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."

Comments

Re:Artificial?

[interiot]

It's easier to argue that the falling exchange rates are more due to the in-game economy (eg. the economies have actual inflation) than it is due to increased competition among MMORPG currency sellers. In fact, that paper almost seems to be arguing that MMORPG economies, as they currently stand, are almost unavaoidably always inflationary.

(city of heros seems to buck the trend... is there anything fundamentally very different about its economy?)

Re:Artificial?

[dfenstrate]

I'd say that the initial storage limitation is one of the least fun parts of the beginning game in WoW

After you get your first 60, this isn't such a problem because you can always send gold and bags to your low level alts. But yeah, a pain at the start.

Other than that, I've actually noticed deflation on my server- arcane crystals and arcanite bars are down 9g or so from their peak, runecloth is down from 2g a stack, and some other crafting items have taken price hits as well. Gold sellers prices are also down a few bucks. I'm not entirely sure how that relates, if at all.

I think it has to do with the game/server reaching 'maturity'. Most of the first adopters who rushed to the scene have maxed out a character or two, and have them equipped with all the craftable items they're going to get. They also have an alt or so that can provide all of the players characters with whatever they need, so they don't visit the AH as much, driving up prices. So know you just have a trickle of characters passing through various levels and buying up some stuff, but at a slower rate than the original mass leveling that came with the server opening.

Anyway, I hope that all makes sense, cause i've been up far too late. And it's just my humble observations, I have no data to back any of it up.