I've never been a fan of "let's sell this for X times cost, or for Y value, and enforce that with cold-shouldering anyone who doesn't." If a test server is supposed to mimic live servers for the most part, and our current ruleset suggests that it is, then there's nothing wrong with having a dynamic economy just like on the live servers, with a few adjustments for the size of the community.
Since test servers usually have much smaller populations, I tend to price lower than on live because people generally don't have as much money. Do I feel I should craft for free just because I'm on test? No. Well, I do give a lot of stuff away but I hate to feel as though it's forced on my by some ruling clique. Similarly, I don't feel I should sell my loot for 4c just because the broker will give me 2c for it; but whereas I'd sell it for 3s on live, I'll put it up for 1 or 2 on test. My usual guide is how much money *I* have and what I'd pay for something -- it may be my playstyle, but I generally don't have much less on test than on live (that said, I usually don't have much money at all, so that probably isn't saying much
).
While I love the small town feel test servers generally have, I dislike the equally prevalent group of Heathers which usually establishes itself in those small communities and who think they can dictate to the rest of the players -- for whatever reason they feel qualifies them. I'm not aiming that at anyone here, it's just something I've seen in several test environments and have never liked. And no, I've never offended said group; I have seen many people bullied by them however, and I don't like bullying of any kind.
Back to the economy, however (sort of). There are greedy people on test just like anywhere else, sadly. There are also people who show up just to get content previews -- you know the type, they usually log in a level 1 toon, ask where the buffmaster is, ask a few daft questions they could have answered themselves if they read the patch notes, complain about the lack of population, make a few derogatory comments, and then move on. They always show up, and I believe they're a large part of what creates this unwelcoming Test-clique feeling (which is very similar to the unwelcoming RP-server feeling, but that's another thread). Like the greedy types, they will never *not* show up. We can't legislate them away. We can't prevent them from logging in, and ideally we *shouldn't* be so unwelcoming that they just go away. It's hard to be tolerant of some of the rampant idiots out there, but it behooves us to try. ;-)
I *do* like that we have a /test channel MOTD, which should help people see that we have means of communication. Habit made me set /craft on autojoin too, though I don't know if there's anyone but me in it most of the time. Cooperation and communication should allow us to get past those who think they can take advantage of a smaller, more closed community -- and allow us to get past the fact that not everything will be as easily available, simply because there are less of us around.
This post is *not* aimed at anyone at all. I'm just jumping on the original thought -- and my own tangents, as usual -- as a chance to air some concerns I've had about test server communities in general, and my desire to avert them here. We're not an elite -- we're just people who, for whatever reason, like a test server environment. I agree that we should try to keep things civilised and not be too greedy; I just don't think we can price-fix what *should* be normal decent behaviour.