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.

Comments

I fail to grasp the (perceived) problem

[Lead Butthead]

Isn't business about "buy low, sell high?"

Nothing new

[SmallFurryCreature]

SWG uses "food buffs" to raise your stats so that a bunny biting you does not instantly kill you. One of the best buffs is "vasarian brandy" as it raises your mind stats wich are not only weak but also used for doing special moves AND an easy target in PvP.

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.

Re:Nothing new

[Comrade64]

This worked well for me in SWG too. I was/am a Master Chef and I started out my business by crafting crates of stuff like that and the much loved (at the time) Tatooine Sunburn, and I would take these to a remote hostile place and sell it. After I made quite a bit and established a solid list of clients, I finally set up shop and raked in the credits! I had shops on four planets, another chef making stuff for me, and I was still turning special orders away because I had too many orders. My customer base blossomed and spilled over quick!

And then they revamped the Chef profession overnight and 90% of my inventory went from awesome to novelty. I was faced with a steep learning curve, so many bad crates that I had to just destroy all but one of my shops and in that remaining shop I destroyed all but one of my vendors, and still had 30 crates in the basement I had to destroy because they were now useless components.

Nowadays I sell the occasional crate on the street, but my days in the fast food business are over.

Short Term Effects

[node159]

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.