Investment Banking in Wow

[Neverafter]

Blizzard has been known to put in various gold dumps to draw money out of the economy in the past. What if there was a way to take huge swaths of gold out of the market, albeit temporarily, while also giving players an incentive to do so?

Fizzle Brassbolts and Pozzik from their Speedbarge in Thousand Needles have amassed quite a large gold empire through their endeavors. Now, they have opened up the Investment Opportunity of Unified Gnomish and Goblin Gold, or the IOU. Located in Orgrimmar, Stormwind, Booty Bay, Gadgetzan, and Everlook, the IOU allows players to invest large quantities of gold for predetermined amounts of time. The longer you deposit your gold, the higher the rate of return, ie; depositing for a month may yield 1%, while 2 months may yield 2% (Conservative percentages, I know) Once your gold is deposited, you may withdraw it, but with a early withdrawal penalty.

To further play into the Goblin vs. Gnome mindsets, you can choose to invest with Fizzle or Pozzik. Fizzle, being a gnome, is generally more cautious and careful with his investments. Players will be guaranteed a positive return with Fizzle, so long as they don't withdraw their gold early, however, the return will be modest. Goblins, known for their volatility and risk taking offer substantially greater returns, but with the risk of losing part or all of your capital. Players who invest with Pozzik will have rates that fluctuate (possible tied to Activision-Blizzard's real world stock, ie, when ActiBlizz stock goes up, rates in game go up, when stock is down, rates are down).

This would give players with large amounts of gold an option to make even more gold, so long as they don't withdraw early or invest with Pozzik during a downturn in the economy. Large amounts of gold would be removed temporarily, some of the gold would be removed permanently through early withdrawals and economic forces. It would also give Blizzard the opportunity to add another level of immersion for players. They could even have areas of the IOU dedicated to NPC's who took out loans and were unable to repay and are taunted and beat up by goons.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Players who invest with Pozzik will have rates that fluctuate

This could work in a sandbox game like Ultima Online or EVE Online, but retail WoW isn't that. The most amount of "speculation" in WoW is items on the AH around a new patch release, and that's an optional activity engaged in by a small subset of the community that is very knowledgeable and has money to burn. Making this a more straight up obvious game mechanic that is going to be used by large swathes of people ignorant of how finances work wouldn't be a good design move, IMO. Most people are just going to lose due to things they perceived to be out of their control or be confused. People come home from work and play this game for fun. They shouldn't have to be doing extra homework or practically learning a second degree just to play a game.

[QUOTE=Neverafter;53443994](possible tied to Activision-Blizzard's real world stock, ie, when ActiBlizz stock goes up, rates in game go up, when stock is down, rates are down).

Terrible.

They could even have areas of the IOU dedicated to NPC's who took out loans and were unable to repay and are taunted and beat up by goons.

Stuff like this is fun.

[Triceron]

Any time NPCs are involved, it'd likely result in farming some random resource for rep. I don't think Blizzard would ever play around with the gold economy in such a way, and if they did I'm sure they could have made a Golden Saucer style casino long time ago.

[Twdft]

depositing for a month may yield 1%, while 2 months may yield 2%

So you want to play for free without doing anything. Earn a few gold caps, deposit and buy token from returns... yeah, not gonna get implemented.

[Neverafter]

Most people are just going to lose due to things they perceived to be out of their control or be confused. People come home from work and play this game for fun. They shouldn't have to be doing extra homework or practically learning a second degree just to play a game.

What homework? There's no homework to be done. You set aside a chunk of gold for a period of time. If you don't take it back, you get rewarded slightly. If you do take it back, you get penalized.

Any time NPCs are involved, it'd likely result in farming some random resource for rep. I don't think Blizzard would ever play around with the gold economy in such a way, and if they did I'm sure they could have made a Golden Saucer style casino long time ago.

What does rep have to do with anything? And comparing it to the Golden Saucer? It's nothing like a casino. There's as much risk/reward ratio as a person is comfortable with. Gnomish banking would be like investing in a CD, where as Goblin banking is more akin to the stock market.

So you want to play for free without doing anything. Earn a few gold caps, deposit and buy token from returns... yeah, not gonna get implemented.

Not at all. I want large amounts of gold to be taken off the table. WoD and Legion tables put huge amounts of gold into the economy. Now with the token, players can potentially earn even more gold for less effort.

Having a way for the gold rich in wow to put huge chunks of gold away reduces the amount of liquid gold in the game at any time. Truth be told, the net effect would be less gold overall, especially if we add in deposit fees or maintenance fees, similar to how the AH already takes a cut. I am no where near rich. I think the most gold I have ever had at one time was 2 million at some point last expansion. It is my understanding that right now, those that are super rich, if they want to "invest" some of their earnings, they buy high priced items off the AH and sit on them for a time and relist them later when the price has probably gone up. This would simply be a more straightforward way for players to set gold aside that they don't think they will need in the short term.

As always, the bank always wins.

[Triceron]

What does rep have to do with anything?

They're not going to allow you to invest gold any more than they'd want you to gain/lose it through gambling. Nuff said.

[Schizoide]

Speaking as someone with over 9 million gold sitting in my accounts, I really don't spend much of it. It isn't like the real world, where you need to pay your monthly nut for rent or whatever, go out to eat, get new shoes, etc. So while that money does exist and my perception of cost/value contributes to inflating currency, your idea wouldn't really help. If anything, it would just inflate currency further, because investing 5m gold at 3%/month or whatever creates raw gold out of nothing.

I completely agree with your goal here, removing money from the economy, but that isn't the way to do it. The way to do it is for Blizzard to announce that they're adding 4 completely unique, awesome-looking mounts to the game. Two are BoP costing 50k gold apiece, and two are BoE and cost 500k gold. And then there's the kicker-- upon the release of patch 9.2, these mounts will be removed from the game and will NEVER be available again. Blizzard commits to them never going in the BMAH either.

The end result is poor folk will buy the 50k mounts. Rich people will buy the 50k mounts for themselves and then spend all their liquid cash to hoard multiple 500k mounts, because they know prices will go up in the future-- the mounts look cool and new supply will be reduced to 0.

This will permanently remove tons of money from the economy, a strongly deflationary measure, and most importantly it's progressive-- it primarily takes money from rich people, not poor ones. I would certainly get maybe 10 of those 500k mounts myself, plan to put them in the bank for a couple years.

[Neverafter]

Speaking as someone with over 9 million gold sitting in my accounts, I really don't spend much of it. It isn't like the real world, where you need to pay your monthly nut for rent or whatever, go out to eat, get new shoes, etc. So while that money does exist and my perception of cost/value contributes to inflating currency, your idea wouldn't really help. If anything, it would just inflate currency further, because investing 5m gold at 3%/month or whatever creates raw gold out of nothing.

I completely agree with your goal here, removing money from the economy, but that isn't the way to do it. The way to do it is for Blizzard to announce that they're adding 4 completely unique, awesome-looking mounts to the game. Two are BoP costing 50k gold apiece, and two are BoE and cost 500k gold. And then there's the kicker-- upon the release of patch 9.2, these mounts will be removed from the game and will NEVER be available again. Blizzard commits to them never going in the BMAH either.

The end result is poor folk will buy the 50k mounts. Rich people will buy the 50k mounts for themselves and then spend all their liquid cash to hoard multiple 500k mounts, because they know prices will go up in the future-- the mounts look cool and new supply will be reduced to 0.

This will permanently remove tons of money from the economy, a strongly deflationary measure, and most importantly it's progressive-- it primarily takes money from rich people, not poor ones. I would certainly get maybe 10 of those 500k mounts myself, plan to put them in the bank for a couple years.

I don't think this would lead to as much inflation as people seem to think. In fact, I think it would reduce inflation quite a bit.

I think most players that would use something like this would fall into one of a few traps.

Trap Number 1 - Putting too much gold up front
Players would for example have 9 Million gold. The player might say, I think I will only use 1 million over the next few months, so I will put 8 Million in the IOU. Now the player that had 9 million only has 1 million to use. As time goes on, and gold resources shrink, they eventually have to withdraw the 8 million early. After the IOU takes their cut for fees and such, the player that had 9 million gold is down to 7 million. Had the player kept all 9 million and spent their gold on consumables, enchants, etc. as normal, they would have closer to 8 million.

Trap Number 2 - Putting gold up for too long
Take for example the player that has 9 million gold again. The player now says, instead of putting up 8 million up front, I'll only do 5 million but I will put it in for 6 months. The rate of return for 6 months being 8%. At the end of that 6 months, if the player didn't touch the gold again, they would get 5,400,000 gold back. In 6 months the player has only made 400,000, albeit by doing nothing. Opportunity cost however would be buying AH items and reselling, buying mats and converting to new items, etc.

If that player does, however, withdraw before 6 months is over, they would incur a 10% early withdraw fee and a 5% handling fee. Now, they would lose 750,000 and still have 8,250,000. That 750,000 is now forever gone, where as before, ie now, it would just sit in a players bag waiting to be spent.

Neither of these scenerio's takes into account a player deciding to choose to invest with goblins during a downward turn in the economy.

Trap Number 3 - The trap of Opportunity cost
Whether a player has 5 million gold or 8 million gold invested in a bank, the fact of the matter is, they can't do anything with that gold so long as it's in the bank. No other investments, no playing the AH, nothing. At the end of whatever time period they have chosen, the player gets a small return. That return however is minimal when compared to what the player COULD have done over that same time period with that same gold. In the example above, 5 million gold earned 400,000 gold over 6 months. If instead, I approached you and said, I know a way for you to make a little over 2,000 gold a day (2,222.22 repeating of coarse), you just have to give me 5 million gold today and I'll give you 2,000 gold a day for the


I do like your plan a lot though. In fact, I think it would work in tandem with mine. Give players short term incentives to spend gold now. Entice players to withdraw gold now and incur a bit of a fee in order to buy a BoE mount to sale later for a huge profit.

[Schizoide]

Playing the AH doesn't inflate currency, it just moves gold between players. In fact it's deflationary as the AH takes a cut from every sale. So you'd want to encourage that, not discourage it.

Your traps don't really exist because I'm still making money over time. Largely from table missions and covenant stuff auctioning tradeskill mats, I'm up a couple hundred thousand gold in Shadowlands. And like I said, I'm not doing anything with my huge pile of money now so the only effect would be to create money out of nothing in those interest payments, which is of course inflationary.