The effects of Acquisitiveness

[Pandalet 1,848]

I really like that Wurm takes a mature approach to folks selling stuff they've invested a load of time into.  Most MMOs try to ban real-world-money sales, mainly because it's not the MMO operator making the cash; Wurm says that, in as much as possible in this legalistic modern world, stuff you've invested a load of time into is yours to dispose of as you wish.  I think that shows a massively more mature and sensible approach than, say, Blizzard.

 

Folks who step in on day 1 and throw a huge wad of cash into having the best possible stuff (i.e. pay-to-win) really don't affect me, or, in fact, the rest of the PvE folks.  There are never going to be very many people like this, so the market distortion is minimal, and really, for most intents and purposes on PvE, red dragon scale (€300) works about the same as 90QL studded leather (can be had for 2-3s).  So really, it's just paying for bragging rights.  The only way that affects PvE folks is if you get butt-hurt about it ("why can't I have shiny red armour?  It's not fair!").

 

PvE-land would be affected if the massive influx of funds was causing land to become artificially scarce (a small number of people were placing and paying for massive deeds, taking up all the space) or prices for basics (like tool enchants) became inflated.  In the latter case, the problem would solve itself over time, as how many enchanted tools does any one person need, and if the prices are high, more sellers will get on stream, increasing supply and lowering the prices.  If shortage of land became that much of an issue, it's likely that new servers would be opened (after all, the level of income would have gone up dramatically).

 

For PvP, it's a slightly different matter.  There, throwing huge amounts of cash at the game could result in some people being much harder to beat.  I don't play PvP, so I don't really know how much of an impact this would be - my understanding is that even the best-equipped and skilled char can be taken down by a large enough group with good planning, so people buying lots of expensive shinies and wandering around chaos are really just giving the other kiddies a chance to acquire said shinies without paying for them.

 

At the end of the day, if your problem with people paying lots of real-world money for pretty things is that you ground hours and days and weeks in game and didn't get the goods, but they paid some real cash on day 1, and so they "got them without working for them", then the problem isn't the system or the P2W'er...the problem is that you're jealous of someone else, and you need to get over that.  I don't think Rolf et al should be working to maintain the high-value-rare market (so the current dragon drops are basically pointless - speculators in high-value stuff go in knowing the risks), but I also don't think they should work to stop people trading items, gold and chars for real-world funds.

[scottfree 32]

My take on the economy .. the amount of time/effort required to make a large (ships f'r example) or high level item is no longer repaid by a fair price, so not worth the bother any more.