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May 23

Fantasy Hyperinflation?

on the subject of MMORPGS, I always wanted to ask: how does the game designers deal with inflation of the ingame currency? Since all the quests are generating cash out of the ether, how does the system deal with constant increase in the amount of money in the game and not turn into the sci-fi version of Zimbabwe? i do not think a player would be pleased if he suddenly found his treasure trove suddenly becoming worthless. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.240.189.90 (talk) 05:22, 23 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There's talk of money sinks. Here's an article comparing money supply expansion in the real world with that of MMOGs. Tempshill (talk) 06:19, 23 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Spending unrecoverable money on training your skills makes it vanish back into the ether. In RuneScape, the Construction skill used to build a swanky house with gold-leaf-covered furniture, opulent silk curtains and a dungeon with a dragon in it. It's is ludicrously expensive and offers little way to re-obtain your money through use of the skill itself. Vimescarrot (talk) 10:12, 23 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wear and tear on equipment can also be a good way of removing wealth from the game. In particular it deals with the issue of there being enormous amounts of the starting equipment in circulation. --Tango (talk) 10:37, 23 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Merchant festivals/auctions with unique items every so often helps to remove surplus coinage as well. -- Legeres (talk) 11:18, 23 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oh - and don't forget death. Different MMO's handle it differently, but for many the punishment does, in some way, result in monetary loss - losing items, skills or abilities which took money to gain. Avoiding death itself may also cost money, in the form of health-recovering potions or food (especially if bought from NPC stores, where the money once again vanishes, as opposed to trading with players, where it just moves around). Vimescarrot (talk) 17:49, 23 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Players quitting effectively removes money from the game, too, if they don't give it away. Vimescarrot (talk) 17:50, 23 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You can have a value sink in NPCs. Items used in quests, trades, sales to shopkeepers (who are convenient but pay below-market rates), etc. all take value out of the system. If there's a glut of a certain item, people will also tend to drop them rather than bother picking them up, so when the game disappears dropped items, value is removed from the system. -- 128.104.112.106 (talk) 18:45, 26 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]