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Carolus Rex
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Sweden
Jan 1970
time: 06:37
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According to a swedish business site (see first link below, in swedish), some players hacked Everquest II and increased money in circulation in the game with one fifth.
Interestingly, the result was inflation of 20%... For the quantity theory of money, see the second link...
http://www.di.se/Nyheter/
http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/essays/money/quantity.htm
Edit: Scroll down to "Spelhack gav digital inflation" ("Hacking of game gave rise to digital inflation"), it's down to the right...
Carolus
Last edited by Carolus Rex on 12-08-2005 at 23:40
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snoopy369
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Of the Peanuts Gallery
Apr 2004
time: 23:37
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In GuildWars, there's a lack of information that's incredibly frustrating, and a lack of 'ease of exchange' that also drives a lot of money OUT of the game. Imagine if all of the players (like me) who are way too lazy to sell their major/minor runes to other players 90% of the time stopped selling to vendors for 100 gold or even less, but started actually trading them in-game (due to some sort of auction mechanism that wasn't a lot of work to use  ) ... inflation would go way up then (as less people would spend money at NPCs on runes). (Also the market would work PROPERLY, instead of how it currently does, which is not by any meaningful sense of market economics.)
EQ2 I have little experience with (no playexp.) but I have to assume that if it follows market economics at all, it must have a more informed (ie, 'going price' is not difficult to determine accurately) and more fluid (ie, you can sell something easily and fairly quickly if you sell it at or slightly below going price). Otherwise, the result doesn't mean a whole lot ... and from the "station exchange" element (that I just learned of), although it sounds like that means the game's goods are probably fairly accurate to market values, I also think that the inflation probably was fairly temporary (and would have been regardless of out-of-game action)...
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Carolus Rex
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Sweden
Jan 1970
time: 06:37
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Here's the link to Edward Castronova's paper:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....tract_id=294828
Scroll down and download it via the SSRN link. It's witty and well-written; the journal entries at the beginning of each section are nice too...
Carolus
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Sir Ralph
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Long live teh Schwampel!
Dec 2001
time: 06:37
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There have been quite some downtimes and a bunchload of bannings (permanently) and freezings (until things are sorted out) in the last week. But the inflation peak was not that horrible as it sounded, and all found out ill-gotten platinum has been deleted. This caused no problems on regular servers and only minor issues on the Exchange servers (which I am of course not part of), because there people paid real money for the virtual cash.
Despite some critic, Sony has quite a good record tracking down botters and pharmers in the near past. And now after the Station Exchange introduction, their efforts even gained teeth, because now traded virtual cash has an equivalent in real currency and thus, activities like this can be prosecuted by civil law, as Sony can claim real losses. Before the introduction of Station Exchange this was hardly possible, no court would have made a case about the loss of virtual money.
Overall Everquest II has a nice in-game economy, better than its predecessor. It has money sources (mob drops either as cash or NPC-sellable goods, and quest rewards) and it has money sinks. These are for instance broker fees (20% in the same city and 40% cross-city), money for status objects like steeds, buyable titles like "Sir" (available for members of high-level guilds) and player housing (private appartments have a weekly rent, the bigger, the more).
So far it was balanced. Not exactly of course, but nearly. Prices and rewards have been adapted several times. The influx of money in the game economy is slightly bigger than the outflux, which is perfectly fine, as achievable money sinks are getting more expensive also. For instance the steed members of guild level 25 can buy using guild status (40% speed bonus), costs 6 platinum, the guild level 30 steed (or flying carpet, 48% speed bonus) costs already 66 platinum. It takes time and effort to accumulate that much, so a little bigger influx than outflux is justified, with keeping in mind, that the money goes poof once the player buys his status steed. All money I made so far in this game in nine months is perhaps 50 platinum, 30 of which I spent.
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Carolus Rex
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Sweden
Jan 1970
time: 06:37
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The question is whether the quantity theory of money was deliberately put in the code or if it actually manifested itself within the game (some economists do not believe in the theory)...
Carolus
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Carolus Rex
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Sweden
Jan 1970
time: 06:37
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quote:
Originally posted by Sir Ralph
By the way, who wants to read a true duping story, written in a rather entertaining style, could enjoy this link.
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It seems that MMORPGs are the games to be hooked on...
Carolus
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12-08-2005 22:50
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