Slashdot Mirror
Cornering the World of Warcraft Markets
Terra Nova has a post up about a financial development on the World of Warcraft server Elune. From the article: "two players recently bought out the entire contents of the Auction House in Ironforge, with the exception of premium-priced high-level weapons and armor (e.g., they bought all the trade goods) and then resold all of what they bought at a higher price." They go on to discuss the event in the context of Massive Game economies and the results that tradeskills can have on monetary inflation.
and put them in a que!
(\(\
(^.^) INFECTED
(")")
Isn't business about "buy low, sell high?"
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
I saw similar things happen in EQ. Basically the most dedicated tradeskillers got together and set base prices on what they'd pay for components, and what they'd expect for their items. That trick worked for a period of time, until players that weren't "tuned in" to the system started to lowball them. The auction nature of WoW will probably cause it to take longer for the prices to get back to normal, but I don't anticpate there'll be a long term effect. Sombodies gotten rich though, assuming players buy their stuff...
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
Stuff like this happens often in Eve. People are cornering various products all the time in order to drive prices up, and it works, as long as people will pay the prices.
Ok, it's time to spill the beans...I'm too busy to do this anymore.
...
Trade goods (Linen, Wool, Silk, Iron Bars, etc...) will consistently sell at the AH if you set a decent buyout price. For example, on my server, you can sell stacks (x20) at these prices:
Linen: 25 silver
Wool: 40 silver
Silk: 45 silver (which sucks!)
Mageweave: 1.2 gold
Runecloth 3 gold
Copper Bars 45 silver
and so on and so on. My guild would buy everything we could below that price and resell it. We'd get it from other players, from low buyouts at the AH, poorly priced auctions, wherever...At one point, as a level ~20 mage, I was spending maybe 2 hours a week doing this and making ~80 gold for my efforts. It was huge.
Then I leveled up to the point where 80 gold a week isn't that special.
Two guys started playing a MMORPG to escape from a money-grubbing humdrum reality, where they spend their time money-grubbing into a humdrum reality?
Oh yeah, and then someone has to write about how interesting that is. Maybe-- to their psychiatrist.
is huge in wow.
which isn't a surprise as basically everything you can kill drops money(or something that you can sell for a buck for a npc) - so a lot of money enters the world.
it needs some serious tweaking.. as now theres professions which simply are not worth doing. you don't get items that are really worth jack from them and selling them for a buck isn't that good business either - basically as said out in the post the best way to make a buck is to be on the raw material side of the business and not on the refining side, as you can get endless amounts of those raw materials(but if you're a refiner you're going to need a lot of those materials to train your skill to be on any level of use, at which point you quite probably already have gotten better equipment than what you can make).
and getting skilled is a lot easier(faster - there is no playing skill involved beyond patience) if you got the cash to just buy the raw materials out of AH - so don't rush into refining(it's not particularly exciting to make copper pants anyhow so you can't justify it with that either), you can change the skills later anyways if you want and later you'll have the cash to buy the raw materials to get the skill up faster.
(no.. fun does not begin at lvl 60.)
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
At least they're not selling the goods for real $ online. Perhaps this isn't as big of a problem as it seems; I wonder what Blizzard's stance is.
However only a tiny percentage of players take the time to simple prepare themselves for a hunt so it is was not unusual to see people desperately trying to shop for brandy ONLY after having arrived at the remotest planet.
Simple money making scheme? Buy stacks of brandy and sell them at a nice profit at remote locations. The makers of brandy don't want to spend the time to distribute their wares and the customers don't want do spend hours shopping.
In the period it worked before SWG went terminal it gave me so much income I never even bothered with running missions. I don't think resellers themselves are a bad idea. Basically I got my money by providing the same exact service as it exists in the real world.
Buying up every single item is an extreme step but perhaps in some future MMO game with a properly thought out economy some players will be making their game by shipping resources between supplier and user.
Imagine a more spread out game were you cannot reach every corner in a few minutes. Perhaps it even takes hours if not days to go into the deep. Ranger type players will be out alone or small groups hunting and doing their survival thing. Once in a while they will be bringing their loot to small villages were they put up for sale. Now these items are in demand but the crafters that want them tend to be in bigger cities as they would be in real live and don't want to constantly be on the move and fend of all kinds of nasty just to get the resources they need. Two groups, the more solo minded explorers who are playing a hunting sim, the other the more social minded creators who are playing a home improvement sim. Add a third group, the money grabbers and they might get their fun out of buying low and selling high. Travelling the lands in search if items to buy.
So I don't think this is such a bad thing in itself. What has me wondering is how badly upset the basic economy is that in such a new game two players can already have gotten so rich as to buy every item on the market. Even SWG economy ain't that broken.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I currently sell all my low level buyout for 1g for 10s items, 10x the price. Since I'm the only one with a buyout, the alts have massive gold, and will buy it out.
Its stupid not to put a buyout, even it 10x the price, if someone wants it bad enough, and wants to win, they will pay.
BTW, the Alliance side of the AH on our servers, is 3x as large. I am running AH scripts to watch prices, and buy when stuff is under vendor sale price, or its under the market average. Good for me to make a few bucks.
But, I've started loosing interested, its moved from a game to a chore, screw that. Wheres the next new MMORPG... Not sure if Battlegrounds will save wow from churn.
What about the monopoly NPC's have over souldbound items? These NPC's are screwing the players over because of their GM given monopoly over these pieces. At the very least these venders can sell back the items to the enchanters, however I have reason to believe the venders work for the defias brotherhood and other shady organizations. I will sell grey items it a vendor and suddenly they will appear on the corpse of a monster that I had just killed after leaving the town.
NPC vendors are aiding and abetting terrorist and must be stopped! I welcome the "opposing" faction to swoop down and destroy these tyrants and liberate use from our evil oppressors!
If they made it so you could put in a request at the auction house for an item, and list an amount that your willing to pay, then people who have product for sale would better know the value of the things they're trying to sell, and they could get an sell their items on the spot, walk away with their cash, and the people who want a resource but dont want to sit all day in the auction house looking for cheeper prices could get their items at a reasonable price.
"Normally, this newspaper's devotion to free trade is unwavering. Yet curbing the trade of in-game items is defensible, since game economies are run to maximise fun, not efficiency."
A model economy: Should links between real and virtual economies be encouraged or banned?
I've done this a few times with linen, and the other night silk. That was pricey, but I'm hoping it pays off. I think it's a valid tactic, but the problem is that is benefits the wealthy more than anyone else. Glad I almost never buy resources on the AH.
Inflation will drive up prices on the highest end equipment, but all the stuff that isn't lvl 55-60 ubergear won't inflate much because chars of that lvl won't be able to afford them.
I'm not familiar with WoW, but isn't there a thief class? I can imagine that there might be ways actual shopkeepers could prevent thieves from making off with their stock, but how are these two guys going to deal with the problem? Seems like a bunch of thieves could team up and take turns sneaking over to them and pilfering a few of the items, until they have too few remaining to turn a profit. What am I missing?
Don't blame me, I voted for Durga.
After having done various micro experiments, it seems apparent that price inflation/depreciation is a short term effect. If for example there is no mooncloth listed on the AH, listing the first item at an inflated price will result in most new items placed to be at a price just below that inflated price, effectively artificially inflating the 'standard' price, however testing has shown that this is a temporary effect as the cost of AH fees causes people to undercut other sellers until the 'globally acceptable' price is reached again.
Relisting the entire AH is an effective strategy for slowing this natural trend, however it effectively ensures that all newly listed items will undercut the existing artificial price, resulting in a loss of sale for the relisters, or requiring the relisters to actively purchase and relist all new items at diminishing returns.
Being on one of the most overpriced servers I'd have too say that the main effect of gold farmers is to increase the price of epic items, but also increases their availability.
Either way it is a short term effect. By purchasing items at the AH you are buying into a free trade economy and as such its effects. Ultimately it all comes down to supply and demand.
GPLv2: I want my rights, I want my phone call! DRM: What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak?
This is why OPEC doesn't immediatly raise oil prices to $200 a barrel (well, besides the possibility of every non-OPEC country sending in their armed forces).
All these guys agree on a high price but after a while one of them breaks ranks and makes a huge profit, lowering the market price.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
I love the idea...if I played WoW I'd probably be trying to do the same thing...btw, did you see that guy get busted for posting replies to himself with his alts?
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
MMORPGs are almost immune to cartels *if* they don't have systems which allow denial of resources. You can't prevent other people from skilling up mining in WoW. You can't kill other miners. Its unrealistic to beat people to the mines all the time. Therefore, you can't cartel effectively to increase the price of, say, Mithril Bars.
What you CAN do, however, if you've got a lot of money and a lot of time is "corner the market". Mithril bars are 4g for a stack of 20. If you have 200g, and there are 20 stacks on the market, and you have a day or so free, you can sit there, buy up every stack at 4, and resell at 6. The increase in price will cause people to either stop using them, or buy from you, or attempt to get into the mithril market themselves. But since there is a barrier to entry into the mithril market (several hours skilling up to Mining 150), and the relative value of Mithril to questing crafters is enough to support 6g if they can't get it for cheaper, this is a decent way to make money.
Its MUCH better, though, if you do it to high-level green items. The supply is critically limited, the demand is high, and *people are stupid*. Made 100g this week off of buying Arcane Robes for 3g each (the game's "suggested price" x 2) and selling them for 30g each (high level green mage robes for mages with great INT/STA stats are in high, high demand).
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
You just need to add rarity to the MMORG equation... After all, you should need a bigger ship to haul all that brandy. If it's worth money, somebody should be able to attack you and take it, right! Monsters should start attacking the peasents directly... then they'll have someplace to take gold from!!! from Blizzard's point of view, players don't want their villages wiped out by the 10,000 point dragon, but in the real world that's how it works... If people get too rich, somebody battles them to take it. In the real world you can be as "rich" as you want... as long as you can keep it... Blizzard should start playing to that tune.
Sure, it doesn't sound fair, but that's the point. Perhaps Blizzard could put some cap on how much stuff you can have in one store...or you have to get another. The game deals in gold pieces, not credit cards... a million gold pieces should take an army of helpers to carry. They need to make massive wealth require vunerability to keep it... Why can't the angry mobs mug a very rich guy? Then he'd have to learn to fight...or pay for protection...
You could be
And EVE has kill and courier missions from NPC's, just like every other MMORPG. But if you're looking for a fully realized market based MMORPG, this is defeniatly the one to try out. I coudln't imagine going back to trying to play WoW's market after this.
I'm the guy with the unpopular opinion
The only flaw in the 'Monopolist' system is that there is no barrier to competitive entry. The only way they can make money on this system is if they purchase at a price lower than the 'fair market value'. While this might sound unlikely, there are actually quite a few ways for goods to drop below an equalibrium price and this is just a capitolistic way of reestablishing equialibrium.
I hate buying anything from monopolies, in the real world or online. If this happened on my server, I would sell stuff privately through trade chat instead, and with the inflated prices there would probably be more interest than usual.
I’m old enough to remember 16K of memory being described as “whopping”
Most of these MMO got money growing on trees wich is bad because if you just keep pumping in money (through mission payouts) then inflation will be insanely high. So they add all kinds of silly things to get money out of the system. But why not simply add taxation on money in the bank, where it is safe from everyone but the blizzard goverment OR let you keep it on you but make you risk loosing money if you die AND make bandits not bother with the poor ranger but go after the rich merchants like the RIAA after 12yr olds. Then rich players will have to pay other players to protect them and wham bang you got the money flowing again instead of some players becoming billionairs and complaining the game ain't any fun.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.