[MUD-Dev] Asheron\'s Call: An example of how easy it is to lose your balance.

[Dan Merillat]

wrenner at uiuc.edu writes:
> On Sat, 19 May 2001 23:20:58 -0700 (PDT)
> Dan Merillat <harik at chaos.ao.net> wrote:
 
>> ... and the race is on for the first billionare.  (the problem
>> should be obvious from my setup)

> Leading, as you might guess, to the complete destruction of any
> sembelence of economy in the game.  I swear, this is not an
> accident.  Someone sat down and *thought* out this change.

Yup.  There's lots of speculation on why, but it's already mostly
acknowledged that they're not changing it back... meaning it's a
"feature" to be kept rather then a bug to be fixed.  So massive wealth
is part of the plan, and was planned since probably the casinos (as
you pointed out)

> Of course a new, denser currancy will evolve.. but does anyone
> really think an economy based on full suits of Greater Shadow Armor
> is a good thing?

Motes.  SIK/Shards were devalued quite a bit (I can get my GSA now! 
YAY!)  but motes are still holding their value.

Guesses?  The economy was broke, so people with cash-farming mules had
no problems where others had to spend too much time harvesting gold?
Having a 3-part currency (Shards/Motes/SIKs) wasn't in the plan, so
devalue 2 of them quite thuroughly?

Either way, it should be interesting to see what effect this has.
Hard-coded economies (gold/platinum/pyreal, whatever) have always had
problems, leading to the development of a player-based currency. I
think, however, that this is the first example of the pre-planned
undermining of 3/4ths of a game's currency at once.  The fact that
it's a fairly large commercial product means the amount of fallout
could be rather large.

I for one will be watching closely to see what effect it has,
especially on the (highly subjective) "fun" of the game.

--Dan
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