Hatsu

On the subject of in-game economics, I believe Blizzard should place inflation control as one of its top priorities.

Having materials price sky-rocket is not exactly the most enjoyable thing you can experience. It may be ok for the majority of the EJ forums population, but for the more casual player it means a higher barrier to entry the "end-game": the higher the inflation, the higher the amount of gold a player needs to complete a transaction with other players or in the AH. The higher that value, the higher the aforementioned barrier. It's like a wall separating new/more casual players from the economy, it does no good.
Do you remember how prohibitive was raiding in terms of gold at the beginning of TBC? That was partly the effect of inflation, and it cut a large number of players out of the raiding experience.

The quick fix were dailies, but injecting more and more currency into an inflated economy will only provide a temporary illusion that the problem has gone away - the reality is that by increasing the amount of gold you are bound to create an even stronger inflationary effect.

To make things clear: increasing the money supply is not a solution. It has, on the contrary, a negative effect on the economy. Giving players more money in order to counter inflation is a bad policy: it creates a vicious circle.

What should Blizzard do?
They can do quite a few things. They could reduce the amount of money given by quests. Or they could introduce new gold sinks (even under the form of AH bots, if done correctly). Whatever they can come up with in order to reduce the money supply, really.

 

Axanor

What if some of the dailys provide materials (ore, herbs, etc) instead of ridiculous amounts of gold? It could help out with the "supply" side of things as long as they don't make questing better than having an actual gathering profession.

 

bellator

Roywyn,

Here is some more downranking data for you based on paladin's cosecration. Paladin level was 70

Rank 1 (lvl20) = 0%
Rank 2 (lvl30) = 0%
Rank 3 (lvl40) = 3.516 to 5.274%
Rank 4 (lvl50) = 98.45% to 100%
Rank 6 (lvl80) = 98.45% to 100%
Rank 7 (lvl70) = 98.45% to 100%

I would gues rank 4-7 are 100% but i have included the ranges just in case.

 

Hatsu

Yes, that could help. It would result into less currency injected into the economy (less money available to players leading to lower pries) and a higher supply of materials (higher supply leading to lower prices).

I suppose, however, that implementing such a system could be tricky, as you would have to carefully select (and potentially change over time according to player needs) the rewards.

 

Valerian

I don't see anything wrong at all with the system. If you decide to do the easy (and guarenteed) daily quests you get your gold right away. If you however choose to gather herbs/ore whatever you can throw it up on the AH at the hugely inflated prices and make MORE money to buy what you need with. This system is self-regulating if people take the effort to work at it.

Inflation ONLY effects player/player trading. More gold actually HELPS player/npc spending since NPCs do not change their costs. Repairs/repsecs (the 2 biggest Npc sinks I'd say) cost a fixed amount. If more gold is available to players these become LESS of a burden on them. If other players are driving material prices up it means the supply for them is low (barring AH manipulation). If the supply is low thats an ideal time to become a gatherer for said material because you can make even MORE gold with it during this time. If you don't want to become a gatherer, well then you're going to need to pay said high prices that those who do gather can set the prices. This is not unfair, they spent the time leveling the gathering skill, used up the profession slot for it and spent the time actually gathering. All things that are available to ANYONE to do. If more people gathered the prices would drop due to increased supply. There is NO need for blizzard to step in with price controls.

 

Shakes

I agree, inflation helps not hurts the newer player. When you don't have much gold like a new player, you tend to be an AH seller rather than buyer. Inflation means you have to sell less stuff to cover your fixed costs (and work towards the big fixed cost, the epic flyer).

 

Hatsu

Let me give you a quick example of why inflation does not help a new player.
Mike starts playing the day WotLK hits the shelves. He chooses to roll a mage because he has always wanted to cast spells and be a wizard. He makes it to lv10 and starts wondering if he can get any nice gear on the AH. He goes there only to find that all green lv10 pieces cost 2-4 gold.
He also wants to be an alchemist. He needs some peacebloom and silverleaf, to be specific. Unfortunately, they also cost quite a bit.
Mike can keep playing. But he will feel alienated.

If you wish to explore the subject a little more, i suggest reading this article: Do MMO Economies need a Greenspan of their own? Troll On Fire - MMO’s, Flames, & Discussion

 

Talgog

The solution is for Mike to respond to supply and demand and become a herbalist.

This does work. I started playing WoW about a year after release on Archimonde (this character), when it was still one of the most densely populated servers in WoW - this was prior to the Firetree, Mug'Thol transfers, etc. I promptly followed the advice on the WoW forums and made my first character a herbalist/skinner. Then I started herbing and herbing kingsblood specifically, as this was the days of the Thorium Brotherhood turn-ins and there was an *enormous* MC population.

Suffice to say I paid for my mount, my Level 40 training and a full suit of plate, while living a fairly good "lifestyle" on my way to 40, and still had a large amount of money left over.

My warlock started out as a miner to support my plans to level blacksmithing for Talgog in TBC. He made an absolute fortune AFTER providing all the mats needed for Talgog's blacksmith leveling at a given ore level.

Mike can be an alchemist, he just needs to get his own peacebloom and silverleaf. Herbing is actually both a natural and recommended support profession for alchemy, so I don't really see the problem here.

 

Ngita

If greens are costing 2-4 gold this also means they are selling for 2-4 gold and he wil find a lot more greens then he uses. Unless Mike does'nt have a gathering profession ,any gathering he does have willl pay amply for the herbs. If you have rolled a alt on a popular server recently you will find that even one gathering profession makes a suprising amount of money at a low level.

 

Valerian

When leveling a gathering profession is your best friend. There are some pieces of gear that crafting professions are good for, but for the most part gear gets replaced so quickly it doesn't matter. A brand new alt can make a fortune if he's a minor because copper still sells well. Once inscription comes out I imagine an herbalist would make just as much if not more money.

The game's economy is fine. There is always a solution to increased prices. Either farm the item yourself or farm an item that sells well and buy what you need. What is not reasonable is to expect that the easiest method to make money will be the most efficient (i.e., daily quests).

 

Twinbladez

Considering the new incentives added to the gathering professions they are even more friendly, viable in endgame as well as leveling hopefully creating a much better high level economy as well.

 

Anedris

I've levelled characters on a brand new server (i.e., AH prices are low) and on an old server (i.e., AH prices are high) and I can affirm that the latter is way easier. You never really have to buy gear when levelling anyways - it gets obsoleted fast and the best stuff drops in instances anyways. You do however have to buy three mounts, and the price of those is fixed. It's way easier to make gold when everything is selling for absurd amounts (especially as a gatherer, and I think you would be insane to level as a non-gatherer, but even non-gatherers will benefit from being able to sell greens and random stuff like pearls and so forth at inflated prices).

 

Exewut

That's silly, the game is disigned around each player having a gathering and a crafting profession. Any normal player right now won't have enough materials to even level his own profession skill (well he'll have excess peacebloom perhaps if he's a herbalist/alchemist), and won't have enough money to buy anything on the AH because his gold drops, grey/green vendoring and questrewards aren't even near suffisent enough. Saying 'oh they should just get 2 gathering professions' is just ignoring the intention of professions.

Nobody claims that daily quests should be the most efficient, quite the contrary, daily quests should only be valable choices for non dps specs (which shouldn't be a problem in wotlk) to make some gold to pay for their repairs. The entire idea behind daily quests is flawed though, you conjure gold out of thin air to buy a fixed amount of consumables, which you then use and destroy, you haven't done anything productive, you only withrew raw materials from the system. That's what Mugabe has been doing, and we know how that turned out. A system where a limited amount of dailies give some raw materials would be a lot better (see cooking daily or those sunwell oils/elixir dailies).

 

Fiola

To add on to the anecdotes...


My first WoW character was broke while leveling because she bought a lot of mats for leveling BS (money sink).

My current paladin broke even while leveling because she avoided buying too much stuff on the AH, and sold high demand items (swiftness pots) at a profit. I remember saving money in order to learn polearm proficiency @ L20 for 1g

My recent druid alt on a different server (no cash infusions from higher level characters) had somewhere around 20g at level 20, and could easily buy a mount at L40. All I did was take all my excess cloth/greens and AH them. She's also a skinner/LW, so she could have easily fetched another 50~g if she sold the leather she skinned instead of using it.


Inflation can hurt alts, but it's very easy to exploit that high demand by supplying the goods. A crafting profession is only a serious money drain if you try to level it faster/higher by buying mats you can't gather. Knowing how to manage your income/spending is a (pretty easy) challenge for the player, just like knowing how to use your character's skills is another gameplay challenge.

 

Hatsu

I realize what you guys are saying. You are making valid points. I would not expect any of the EJ community posters to have problems rolling an alt.

The problem is that not every new player out there is going to check the forums and ask for advice when choosing his professions. He is going to be inexperienced and he is not going to like the fact that things are so expensive, simply because he can't afford them.
Rolling an alt nowadays is fine if you either know the game mechanics/economics or you have a lv70 to support your needs. But leveling a profession from scratch, with a limited knowledge of how the game works and no support is pretty hard and off-putting.
When vanilla wow hit the shelves you did not need to play the AH in order to buy a stack of peacebloom. Nowadays it is almost mandatory if you don't possess a lv70 character.

What inflation does is making low level content meaningless money-wise, and increasing the gap between those who play hardcore and those who don't. While i realize it cannot be completely avoided, I believe it should at least be kept under control.

 

Karamoon

All this inflation talk doesn't make sense to me; I've never seen a good explanation of why inflation in an MMO is bad beyond 'I don't like it the size of the numbers on price tags'. Inflation doesn't hurt new players who exercise a little sense in deciding to take a gathering profession or two, in fact it makes it very easy to get training, including mount training, and the relative difficulty of buying items is the same regardless of what the absolute price is.

A new player trying to level crafting professions is choosing to make the game harder on himself in much the same way as a player deciding that he wants to play a melee hunter does. Insisting that the game is designed for everyone to have a crafting profession is a lot like insisting that hunters are designed to fight with swords instead of bows because they have hand-to-hand talents in the survival tree.

At higher levels, I don't see how a higher cost on items is a 'barrier to entry' when even a fresh 70 has more relative earning power than they did back when people first hit 70. Since there are more good alternative items that don't require cash (PVP and badge gear) and a lot of items have gone through a massive price drop (T5/6 crafted items), I think it's clear that a new player can get up to T4-ready and especially T6-ready status in far less time than when I first hit 70.

If crafters could always make gold by crafting because of regulated AH prices with an unlimited supply, then leveling any crafting skill would be absurdly easy and cost nothing but the time to hit the 'craft' button, and the crafter could then constantly craft max-level items and make money by standing in the AH buying items from NPCs and selling them. I really don't think that Blizzard's concept of the game is for people to make money by crafting things for NPCs from materials gathered by NPCs, I think the idea is that you have to go out into the game world to make money.

 

Hatsu

Alright let me give you one: if you keep injecting currency into an economy, the amount of money needed for transactions between players keeps raising (inflation).
As the amount of money raises, the gap between those who play hardcore and those who don't keeps getting bigger. Eventually, the gap gets so wide that new players just don't bother playing anymore.

By the time WotLK comes out, I'll have roughly 15k gold put aside. Many other players will have similar amounts. This will likely lead to huge inflation. Are new inexperienced "casual" players going to be able to keep up with those inflated prices? No. The only way to keep this under control is by reducing the money supply (which is usually accomplished by money sinks).

 

Tunch

What exactly do new people need cash for? You can very easily level to cap without ever touching an auction house. The required money sinks (skills, mounts) are all fixed costs. Inflation's range of impact on a new leveler ranges from completely indifferent, to making it a joke to acquire the necessary cash for fixed leveling costs due to inflated pricing of low-mid level gathered items. Your argument doesn't really make any sense, new players don't have to "keep up" with anything, all the required shit is fixed cost.

 

mrmojo892

Well not every new player is aware of copper, but that is something that has generally kept up with inflation. Stacks are up to 8g on my server with some up to 15 (not sure what they normally sell at though).

 

Hatsu

Tunch: not everyone plays to reach the level cap, and there isn't such a thing as a compulsory fixed cost. You spend money on whatever makes you happy. If leveling alchemy (sorry for relating to the same profession all the time, it's the one I am most comfortable with) is what you want from the game, you should have the option to buy the extra stack of earthroot off the AH at an affordable (given the amount of gold you receive from quests) price. That was possible three years ago, is it going to be possible in the future? I honestly doubt so.

But let's say that a new player does play to reach the level cap. Do you realise how much money will people have accumulated by the time he hits the cap? It is ok to have a gap between old players and new ones, but it is also wise not to let the gap grow too big.

 

Lanlaorn

This is ridiculous, if a "hardcore" player earns gold at 3x the rate of a "casual" player it doesn't matter if at the end he has 50g and you have 150g or if he has 5,000g and you have 15,000g.

Your relative buying power in player transactions is the same because the prices of items will be relative to the inflationary effects on the system. So in the first example Uber Crafted Item would cost 10g and in the second 1,000g.

And honestly I really don't think we need a distinction of 'hardcore and casual' when it comes to gold farming, or chinese sweatshop workers are the most hardcore of us all. I've played fairly hardcore in the past (not so much now since I'm feeling the "what's the point?"-itis of WotLK approaching) and I've never felt the urge to amass tons of gold. I get what I feel is "enough" gold, 1.5k pre-TBC and 5k now, and just stay above that mark while paying for all consumables, reagents, repairs, respecs, etc. If I need to make a big purchase I start earning gold, so in the present day I'd start doing 25 dailies a day maybe, for example.

I just don't feel the need at the moment. I have an epic mount, my alts have epic mounts, I have my 5k gold for sudden expenses and I can farm up more on demand. I could do 25 dailies a day every day and have 15k gold like you, but... why? It really doesn't hurt me to have 1/3 your gold.

This is not at all true. Even with full +damage gear a Disc Priest and a Fire Mage will be worlds apart in killing effectiveness. The Priest isn't "gimped" at all, but a real DPS class kills so much faster it's obscene. Personally I don't like even doing daily quests that involve killing 6 mobs, hell ideally I'd rather not even dismount at all.

 

Unity

Anytime I see a new player asking 'what profession is good for [class]' I reply with dual gather. There aren't a whole lot of useful BOP crafts before the cap so anything they'd get from a crafting skill can be bought without the expense and delay of leveling the skill themselves. Unless WOTLK adds a bunch of worthwhile low level BOP items characters with dual gather will actually become stronger than crafters before the cap.

Inflation is good for new players reaching level cap. Provided that everything traded between players inflates at the same rate each flask and potion needs the same amount of time spent farming but a new 70 on an inflated server will get there with relatively more money and get the fixed costs out of the way faster.

 

Calixtus

So inflation is bad for people who go to the auction house only to buy - never to check what he has in his inventory to sell - doesn't read any guides - despite the fact that the game's been out so long there's load's of them around - doesn't visit any forums - the EU official profession forum has a mage called Lobotomy, who knows everything and then some about professions, and he shares his knowledge freely - does not know anyone to point him in the right direction - I educated some poor fellow in the advantages of double gatherer in /2 just the other week - and... So... Basically... He's blind, deaf and stupid? I mean really, we're not just talking about being new to the game here, we're talking about managing to be be completely oblivious to just about anything. Even if double-gathere while leveling does no strike people as the most obvious course of action, gatherer + associated crafting certainly seems logical enough even if you never communicate with anyone else on the subject.

Inflation does indeed make low level content meaningless, but not in the way you're thinking. A stack of copper bars on my server currently goes for 2g. So a mount at lvl 30, which costs somewhere around 40g (... I think?) would be about 20 stacks. Of copper. The first thing you can possibly mine as a miner. Way back when my server was brand new, I was damn happy to have earned my mount at lvl 40 (well, okay, I would've been if I hadn't been a warlock). I remember a real life mate of mine, I had to give him silver to buy a gryphon ride after he bought his mount. A character fresh from the starting zone, with no support from a main character, on a not-so-new server today is going to find it trivial to aquire a mount; A once hard-earned and much desired piece of equipment.


As someone noted, the system is pretty much self-regulating. If doing dailies gives more gold per hour, people do dailies and introduce gold to the system at a higher rate than loot drops. But then people stop farming primals, the supply goes down, and thanks to the wonders of supply and demand, it won't take long before farming primals is once again a more profitable way to spend your time.

 

Karamoon

By a 'good explanation', I specifically mean one that doesn't rely on unsupported assertions or bad math. The absolute size of the difference in two player's gold stockpile don't matter - Blizzard could multiply or divide all prices, cash drops, quest rewards, and gold stores by 100 tomorrow and no one's buying power would change a bit. Inflation doesn't magically just increase the price 'casuals' have to pay to 'hardcores' to get items from them, it also means that the 'hardcores' sitting on 20,000 gold don't think anything of dropping 5g per stack on copper bars that the level 7 newbie can farm up with ease.

Blizzard clearly doesn't consider 'buys materials from players but never sells materials to players, only gets gold from quests and vendors, and tries to level crafting skills without the corresponding gathering skill' a playstyle worth supporting, and neither do I. This group is not 'new players' or 'casual players' or 'people who don't like running spreadsheets about AH prices', it's a tiny group of people who are deliberately choosing to make the harder. It's like melee hunters; I am quite sure Blizzard isn't going to stop your hunter from forsaking his bow and gun, but also won't lose any sleep if you don't kill things as fast as a regular hunter.

We're not talking about eostric knowledge, like someone weighing the merits of hit vs haste vs agility for a sword rogue vs dagger rogue against a raid boss or trash mobs or soloing. The get rich scheme is 'learn mining, mine ore, put ore on AH for slightly below what most of what's listed is going for', which doesn't require theorycrafting spreadsheets or vast game experience to pull off. New players can, in fact, come out massively ahead since their training (especially mount training) isn't subject to inflation; it's been a really long time (long before the drop) since I've seen a level 43 posting something like 'how can I possibly make 100g for mount money? I haven't trained since level 36 and I'm still broke!'.

 

Hatsu

Ok, having a stack of copper sitting at 7g as a result of rampant inflation is not going to hurt a lv10 new player who's gaining 2 silver per quest turn-in.

I am not going to pick a fight over this, really.
It is not rocket science and I find it pretty silly that you are actually claiming that inflation is somehow positive and that the system is self-regulatory. It isn't and it has never been in any mmo.

Having 1/3 of my gold means that can't spend the same amount of gold I can spend on whatever we both need. I can outbid you because I can afford what you cannot afford. That drives prices up. It's ok, but it must be kept under control, you gotta hit the sweet spot.