Thursday 11 January, 2007

Alright, well after more naxx raids and continued playtime perhaps it is best to address how World of Warcraft handles its economy. Generally I think this is one of the largest downfalls in MMO design. On a broad view WoW does a fairly good job of building and regulating an economy. However on a more from a more microeconomic view, there were some seriously stupid decisions made. Ill go into more detail on at least one of those decisions later. Another important aspect of any MMO economy is how the developer addresses the issue of third party companies attempting to turn an REAL LIFE profit via farming gold, items, and resources and selling them on the web for in-game delivery. WoW does a pretty poor job, as to most of the MMO's at this. However, the Bind on equip/ pickup system is one of Blizzards best decsions on helping to regulate the economy and the strongest tool against the third parties. This makes the third party unable to sell very many useful ITEMS, not to be confused with their ability to sell gold. The farmers / gold sellers occasionally find loops in the system and find a way to dominate the economy, but generally its pretty short lived due the fact that blizzard will close the loophole with the next patch. But enough about that.

One of the huge flaws in game design can be found in profession known for being good at making money . . . Herbalism. Why is Herbalism good? because it can farm dreamfoil. Dreamfoil is a endgame herb that is pretty much used in every single potion a caster in WoW will want to use, not to mention its used in all of the Greater "blank" Protection potions. So when I go out to pick my herbs, I don't ever go to a zone where I can't find dreamfoil. As a druid, the rate at which I will go through the stuff is crazy. Here is a list of some of the most popular consumables a healer would want to use on a hard raid.

Major Mana Potions*
Greater Dreamless sleep potions*
Mageblood potions*
Flask of Distilled Wisdom*
Major Healing potion*
Greater (fire,frost,poison) Protection potion*
Dark rune
Greater mana oil
Some food that will give you a buff

Alright, consumables marked with a * are made by alchemists, who are the people that use 95% of the herbs in the game. Of those marked, here is the ones that need dreamfoil to me made

Major Mana pots
Greater Dreamless Sleep
Mageblood
Flask of Distilled Wisdom

So as you can see dreamfoil is nearly everything that I would make for personal use on a raid. That is unnecessary, and has lead to nothing more than an increase in the prince in G it takes to raid. I hope there is not an equivalent to dreamfoil or mistakes in other professions in the upcoming expansion. Fixing these issues would really help the overall economy of WoW.

Nice gamelog, with a lot of fine-grain detail.

I'm unclear as to why you think that dreamfoil is a design flaw. One challenge that MMOs have is finding reasons for players to have to trade with each other. Blizzard has complete control over the source code, and so in theory could just give each player (via appropriate source code) exactly what they need. But, then the player's wouldn't need to trade to get dreamfoil.

Tying this back to the lectures, this feels to me like a "rule as limitation" in that the need for dreamfoil creates challenges for the player.

So, is the limited availability of dreamfoil really bad game design?

A good game log.

I found this a bit hard to read. Despite having 8 million subscribers worldwide, not everyone plays WoW. You did a pretty good job defining terms except towards the end of your first post. Anyway, This is very indepth description of your guild's work raiding. It has a few interesting points about what makes rade content interesting. I think you were on the right track with your discussion of the economy. It is a big issue of design and a very hot topic. What do you think Blizzard should do in order to have a success economy and avoid the pitfall that many MMOs fall into?

Really? What server are you on... Dreamfoil on BDF and SS goes for like... 20 for 2g.

Thunderhorn and Greyman. Min of 12-15g a stack for DF on both.

I think the expansion, which recently came out, provides a good chance for blizz to fix some of their economic issues. Things I have noticed thus far.

The previous endgame herbs(dreamfoil, sansamn, and so on) have continued to spawn in outland.

Making gold has also become much much easier, In the two days its been out I have made nearly 200g, simply by running the two new instances and selling the trash greys, and the greens. Its hard to say at this point what will become of the economy. My guess is it stays about the same. One thing is apparent, they are trying to make better gear availiable to what blizzard claims to be the average player, who they define as a person not in a raiding guild. I don't know, or at this juncture want to predict, what raising the average gear level will do to the economy.

As far as coding/technical ways to fight the third parties.... Well I am not an experienced coder so I can't really thing of a very technical way to fight it. However I think in the long run the bind on equip/pickup system is the best defense. If you look at historical examples such as D2:LoD (Diablo 2, The Lord of Destruction) where no gear ever bound to a player and hence could be traded infinite amounts of time, the third party sellers made a killing off finding items and selling them. Or as I suspect, generating hacked/duped items and selling them. Really I don't think its possible to stop the third parties, the best defense is to use a binding system, and ban as many of their accounts as possible. Making their overhead higher, and lowering profits.