The Economy 2.0

When you talk about drops, are you talking about creating gold from thin air and inserting it into the global economy, or from a pool?

 

To me gold drop from monster and treasure are pure gold creation.

 

I suppose I'm looking at it from the angle that drops are not newly created money but money that has been recycled from the sinks. The only time I expect new 'money' to come in is when a player is created or the devs create a new land with new resources.

 

I have to say... I dont understand. It's operating on existing economic solutions(and their problems) that existed in the past and today.

Gold
Problem with gold was that it kept getting found. When a new gold mine opened up all the sudden the local area was flooded with gold and prices rise. If you remove the monsters give out gold, and did mining, your still dealing with that problem.

Currency
Problem with currency today is that it keeps getting printed. The more we print the more inflation.

Trading (bartering)
People may be trading 5 shirts for a sword one day, then a horse for those same 5 shirts the next. If someone makes a ton of swords, the demand for them is lessened.

Conclusion
The economies that MMOs have are no better than what has already existed before. They are ultimatly modeled after our history and teams are usually in the business of gaming, so making a new economy type from scratch is a dificult proposal. The system you proposed creates a 'caste' system. Unless you’re proposing a totally new system, there isn’t much the team can do except design an economy that they know they can manage.

 

@Sir_Tim: The use of headers, the caste system note, and the mention of the difficulties in creating a fresh new economic model are all praiseworthy. The one other thing I'd like to mention is that there are some sizable discrepancies between real economies and virtual economies. I'm not going to write a paper on it, but one example would be the natural gold sinks irl, such as the need to buy food. Wiki search "Virtual Economy" for a short book on the matter (not a literal book, but a long article).

 

I agree with your mention on the discrepancies, I hope my post didnt sound otherwise. But I've been running a Virtual Economy myself in another community I own. So I am familair with the problems there too. Biggest problem in a VE?... currency trade(directly or indirectly). a VE token can be worth a computer one day, then barely a hamburger the next. Oh well... the team just need to pick an economy system that works well for them.

But they also have more control past just the dollars and cents. They can control how accessable resources are too. A dynamic not found in real life, whether VE or Physical Money. As I mentioned, for a game, its simpley figuring out which economic system they feel most comfortable managing.