[MUD-Dev] Self-organizing worlds (was: Elder Games)

[Mik Clarke]

Chris Gray wrote:

> [Koster, Raph:]
>
>  >There's a couple of economics researchers who are working with us here to
>  >actually try to pinpoint the differences between human behaviors in virtual
>  >economies as opposed to real world economies.
>
> Wow, that's getting serious about the game!
>
> My totally uneducated guess would be that a response like hoarding would
> arise from the far greater danger of the virtual world (I presume UO or
> something like, in this case).

Hoarding is both surplus disposal - all those coins are just to heavy to carry
around so you dump them in the bank and keep playing - and after a while you're
overloaded again.

It is also a sort of insurance.  A lot of game abilities arise from equipment,
especially equipment that enhances the characters.  Generally it enhances it to
the state that the dangerous places the character can go are such that they
cannot get there without the equipment.  This then presents one (or maybe two
problems), depending upon the mud.  If they die, they need to be able to get to
their corpse to retreive their old equipment - but they can't get there without,
at least, some equipment, so they need the cash to refit with purchasable
equipment so they can go and retreive their non purchasable equipment.  Secondly
it is not inconceivable that they should die and then lose all their equipment
due to a crash or similer problem.  In such case they need to be able to sustain
a level of refit that will enable them to continue gaining xps

Oh, and eventually, hoarding just becomes another way of keeping score.

Mik




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