inflation
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The Daily Grind: Are black market auction houses a good idea?
With World of Warcraft's upcoming Mists of Pandaria comes an interesting addition to the game: a black market auction house. This new type of auction house will allow Blizzard to post rare items from the game for bidding only (no buyouts), and is obviously intended to be a massive gold sink for those who have more money than sense on their hands. While the intent of the black market auction house is understandable, what it's selling has players hotly debating over whether this is a good idea or the spawn of Evil and Mrs. Evil. Raid gear, ultra-rare pets, and other hard-to-attain goods could become easily available for those with large pocketbooks. So let's put it to the bright minds at Massively Labs (that's you): Are black market auction houses a good idea? Is Blizzard setting a trend here or cutting its own feet out from under it? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Taking charge of your gold in the first days of Mists of Pandaria
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Fox and Basil's reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! The first few days of an expansion are a little like the wild west. This week, Gold Capped received an email about these first days: I love your column on WoW Insider. It's been an eye opener for me on just how easy it can be to make some serious gold. That said, I didn't discover it until well after Cataclysm had launched, and so my question to you is; what were the first few days of the Cataclysm launch like economically, and what do you think I can expect from Mists of Pandaria? I had a blacksmith at the time of the Cata launch, and I remember spending exorbitant amounts of gold on ore/bars (he wasn't a miner). Is it a situation where, for the first few days, farming actually is worth doing, or are goods still worth making then? I have a bunch of 85s, all with worthwhile trade skills, and I'm just wondering what the best way will be to capitalize on the newness of the expansion. The first few days of every new expansion, including Cataclysm, were a little crazy. The first thing you need to prepare for is the hyperinflation. Everyone will have more money, and they will all be spending it. Nothing gets people spending their savings like a new expansion. Pets will be battleable, new glyphs will be available, and everyone will be leveling professions. All this new demand is going to overwhelm the farmers, and for a while at least, the only cheap way to get materials will be to farm them yourself.
Sticker Shock drives home the reality of price inflation
If you're one of those who lament that things cost a lot more now than they did five, 10 or 50 years ago, you can keep track of exactly how much your costs have changed using Sticker Shock. Create lists of items you commonly use or pay for, like a gallon of milk or your electricity bill, and then track its cost over time by adding different price points. You can break it down into a graph or a running list of changes. It's a good supplement to your budget if you want to predict how much costs could change in the immediate future, but it's also a useful app for journalists and researchers who crunch this sort of data on a regular basis. Sticker Shock is US$1.99 on the App Store.
Gold Capped: Legally buy gold with the Guardian Cub
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! If you buy a Guardian Cub with real money, you can sell it for in-game gold, effectively purchasing gold. If you're one of the millions of WoW players who are constantly cash-strapped in game, you now have the option of leaving the whole gold making process to others; simply buy a $10 pet that can be sold for gold on the AH. BOE gear, mounts, flying training, and alts are all expensive, and making money (playing the AH, doing dailies, selling valor point BOE gear, etc.) isn't the most fun use of some peoples' time. This change will be a welcome one for those who would rather spend the time needed to make $10 at their day job than hours grinding gold. Additionally, pet collectors who also play the gold making game will be able to get a pet from the pet store without having to lay out real money for it. So how much will these pets cost, anyway? The answer will vary from realm to realm, but one thing is certain: The demand for the pets will spike out of the door, then fall off a cliff as soon as enough people have one. Also, repeat business isn't any more likely than for other Blizzard Store items -- I almost never see people sporting their Lil' K.T or sparkle ponies these days, and I imagine that few people still pay real money for them. As the demand drops off, these will sell for less and less gold. The supply is directly related to the number of people buying them from the store for resale on the AH. This means that the more gold the cubs are worth, the more supply there will be. Eventually, as demand peters out, people will be less likely to buy them for resale. In short, if you want to buy gold without breaking the terms of service, get it while the getting is good. The gold per pet will go nowhere but down, unless Blizzard likes this system so much that it introduces more items like this.
Lost Pages of Taborea: Fixing the economy
I've got one more article concerning the current state of Runes of Magic's economy. To round out my trilogy, I'm taking a look at actual fixes to what could be seen as a broken mechanic. If the current inflation is indeed seen as something that is broken and could quickly damage the playability in RoM, then the fixes would likely be band-aids. It would take too long to rework an entire system filled with thousands of items, each affecting the other. The fix would also need to be implemented quickly. That puts some limitations on our speculations. What does the fix need to concentrate on? The problem seems boil down to the excess amounts of gold that can be hoarded -- hundreds and hundreds of millions can be saved up. It's also possible for high-level, well-geared players to accumulate gold rather quickly. In this week's Lost Pages of Taborea, I want to take a look at gold sinks (including one Frogster is testing), gold-caps, and some other ways to tame the economy.
Lost Pages of Taborea: Beating the economy
Last week, I expounded on Runes of Magic's current economic situation. Prices are crazier than the obligatory car salesman's, only in reverse. That is to say, prices are extremely high for everything right now. It doesn't stop the game from functioning, but it does put a lot of gear and upgrading tools out of reach for new and free players. This week in Lost Pages of Taborea, I want to look at a handful of ways that you can continue to enjoy RoM until the storm blows over (if it blows over). Even though prices seem out of hand, you can still get equipped well enough from new quests to start running dungeons. The minigames have been rejuvenated into farming grounds, thanks to the introduction of crimson stats. And even though it is often scoffed at, arena gear is an option for those willing to grind honor points or materials.
Massively Exclusive: ArcheAge's Jake Song on consensual PvP, inflation, and more
ArcheAge news has been a bit sporadic of late, and it's also been quite some time since we talked to the devs or took a spin through one of the game's closed beta phases. Like many of you, we're dying to know more about XL Games' forthcoming fantasy sandpark, so we went straight to the source to see if we could drum up anything new. Lead designer Jake Song was kind enough to field a few of our burning questions, and we're pleased to present you with another Massively ArcheAge exclusive that touches on everything from localization and story to consensual PvP and item decay. Join us after the break for that and more.
Lost Pages of Taborea: State of the economy
For months now, it's been no secret that Runes of Magic's economy has been out of whack. I've been sitting on this article, watching and waiting to see what would happen next. The assumption, of course, is that I think something will happen. I keep thinking that Runewaker, Frogster and RoM will align like stars to zap the economy back to its previous state, or that RoM's economy will act like a large, slowly deflating balloon, but nothing's happened for months. That's not to say the something that could happen will never happen. This period of severe inflation is a drop in the bucket compared to the life of the game. But what if the economy stays the way it is? I've stopped asking questions that pointed and started asking how this new economy makes sense. I don't think anything is more wrong with the economy now than it was before. Prices are higher, much higher, on everything. For some, that's enough of a problem, but is it a problem for the operation of RoM? In this week's Lost Pages of Taborea, follow me down the rabbit hole to see how the weird might actually be normal.
Gold Capped: Staying ahead of inflation
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the auction house. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him or tweeting him at @foxvanallen. Do you remember the moment you hit 1 gold for the first time? I do. I was killing mobs in Ashenvale, vendoring Light Feathers and other various trash drops. It was an epic moment. That first piece of gold felt like so much money. It wasn't a lot of money, of course -- it just felt like it. But still, it was worth a heck of a lot more than one piece of gold is worth today. The reason: Azeroth suffers from a constant state of hyperinflation. The purchasing power of 1g is always falling, and it's falling quickly. Thankfully, though, you don't have to stand by and be a victim.
The Anvil of Crom: Recessions, appearance tabs, and PvP for the returning player
Welcome to the Anvil of Crom, Conan fans. It's been a whirlwind couple of weeks, and all of the announcements, new content, business model changes, and general gameplay shenanigans are only going to generate more Age of Conan discussion as the summer wears on. This week I'd like to take a brief time out to highlight some worthwhile (and ongoing) community discussions. Every so often it's good to take a bit of a break from my rantings and ravings and hand the microphone to you guys, and what better way to do that than by examining a few of the more interesting forum discussions to be found on both the U.S. and EU boards. Without further ado, join me after the cut and add your two copper to the comment section.
Patch 4.2 PTR: Uncut green gems vendor price reduced
Blizzard has already reduced the vendor price for cut green gems (presumably to reduce jewelcrafters' propensity for vendoring the majority of every prospected stack of ore). While they left the uncut gems at 5g, it became much more profitable to shuffle all possible colors of gems into enchanting mats and blue jewlery. Well, the latest testing from the patch 4.2 PTR has reduced the price of uncut gems, too. On the live realms, they vendor for 100g a stack, leaving a decent vendor floor price for ore. Once this change goes live, they will be worth 50s each or 10g a stack. This should indeed have the desired effect of causing fewer of these to end up vendored for inflationary vendor money, with the potentially undesirable effect of making mining less profitable. Assuming you're transmuting, disenchanting, or otherwise making good use of 5 of the 6 colors of uncommon gems, this will likely not change your life much. You will make 10g instead of 100g when you vendor a stack of the borderline useless Zephyrite, but most of your money will be coming from the other activities. Also, you can still occasionally sell these to other jewelcrafters for their daily. Bottom line, though, is that the new "floor" price of Elementium Ore and Obsidium Ore is basically gone now. There are no more guaranteed sales, and if you flood a market (like enchanting mats) by processing thousands of stacks of ore, you can't count on any vendor based fallback to at least get you your money back. The news is already rolling out for the upcoming WoW Patch 4.2! Preview the new Firelands raid, marvel at the new legendary staff, and get the inside scoop on new quest hubs -- plus new Tier 12 armor!
Trading platinum for Station Cash items OK with EQII's Georgeson
EQ2Wire has an interesting tidbit regarding the exchange of platinum (EverQuest II's in-game currency) and items purchased with SOE's Station Cash. With players now able to gift Station Cash items, EQII vets wondered aloud on the game's official boards if trading some of their surplus plat for SC paraphernalia would lead to a ban. Surprisingly, EQII producer Dave "Smokejumper" Georgeson took a laissez faire approach to the discussion, in effect saying that players are welcome to the trades provided they're not facilitated by any third parties. "We really don't want to put a hard value on platinum to SC conversion rates, so we would probably only step in on this if we thought it was going to cause us legal headaches in the future. So...if kept on the low-down, it'll never cause problems. But if someone put up a website selling items officially with posted conversion rates, I have a feeling that legal might want to step in and stop it to avoid issues. Make sense? Keep it person-to-person and I don't think this will ever be an issue," he wrote. In addition to the exchange discussion, EQ2Wire's Feldon chimes in with a brief analysis of the game's economy and inflation troubles that's worth a read if you're thinking of heading back to the world of Norrath.
EVE Evolved: ISK sinks and faucets
In EVE Online's player-run economy, the flow of ISK is a vital concept. While there are many ways to make ISK in EVE, most of them only move it around from one player to another. When you mine ore and sell it on the market, for example, the mining process doesn't introduce any new ISK to the game. Only a few game mechanics can be called ISK faucets, as the game mechanics actually create ISK from thin air. Similarly, the ISK sink mechanics destroy ISK or remove it from the game in some manner. To the individual player, the difference between something being an ISK faucet or not is largely immaterial. When you sell something on the market for a few million ISK, or get the insurance payout on a lost ship, it doesn't really matter to you where that ISK came from. Where the concept really matters is in discussions on inflation and how the game chooses to reward us in PvE. Are ISK bounties and rewards always a good idea, or could their over-use eventually lead to runaway inflation? In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the various ways in which ISK flows in and out of EVE Online, and why we should care about inflation.
The cost of Apple's products, adjusted for inflation
A site called VoucherCodes recently tried to figure out if the $499 entry-level iPad really is as good a deal as many have claimed. They analyzed the cost of several of Apple's products, adjusted for inflation, and some of the results are pretty astonishing. The first Apple computer ever created, the Apple I, cost $666.66 in 1976. Adjusted to 2010 dollars, that Apple I would cost $2,540, which isn't too bad. But the Apple Lisa, Apple's first stab at creating a computer with a Graphical User Interface, cost $9,995 in 1983, or a staggering $21,745 in today's dollars. Sure, the GUI was a cool bit of innovation, over $20,000 for a personal computer? Comparing the iPad to previous Apple portables is even more interesting. Apple's first portable computer cost $6,500 in 1989 -- which would be almost $11,400 today -- while the $699 Newton from 1993 would cost nearly $1,050 in today's dollars. Most intriguing of all is that the first iPod, released for $399 in 2001, cost $488 in today's dollars. That's just $11 under the cost of the iPad, a device that has far more storage, processing power, and access to more features than the first iPod could even dream of only nine and a half years ago. Apple's handhelds are cheaper than ever, even when you bring inflation into the mix. Within my lifetime alone, computers have gone from luxury items and objects of curiosity, something people would have to save several months of paychecks in order to buy, to something people buy on a whim, for a week's pay, and carry around with them in their pockets. It's not surprising that the cost of computers has come down over time, but when charts like the one at VoucherCodes drive home just how much prices have dropped in terms of the real value of the US dollar, it's pretty amazing.
Ghostcrawler: "Players are going to freak when they see Cataclysm gear"
Ghostcrawler responded recently to a post asking about stat growth on items, and the results were pretty interesting. The player asked if Blizzard had any plans to cut back the stat growth on items before we reach +2000 spellpower, for example. GC had this to say: "They're just numbers. We don't think it starts getting scary until the human mind literally has trouble processing the digits. If your new staff has 152,420 spell power, well, yeah that's a mouthful. But if your new staff has 4000 spell power, the only thing that can really be freaking you out is that 4000 is just a really big number compared to the 100 spell power you might be used to. Automobiles used to cost hundreds of dollars instead of tens of thousands of dollars too.... :)" Well, sure, but what about in Cataclysm? With all those stat changes you guys talked about at BlizzCon, there has to be some surprises on the way when we see our first glimpse of Cataclysm gear.
Researching virtual economies to learn about real ones
Researchers are apparently using economies in virtual worlds like Everquest, EVE Online, and of course our own World of Warcraft to determine how real-world economies work, according to this article by Reuters. Scientists have, of course, used WoW to model real-world behavior before, but that was specifically for something biological, and thus there were quite a few differences between the virtual model and the real application. In economies, however, it's all just money and numbers, so researchers can easily see real patterns and movements in the data.Unfortunately, the article doesn't go too deeply into their results (and it only talks about their findings from Everquest), but there is one nugget of conclusion: the economists saw inflation spike in one server over 50% in just five months. They say that the population rose on the server, which apparently made some items hard to find, thus raising prices. Economists say they've seen that same thing in the real world before: in developing nations, and in war zones. We can probably see similar effects right around a patch, or even just on weekends. As more people run to the AH to buy certain items, inscriptions or enchants, the price on those is going to rise. Interesting stuff -- it would be cool to hear what other similarities these guys have found between the virtual world and the real.
DKP pitfalls and how to jump them
Kree's got a nice set of posts about some of the more advanced problems with a DKP system in his guild (he calls them pitfalls, which works very well as a metaphor). I've never been part of a really serious DKP system, but just like with any other economy, DKP can lead itself to imbalances if you aren't careful with how people are getting and spending points.Inflation is definitely a problem I've seen in other guilds -- usually, with DKP, you have a few very consistent raiders, and everyone else can fall behind. And eventually you get a few folks with tons of DKP, so much so that they can outspend everyone else and basically dictate how gear drops. Kree's solutions are good, though -- he offers up "point rot" (points devalue over time, so you can't save up tons of them at once), and a point cap (though even that can cause problems, as people are forced to spend DKP on gear they don't need rather than losing them). The other issues, collusion and upbidding, don't happen quite so often (both of those require players to be rather malicious, and in guilds where everyone knows which gear they should and shouldn't use, you don't usually have an issue), but he's got some good solutions there as well.DKP was designed to make sure passing out drops is fair, and Blizzard has put all sorts of rules and restrictions in the game to try and get raiders the gear they need without a lot of fighting. As long as your guild remembers that there's always more gear to go around and that no one piece is worth stealing or causing trouble over, a good, balanced DKP system can help you avoid these alligator-filled pitfalls pretty easily.
Making/Money: Auctioneer Wishlist
WARNING - MATH AHEAD! A few weeks ago, a reader e-mailed me with questions about some Auctioneer data that they have been collecting. Though the question was regarding trying to determine inflation patterns on their server, it got me to thinking about what Auctioneer actually captures. And what other data points would be most helpful in making evaluations of item pricing or looking into economic trending. While I'm not about to go through all of Auctioneer's algorithm rules, I would recommend that anyone who uses this mod check them out on Norganna's Wiki. They explain where the recommended prices come from. Basically, it's a comparison of the historical data accumulated from all of your auction house scans and the most recent snapshot data. The market value ends up being either the median of historical or recent data, flavored with the user-set preferences for markup or markdown.
Comcast jacking up cable rates 4.6% on average
Don't even think about saying we didn't warn you. Just as we expected at the first of the year, Comcast is gearing up to hike rates on unsuspecting cable customers, and it's consoling us all by stating that the increase is still well below the rate of inflation (wait, for real?). Beginning on November 1st, the carrier will be raising rates on most cable TV services, DVRs and HD STBs on the average of 4.6%. Interestingly, we're told that high-speed internet and digital home phone services won't see bumps, and neither will bundles. You know what that means? Bundle up or switch out.[Via ABC, image courtesy of Flickr; thanks Garst]
Forum post of the day: Using the Auction House properly
The economy in WoW has some interesting nuances. Players spend oodles of WoW gold on their crafting professions, and sometimes manage to turn a tidy profit. I'm often surprised to see some items that are strongly in-demand, like Light Feathers. Shrewd players use the auction house to build their bankrolls. Lomentari of EU-Draenor is exasperated with people who fail to use the auction house "properly." She is angry that other crafters are selling the same product she creates for several gold lower than her preferred price. The items are placed on the auction house en masse at the low low rate, which the original poster blames on Leather Workers skilling up. She feels powerless to do anything about her "massive money loss." The original poster is willing to accept small cuts in pricing, but has a hard time deal with steep declines in prices.
