Economy reset for next expansion?

[Ryzael]

No they don't. Blizzard has never taken away gear or items for an expansion.

they just make it all worthless junk, which is essentially the same thing

[Magicuz]

maybe a gold split

[MrLachyG]

It's not just about consumables and repair costs. If you're a new or returning player, you can't afford to buy anything you actually want from another player. Gear better than the latest catch-up mechanism costs tens of thousands of gold. Pets start at thousands and cosmetics like mounts can cost hundreds of thousands. You're essentially priced out of the marketplace.

I know someone is gonna reply telling new players to get money the same way they did, gold WQs, gold missions, gathering professions, etc. And yes, of course they can grind it out and buy all but the most expensive items with hours of work. But that isn't much fun-- and players like me who have borderline exploited garrison missions since WoD have close to 10 million gold in the bank for damn close to zero effort.

So what do those new and returning players do? Well, they:

a) Grit their teeth and grind out money to buy the stuff they want.
b) Deal with it. Simply don't participate in the player-run economy at all.
c) Get frustrated, decide they hate it, and quit the game.
d) Real-money trading, sell gametime tokens for gold. But they'd have to spend $114 to make 1 million gold (at today's prices), so that gets expensive fast.

None of these options make the player happy.

So, yes. It is a real problem. The devs need to get rid of massively inflationary pressures, primarily gold rewards from follower missions, and remove the excess money from the economy.

you may well be right, but the solution is NOT to remove the gold that somebody has built up

[Chaelexi]

People with real gold don't "farm". Your post shows how much you know about it.

We do so farm, for the first 3 weeks of an expansion and make money off the idiots who spend large sums of gold on mats that will be cheap in 2 more weeks. Then it is back to farming the AH, there are so many dumb people that make it easy to make money

[azurrei]

It's time to expand the "unclaimed black market container" into new territory...absolute easiest, most effective gold sink Blizzard could implement is to finally add in loot crates to WoW. I HATE the concept of loot boxes in F2P games but if it is available for in game gold or $$$ like a bunch of other Blizzard games - it could be wonderful to combat inflation.

[Chaelexi]

It's not just about consumables and repair costs. If you're a new or returning player, you can't afford to buy anything you actually want from another player. Gear better than the latest catch-up mechanism costs tens of thousands of gold. Pets start at thousands and cosmetics like mounts can cost hundreds of thousands. You're essentially priced out of the marketplace.

I know someone is gonna reply telling new players to get money the same way they did, gold WQs, gold missions, gathering professions, etc. And yes, of course they can grind it out and buy all but the most expensive items with hours of work. But that isn't much fun-- and players like me who have borderline exploited garrison missions since WoD have close to 10 million gold in the bank for damn close to zero effort.

So what do those new and returning players do? Well, they:

a) Grit their teeth and grind out money to buy the stuff they want.
b) Deal with it. Simply don't participate in the player-run economy at all.
c) Get frustrated, decide they hate it, and quit the game.
d) Real-money trading, sell gametime tokens for gold. But they'd have to spend $114 to make 1 million gold (at today's prices), so that gets expensive fast.

None of these options make the player happy.

So, yes. It is a real problem. The devs need to get rid of massively inflationary pressures, primarily gold rewards from follower missions, and remove the excess money from the economy.

Here is the thing, no matter what you do there are ways to that someone will get ahead in the market place. Go back to vanilla where me a 3 guildies ran the AH completely on Laughing Skull(US), at that time we had close to a 100k each and Olgal had multiple characters with max gold.

[wrynil]

You don´t need skll for farm gold, just time, you hability to be efficient is other thing. But anyways i understand the players who took his time for farm gold, but i just thought that would be more fun if all players start at the same level.

Being a good trader IS A SKILL...

[rogoth]

Here is the thing, no matter what you do there are ways to that someone will get ahead in the market place. Go back to vanilla where me a 3 guildies ran the AH completely on Laughing Skull(US), at that time we had close to a 100k each and Olgal had multiple characters with max gold.

i was the same back in wrath with the frost lotus market and flasks, sadly those days are long gone, and i feel like it's harder to maintain a specific gold threshold if you plan to buy something expensive while it is easy to make gold for general day to day expenses like repairs/consumables etc.

[Guyv3r]

We do so farm, for the first 3 weeks of an expansion and make money off the idiots who spend large sums of gold on mats that will be cheap in 2 more weeks. Then it is back to farming the AH, there are so many dumb people that make it easy to make money

True. Still it's not farming. AH managing is more like smart investing than farming.

[Moose184]

Just send your Champions on Gold missions. I'm making over 100k a week without hardly putting any work in

[Cerus]

The WoW economy is a mess and Blizzard doesn't even hire people to fix it.

The economy can be fixed, but the gold flow would have to be cut substancially. This means those with alot of gold would be benefiting the most. If you reset it, they would lose the most.

So, the only possible way to de-inflate it is to make a % cut to all accounts along with the new economy infrastructure.

Another possible way is to get the tokens out of the gold market and create a new in-game currency for it.

How is it a mess and why would they hire people to fix it? Economies are living, breathing things. Players decide what value to place on the things they feel they need.

[Schizoide]

Here is the thing, no matter what you do there are ways to that someone will get ahead in the market place. Go back to vanilla where me a 3 guildies ran the AH completely on Laughing Skull(US), at that time we had close to a 100k each and Olgal had multiple characters with max gold.

Playing the AH doesn't add money to the economy-- in fact, due to AH fees, it removes a little bit. Therefore it is not inflationary.

The problem isn't individual rich players. The problem is the amount of money in the economy. The more money you print the less it's worth.

[Megas Elekmatos]

No. Ever. Punishing those who earned what they have in-game would be a prick move from a developer's standpoint.

[Daedius]

12 pages on such a retarded idea... -.-;

[Schizoide]

What you need to do is remove money from the economy in a progressive way, so you take money from the super-rich but don't screw over the poor. That's very simple to do.

1) Add a vendor to the game, selling 3 unique, very cool-looking BoE mounts for 1 million gold apiece.
2) Tell players the vendor will be removed from the game in 60 days and those mounts will never, ever, be purchasable or obtainable again by any means.
3) There is no #3, that's it.

This will cause all the rich people to buy the mounts and hoard them, because prices on awesome looking no longer obtainable mounts will inevitably increase over time and they'll make a profit. That's good, because when you buy something at a vendor that money leaves the game permanently. And basically, problem solved. If inflation becomes a problem again tell the artists to cook up 3 cool-ass mounts and do it again.

[Allenseiei]

Gear resets and gold resets, what's next?

[Marrilaife]

Gear resets and gold resets, what's next?

Level resets a.k.a. level squish or "WOW2" ideas, already have these around here... And authors of these keep returning back and back and back... Even though it's pretty obvious if you break the trust of players their time, effort and subs went into "something" they'll be much less inclined to put effort, time and money into such a game.

Why do you think Blizzard is shy to perma ban botters and cheaters these days, they are reluctant to get rid of a paying subscriber even if his actions are dubious and detrimental to the game. Now imagine people who are "model citizens", the farmers, the traders, the investors. They're the staple around the year sub while Johnny cyclical pops in and out, leaves maybe 2-3 monthly sub bills on the table per year and doesn't give you much guarantee he'll even be back because maybe new "wow killer" is being released next month (yeah we all know how they ended).

[ComputerNerd]

The only reason some can take advantage of the in-game economy is because many aren't.