2 Million Gold for the Spider Mount - will Legion have controlled inflation?

[Raiju]

Except very few players will buy to resell - the casual majority who don't go to forums certainly won't. It's a moot point from the start. Many people won't afford the more expensive post-removal mount even if they knew about it or were interested in it.

This change does absolutely NOTHING for them.

[risingforce]

In the EU the token sells for 85k right now. 2 milion/85k*20 €uro = 470 €uro for the mount. That's completely crazy.

Is it crazy? Mythic raid boosts go for several million Gold, many TCG pets run into the millions of Gold.

Ask yourself this: is it OK that someone can spend a lot of Gold/$$$ in a game for their enjoyment? The answer is yes. These are aesthetic items for those that have a lot of Gold.

Now ask yourself this: is it OK that you don't have that much Gold/$$$? If your answer is no then cool, either (1) get into the position of selling Boosts/CMs/Mythic+ or (2) grab TSM and start crafting or (3) buck up and purchase the Tokens; because anyone who has that much Gold has done all/either or has gone beyond those three points to get that much Gold, and it is completely fine if they want to spend that much Gold on whatever the **** they want to.

As for inflation, I hope that Blizzard maintain inflation, and not skyrocket it within Legion... doing so would ruin the AH markets.

[Fyersing]

Except very few players will buy to resell - the casual majority who don't go to forums certainly won't. It's a moot point from the start. Many people won't afford the more expensive post-removal mount even if they knew about it or were interested in it.

This change does absolutely NOTHING for them.

It absolutely does something for them, it makes the gold they currently have more valuable, which affords them with the opportunity to actually participate in their server economies (in any manner and with as much determination, or lack thereof, they so choose) more effectively than they would without deflation mechanisms.

It's easier for someone with 18,000g to actually make money as a Tailor if buying 1,000 x [Sumptuous Fur] costs them 1,500g than it would be if the same [Sumptuous Fur] cost them 3,000g. If there weren't deflation mechanisms, by now, raw materials would likely be hitting 4-5g ea. and this number would be exponentially growing... such that the same person, sitting at 18,000g in an expansion or two, would be forced to spend 50% of his total gold value to just buy the raw materials for a Stage 1 crafted item.

You can't give gold to the poor. It's not fair.
You can't take gold from the rich. It's not fair.

You can take measures to ensure the purchasing power of each individual measurement of your currency, in this case a single gold piece, is as high as possible -- which is done by having the lowest possible number of said currency in circulation at any given point in time. This is what deflation is and why it's important.

[Raiju]

Your given deflation mechanism doesn't apply because the rich do not need to lower prices for the majority because they are profiting on the side. Your example is going to take VERY VERY VERY LONG before it has any real effect on the economy - since the money the rich poured into those vendor items will sell slowly after the fact.

Coupled with this is the fact WE DO NOT NEED TO WORRY ABOUT INFLATION. It's a single currency game, and it's a number. It's completely fine to add inflation to a) promote doing new content over old content, b) allow new players to catch up to old players and take part in the economy. You don't need to drain as much - and the impact of your drain will be much slower due to these reasons (unless you make the items considered mandatory - but that would be a scumbag move)

[Kryos]

Spectral tiger sells for almost twice the price of that stupid spider on EU.. 2 million is nothing.

Players are not NPCs. Their gold does not get removed from the game. The price is also not fix but based on agreements between buyer and sellers. Bad comparison is bad.

[Socialhealer]

Players are not NPCs. Their gold does not get removed from the game. The price is also not fix but based on agreements between buyer and sellers. Bad comparison is bad.

yet loads of people have made this comparison, maybe it's just you in denial, i think his comparison is perfect, i think your view is plain ignorance.

[Aceveda]

What's really funny is that the devs don't care about inflation. Watcher said the 2mil mount was not intended to be a real gold-sink. And grey L110 items in the alpha sell for as much as 113g.

Wtf? So everyones getting rich in Legion?

[Rotted]

do you have every gladiator mount? i have none, why because a mount is on a vendor are you instantly entitled to it? there will be nearly 400 mounts in the game with the addition of legion why because 1 is ultra expensive are you crying that it's a cash grab?

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and? swift spectral tigers on EU are running around 2-3million already, why don't you get angry at those? call those a token scam cash grab.

I kinda have to agree with the guy your quoting.

2 million is sheer madness.

I wouldn't compare a gladiator mount to the spider either. The gladiator mount requires extreme hard work, and massive time sinks to develop your character to that point, you have to the best of the elite. The spider requires time investment in gold, lets say for example garrisons, its time wasting but its simple, granted everyone can get it, buts its still different.

It's not really "warcraft" is it? the game shouldn't be gold orientated to purchase luxury items. Don't get me wrong, it shouldn't be cheap either, but as a vendor item it shouldn't just be obtainable to a handful of people on each server.

All this being said, 'm 99% sure this is just a placeholder price, and on launch it'll be cheaper

[Schizoide]

Not really.

Any/all gold spent at a vendor is aiding in the deflation process. What Schizoide's concept, that of having a mount vendor whose products are only available for an extremely limited timeframe, would do is allow players to spend some amount of gold (ex. 100,000g) with the expectation that because the mounts will eventually become completely unavailable their value will simply increase over time and they will be able to sell it for more than they bought it.

Which is fine, because even though they're going to make 100,000g-250,000g from the sale of this item to another player it still took 100,000g out of the overall economy when they initially purchased it -- and every gold that leaves the economy, theoretically, increases the purchasing power of every single remaining gold still in the economy.

Exactly right-- and in my scenario, the Bind on Equip mounts cost 1 million gold, not 100k. I've got 5 million or so myself, and if this was done I would spend all my money on mounts, expecting to make a profit in the future.

But like you said, that profit doesn't matter-- the money I spent on these mounts will be removed from the economy permanently. That's the entire point. When you remove money from the economy it's deflationary-- the remaining money has more value. Even if relatively few people buy those 1 million gold mounts, every bit of money removed from the economy counters the destructive inflation from WoD garrisons.

Again I have 5 million gold, but I would never buy that 2 million gold spider mount. It's too expensive. So my money isn't being removed from the economy. Watcher said it wasn't intended as a gold sink so I guess... they succeeded?

From Watcher's comments, the devs are only considering ongoing goldsinks, like repair costs and auction house fees. Those could be dramatically increased at higher levels too, but that's unfairly harmful to people that don't have a lot of money. Super-expensive tradeable cosmetic items like mounts, available for a limited time, are completely fair. To this day I haven't heard a better solution to inflation than my own.

Probably because the devs are embracing inflation, which is /boggle-worthy.

[snackfeat]

All this being said, 'm 99% sure this is just a placeholder price, and on launch it'll be cheaper

Might wanna read the post where Watcher said it's not a placeholder and the price is not going to change.

A lot of people were excited to get this mount when it was datamined, but maybe this will show people that you should not automatically assume that you are going to get everything that gets added to the game.

The sooner the mentality of "I should get everything in the game cause I paid for the game" dies the better.

[Raiju]

Exactly right-- and in my scenario, the Bind on Equip mounts cost 1 million gold, not 100k. I've got 5 million or so myself, and if this was done I would spend all my money on mounts, expecting to make a profit in the future. But like you said, that profit doesn't matter-- the money I spent on these mounts will be removed from the economy permanently.

And has no effect on the current 'less rich' until you sell your mount and take the money from them. That's awfully slow when people coming back for legion need gold to be able to buy anything on the aution house vs the people who had *A* garrison in WoD. 'Sorry guys, let's all wait for this method to iron itself out because... well I don't know. Inflation is a bad thing because I said so.'

Neither of you have yet to give any valid example as to why THIS negates the need for inflation for new/returning players. It will take far too long for a speculative effect that may be far too little anyway. Any method relying on 0 inflation is going to absolutely suck for the people who don't have gold to drop until it sorts itself out, and ultimately only serves to give exclusives stuff to the current wealth (that a lot will just keep).

This is why we have 100g vendor items, 500g world quests, and likely why they knowingly haven't touched old raid farming this time around.

[rda]

Not necessarily. And you don't need to remove all the gold from the economy, just as much as possible.

For example, my suggestion is to create a vendor that sells very three cool, unique looking, bind-on-use mounts for 999,000 gold apiece and three bind-on-pickup color-variants of the same mounts for 100,000 gold apiece, then tell players that the mount vendor will be removed from the game on July 1.

People with "normal" amounts of gold will immediately buy the three 100k mounts, removing a large amount of their accumulated wealth from the economy.

People who borderline-exploited garrisons for gold like me, making many millions of gold, will also buy the three 100k mounts and then spend all their remaining gold on the 1 million gold mounts, because as they're being removed from the game, their value is sure to appreciate in the future. So the really rich players would remove all their gold from the economy too.

I believe this is the best way to outright fix gold inflation in WoW. Embracing inflation, as the devs are doing, is extremely foolhardy.

I agree this would remove a lot of the gold, but I'd rather things stayed as they are (even though I wasn't there to farm easy gold in garrisons in WoD and I don't have free 2 mil to spend on the mount). Because if they do what you suggest, I won't be able to get those mounts forever, and if they don't do it, I could farm 2 mil even if that's not going to be easy.

Maybe there's a different solution that both removes gold without creating things which others won't be able to get ever.

Or they can just increase all gold rewards in Legion by a factor of 10-15 and wash WoD gold away with Legion gold.

[Schizoide]

Raiju, this is not intended to be a flame or an insult, but your grasp on very basic economic theory is poor. Removing gold from the economy is inherently deflationary by definition. Deflation makes remaining money more valuable, again by definition.

Some inflation is a good thing, but WoD garrisons were disastrous, and embracing inflation by making grey items vendor for 113 gold is precisely the wrong direction by the devs.

@rda: There are other solutions, such as increasing currently existing gold-sinks for maximum-level characters. For example, they could charge 10 times as much to repair your gear. But that's inherently unfair to poor people. My idea for limited-time tradeable cosmetics removes money from the economy without penalizing the poor folks. (Except they can't get those mounts, obviously. But they're cosmetic only.)

They actually are increasing gold rewards in Legion; that's what I meant by 113g grey vendor items. Terrible, terrible design from the current WoW dev team.

[rda]

(Addition to #730)

Just saw "bind on use" - that's better than "bind on pickup", but I'd still prefer something different. "Bind on use" means I can't control whether I am going to get the mounts or not, the starts have to align as well (there should be sellers).

[Raiju]

Raiju, this is not intended to be a flame or an insult, but your grasp on very basic economic theory is poor. Removing gold from the economy is inherently deflationary. Some inflation is a good thing, but WoD garrisons were disastrous, and embracing inflation by making grey items vendor for 113 gold is precisely the wrong direction by the devs.

Noones arguing WoD was good - but this isn't an international economy based on balance income - it's INTENTIONALLY designed so the new thing is the best. This is why old profession methods are devalued in new expansions, and why every expansion has had this curve on vendor prices on items (60g+ items are common as it is)

WoD has to be fixed and the priority is to fix it for the people most affected - those who don't have garrisons. Gold sinks can be added after the fact but right now what we need is an instant fix, not a long term one.

To top it off, due to a single currency system in your eyes what actually are the downsides in having the levels of inflation shown? This isn't real world economy, afterall. My whole point is that real world economics (which my grasp is better than you may think, I just understand a lot of concepts don't apply here) are irrelevant when inflation is actually supporting a gameplay style that is healthy to the game.

[Schizoide]

@rda: There would be sellers, that's the whole idea. People spend the 1 million gold to buy the BoE mounts (removing that gold from the economy forever), then once the vendor is removed from the game they can be resold to other players for much, much more. They're investment vehicles (literally!).

@Raiju: My idea is an instant fix. Remember, the vendor is gone July 1. You've got 6 weeks to buy those mounts or lose your chance.

There are tons of downsides to inflation in a MMO. This is just off the top of my head.

Inflation makes the economy difficult to enter for new players and returning veterans. People that played the game since the beginning have much more money. The market sets prices based on supply and demand. This renders new and returning players desperately poor and unable to buy anything.

When I first started playing WoW, the 1k gold cost for an epic mount was extraordinary. By the end of TBC I had 60k gold to my name, and that was considered rich. Today, 60k gold is nothing-- I make ~17k/gold per day doing nothing but garrison and naval missions on 11 characters. If I quit WoW in TBC and came back today I wouldn't be able to buy jack squat. The economy would be closed to me.

It also completely breaks tradeskills. While leveling up, you might be able to sell a stack of copper ore for 20 gold. That's an unbelievable amount of money for level 10! As a new character, why in the world would you level blacksmithing when you could just sell the ore? So tradeskills are dead until max level. You also can't afford items in the auction house as upgrades as you level, and so on. The economy is closed to you.

[rda]

To top it off, due to a single currency system in your eyes what actually are the downsides in having the levels of inflation shown? This isn't real world economy, afterall.

I can name a few cons. Ie, if they increase gold rewards from Legion content and do nothing else, all gold rewards from before Legion are going to be irrelevant. We have this situation with quests now, gold rewards coming from quests below Draenor / Pandaria are *completely* negligible, if you are leveling, you are going to make as much money as all your quests prior to 60 by selling 20 Goldthorn, this is broken, and with the change more things would be broken that way. There is a solution to this particular issue - they have to increase all gold rewards everywhere. This will in turn break some other things (and there are other cons, too), etc.

It's not too simple, but I think the amount of damage from WoD gold is so big, it might still be worth it (to increase all gold rewards come Legion by something like 10x) with all warts.

[Raiju]

I can name a few cons. Ie, if they increase gold rewards from Legion content and do nothing else, all gold rewards from before Legion are going to be irrelevant. We have this situation with quests now, gold rewards coming from quests below Draenor / Pandaria are *completely* negligible, if you are leveling, you are going to make as much money as all your quests prior to 60 by selling 20 Goldthorn. This is broken. There is a solution to this particular issue - they have to increase all gold rewards everywhere. This will in turn break some other things (and there are other cons, too), etc.

This has always been the case, and has always been intentional.
@Schizoide the entire game is intentionally at max level, new players are raced to max level where the new content is and they are on a level playing field to long time players, not trying to compete with people who have all the old expansion stuff that will take them forever to attain. Top heavy inflation is only a benefit to hte new/returning players, as it lowers the value of the gold we had prior.

It's not an instant fix, I don't see why you don't get that. It's an instant fix for total gold in the economy, but the newbies wont feel the effects for months because they won't be able to afford the mounts for al ong time (if at all) and can only hope to be affected by overall lowering of auction house prices caused by the medium rich buying the mounts and therefore buying things at lower cost. For all this they are near guaranteed to lose out on exclusive items to *eventually* be able to compete in the market. The only benefit that was gained from this is the average gold amount is lower, but we can all agree that that's a fairly arbritrary number that blizzard can simply scale new patch/expansion prices to compensate for.

If you had come back in legion, you'd level up in legion and do world quests for your 10's of k's and be able to compete in the market. You can be as good a gatherer as anyone, or you can farm old raids provided you get that tip, or you can simply sell everything you get on the AH and start targeting small markets first.

[Schizoide]

This has always been the case, and has always been intentional.

Perhaps. With the devs embracing inflation with 113g common vendor items, perhaps. It wouldn't be the first boneheaded decision they make god knows. /Shrug.

[rda]

This has always been the case, and has always been intentional.

I think this was collateral damage, not intentional.

(They just talked about leveling being broken, btw. This doesn't mean much, because that's just talk, but if they actually fixed some of leveling, fixing gold rewards / professions during leveling would be much appreciated.)