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The Fairness of Virtual Currency
CNet.com is running an article looking into the fairness of the virtual currency exchange. From the article: "...according to two of the leading experts in the economies of these virtual worlds, getting a fair price in the exchange of real dollars for fantasy coins can be a crapshoot. Turns out it's hard to find reliable data about the dollar/virtual currency exchange rates in a pretend world where there's no Alan Greenspan setting interest rates and scolding everyone about irrational exuberance."
"(city of heros seems to buck the trend... is there anything fundamentally very different about its economy?)"
City of Heroes has a system that uses no items at all. The only things characters purchase are skills.
In COH, the currency (influence) is fairly easy to acquire. Also rarity of in-demand skills is not generally completely insane.
There really is nothing to spend on in COH in the later half of the game that drains your money (or influence). In the first half, costs for buying upgrades for your powers (damage enhancements, accuracy enhancements, duration enhancements, etc) are a significant part of the game so much that most people don't enhance until level 33 or so (out of 50 levels) for their first characters. After that though, all money issues are over as people have much more than they know what to do with. Costume changes are the biggest drain at that point, but that is decorative and doesn't add to the numeric or power aspect of the game. Money transactions such as costume contests only transfer the money from higher levels to lower levels, so does not leave the game economy. At the high levels COH has an economy problem, but there is not much of a demand for cash, and so money plays a small part. I would say that COH suffers from the inflation as much as any other game. The problem with a balanced economy is that of the haves and the have nots. In a balanced economy you will get some people that make a lot and some that will always struggle and not be able to pay for things (repair, rent, upgrades, transportation) and thus you get people that will complain and quit. In order to keep the weakest players able to play, you end up with increasing cash in the economy either through lack of money drains, or higher incomes.