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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."
"Do real world economic class/social issues translate to the virtual world? "
considering that the PP (currency of EQ) is literally worth more than the "real" currencies of some countries when the PP is sold on E-bay or whatever i would have to say it sure does.
in fact someone who realy knows what they are doing can make a better living by "playing" this game then they could in some jobs the avg person is qualified for. i would suppose this would be a serious pay-raise for people in some areas frankly
I wonder if there's an official definition of a currency.
Ability to earn cash in Everquest... check.
Ability to buy things in EQ... check.
Exchange rate... check, if unofficially.
Actually I'd be interested to see a graph of the exchange rate of EQ cash v dollars - which is the better long-term investment? With the impending recession it might actually be a good, (if somewhat risky!) investment to transfer your savings to EQ.
Well, it sounds as though that's not necessarily all that they're studying. Some of their descriptions made it sound as though they're at least partly interested in a descriptive study. They want to know what kinds of activity people are involved in, for instance. That's not necessarily hard core analytical economics, but the descriptive statistics that they get from studies like that are the grist for the mill of later, more quantitative studies.
At the same time, why should the fact that the economy is entirely artificial prevent it from behaving like the real world? The people who designed the game are obviously most familiar with the real world economy, so some of their basic assumptions are going to be framed in terms of conventional economics. Equally, if not more, important is that the players who are implementing the economy are also trained in the conventional, meat space economy. When they're thrust into an artificial economy, they're going to respond with the same general types of behavior that they'd exhibit in meat space. The exact details may be shaped by the nature of the game economy, but the assumptions made by the people involved are going to have a tremendous impact on the overall outcome.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
hmm..."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. That's fine for a game, everyone can be a winner, but I don't know if a study of it will turn up any findings that are relevant in the real world. "
Uhhh, remember when a bottle of Coke was a nickel? What's different?
Check out PlayerAuctions and see what the shit is selling for. It is awesome profit considering it takes little time to get Platinum and some boneheads never realize it so they just buy it. Of course eBay has been forced to pull all EverQuest auctions and I don't know why PlayerAuctions is still safe. On a serious side, yes, Platinum pieces are worth considerably more than any 3rd world nations currency, which shows how spoiled this country is.
The problem is, it takes resources to make that bottle of Coke. Glass or plastic and the various ingredients.
In EverQuest, if I need the resources to make something, I can either buy them, find them, kill mobs and loot their corpses for them, have a magician summon them, borrow from someone in my guild, etc. There are numerous ways to produce items without depleting resources because, there are no actual limits on what can be extracted from the 'environment' of EQ. (I.e. me and 500 other people can fish off the docks of Qeynos for weeks on end and we'll still catch little fishies.)
And because there are no resource costs associated with producing items or 'making' money, there is effectively an infinite supply. Only a small percentage gets 'recycled' by buying from NPC merchants. Trust me, after about 15th level, the only time most PCs use merchants is to either sell loot that no one else wants to buy (at a vastly lower then market value rate, which is one of the reasons no one uses the damn merchants) or to buy food and water when you don't have a pet caster to summon them for you.
Considering that I can kill mobs all day long and make money, and I suck at EQ, anyone who is good at it can make enough plat to outfit however they need.
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
In an economic model, cars break down, so you need to buy more. Food is consumed, so you need to go to the grocery store. You need to pay rent to live, etc. This doesn't happen in everquest. The Everquest economy, by design, is doomed. Thats a plain fact that anyone who has played the game for a reasonable amount of time realizes. The hope is that by the time the economy gets too horrible, Everquest 2 will be released.
The "economy" they're weakly trying to make some profound conclusion from is that virtual items in Everquest have real world value to some people. This may come as a shock to some people, but EVERYTHING'S value is in its perception to the person who will buy it.
How much is a sheet of paper worth? How about a piece of paper with 0.0001 dollars worth of ink on it that happens to be a sports star's signature? How about a $2.25 toy that someone spends $200 on Ebay for? Heck, what about gold? Its just a piece of metal with some moderately useful applications; but since someone out there still thinks it makes pretty things, its worth quite a bit of money.
People spend money on Everquest items because it makes them enjoy the game more by having other people spending the time earning the items for them, like a caddy on a golf course.
This isn't spiffy Cyber-Economics of the Virutal Internet Future Era. Sorry.
Tink bag.. over 3Kpp... Gone
Jc.. we're talking over 40Kpp gone out of the
game reaching a skill of 220 (easily)
Smithing.. all the plat spent on materials that
gets destroyed by failures
Research items like runes, pages, words, components, etc. etc. etc.
Yes.. Items are destroyed... pp is spent to vendors for spells
LOTS of plat to vendors for spells.. all gone.
On some of the older servers... inflation hasn't come around...
Prices actually decrease because there's an abundance of items.
Only the rarest of rare items retain their inflated
value.
Chars with 1Mpp quit... it happens.
No..it's not a real world economy... but it's interesting nonetheless..
I would also say it's one of the better ever set
up, till this point in time.