The value of coin in Azeroth?

[Aadora]

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.

I'm not meaning to sound rude in any of this, I just putting my opinion out there so if it seems like I'm going too far I'm sorry.

This is in reply to Reigen too in talking about the gold in the banks.

That still just looks like ignorance to me. Regardless of what we decide a gold is worth, those piles of gold ARE there. It doesn't seem right to just ignore what Blizzard put into the game on speculation that it was just for show.

And actually, there is an ingame term for what we see as character 'levels'. They call it adventurer levels, it's like a ranking of power. You gain experience and become more powerful, and so your ranking as an adventurer goes up. By that logic, higher 'level' enemies are stronger and more dangerous. So yes, it would be a harder job. Just like we pay the higher educated people for the jobs that require more experience, as you get a higher 'level' you get paid more for tasks which require your level of expertise.

And let's not just turn that into a "Doesn't matter if Blizz put it into the game it's not canon".

I'm not saying it should go either way. I'm not saying a gold should be worth the same as a US dollar or that it should be worth a hundred thousand. I'm just trying to see the reason for deciding that it should be worth a lot. And so far, the reasoning I have seen is "Gold is rare". But, what supports this? Sure we don't find a lot ingame but we don't get access to the mines that the Alliance of the Horde use for their supplies. There are mines in the game, but they also have infinite supplies in them according to the game mechanics, and that is one thing we can ignore.

Keep in mind that what we mine as players, is random veins that are for some reason sticking out of the ground like a sparkling pimple. If you want to use the ingame ore veins though, silver is just as rare as gold. They are both rare spawns with a certain % chance of spawning from their lower quality vein. I believe silver rare spawns on tin vein locations, and gold rare spawns on iron vein locations. But of course we already have the valur right in front of us saying that a gold is worth more than silver, by about 100x.

However, I have always thought of it more like a silver is a dollar. Copper is the change like pennies, and gold is the trade in for when you don't want to have to store hundreds of metal coins on your body. Get a drink and pay a couple silvers, copper allows the change to put between. Gold is more of a convenience or the larger business side of things. Hundreds of gold being worth about what tens of thousands of dollars is worth to us today.

I personally don't think that a single gold should be worth so much as to buy an entire house. I think some things in the game are correct such as buying a horse for 28 gold. That would mean it's worth about 28,000 dollars which for a quality car is about what you can expect with the higher quality horses going up to 40 gold. A house is worth a couple hundred gold perhaps for a nicely sized one. Maybe just 60 gold for one of the one room houses with a fireplace.

Imagine if a single gold coin were worth enough to buy a house.

Some random person goes out and finds a gold vein out in the world.

Let's stay more realistic and say he spends hours of his time digging it up, and ends up with enough to make about a bar.

Now imagine the amount of skill it would take to turn this pure gold, into a coin and how many you could make from an entire bar. If they could get their hands on a single gold coin they could forge perfect copies, and there would be no way to tell. It's not as if the metal is fake, and any markings they put on the coins could be copied easily.

Find a small vein of gold... mine it up... forge coins... set for life.

[Sol]

I don't really have anything to contribute to this discussion at the moment, only wanted to express that I'm glad it's finally happening.

However, I will note that the discussion of the in-game mining profession in relation to the IC proliferation of minerals across Azeroth is probably going to be fruitless. Metal doesn't sprout up, in Aadora's handy term, in 'sparkling pimples' out of the earth. You get gold, silver, iron, tin, whatever out of the ground. You dig. You excavate a quarry, build a shaft. Mining is an extremely resource- and labour-intensive industry because it takes so much effort to get that stuff out of the earth's crust where it naturally occurs. An adventurer running around with a pick in their bag grabbing stuff out of the soil is very much a game mechanic, and I will lay down fisticuffs here and now with anyone who argues otherwise. Unless Azeroth works according to radically different laws of geology (beyond the obvious elemental and volcanic tomfoolery), we have no reason to believe otherwise.

If anything, we should be looking at the proliferation of gold mines on the world map -- I know Night Web's Hollow is mentioned to have been one before it was abandoned and infested with spiders -- but really, because we don't know what most mines are actually for, and because the in-game world is a representative compression of a much larger one, we can't really say.

Also, regardless of whether the piles of money in banks is canon or not, keep in mind that the money in banks is generally everyone's money ever. Imagine how many nobles, merchants and prominent businesses have accounts in Stormwind's central bank! From a purely graphical perspective, as well, it's worth noting that the size of the gobjects for such piles of gold tends to be inflated -- otherwise, the individual gold coin in them would be much larger than is practical to carry.

. . . And that's all I have to say about that. /gump

[FlyingSquirrel]

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.

Okay, I'm just going to pop in here a bit.

Aadora, you can't expect Blizzard to answer things like this. There are giant plotholes in just about every story going on and they don't much care to fix them, so I don't think it would be much in their desires or really just cares to release a ratio of how much mineral worth is in an area. And until Blizzard may change and do this, we have to base it off of what WoW is based off, our own world.

[landashua]

That still just looks like ignorance to me. Regardless of what we decide a gold is worth, those piles of gold ARE there. It doesn't seem right to just ignore what Blizzard put into the game on speculation that it was just for show.

And actually, there is an ingame term for what we see as character 'levels'. They call it adventurer levels, it's like a ranking of power. You gain experience and become more powerful, and so your ranking as an adventurer goes up. By that logic, higher 'level' enemies are stronger and more dangerous. So yes, it would be a harder job. Just like we pay the higher educated people for the jobs that require more experience, as you get a higher 'level' you get paid more for tasks which require your level of expertise.

And let's not just turn that into a "Doesn't matter if Blizz put it into the game it's not canon".

I'm not saying it should go either way. I'm not saying a gold should be worth the same as a US dollar or that it should be worth a hundred thousand. I'm just trying to see the reason for deciding that it should be worth a lot. And so far, the reasoning I have seen is "Gold is rare". But, what supports this? Sure we don't find a lot ingame but we don't get access to the mines that the Alliance of the Horde use for their supplies. There are mines in the game, but they also have infinite supplies in them according to the game mechanics, and that is one thing we can ignore.

Keep in mind that what we mine as players, is random veins that are for some reason sticking out of the ground like a sparkling pimple. If you want to use the ingame ore veins though, silver is just as rare as gold. They are both rare spawns with a certain % chance of spawning from their lower quality vein. I believe silver rare spawns on tin vein locations, and gold rare spawns on iron vein locations. But of course we already have the valur right in front of us saying that a gold is worth more than silver, by about 100x.

However, I have always thought of it more like a silver is a dollar. Copper is the change like pennies, and gold is the trade in for when you don't want to have to store hundreds of metal coins on your body. Get a drink and pay a couple silvers, copper allows the change to put between. Gold is more of a convenience or the larger business side of things. Hundreds of gold being worth about what tens of thousands of dollars is worth to us today.

I personally don't think that a single gold should be worth so much as to buy an entire house. I think some things in the game are correct such as buying a horse for 28 gold. That would mean it's worth about 28,000 dollars which for a quality car is about what you can expect with the higher quality horses going up to 40 gold. A house is worth a couple hundred gold perhaps for a nicely sized one. Maybe just 60 gold for one of the one room houses with a fireplace.

Imagine if a single gold coin were worth enough to buy a house.

Some random person goes out and finds a gold vein out in the world.

Let's stay more realistic and say he spends hours of his time digging it up, and ends up with enough to make about a bar.

Now imagine the amount of skill it would take to turn this pure gold, into a coin and how many you could make from an entire bar. If they could get their hands on a single gold coin they could forge perfect copies, and there would be no way to tell. It's not as if the metal is fake, and any markings they put on the coins could be copied easily.

Find a small vein of gold... mine it up... forge coins... set for life.

In terms of the gold in banks, Aadora, really think for a moment whether that's truly canonical. It's there, of course, but so is the same exact house, hundreds of times, across the entire continent. So is the same exact guard on every street corner. So are the same 5 or so faces per race/gender combination. It's a representation. I don't want to come off as rude, but you can't have it both ways. If you see every item in game as canon, then you're also seeing the same 5 faces, hearing the same exact voices, watching the same exact movements. Everyone rides on identical horses/mounts, the land mass of an entire continent is less than that of the county I live in. Maybe I'm being unreasonable, but I feel that your argument for the gold in banks is unreasonable.

Also, a man couldn't simply mine gold and turn it into coins, the coins are stamped. Beyond that, most of them are worked with a blend of other metals/alloys, as gold itself is to valuable to be made into a pure gold coin. You would have to discover that blend yourself. But let's not even go there, let's back up to the stamps I mentioned. They would have controlled distribution to certain individuals and getting caught making a counterfeit would likely be punishable with a hefty fine, prison time, or perhaps even death.

Worth noting gold is usually found underground as flakes/nuggets, and getting enough to make a bar is no small chore. Watch whatever the name of that Discovery channel show is about the gold diggers in Alaska. They toil a whole season to fill a handful of 2 ounce vials, and it's a good payoff. It makes moving to Alaska for a few months, renting thousands of dollars of equipment, paying tens of thousands for a claim of land and performing hard, backbreaking labor worth it. A few small vials.

I think this discussion needs to step away from why things are their respective values for a bit and move onto establishing their value as coins. If we have an established guideline we can work backwards from there and explain why a gold coin is worth a house, or why twenty silver won't buy you a drink in a fancy bar.

[Dae]

I know a lot of people do enjoy working with an economy, but as far as I'm concerned, the financial situation of my characters is a trait that I, as their player, is responsible for. The other day, Morgen splurged at the Sable Dragon Inn, and is now is a bit frustrated with herself for it.

I use the good in question, the selling character's methods of asking for payment and demeanor as a gauge for how much my characters' wallets will hurt.

[DaveM]

It's very interesting to try to determine the scarcity of gold and the socio-economic patterns by which coin would proliferate. It's a great geek-out discussion.

But I don't think that's the big question - or at least not the immediate question.

I think the immediate question is 'what is an aproximate standard of price (comapratively speaking)?'

If the terms 'copper' 'silver' and 'gold' are too distracting because they're metals and potentially lore related, we can use GES - generic economic standard, or any other terms.

I just think we should, for starters, figure out how many 'GES' a human peasant makes, then from that what a sin'dorei ranger makes, from that the price of a horse, or a full course meal, of good armor, etc. - so that we attain a standard of comparative economic values.

[Sadron]

A question I would like to ask of this discussion is: why does the value of currency have to be standardized? Why do we have to assign a fixed value copper, silver or gold throughout Azeroth?

I like to think the value of a coin within Azeroth's economy would be decided by the citizens. It would be subjective depending on who is selling the goods and to whom they are being sold. A vendor would assess the value of a coin and haggle price with the customer. That's how I like to imagine the exchange of goods to work in WoW's setting.

And then there are all kinds of questions this idea raises about the value of the coin that add depth to the sociopolitical scene of Azeroth. For example, has all of Azeroth agreed to use the same markings on their coins, or would minters in Stormwind stamp King Varian Wrynn's face on their currency? I'm sure an Orc would view a coin with the Human King's ugly mug upon it as of lesser value than one with, say, Garrosh or Thrall--if he accepts the coin at all.

With deepening tensions within the factions, this could bring out some nice racism and prejudice that really paint the setting in which we write. I imagine Azeroth doesn't have a system or general authority that prescribes what the worth of a coin is; they just have the coins. If that's the case, it would be up to the people--our characters--to decide what that coin is worth.

My two copper, take it for what it's worth. Heh.

[DaveM]

The short answer, Sadron, is: because the question is not about the subjective worth (that's a much harder one), but about the -comparative- worth.

For example, so that one farstrider isn't paid ten gold a week, while another ten silver, in their roleplay depiction.

[Roxas65]

Aadora, I was going to respond to everything you wrote in your long response to me there, but other people already covered most of it for me so I'll cut it down to a few key points.

First of all, the value of gold has never been in its rarity. Sure, it's rare, but not ridiculously so. No, the value of gold comes in its purity. Metals rust and even silver becomes unpure and flawed with age, but gold can remain pure for decades stacked on decades. It's simply an immortal metal and that's what have always attracted people. People wore it as a status that you were as pure and immortal as the metal you wore. That and the fact that it's really shiny and pretty. At least that's how it started. Now people are more interested in it because of the pricetag on it.

As for the whole realism thing. When I say realism, I refer to real life, yes. I never said that I actually agree with the practice of integrating our kind of realism into a fantasy world like WoW. In fact, I try to avoid it. But I know that a lot of people do like to do that and my posts were mostly for those people. I don't agree with it, but I'm not going to say it's wrong to RP that way and if I can help with it I will. Live and let live and stuff.

Those are the two things I'm going to clarify, everything else has mostly been answered. Plus the fact that I try not to get into heated debate on server issues since I haven't actually played on the server for more than a year now. I was just adding some perspectives that some people will like and others don't.


EDIT: I forgot to mention a fun fact. Somebody talked about how merchants used to bite coins to determine the legitamacy of a gold coin. It wasn't just to see if your teeth made a mark, it was also because some of the metals that were used to make fake coins reacted funny with the saliva in your mouth, especially if you happaned to have some sort of metal teeth yourself.

[landashua]

It's very interesting to try to determine the scarcity of gold and the socio-economic patterns by which coin would proliferate. It's a great geek-out discussion.

But I don't think that's the big question - or at least not the immediate question.

I think the immediate question is 'what is an aproximate standard of price (comapratively speaking)?'

If the terms 'copper' 'silver' and 'gold' are too distracting because they're metals and potentially lore related, we can use GES - generic economic standard, or any other terms.

I just think we should, for starters, figure out how many 'GES' a human peasant makes, then from that what a sin'dorei ranger makes, from that the price of a horse, or a full course meal, of good armor, etc. - so that we attain a standard of comparative economic values.

I agree that the discussion has been too focused on the "why" coins have their value and has strayed away from the original topic of outlining a standardized value. We're not here to question what makes a coin worth what it's worth, we're simply trying to determine what that coin can buy. Not why, or for what reason, or how, but simply what.

A question I would like to ask of this discussion is: why does the value of currency have to be standardized? Why do we have to assign a fixed value copper, silver or gold throughout Azeroth?

I like to think the value of a coin within Azeroth's economy would be decided by the citizens. It would be subjective depending on who is selling the goods and to whom they are being sold. A vendor would assess the value of a coin and haggle price with the customer. That's how I like to imagine the exchange of goods to work in WoW's setting.

And then there are all kinds of questions this idea raises about the value of the coin that add depth to the sociopolitical scene of Azeroth. For example, has all of Azeroth agreed to use the same markings on their coins, or would minters in Stormwind stamp King Varian Wrynn's face on their currency? I'm sure an Orc would view a coin with the Human King's ugly mug upon it as of lesser value than one with, say, Garrosh or Thrall--if he accepts the coin at all.

With deepening tensions within the factions, this could bring out some nice racism and prejudice that really paint the setting in which we write. I imagine Azeroth doesn't have a system or general authority that prescribes what the worth of a coin is; they just have the coins. If that's the case, it would be up to the people--our characters--to decide what that coin is worth.

My two copper, take it for what it's worth. Heh.

Again, even if we assign a vague value with room to haggle, it's a step above what there is today. I know that when I'm quoted a price nowadays I just RP paying it because it's easier than having an OOC discussion about whether or not the other person thinks it's a good deal, or possibly offending them by haggling. I feel like most people do that, too, to avoid incident. If we assign even a loose standard we can allow that haggling RP, we can allow that "Your puny alliance silvers are meaningless here!" RP, we can have that illusive "YOU WANT ME TO PAY WHAT?" RP. Your penultimate sentence seems to point that you agree that we should work out a standard. That's what we're trying to do on this thread, find out what a coin is worth.

[Aadora]

In terms of the gold in banks, Aadora, really think for a moment whether that's truly canonical. It's there, of course, but so is the same exact house, hundreds of times, across the entire continent. So is the same exact guard on every street corner. So are the same 5 or so faces per race/gender combination. It's a representation. I don't want to come off as rude, but you can't have it both ways. If you see every item in game as canon, then you're also seeing the same 5 faces, hearing the same exact voices, watching the same exact movements. Everyone rides on identical horses/mounts, the land mass of an entire continent is less than that of the county I live in. Maybe I'm being unreasonable, but I feel that your argument for the gold in banks is unreasonable.

Just because I think the gold should be canonical does not mean I am obligated to find everything else canonical. The fact that there are piles of gold in the banks, not copper, not silver, but mounds of gold. This is far different than just Blizzard not wanting to have to make a new model for every single guard on every corner of the street.

The guards in Silvermoon are there. Sure, they have all the same faces and look exactly the same, yes. But they are elves, they are sppellbreakers, and they are guards. We know this for a fact and regardless of having the same face, it should be assumed they are trained to stand in the same way and wear the same uniform.

However, those mounds of gold aren't anything but gold. They tell us one thing, that there is gold there in that place that they are put. Mounds of gold in a bank is a -completely- different subject that has no relation to Blizzard simply being lazy.

Blizzard didn't get -lazy- and say "Bah, just put a bunch of gold in there." They made the decision to fill the bank with gold. They didn't say "Let's make every guard look exactly the same" or "Let's make every house look exactly the same." it was simply convenient to use copies of the same thing. It was not convenient however, for them to specifically put gold into the bank. That was a conscious decision and not one that was like "Oh we might as we so we don't have to do something else or more work."

The only reason I was even saying it matters was to pretty much ask the question: Why do people want a gold to be worth so much when according to the game it's not.

Either way, I don't think a gold should be worth as much as some have said here. A single gold coin buying a house? that seems like... a lot. You drop a single coin on your way to the market and you literally just lost everything you own?

I think it should be left up to each player what they think it is worth. A guideline maybe, but I don't think we should push people to RP a certain way to say gold has to be worth a certain amount. I mixed things up a lot before and it didn't affect my RP at all. My noble Casey would go to Cressy's auctions and buy a completely worthless item for a few gold, and then turn around and buy a drink for a couple silver. Often times, that thing she bought for gold would be more worthless than the drink.

The greed of a goblin you might say, but even those that weren't nobles, or even didn't have that much money would come to the auctions and buy things that had no real value, but were still worth multiple gold.

[Aphetoros]

Well, you have to realize also that gold represents money. It just... is a general symbol of wealth. They're going to put gold in the bank because everyone's money is there. Stormwind is HUGE ICly, these cities have so many people. This is like, everyone's cash.

[CappnRob]

I think ya'll are forgetting that Warcraft tilts towards the artistically exaggerated side when it comes to expressing things. Got bank with an open vault? Drop a pile of hugeass gold in there. It looks wealthy! I seriously doubt they meant to imply gold is extremely common.

Furthermore, all the banks are community banks, so yeah.


Addendum: I find relying on the level 30-40 range Vanilla quest rewards to be a good "measuring stick" for the wages of an adventuring mercenary character would be (as well as the appropriate prices for food and drink at that range). Once you get higher than 40, that's when your quests become dangerous excursions into Plaguelands and Blackrock. Lower thaan that, you're still dealing with the (relatively tame) domestic problems in your starting zones.

[Bovel]

What we need is a list comparing what various tradable goods are worth compared to each other and how much the common farmer versus a noble makes in a years time (perhaps a soldier's wage would be nice to see as well). Drinks would be really cheap because in yesteryears one couldn't trust that clear water didn't make you sick and ale and such was a more secure choice of drink, and compared with today every kind of alcoholic drink was much lighter on the alcohol. Any kind of mount or beast of burden would cost tons of money and something a farmer would save up years to buy. Meat and fish would also be quite pricy. A good picture is that two red mullets were in Roman times worth as much as a good horse. I seem to remember that we have had this discussion before and someone of the GMs at the time made some kind of guide or list on money's worth, no?

[Holynexus]

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.

Many things are also poorly backed in lore and you don't make such a fuss of them. You know which.

And you don't offer any serious alternative. You're playing the devil's advocate, and it does not help at all.