[MUD-Dev2] [REPOST] DGN: MMOG Game Economies

[John Buehler]

Christopher D. Chapman writes:

>I'm pretty much of the firm belief that a scaling system of 'pay for
>training' that links xp to gold will help create a single currency
>(instead of the two) and solve all of the issues around the rampant
>inflation in these games.  i've written up a moderately brief piece
>evolving from a bit of stream of consciousness rambling.
>
>  http://www.writely.com/View.aspx?docid=ac6vt6kwbxtj

In your document, you state:

"To counter this exponential growth in wealth across the board, developers 
have tried to implement money sinks.  They are trying to siphon money out of 
the system with things like paying for transportation or paying rent on any 
property the player's character might own.  The issue with this is that the 
sinks aren't exponential and thus won't match the character's potential 
income."

World of Warcraft scales its sinks exponentially.  The cost of everything at 
the end game keep up with the pace of items and cash that come to the 
player.  Actually, the sinks are a tad behind the sources of cash during the 
time a character levels, permitting the character to have some cash for the 
larger expenditures that show up at the final level.

If you think about it, it's fairly trivial to produce sinks so intense that 
player characters would be broke all the time.  EverQuest had too few by 
far, and World of Warcraft seems to have it just about right.  Others were 
in between.

In my opinion, a game that has rampant inflation is focusing too intensely 
on the innate skills of the character classes as their means for gaining 
items and cash.  WoW assumes that the players must augment their characters 
with consumables and other expenses in order to consume the bulk of the 
wealth that the character receive.  Lacking that equation, there is plenty 
of income, but not enough expenses.  The two simply need to be balanced, and 
WoW does a good job with this.

Buying experience is another way to add to the burden of expenses for a 
character, but note that then twinking takes on a whole new meaning.  A 
player with a character with level 50 amounts of cash can dump a bunch of 
cash on a level 1 and that character can likely buy 20 or 30 levels.  You 
may or may not want this.

Lastly, buying experience as the primary means of controlling inflation 
suggests that there is no advancement limit.  That characters can keep 
buying more experience (to some purpose or advantage) essentially forever.  
That's another effect you may not want.

JB