The Test Server Economy

[Lilith]

It's a touchy issue... sure. But we're already starting to see people get greedy in their prices on the broker.

Why can't people just sell things force twice cost or vendor value?

[Naiya]

/me sees a perfect chance to get snarky and undercut the market and make BAJILLIONS!!

bwahahahaah

in all seriousness, I wouldn't know what current value is for selling stuff at the broker. If it were like other games, I can see myself popping items in there and letting the broker set the cost and running with it. I don't have time to worry about icky "finances" I'm.... an ar-tist! //exaggerated melodramatic hair flip//

[Ysharros]

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.

[Stuby]

I personaly dont see the point in price gouging on a test sever its gona go byby some time and all you have will mean nothing. Thats just my 2cp.


O and Ysharros WOW and I thought I had some long post

[Naiya]

Originally Posted by Ysharros

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."

To be honest, my pricing structure is based solely on laziness. I am more interested in testing the part of crafting/auction/etc that have defined variables. The economy is too mutable and there are too many unknown variables to test it effectively on a server that is not an exact duplicate of the live environment (read - pretty low population)

Personally, I don't care how much stuff sells for... however... if I start selling stuff and everything comes back as not sold or I get cash for it AND the item returns to me as unsold - THAT I am interested in bugging

To mutilate a cliche phrase "Never attribute to rebellion that which can be attributed to laziness "

[SwordMage]

For crafted/dropped equipment, I don't see any particular reason to price much differently than one would on live; maybe a bit lower so that more people can afford their upgrades given the faster XP gain (fewer drops per level).

What I do like to do is be sure that dropped recipes other information is cheap. It does us no good if crafters don't have access to the recipes (in EQ2 I took the same approach with dropped skill books).

By the way, vendor buyback prices are a bad measure of value in this game, they can be 20 or 30 times smaller than vendors charge for worse mundane equipment of the same level.

[Ysharros]

Originally Posted by SwordMage

What I do like to do is be sure that dropped recipes other information is cheap. It does us no good if crafters don't have access to the recipes (in EQ2 I took the same approach with dropped skill books).

Urgh, yes indeed. That's one reason I really like test communities though -- for stuff like that, where there's a need there's usually a way to get it. Same goes for rares or even hard-to-find "fluff" stuff. I'd count housing materials as "fluff" stuff, since while they're surely lovely to have (she says, eyeing her empty plot), they're not essential.

Another thing I enjoy about test economies is that barter has a much larger place. I've always liked barter, because when it's done with respect everyone feels like they're getting something useful out of it; it seems more personal to me than just "I'll sell you this item for X amount of gold."

And Naiya, great quote. Personally I claim efficiency, not laziness *cough*

[Hungkung]

*Ok everybody against the wall, this is a hijack*

well sorta,

Ysa. said something which I so need to jump around and point at, maybe light a great fire near it and dance naked under the moonlight for it's pleasure...

I've never understood the mentality of letting bullies of any stripe win, whether its schoolyard toughs or little fat ladies in a chatroom who call the place home and by hook crook or simple attration drive anyone off who doesn't tell them how wonderful they are.

Used to be in the Pagan real world, you'd get these cliques, which is kinda the opposite point of the faith and with MMO's I've seen it as an ever growing cancer, esp. on the test servers, --where you should have everybody doing something different trying to break as much as possible, rather than obeying the powers that be. Niether one makes sense to me I brought up the pagan one because of the preconcieved notion that it is the little boys who are "the problem". Little boys are supposed to be a problem, they are still working on thier biology, it wasn't too long ago pugnacious little shits were an asset to the tribe because they were being pugnacious to lions while they guarded the flocks with nothing but a big stick. I find it so weary to see yet another 40something lady, holding court, whether in a Grove or outside Ogrimmar, where it's wear her t-shirt or leave. I'm guilty of pulling roots on test servers because the politics got old to me so the people who are staying and dealing wiht the drama I want to thank each and everyone of them for making patch day a lot less hectic than it could be.

and now that I've taken you around a pointless mountain, did you enjoy the ride? with an ecomony The Market is always right, and I like capatilists, I don't trust them, I like 2 year olds too, but I won't have them without a diaper on the couch, and the two groups have a lot in common, both have an absolute blindness for any other point of view, niehter can ever be satisfied and both have the lack of self restraint to contol themselves.

an example: A 2 year old who can't get up on teh couch by herself and cries for a hand up, ok not a problem, but leave a bag of cookies unattended on the high counter and you will come in to see a building-block ladder made out of furniture to the cookies; A capatlist who does not want government regulation suddenly gets beat in the market place starts crying for tarriffs on the compeition.

and in both cases if you try to regulate the situation you end up with a mess --an adult who used to be 2 who has no personal-hustpa to get what she wants herself, or a capitalist who is just going through the numbers until retirment offering nothing new or changing strategies and ends dragging the rest of your economy down the recession river with him. so before we start suggesting "limitations" on anything, including the test server, maybe lets think about it and just keep the cookies out of sight and see how well that handles the situation.

we now return you to your normal scheduled programs, you can take your hands down.

[Ysharros]

Heh, Hung, always good for a smile.

The funny thing about discussions of markets in MMOs is that you can usually take the same basic "facts" and spin them to suit whatever economic axe you're grinding.

I don't know if I have an axe. I like barter. I like reasonable return for work done -- as a crafter, anyway, since I feel adventurers don't earn any of the stuff they put up on the broker; it's not like they've worked for it, and they got xp AND money while getting it. (Yeah, I'm being extreme to make a point.)
I dislike gougers and massive undercutters not because they hurt the market (they don't have that much effect in the long term) but because both of them hurt crafting, my primary MMO love -- the former because they give us a bad greedy-crafter image, the latter because they reinforce some adventurers' belief that crafters should be click-monkeys who work for free.

Most of all I dislike intolerance, which is often what leads to bullying. It's insidious for the most part on test servers, and for those *in* the group it doesn't seem that way while for those being treated unkindly, it's evident that there's a sizeable fraction of test communities that doesn't want anyone else in "their" sandbox. Fact is, it's NOT the testers' sandbox, it's the devs' sandbox, and the more people who test there, the better.

All of this from poor Lilith's original post -- sorry Lilith, didn't mean to jack this thread so far into left-field. I also didn't realise before I started posting on it how much I care about test communities and how keen I am to make sure this one doesn't devolve into some of the smaller-minded ones I've seen elsewhere.

[Tybr]

Personally I never charge more than I would be willing to pay for an item myself...somtimes this creates a cheap price and others a bit of a high price. But as I'm the one making it, I feel I have a pretty good idea of how hard an item is to make/get. The only time I have a problem with this method is when an adventurer finds a similar item that he/she sells for considerably less than I would be willing to make it for. In that case I meet that low price and refrain from making it again. (Why waste me time?)

Just my 2cp.