WoW Economics

The other day I was explaining to a co-worker, who doesn't play WoW, about how you make gold in WoW. Now this person plays final fantasy and other rpg style games. What amazed them was how similar wow economies are to real life capitalist economics.

For example, there is basic supply and demand. Depending on the amount of competition prices vary server to server. One server may have almost no competition on belt buckles or BS cratable epics, which in result drives prices up to meet demand. If you can find the right niche on your realm you can make some serious gold. The same supply and demand curves we use in the real world can be used in WoW. Pretty cool right? Heck there is even market manipulation, my post a few days ago about market resets is a great example. Buying up all the existing supply of an item, limiting that supply, and creating a higher price that players will still be willing to pay.

What's amazing is we even see absurd inflation in WoW, it has become overly easy to make gold in WoW. Even blizzard became concerned with the economics on their own realms. They implemented purchasable items to help curve this inflation by trying to take some of this gold out of the economy. This can be seen in haris pilton epic bags, vanity pets, epic flying, cold weather flying, & travelers's mammoth.

This is what fascinates me about WoW beyond just gold making.

Thanks for checking in!