A booming economy (and a lack of PvP) in the PotBS beta
The Pirates of the Burning Sea NDA lifted the other day when the beta went open, and so lots of bloggers are postingtheirownimpressions of the game (we at Massively got to postours a while back, but hey, we're cool like that). Tobold, though, has an interesting post up about a favorite subject of mine in the game: the economy and crafting system. Once again, you can read my thoughts in the crafting writeup from a while back, but Tobold says something I hadn't considered-- that it is extremely easy to raise a fortune in PotBS.
Or is it? Tobold says you can make a lot of money just by using your stored labor (which stores up in real-time-- my favorite innovation in the game), and right now, that's true. But having played the beta for a while, my prediction is that prices in starter and close-to-starter ports will drop pretty sharply after the game comes out. Right now, PvP is still in its infancy in the game (either because people are still learning how to do it, or because pirates haven't geared up yet to the point where they can really crush newbies). I was able to sail around the world to trade without any trouble at all. But in the live game, it'll become that much more dangerous to travel across the seas, and that will push the system to where FLS wants it: with PvP and the economy as two sides of the same paper.
Right now, it's easy to make a ton of money because money is moving fast around the world. When the game comes out, and the real pirates make their way to the open seas, the economy will fall much more into the pattern that FLS is trying to get it in: goods at home will be bought and sold cheaply, and to make the real production and trading money, you'll have to travel through dangerous waters and survive to sell at the other side.
