[MUD-Dev] RE: Value of PvP avatars (was: To Kill an Avatar)

[Paul Schwanz]

Marian Griffith wrote:
> In <URL:/archives/meow?group+local.muddev>  on Thu 24 Jul, Robert Lemos wrote:

>> As long as the games have significantly more men then women and
>> as long as the players tend to identify with their characters, I
>> would say that there is going to be a price difference.

> Not really.  If the explanation is purely economic then the price
> difference is determined by supply and demand. For female avatars
> to be priced lower than comparable male avatars either the supply
> must be higher or the demand must be lower. As you just postulat-
> ed no (or hardly any) interaction between those two markets the
> relative sizes of them are irrelevant. This leaves open as one of
> the few purely economical explanations that female players must be
> leaving EQ en masse to create a significant difference in pri- ce
> between male and female avatars.  (Another one being that, for
> some odd reason, female players are willing to sell their charac-
> ter, but are not as willing to buy one)

Or there could be a number of men who experiment with creating
female characters, but then for some reason (perhaps time commitment
or constraints at higher levels?) decide to concentrate on playing a
male avatar.  Whereas these men might use a character slot for such
experimentation, they may be much less likely to pay money just to
experiment.

> I wonder if we could talk the make of EQ into adding the option to
> switch gender of an avatar.  It would be interesting to see if
> such an option has any effect on the pricing of avatars.

Yes, that would indeed be very interesting.  Of course, especially
for EQ, you'd probably need the ability to switch the "gender" of
the avatar's equipment in addition to allowing players to switch the
character's name in order to facilitate real customization for those
interested in being represented in game as male.  And that sort of
flexibility might introduce some real identification issues that
were disruptive to the game.

--Phin
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