce 1.2x as much stuff as last year, having 1.2x as much money is a good thing.
You said it in your first sentence... (Score:2)
People will make many purchases with their $1200. They don't need to have it all at once. Let's say that everyone has $100, and spends $10 every week. That means that, on average, $10 flows out of AND INTO everyone's account each week. Because you arn't making more than $10 per week, you're not willing to buy more than $10 per week.
But lets say that this week, you want to buy something that costs $150. But you only have $100 - so what do you do? You go to someone else who has $50 and you borrow it and promise to pay them back $60 later. $60 later is worth more to them than $50 now, for you, $50 now is worth more than $60 later. Now you go spend your $150.
What just happened? Someone who was used to getting $10 a week just got $150. So now they can go spend $150 instead of $10.
A bunch of people do this and there's a lot more money to be spent, but no more goods to spend it on, so inflation results as buyers find that their customers have more money they're able to spend on their products.
This happens in the real world, only much slower, and it's balanced out by economic growth. Having 10x as much money is a good thing if oyu also have 10x as much people making 10x as much stuff.
yes and no... (Score:2)
Your fundamental error here is that you think the number of dollars in the system is the same as the number of dollars that can be spent. It's not.
Very simply, everyone has $100. If they spend $10 per week all year, $50,200 will be spent that year. If they spend $50 each week all year, $251000 will be spent that year. SAME amount of product produced, but FIVE TIMES as much money spend on it, and prices are five times as high, even though the SAME PHYSICAL AMOUNT OF DOLLARS was available.
GDP = Number of people * PER CAPITA INCOME.
GDP = Total money SPENT.
You must first accept that fact that you are NOT measuring the amount of money, you're measuring the FLOW of money. If there is more flow, but the same amount of product, you're going to need to devote more flow to get the same product, and that's inflation.
Re:My impression (Score:3, Funny)
No one can dupe 1.5 million dollars out of thin air in the real world.
Sure they can. It does tend to piss off the Secret Service, though, and they can get downright testy about it.
Re:My impression (Score:2)
If this doesn't sound like the real world, then you obviously don't live in Silicon Valley. Example: Note the lovely boards over all the windows and the rotting walls on this 900 square foot home! [mlslistings.com] only $489,000!
Any semi-localized windfall, legitimate or otherwise, even if it only affects a small percentage of the population, is going to drive up prices.
Re:My impression (Score:2)
Re:My impression (Score:2)
Asheron's Call 2 (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Asheron's Call 2 (Score:2)
If you're saying that it doesn't require skill to craft a weapon at all, but more skill = better weapon, then fine
From my experiences... (Score:2, Insightful)
An exception to this would have been the Diablo II expansion right after its release. Accounts basically sold for the value of the individual items. I sold a single item (the Eaglehorn bow) for $1010 USD about a week after the release of the expansion. Of course, Diablo II has sort of been destroyed by hacks. Even if it weren't, graphically, the game looked old when it was released. Now, it just seems ancient.
I'm really looking forward to World of WarCraft. [blizzard.com]
Game economics (Score:2)
An economy is a careful, thrifty management of resources, such as money, materials, or labor. Having an economy requires someone to work boring and unpleasant jobs. This includes monotonous jobs in a factory/office/farm/mine/store/vehicle with paperwork, early/late hours, and homework. However, gamers don't like to be managed - when they have too many boring tasks in an online game, they go play another game that's more fun. In a game there is no need for food, shelter, or clothing to survive. Everyone is looking for adventure and as a result they constantly raid or fight each other. If you want to constantly raid new lands like Gengis Khan's horde then play Everquest (it gets lonely if you don't stick with the horde though). If you want to fight other players in large team battles then play Dark Age of Camelot. If you like boring jobs, log off and save up for a nice house. Forget about a gamer economy because no one has to be there.
Who Cares? (Score:3, Interesting)
And if your arguement is that this is for entertainment, well my friend, I only paid once for my copy of Soldier of Fortune II, and it's offered me endless hours of entertainment. Same with Half-Life.. Unreal Tournament.. Tribes.. WarCraft III.. Quake2.. etc..
I don't have to pay to advance my character or stats in these games. My level of fun isn't going to depend on whether I have some piece of "r4r3 ph4t l3wt" or if my character doesn't have a sword with +1 against ogres. I can just play, and not worry about such things. Nor do I have to pay a lame "monthly fee" to keep playing the game.
Consequently, EverQuest sucks the wang, and you all need to get lives.
Re:Who Cares? (Score:2)
Re:Who Cares? (Score:2)
Re:Who Cares? (Score:2)
That said, there are lots of people who aren't like me, and that doesn't make them ilegitimate players; perhaps poor players, but as long as they don't break the game's rules, players nonetheless.