The value of coin in Azeroth?

[Aadora]

I have to ask... what is all this based on? Saying that a gold coin is a lot of money. Is there any information we have to support this besides the preference of some? Ingame you can buy a few glasses of milk for a few silver, even a few pieces of bread. A couple of gold will get you a really nice and obviously more expensive meal.

If you look at quests as jobs, on average people seem willing to pay a few gold for tasks. You might say that doesn't work because quests pay more and more as you get higher level and yet are getting asked to do similar things. According to what all the NPCs say though, the higher level you get, the more dangerous and powerful the enemies you face are. So it's not wrong to say they would likely pay more for a harder job.

I'm not exactly sure where the idea that a gold is a lot of money came from. It almost seems to me like it is just a result of wanting to differ from game mechanics so deciding for ourselves that gold is worth much more than it is ingame. Perhaps someone could enlighten me if there is something to point towards a gold being a lot of money or if something in the past of CotH has made this the accepted opinion.

Of course most would just say "That doesn't work you can't compare ingame prices to IC prices. Things are priced around a player being able to quest a lot and earn a lot of money." Well, why exactly can't we used those prices to have an idea of what a gold might truly be worth? What else do we really have to go on?

In more fantasy worlds that I know of, gold is the primary currency. Sacks of gold, piles of gold, or even just a few gold. Gold coins are what people use. They don't have silver or copper, just the coins that act like a dollar. So why does WoW have to be different?

[Roxas65]

Because gold is an extremely valuable mineral and is not something you just toss around even if it is something as small as a coin. Besides, if gold was such a common form of currency, there'd be no need for silver and copper coins at all.

There have been societies that have used the exact same currency as in WoW with the copper, silver and gold coins and in those societies a gold coin was extremely valuable. For 20 of them, a traveling merchant could open up his own shop in a large city and that's extremely expensive.

The reason it doesn't work that way in WoW is because it's convenient. The way these currencies normally work, you can't even get exact change. If you wanted to bring a copper to buy a loaf of bread, you might have to buy some milk as well to make it worth your money. That's why people often bought stuff in bulk quantities rather than individual purchases like we do today. If you actually had this as a gameplay mechanic, players would go nuts.

It's an easy way to make the player feel like they're progressing as well. You don't want to be making copper and silver and the very rare gold when you're level 80. That would make the players feel like they're not progressing.

With other words, the way currency is portrayed in game just isn't realistic. The fact that players run around with entire treasuries in their pockets is absolutely ridiculous from a realistic standpoint. I wouldn't look down on people using the simple way that WoW looks at currency for the same reason it's presented the way it is in gameplay. Convenience. If one wants to keep roleplay flowing without doing some complex thing about currency and pay 3 gold for a drink at the bar, that's fine for me. That's also why other RPG games use gold coins so frivolously. It's convenient, but it's never ever realistic. To say an entire kingdom uses nothing but gold coins as currency and the player alone has thousands if not millions would mean that the country is basically -bathing- in gold.

Some people, however, like to tint their roleplay with some realism and for them a currency like the one portrayed in WoW gameplay is absolutely ludicrous. I also think that a merchant character, I've seen at least some around, could benefit from something like this because it makes the act of trading way more complex and interesting.

[DaveM]

I think that before we get into hyper-realistic alternate-currency analysis and economic roleplay, we should maybe have a standard for what the typical one-currency silver buys in Redridge/Orgrimmar/Dalaran.

[Roxas65]

I agree. My posts about how the WoW form of currency normally works was mostly intended as fun fact and a little bit as a reference for players aiming for realism. Personally, an economical system like that in RP would drive me to the brink of insanity. I'd roll a hermit just to get away from any situation where he'd have to buy anything.

Unfortunately, topics like this have sprung up several times during my time here. It usually comes down to the same thing every time, but only a handful of people adopt whatever is agreed upon. So when they RP with people who haven't adopted the value of currency as agreed upon in the thread, one side has to roll over and it's usually the more convenient option that wins.

It'll never actually stick until somebody with high authority says "this is what it's like." And even then it's swing and miss. I don't hear much about the RP currency that was used a while back, for example.

[Nymus]

I think a small problem is that we're using three units of currency as opposed to our system of cents to dollars, pence to pounds, etc. We aren't used to thinking of money as copper - silver - gold, we're used to thinking of it as two stages.

Also, another thing is the minerals they have in Azeroth. No geological surveys are for sure about the world (of warcraft) - who knows if gold is abundant or not? If the case of using the most precious mineral as the best currency (as in, gold) why don't we have elementium coins? They're the rarest material (afaik) in Azeroth, so why not use them as the highest value coin?

Ofc, I'm no economics professor so I'm not sure about all of this stuff. My best bet is that each faction uses different forms of coins. Little, flat, cylindrical pieces of gold are rather easy to fake, and I'm guessing that Orcs want to distance themselves as much as possible from the Humans, so they would use something other than gold. But, for the sake of game mechanics, Blizzard had to use the same.

Oh, Blizz, why don't you give us more lore to use. Why... ;n;

[Roxas65]

Some of your points there interested me, Nymus. Especially the one about gold not being the rarest mineral on Azeroth. I hadn't considered that.

[Delta]

It'd solve a lot of problems if we converted to the One True Currency. Since I doubt that's happening any time soon, however...

I don't particularly want any hard and fast rules, or even a guideline, unless there's some canon backing behind it. It's been left open to interpretation, so I think people should be allowed to interpret it the way they wish to.

As long as you can come to an agreement on value and price with the people you're roleplaying with, I don't think there's a problem.

[Scar]

I have only one thing to say, or well a few actually. Although nothing is telling us whether the Alliance and the Horde are using the same currency as one another, the goblins of Kezan are using their own!

Macaroons!

We see them numerous times in quests in the goblin starting area, you can look that up yourself. It can be safe to say its paper money.

[DaveM]

http://www.conquestofthehorde.com/Thread-IC-Currency

I'd like to have a GM-vouched guideline, because it's otheriwse impossible to talk about money across different RPs.

Let's start talking about the above-threaded guideline and tweak opinions about it. (Yes, I know it was meant for the IC currency system, but it's a valid starting point for discussion otherwise as well.)

This isn't about realism or canon, this is about a starting standard for discussion so that RPs involving money make more sense.

The above list's problem, to me, is that it is inflated beyone -any- use for copper. Copper should be relevant sometimes.

[landashua]

http://www.conquestofthehorde.com/Thread-IC-Currency

I'd like to have a GM-vouched guideline, because it's otheriwse impossible to talk about money across different RPs.

Let's start talking about the above-threaded guideline and tweak opinions about it. (Yes, I know it was meant for the IC currency system, but it's a valid starting point for discussion otherwise as well.)

This isn't about realism or canon, this is about a starting standard for discussion so that RPs involving money make more sense.

This is exactly why I asked the question. Whatever standard we decide on, whether it's that gold is to be used sparingly or expressly, we need to have a standard so that we can expand financial RP without alienating the gold conservatives or having the gold liberals feel as if they're cheesing about when they only pay a gold to have their breast plate mended.

It's also worth noting that we shouldn't ignore the value of the metals in the coins. It was pointed out that gold isn't the rarest mineral in Azeroth. While a valid point, I'd like to counterpoint that gold isn't the rarest mineral on Earth, either.

The simplest guideline I can come up with is as follows, (to be retouched as the discussion continues)

Copper: Daily purchases, small bulk purchases, "spending money".

Silver: Bulk purchases of daily items, travel expenses, low level enchanting.

Gold: Specialty items, high level enchanting, permanent housing.


You might walk into town with 20 copper to hold you over for the day and still have some in your pocket at the end of the night. 10 copper might pay for a night's stay at an inn, including food and drink. 20 copper might clothe you head to toe, 50 coppers doing so quite fancily. You might pay a copper or two for an empty glass vial if you're an alchemist.

A silver might buy you two crates of the same vials or passage on caravan through Azeroth. A handful of silvers might buy a horse or a farm animal. A small purse of, say, 5 silvers, might be enough to book you a week stay, all expenses, in an extravagant inn.

A gold should never be spent willy-nilly, you could probably buy a (humble) house with that coin.

A valuable thing to remember:

WoW currency does not have a single decimal.

100 copper = 1 silver, 100 silver = 1 gold, 1 gold = 10,000 copper.

This is, of course, hypothetical. It's impossible (and unfair) for us to establish a set price for every item in the game, but we should consider their approximate values. If we have an agreed upon standard we can begin expanding financial RP.

[therew]

IF you really want to do this then there are a few questions that have to be answered first.

How much is the cost of living?
How much does the common man make?
How rich is rich?

These questions are not very easy to answer, and when you take into consideration the fact that each race would have their own economy, their own money, and then top that off with there having to be a over all horde currency to alliance transfer... It would take a few history channel specials before we can even remotely start to make a simple guide on how much gold is worth in WoW and that's if we flat out ignore what the quest givers are giving players for what they do.

Now if we just set the numbers based on an actual economy then we get something like...

if we were to set the value of a gold coin in wow and make it equal to 1 gold Aureus. And a common solider in WoW would earn the same amount as one in Rome. That would mean a year a solider would see 72 gold coins. ( And that's under J.Caesars pay after it was doubled. ) Now how much could that buy? I did my best to find some numbers a denarius amounts to about 20 dollars. ( 25 denarius makes the 1 gold Aureus I mentioned, and low end troops got paid about 1800 denarius a year) That's about 36k a year.

1 gold = to 1 Aureus = 500 dollars
1 silver = 1 Sestertius (which is silver btw)= 5 dollars
1 copper = not worth counting ( 10 to equal the lowest of roman currency ) = 5 pennies

Now if we had something like that, we could then decide how much the common person of each race is worth, how rich is rich in each of those races, and then we can try to build on from that, but money would be complicated to say the least and it would take a lot of work to set something in stone as a server wide spending guide. I feel that if it is something you feel the server really needs and you are passionate about it, then its up to you to do the math, calculate all the variables and offer to the server something it can use. ( I say that with love, don't take it harshly)

edit:
Wow! I was rambling in that one! I can go into better detail with the math I did if you like.

[Aadora]

There are still problems here that I'm apparently not understanding, where the main point has kinda been avoided. What proof do we have to support these facts?

Because gold is an extremely valuable mineral and is not something you just toss around even if it is something as small as a coin.

Says who? According to ingame mechanics gold is somewhat more rare sure, but where in lore does it say that gold is a rare currency and couldn't be used for coins as much as coppers and silvers? You have to remember that regardless of what you think realism is in this situation, this is an entirely new world with its own laws and makeup. The reason that gold ingame is considered a 'rare' spawn could be nothing more than that gold is taken in as coins so much that finding veins sitting out in the middle of nowhere isn't that common.

There have been societies that have used the exact same currency as in WoW with the copper, silver and gold coins and in those societies a gold coin was extremely valuable. For 20 of them, a traveling merchant could open up his own shop in a large city and that's extremely expensive.

There have also been societies (Probably not real ones but WoW is fantasy, don't forget that.) that have done the exact opposite.

The reason it doesn't work that way in WoW is because it's convenient. The way these currencies normally work, you can't even get exact change. If you wanted to bring a copper to buy a loaf of bread, you might have to buy some milk as well to make it worth your money.

Again, where is something that supports this? Has it been officially stated before that the ingame currency system is not a legitimate model for what the Warcraft universe's currency system is, simply because it's too simple?

With other words, the way currency is portrayed in game just isn't realistic. The fact that players run around with entire treasuries in their pockets is absolutely ridiculous from a realistic standpoint. I wouldn't look down on people using the simple way that WoW looks at currency for the same reason it's presented the way it is in gameplay. Convenience. If one wants to keep roleplay flowing without doing some complex thing about currency and pay 3 gold for a drink at the bar, that's fine for me. That's also why other RPG games use gold coins so frivolously. It's convenient, but it's never ever realistic.

This is a big opinion. We aren't talking about the fact that players run around with thousands of gold in their pockets, we are talking about the fact that players have thousands of gold to their name at a time. Let's say that a gold is a dollar. You have a few thousand gold, you have a few thousand dollars. So why would that be so rediculously unrealistic?

To say an entire kingdom uses nothing but gold coins as currency and the player alone has thousands if not millions would mean that the country is basically -bathing- in gold.

Very, very rarely do players jump out of the thousands mark. And certainly people aren't going to have hundreds of thousands or millions of gold simply through questing. The people that have that much money work the auction house, the same way people work with stocks. They look at buying items in bulk when they are cheap, and throw them back out there when the prices are raised again. So why is it so strange that these people would have a lot of money, we already have people like that in real life if you are so eager to relate it to that.

Yes, it would mean that a country has a lot of gold if its citizens are caapable of obtaining so many coins. But again, what is there to support that gold is rare beyond OTHER worlds or OTHER games?

Some people, however, like to tint their roleplay with some realism and for them a currency like the one portrayed in WoW gameplay is absolutely ludicrous.

That's a big opinion, that the ingame currency system is "absolutely ludicrous". For the last time I will ask (Since it's the end of the post for me) where is the proof to support that a gold being worth a lot of money is 'realism'? Who exactly took it upon them self to decide that? In this case, the very word 'realism' is starting to sound more like 'related to real life' which shouldn't be a thing at all. The Warcraft universe is not real life, and should not be looked at as a differently shaped Earth.

If gold is worth sooo much. That means that a bank would be filled with silver and copper. Have you ever seen the ingame banks? They are most often filled with gold. And by the standards I am seeing here, being really rich would mean having maybe, a sack of gold to your name. Now that doesn't sound to me like they would have enough gold to fill a bank.

[Reigen]

It being the highest value of currency means that out of the three, it is the rarest material. I mean, in the real world, Diamonds are worth more than gold, but we don't use diamonds as a form of currency. Just because there are more valuable minerals doesn't devalue gold any more.

The gold for quests are largely considered uncanon for a very simple reason: Gold scales with your level, not because the tasks are harder. Killing ten pigs at level 1 gives you like 10 copper and killing ten pigs at level 85 will net you 60 gold. The task isn't any harder, but gold scales with your level.

Edit: There are piles of gold because it looks fancier. Would you 'oo' and 'aaaah' at a pile of copper? Not really, no. They're there for a 'wow factor', not as a representation of what is canon and what is not.

[landashua]

Because gold is an extremely valuable mineral and is not something you just toss around even if it is something as small as a coin.

Says who? According to ingame mechanics gold is somewhat more rare sure, but where in lore does it say that gold is a rare currency and couldn't be used for coins as much as coppers and silvers? You have to remember that regardless of what you think realism is in this situation, this is an entirely new world with its own laws and makeup. The reason that gold ingame is considered a 'rare' spawn could be nothing more than that gold is taken in as coins so much that finding veins sitting out in the middle of nowhere isn't that common.

The lack of lore on trivial subjects isn't evidence of or against the scarcity of gold. We can reason from the nodes of gold we find (random, rare spawns) that gold is relatively uncommon. Gold's value in the real world doesn't come purely from its scarcity, its value also includes factors such as its versatility and perceived attractiveness.

There have also been societies (Probably not real ones but WoW is fantasy, don't forget that.) that have done the exact opposite.

While this is true, we're not focusing on those economies.

The reason it doesn't work that way in WoW is because it's convenient. The way these currencies normally work, you can't even get exact change. If you wanted to bring a copper to buy a loaf of bread, you might have to buy some milk as well to make it worth your money.

Again, where is something that supports this? Has it been officially stated before that the ingame currency system is not a legitimate model for what the Warcraft universe's currency system is, simply because it's too simple?

The supporting information for this is that there is nothing below a copper. Merchants aren't keen on breaking coins into pieces.

With other words, the way currency is portrayed in game just isn't realistic. The fact that players run around with entire treasuries in their pockets is absolutely ridiculous from a realistic standpoint. I wouldn't look down on people using the simple way that WoW looks at currency for the same reason it's presented the way it is in gameplay. Convenience. If one wants to keep roleplay flowing without doing some complex thing about currency and pay 3 gold for a drink at the bar, that's fine for me. That's also why other RPG games use gold coins so frivolously. It's convenient, but it's never ever realistic.

This is a big opinion. We aren't talking about the fact that players run around with thousands of gold in their pockets, we are talking about the fact that players have thousands of gold to their name at a time. Let's say that a gold is a dollar. You have a few thousand gold, you have a few thousand dollars. So why would that be so rediculously unrealistic?

We are talking about the fact that players are running around with practical treasures. I'll expand on this with your next point.

To say an entire kingdom uses nothing but gold coins as currency and the player alone has thousands if not millions would mean that the country is basically -bathing- in gold.

Very, very rarely do players jump out of the thousands mark. And certainly people aren't going to have hundreds of thousands or millions of gold simply through questing. The people that have that much money work the auction house, the same way people work with stocks. They look at buying items in bulk when they are cheap, and throw them back out there when the prices are raised again. So why is it so strange that these people would have a lot of money, we already have people like that in real life if you are so eager to relate it to that.

Yes, it would mean that a country has a lot of gold if its citizens are caapable of obtaining so many coins. But again, what is there to support that gold is rare beyond OTHER worlds or OTHER games?

The largest issue with the in game economy is that it isn't a real world economy. The same quest mob gives out the same amount of gold to every one of possibly thousands of players that come by. That mob has no "stockpile" of gold it's pulling from. It doesn't stop giving out gold, ever. Multiply this by thousands of quests/daily quests, the WoW economy never stops growing, there is always fresh currency in circulation, which is how people are able to play the auction house in retail to accrue masses of gold. An actual economy has a limited amount of currency at any one time, even when new currency is minted, it devalues the standing currency where as the value of currency remains static in WoW. A gold is always a gold, a US Dollar today may not be a US Dollar tomorrow, it could be 1.007 USD, but it's still a change.

Some people, however, like to tint their roleplay with some realism and for them a currency like the one portrayed in WoW gameplay is absolutely ludicrous.

That's a big opinion, that the ingame currency system is "absolutely ludicrous". For the last time I will ask (Since it's the end of the post for me) where is the proof to support that a gold being worth a lot of money is 'realism'? Who exactly took it upon them self to decide that? In this case, the very word 'realism' is starting to sound more like 'related to real life' which shouldn't be a thing at all. The Warcraft universe is not real life, and should not be looked at as a differently shaped Earth.

If gold is worth sooo much. That means that a bank would be filled with silver and copper. Have you ever seen the ingame banks? They are most often filled with gold. And by the standards I am seeing here, being really rich would mean having maybe, a sack of gold to your name. Now that doesn't sound to me like they would have enough gold to fill a bank.

See my point above, and consider that those banks were decorated for retail. In retail, gold is abundant, because every Cata quest hands 14 of the suckers to you. There are many things in game that are infeasible, but we allow via 'suspension of disbelief,' such as every Silvermoon guardian being identical, or the same conversation happening between two NCPs on a cycle, all day, every day, without fail. The 3 year interrogation of a harassed elf near the gates of Silvermoon is another example, or the apparent permanent stalemate between Horde and Alliance forces. Or how about how every person of a given race/gender always sits/lays/emotes in the same exact way? We take these things such as the stalemate, or /sit, and RP around them. That's what RP is about, defining the world for ourselves. Retail is the playground and it's up to us to play in it, define rules where there are none, and, with a little imagination, make the world our own.

[Aphetoros]

You have to consider the history of money for this to be valid.

First we had bartering, then cattle, then shells. Then the Chinese manufactured shell imitations out of bronze and copper. Then modern coins were silver. Silver was the most common form for a long time. I want to say it was the Greeks who began this with silver drachmas. Then we moved into a gold standard, which was abandoned in 1971. Silver is the most reliable form, it seems. Being that silver was rare, but not as rare as gold, which allowed it to flourish as the more common form of currency which I believe lead to the idea that 'silver' is dollars (silver dollar, anyone?) and copper is cents, gold being the next step up from that. In a sense, silver is worth something, but not everything, whereas copper was worth too little and gold was worth too much to be carried around and traded daily. If you compare it to my wallet, I feel like silvers are ten and twenty dollar bills; I like having me some twenty dollar bills in my pocket, but I won't carry around a few hundred dollar bills in my pocket, because that's too risky (like gold.) If I just carry around some dollars and cents (copper) I feel too little. It's not enough for me to go to a market and get what I need.

Note, this may not be as coherent as I want because it's gotten deleted -twice-. aijfiajfij

So, on weighing coins:

Copper coins: Common, easy to make and relatively worth less than the other two coins. Probably would rarely be weighed, if ever at all. The worth of these wouldn't fluctuate enough for it to be worth it, and if they did; it's copper. It's like the change in my pocket.

Silver coins: Probably the most common form of currency, I think. I feel this way only because silver has had a constant rarity; its value didn't fluctuate much at all for quite a long time, and thus was most reliable and steady. A merchant might weigh this more than copper, but probably not all the time. Only if something made them suspicious.

Gold coins: Weigh dat kodocrap! Gold is rare, and serious business. Gold is like a hundred silvers, and is worth a heck of a lot. Although counterfeit gold was rare (because apparently the cost to make fake gold that could pass for gold when weighed was expensive) it still happened, and so merchants would bite the gold to determine the fakes. I think this was either because pure gold would be softer, and thus easier to make a mark on with your bite, or because if it were fake the bite would expose the base metals beneath. You'd weigh it as a standard simply because ain't nobody gonna take chances with getting some bogus gold. That would be a serious loss because... let's face it, how are you going to turn that gold into some cash without duping someone yourself? Most people are above that, I think.

Anyway, I don't feel like typing anymore and I feel like there was more I should've said. But I'm said because this has been deleted several times.

boop. *bops your nose*