The Economy of Everquest

Gr0und_zer0 writes: " A Cal State professor is currently conducting an economic survey of Everquest players which will be used to write a paper he plans to submit to an academic journal. It will be very interesting to see how this turns out and if it actually is published. Maybe we will learn the Everquest platinum to be favorable to some of those devalued third world currencys floating around. So much for living in reality, who needs the stock market these days, I'll invest in Everquest."

Comments

virtual economic system...

[L-Train8]

Weird. Do real world economic class/social issues translate to the virtual world? I can't help but think that all he's going to find out is that the people who spend the most time playing have the richest characters, though. The Everquest market shouldn't really follow normal economic rules, because it is a constructed economic model, created to maximize game enjoyment, not reality.

Re:virtual economic system...

[swillden]

Unlike a Real World economy, over time, everyone in the EverQuest economy will gather more money, which leads to a strong, steady drop in the value of platinum, the currency.

Not as much as you might think. There are outlets for plat in the game: quests, spells, trade skills, some merchant-only items and, at higher levels, access to areas of the planes all consume plat. Also, there's the fact that over time each player tends to create multiple characters, each of which has a separate bank account and inventory, which dilutes the supply of platinum and items.

In fact, in practice, platinum doesn't seem to devalue nearly as fast as the items you buy with it. The net effect is one of near constant deflation, as opposed to one of constant inflation (drop in currency value).

Re:virtual economic system...

[gnovos]

only one original supplier, the game's NPCs, none of the goods decay or wear out with the exception of food (which can be freely summoned), and there are no taxes or such.

Funny thing, but all of these points are wrong. First off, there are three suppliers. The NPCs, like you said, but also there is a strong questing infrastructure and also trade skills that are very valuable. And that is only for physical things, many people also are willing to pay for spells cast in thier favor (Ressurection, speed boosts, long-distance teleports, etc.)

As for things degrading, there are both things that degrade over time (Potions, limited charge items, items that vanish on log-out), and also things that are obsoleted (either through new and better versions coming out, or through environmental changes that affect the items making them less potent). The world of Norrath is constantly changing, not just new zones and such, but even the rules of how the world works, and every time a change is made, players have to adapt and change tactics. These adaptions the players make change the types of weapons and items they will need to succeed. You also have, on rare occasions, Verant changing individual items themselves to make the less powerful (thus less desirable).

As for direct taxes, yes there are none, but there are MANY money-sinks in the world. Not only do you have to sink in a lot of items becuase of the high failure rate, you also have uneven buyback rates skewed highly in favor of the NPC merchants.

Yes over time everyone eventually makes some money, but they also lose it. I have some friends who are just now reaching level 60 (the highest in EQ) who are not finding themselves strapped for cash after buying hard to find items and spells.

It is actually a very reasonable go at building a model economy, I'm very interested to see the paper when it's done.