Economy

[Hawkk]

I am curious as to what you beta-testers think the economy is going to be like in WoW.



What I mean is; will the economy be like it is in EQ, where you have to be a Trade-skill Freak, Bazaar Tycoon or in a high-end guild for the high priced sellable items, or do Quests / Mob-drops actually give appreciable monetary gains?



I am frequently penniless in EQ, and I was hoping that the casual player would be able to make some respectable coin by completing quests or while killing exp mobs.



Or, better yet, perhaps currency does not maintain the same level of dependency in WoW as it does in EQ???








Hawk (http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=157828)
Companions - Veeshan
</p>

[Lenardo]

quests give appreciable monetary gains and equipment that sells for a decent amount.





HOWEVER the tradeskiller - blacksmith type especially- will be the ones with the most money



right now i am a herbalist/alchemist/skinner



what does that mean



herbalist is just gathering herbs- they spawn on the ground you harvest them- they sell for decent money



alchemists make potions from the herbs- they sell for decent money



skinners harvest skins from animals for other tradeskills to use - leatherworking tailor engineer etc etc. - leather Esp the higher end leathers sell for Good money



also if you get a "crap" item you can sell to the npc mercants and remove that item from the game. unlike eq where the npc's keep track of what they bought and can resell them npc merchants in wow,,,do not resell.



also merchants in wow have Rare items that they will sell on occasion. rare armor weapons etc....






Brother Lenardo Draconis

65th Transcendant of the Celestial Fists

The First Seal

The Nameless

Magelo ('http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=329805')</p>

Are there continual money sinks [where it is actually removed from game] or does money just continue to build up like the EQ economy?


What I Was in the World (http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=195825)

Where I Was in the World (http://www.raarcentral.com)</p>

[Lenardo]

skills/talents/equipment = money sinks



for my shaman i had a gold and a half when i leveled and got some new spells (15th to 16th level i think)



by the time i bought my SPELLS - i was down to 5 silver.


Brother Lenardo Draconis

65th Transcendant of the Celestial Fists

The First Seal

The Nameless

Magelo ('http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=329805')</p>

[Lenardo]

until a game definitively stands up and sues, they will "look the other way"



ige is going to go bigtime into wow- i'll tell you that right now



the problem is the devs of all the mmo games are afraid they will LOSE the case, thus ignore the problem- a few have gone so far as to offer it themselves.





recources for the tradeskills are important.


Brother Lenardo Draconis

65th Transcendant of the Celestial Fists

The First Seal

The Nameless

Magelo ('http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=329805')</p>Edited by: <A HREF=http://pub147.ezboard.com/bmonklybusiness43508.showUserPublicProfile?gid=len ardo>lenardo</A> at: 3/22/04 1:06 pm

New skills and talents are amazingly expensive. At level 7 on my new Rogue I already have stuff costing 2 silver, which at level 7 can be hard to come by to get all of your skills. <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/smile.gif ALT=":)">


Corsec</p>

[Hawkk]

So I guess it won't be any different then EQ, oh well. Yay for the trade skillers.



Ok, more questions....



How likely is it going to be that as soon as the game goes gold PlayerAuction and its ilks will be selling items/coin?



And



Has there been anything said by Blizzard if they are going to actually take action against those type of "businesses"? (Not that I have a problem with those type of things, but they do tend to screw with the player economy alot.)






Hawk (http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=157828)
Companions - Veeshan
</p>

If its anything like the other "mining drivin economy" games you probably wont see gold being sold, but resources.



Though I'm sure the currency will be sold aswel, reguardless as to blizzards stance on it.


</p>

[Fendryl Istalindir]

I don't think the right way to combat IGE & such is through the EULA/TOS, nor in a court of law. There's really no way to fully control what people do in real life and how that affects what they do in game.



There's a relatively simple route to put IGE & other ingame sellers out of business though, and that's to do it yourself. Who are you going to trust to not rip you off when you try to buy 10,000,000 gold in UO, some company on the web, or OSI themselves? Who are you going to trust to broker a character transfer in EQ, some company based offshore in god-knows-where, or SOE?



I'm sure there's some hitches involved with putting such a system in place, although OSI made some strides in that direction, I'm not sure why they ever stopped. There's most likely some ugly tax/income issues or something.


----

[65 Maestro] Fendryl Istalindir (http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=448810) <Acervatim Amicitiae (http://aa.servehttp.com/AA/)> - Tarew Marr

[65 Transcendent] Fant (http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=62715) <Acervatim Amicitiae (http://aa.servehttp.com/AA/)> - Tarew Marr



"When you're great, people often mistake candor for bragging." - Calvin

"Manners don't cost anything extra" - Mom</p>

Hm, that's a sort of fun system.



Have it so that blizzard offers to sell goods for 90% of what IGE is charging. Don't even bother looking at the individual sales. 20% of the time they buy the item from IGE losing some of their profit margin (in order to stop dummy listings). They of course destroy the item because they can create anything they need for free. It doesn't destroy IGE, but it does mean they are always competing with a competitor they can't possibly beat.




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[Takkon Smakafu]

In Everquest, time is money. A common and viable arguement that I've seen is that it would take less time to work at a real job and earn the money to buy X amount of platinum than it would to mindlessely farm that X platinum ingame. It's a dreary task that very few people enjoy.



I see Warcraft as eliminating much of the need for that. Perhaps if the game itself is more fun and involved, then less people would be so driven to bypass it.



-Takkon


</p>

Here's a question I haven't been able to find a good answer for yet. Can someone explain the exchange rates for currency in WoW and list all known currency so far? Like is 10s = 1g, etc..



I'm really curious, because I've seen several people say that 30g is alot of money. What is it about the economy that gives such a low amount of coins so much buying power?


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[Arlos]

100 copper = 1 silver

100 silver = 1 gold



Last night, fighting L37 elite mobs, their coin drops were anywhere from 40 copper to not quite 8 silver. Split that 5 ways, and you can see that money from coin drops doesn't accumulate that fast.



I am a L28 paladin right now, and I have just about 8 gold all told. When I turn L30, just buying my spells will cost 4 gold. The single most expensive item I've ever sold was a 2h mace that went for about 3.5 gold. Most expensive stuff I've ever SEEN sell went for 30 gold or so. I believe the richest folks, those who're L30 and are farming tons of items and selling them or making them with tradeskills have on the order of 200 gold.



While Len is right, people who do tradeskills can stand to make a good amount of money, it's not as easy as you might think, due to the interdependence among tradeskills.



For example: I recently got the plans to make a pretty good dagger, the Deadly Bronze Poniard. Completed ones sell for 80s - 1g or so. Not too bad for something I can make myself, right? Well, the problem is the components. I need 2 different types of ore that must be mined, smelted, then smelted together, I need a swiftness potion which has to be made by an alchemist from items gathered by herbalism, I need medium leather which you get from someone who's got the skinning skill, and I need a rare gem which can come from mining, but is just that: damn rare.



There's no way any one person could have all of the necessary tradeskills to get all the components themselves, since they just couldn't have enough skill points, and even if they did (once the level cap goes up), the time it would take would be large. So, you need to work with other tradeskillers and buy THEIR products in order to make your own. Some of the rarest components for the highest end items run into the multiple gold each themselves. (Jade is a good example, seen 1 jade sell for 8 gold.)



So, again, while high end tradeskillers of the various disciplines can make very nice stuff, all the high end recipes I know of require a great deal of interdependence on other people, which certainly helps keep the economy moving.






-Arlos the Disciple (http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=333621)
Legacy of Steel (http://www.legacyofsteel.net)

http://www.legacyofsteel.net/images/sigs/arlos.jpg</p>

[Hawkk]

So are you saying that you can not do all the different rade skills (i.e. Fishing, Cooking, Smithing, etc....)?



Do you not gain skill points by doing the skills? I am a bit confused...






Hawk (http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=157828) - Veeshan</p>

Thanks Arlos, that was exactly what I was looking for. I was expecting a 50:1 or 100:1 ratio based on how people talked about it, much different from the 10:1 ratio I'm used to with EQ.



As a follow up question(s), you mentioned (and I had seen talk of it before) the interdependencies of the various tradeskills, how difficult is it to find someone selling what you're looking for (like your Potion of Quickness), and how in line are the costs in relation to the finished product? In other words, is it more economical to sell finished goods used in other tradeskills to players, or is it better to sell the raw goods to players instead?


</p>

From what I understand you do gain points from tradeskilling, however you have to actually purchase the training to be ABLE to gain skill ups.



This is one of the few things I don't like that I have heard about in WoW. I think that it will force people to level up alts in order to gain Tradeskill mastery... I hope that I misunderstand how the leveling system works but I'm afraid that I don't.


Homer (http://www.pusboil.com/magcman.wav)

http://www.angelfire.com/home/pearly/homer/homer_woo.jpg</p>

[Lenardo]

YOU GAIN points in the SKILL from doing the tradeskill



you get Points for Tradeskilling by Leveling



you get one skill point per level.



if something takes 3 skill points to train and you have zero, guess what you need to either give UP a tradeskill or you have to get 3 more levels.






Brother Lenardo Draconis

65th Transcendant of the Celestial Fists

The First Seal

The Nameless

Magelo ('http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=329805')</p>

Here's hoping they have built-in player stores or bazaar at launch.


<span style="color:red;">Ancil Mercurial

60 Rogue (formerly) of the Elitists

Tribunal Server (retired)</span></p>

When you initially train a skill (such as herbalist) it costs you 1 skill point, you gain 1 skill point per level (i think humans get an extra every 5). At a base level herbalist (apprentice) you can max at a skill of 75, EVERY TIME you successfuly forage something from a herbalist camp, or whatever you'd call it (like a silverleaf bush), you gain a skill up in it, forage 75 bushes, and you're capped.



Now im not sure if you have to be 75 skill, or level req for the second part (havent done much tradeskills), but then you buy the next level (journeyman), for 3? i believe skill points (3 levels worth of skill points, see it adding up?), which caps you at a skill of i think 150, after that is 225, or something.



Certain recepies (for blacksmithing, alchemy, ect) require certain skills to perform. Same goes for gathering, certain mine veins/herb bushes require higher skills to forage/mine from.



Gathering skills can technically 'fail', but if it does you just attempt again, i havent failed any gatherings since i broke a skill of 5 in herbalist.



Combining tradeskills *do not fail*, if you have the required skill, and the recipe, you will be able to make it. But as its been already stated, many items require multiple skills to do the combine, and you'll never be able to max them all.



As a note, the 'skill points' are also used in thing such as new weapon proficiencies (i used a skill point to train my warlock in 2hb), new languages i think, and alternate mounts, i dont think the languages or mounts are currently in beta, i haven't searched around enough.


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