Slashdot Mirror
MMO Creators Follow The Virtual Money Trail
Thanks to Wired News for its article discussing the dysfunctional economies of massively multiplayer games. The piece references an economic analysis by Raph Koster regarding Star Wars Galaxies, in which he mentions the game "...uses what is called a faucet-drain economy. You can visualize a spigot of cash coming into the game, a big ol' sink where the money sloshes around, and a set of drains where the money goes out the bottom." Virtual economist Edward Castronova also comments, concerned about the proletariat and the bourgeoisie: "The wealth distribution is not just unequal, it is incredibly unequal... Raph says it is similar to the distribution of wealth in (real-life) economies, which it is, but even the worst robber-baron economies were not this bad." In the end, though, Koster argues: "You don't get to ignore the economy, but absolutely, the goal is the fun, not Berkshire Hathaway."
for a long long time on the Mud-Dev mailing list. In fact a point of discussion many times, and not just the faucet drain economy model either.
Mud Dev Faq
Full archive here
Devaluing Items and Currency is a big problem in many MMOs. Items/Currency are really one of three reasons people stay in the MMO game they're in, the other two are "People Social" and "Skills/Character".
An MMO with a more stable value on high-value items and large sums of money will be more likely to keep players around. It's just no reason to stay if EVERYONE has that Vorpal Sword of Timespendedness that you spent 5 months getting, but can now be had for 5 minutes of play-time because they're manufactured for mega-cheap by Craftsman1, Craftman2, Craftsman3, or had by camping for a few days in some random location with a dozen other people.
What about Eve Online? I was in the beta for a short while and that game seemed to be all about the economy, also. That and a lot of mining. ;)
Anyone that's currently playing Eve, what's the current state of its economy compared to most MMO's?
after about a week of experiementing with crafting in FFXI, I gave up on it completely, since it was just too costly to advance as a crafter.
Horizons, on the other hand, has probably the most open crafting system out there. It's extremely easy for anyone to decide to be a crafter and start cranking out tier 1 items. It does get progressively harder(tier 4 armor is very hard to make), however, there's not the same kind of beating your head against the wall, trying to break through the first baby steps of crafting and you only do as much crafting as you want to.
the supply and demand system doesn't really apply with crafting in Horizons. Looking at the consigners, the things that sell for the most, are rare mob drops, used to enhance crafting. player crafted gear is still cheap.
Hell, I just got a full set of steel platemail (tier 3, requires a level 60+ armorer with 100 being current max level) done, complete with all the special techniques that would fit for tips. all I had to do was supply him with the materials for the techniques (the aforementioned pricey rare drops).
All that crafting took about half an hour for us to go through and figure out exactly what to make and what ingrediants were needed. and he did it for tips. and I didn't even KNOW the guy. I just sent a tell to the highest level armorer online!
honestly, I think player-run economies are more influenced by supply (how much of a pain in the ass it is to make things) than demand.
The World's Worst Webcomic!
they must have upped the drop rate since I quit, because it was more like a 10-20% chance about 6 months ago. glad to hear they made crafting less of a pain.
The World's Worst Webcomic!
FFXI has PVP. Fortunately, it's extremely limited in nature (completely opt-in, no penalty for death, specific areas and times only). I say Fortunately, because the vast majority of the people who want full PVP, like the poster above, seem to want it so that they can behave like a bunch of children and make the game less fun for others. There are plenty of PVP oriented MMORPGs out there. FFXI isn't one of them. It's also the most popular of them these days. Go figure...
Koster responds that while "the truly obscene amount of money is in the hands of a few," the situation is not as bad as it sounds. And that, he says, is because there are tens of thousands of what he terms "try me out" Galaxies characters lying dormant that skew the distribution numbers.
/.ers running around with Atlas Shrugged images and quotes on their websites. In an pure market economy where value is placed on everything, there are people whose lives the market decides aren't worth supporting. In a 100% open market economy, survivial of the fittest is right back in play, and people die.
"They are dirt-poor," Koster says, "and they really distort the statistics."
This is the part that gets me about all the
Though you might argue it's also very easy for us to ignore the dying caused by our own present system, it's a factor I haven't seen one economist mention in plain speak in their studies, anecdotal and more rigorous. The fantasy equivalent of death (a stream of unrenewed accounts, among other things) is being ignored.
I played Ultima Online for quite some time, and I have to imagine the routine of, "Hack tree, build bow, repeat *100, sell bows, buy adventuring gear, get player-killed [by another player], rinse, repeat," didn't appeal to everyone.* These people left the game -- their account were, for all practical purposes, killed. These players gave up the will to live in this fantasy world. And the money they earned during their brief lives stayed right where the market placed it -- with the powerful.
Anyhow, not to belabor the point, but I wonder if those "dirt poor" characters "lying dormant" don't represent the people a true, ideological market economy would leave in our gutters even moreso than our governed market does today.
(* -- Yes, I realize UO changed the rules to eliminate pkilling quite a bit, but the old days, phew!)
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
I understand why most online RPGs have items and money, and therefore economies...
...to bring it back to the discussion about virtual economies, the choice of the developers in this particular game to exclude such things really, for me at least, makes the game more enjoyable, and just seems to work with the comic book theme.
But I have to say that I'm really enjoying the comic book goodness of City of Heroes-- The inventory is limited to a dozen or so slots where you can store power-ups (One-time use powerups called "Inspirations", and longer term but still not permanent powerups that enhance your powers called "Enhancements").
The only currency to speak of is "Influence"-- which can only be gained by defeatomg bad guys, and which can be used to obtain Inspirations and Enhancements to a degree...
But the focus of the game is pretty much to get your your bad (err, "Good" I should say) super-hero self together with some super hero buddies, form a super-hero team, and go beat some evil-doer butt.
Extremely satisfying, and delightfully free (in my opinion) of feeling like you're "level grinding". Plus, designing your very own super-hero outfit is disturbingly satisfying.
The piece references an economic analysis by Raph Koster regarding Star Wars Galaxies, in which he mentions the game "...uses what is called a faucet-drain economy.
And the faucet drains right into e-bay . I played SWG for the first month, and quit after I realized it was an annoying timesink and that Jedi were a sick marketing ploy. I had some money to play around with last month, so I bought myself a Jedi on ebay for $600. The Jedi was mislisted, so I got it pretty cheap. I played for a week, realized it was still boring (You have killed a generic monster, you gain 100 Jedi XP! Only 190000 more till you can get your next box/level!) so I relisted it on ebay. And I got $2000 for it. $1400 isn't a bad profit for a weeks work/play. Thanks for improving my real life economy Ralph. Maybe I'll see you again after pub 10 when being a Jedi is fun, or when the vehicle expansion comes out this fall.
Just FYI, this is probably the specific change that fixed the crystal drop problem:
If you quit 6 months ago or so, that was right after the NA release, and nobody was getting crystals. Crystals don't drop in regions controlled by beastmen. Since all the noobs were running out when they got the game and getting killed left and right, beastmen controlled all areas near towns. I had the game for 3 weeks before I saw a single crystal (on La Theine Plateau, for those who play the game - Ronfaure was always under beastmen control).
Probably about the time you left, they changed the rules so people under level 4 or 5 (I forget) don't affect the control of a region when they die, and now crystals are common drops in the noob zones at low levels.