Frozenfire's Economy 101 Essay - January 2002

Sometimes I doubt I play the same game OSI claims to be working on. The economy is getting worse every day, and yet I see no sign that OSI is planning to look into it. Are they even aware of the problems?  I see three main ”issues” (OSI speak for ) There are three sides to this:  Inflation, Risk/Reward and Self sufficieny. Ill deal with each in an update starting with inflation.

Inflation. Every day players go about their business, killing a number of monsters and hoarding the gold. Whatever gold is not spent on NPCs for regs and the like is kept in the bank and accumulates there. Now, its not a big deal for the economy if you and your friends go out and make 50K in an afternoon (if you know how, you can make much more). But if 200 players does it every day, it will soon amount so some serious money.  Throw in  duping and NPC vendor exploit (the faction house deed exploit was the most recent, but hardly the first – anyone remember the wheels of cheese?) and its easy to see that there is a lot more gold in player hands today than a year ago.

Player to player trading do nothing to drain money from the economy. 50K spent buying  a silver vanq weapon from another player, just means the seller now 50K richer – and the money stay in the game, if in another bank box.

At the same time as people loot their gold, items are spawned into the world. Thing such a magic weapons get looted, ingots are mined from mountains etc. Players will trade among thengselves to get items they want and get rid of what they dont. Some items are harder to get than than others. Ruin weapons are nearly useless and a dime a dozen and no sane player will pay gold for them. Castles are limited to perhaps 100 per shard, and there is practically no chance of more coming into the world. In the end, supply and demand will settle prices. Castles cost more than Villas because there are so many more Villas being offered for sale.

But prices change over time, because thats what supply and demand does too. As gold increases, so does magic weapons (some wear out or decay, but the net amount should increase over time). But since gold increases much faster, players will gradually offer more of it to get the item and then we have inflation. If gold supply had increased slower than magic weapons, prices would have decreased instead. Prices reflect the relative scarcity and desirability of something.

Ok, big deal. A powergamer will notice price trends  know to protect himself by not having too much gold in the bank, but instead buy things that can be resold later at a  price adjusted for the inflation.

But some people loose out. New players for sure. When I started playing on Europa, my first house cost me no more than the deed, as I found a spot placed it. A new player, will have to work much harder and longer to catch up in gold with all the other house shoppers. Thats not a huge problem as there should be some hard things to strive for in the game.

But players who play the game to sell their crafter goods are big time loosers in this economy. Inflation for big ticket items, like Towers, have gone through the roof. At the same time sales prices for player made goods have remained constant at best. So its safe to say, that a crafter has to work perhaps 30 times longer to be able to afford the same item.

Inflation isnt the big deal. Its just paying 25K for something that was 10K a year ago. So what, I can make more gold per hour now than a year ago, besides I have more money too. The problem is rather  <b>the lack of inflation</b> on the player crafter items. This difference in inflation become noticeable over time and lowers the reward for crafting while increasing incentive for gold farming. In case you havent noticed, vendor spots have gone dead the last year, and you see a lot more bards and tamers around. I bet that a lot of the farming tamers so reviled on UOPG boards, have previous careers as tailors or blacksmiths before they sold out and purchased their 4 white wyrms.

Players inevitably react to the economy. OSI should pay it a lot more attention. Because player do.