MMO's, what CAN we learn about economics from them?

Started by Lord T Hawkeye, September 19, 2014, 01:03:38 AM

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After watching Extra Creditz' vid on the subject, while I truly believe they mean well, they're kinda out of their field on the subject.

For example, they describe the rising prices of items in MMO's as inflation but that's not exactly what the term means.  It means buying power of currency is weakened and the amount of it in existence is not the only factor in that.

Let me relate my own experiences with WoW since I played it for a very long time and know the economics quite well.

While it IS true that prices are higher now than they once were, players are all richer than they were back then too.  Back before any of the expansions, the richest player on my server was worth 10,000 gold or so.  Nowadays, anyone can grind that without too much trouble.  (I think there's a few players now who have hit the max gold amount which is 9,999,999 gold and have more on their alt characters) So it's kind of a stretch to therefore argue the economy is worse because it simply isn't.

But the higher prices make it harder on new players?
No, not really.  Because the price of low level materials and things has also gone up so a lowbie can easily earn quite a nice stack of gold for his level by gathering for a while.  Why?  Because high level players tend to buy low level materials for their alternate characters rather than bother to grind up the materials themselves.  In fact, I recall things like iron and mythril (relatively low level metals) selling for MORE than than the high level stuff because everyone was farming the later but not so many were farming the lower level stuff.
The materials in Outland in fact sold for a damn fortune if you could find a buyer because everyone hates that bracket and levels through it as quickly as possible, leaving very few people farming materials in there.

So is this really inflation or does Extra Creditz really need to stick to game design and not venture into the unintuitive world of economics?  Anyone else got MMO experiences to share on the subject?
I recently heard that the word heretic is derived from the greek work heriticos which means "able to choose"
The more you know...

It also helps that the respawn rate of nodes in the Outlands for those materials is a BITCH!  Good lord, grinding for those mats, either for my skills, for an alt, or whatever is always a pain.  Supply and demand at work, works.  Less supply, similar demand = higher prices.
"When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world—'No. You move.'"
-Captain America, Amazing Spider-Man 537