In game market.

[Brutalskars]

Auction house, trading, npc's.
Those are the three main parts of the COTH market.

Subjects:
Stimulating the market
Using the market
Adding to the market
Being part of the market


Here I believe we should discuss the market its self. Please feel free to comment on the four subjects.

[Kainue]

Once you get an approved character and receive your nifty 2000 gold, thats where we all hit a wall in trying to get a real market going in my opinion.

As for "supply and demand".

The person grinding for the item = the Supplyer.

The person who can't/don't have time to grind for the items they want = the Demanding one.

So, we have that part sorted out, kind of.

[Vrahn]

Bottom line, with the injection of so much gold into the system via grunts, it's nearly impossible to get an OOC economy rolling. ICly is a different story, mind you we would need some sort of merchant's union, and even then, not everyone would use them to get their goods.

[Scout]

I want the Orgrimmar Trade Union bot back...

Such good times...

[Kainue]

Bottom line, with the injection of so much gold into the system via grunts, it's nearly impossible to get an OOC economy rolling. ICly is a different story, mind you we would need some sort of merchant's union, and even then, not everyone would use them to get their goods.

Eah, but what if we can find a away to merge the way the OOC economy with the IC conomy? It's possible, we just have to combine our noggins and put it together. At times, I feel like I know how it -could- be done but I always find loopholes. Bah.

This subject has always been of great interest to me.

[Cressy]

Well...I have been posting up random items on the AH that I have made while leveling my tailoring.

Even just posting things that people keep asking for (IE. Black Mageweave? Everyone wants it.).

I don't make a huge amount of money, but enough.

[Vrahn]

Well, there was the idea thrown out that we use GHI to create a standard IC money item such as the "Stormwind Dollar" and such, and then distribute it into circulation and use it as the main payment for everything. I personally would love to at least attempt this idea, though I can definitely see the down sides or problems of it. Still, you never know until you give it a shot, it might turn out to be something really cool.

[Kaghuros]

I did recently print out a bunch of GHI Stormwind Dollars (Stacks of 100 100s and 100 1s) on Lorric just because. They might work, but the problem is that they are mainly IC. I'd use them to pay people though, and if we got an economy with them that would be pretty interesting.

[Vrahn]

Well, we would have someone open up the 'Stormwind Bank' and the 'Bank of Orgrimmar' where people could go and obtain loans and all the normal stuff you do at a bank. Of course, there would need to be some pre-distribution to account for the wealth people start with, as well as some way to introduce new money to the market if people are stingy. Either way, I'm up for it as a purely IC test drive.

[Brutalskars]

Great ideas guys.
What would be cool is to see a union of OOC and IC economics as well as a mainly IC system of IC money. But the IC system would require a lot of GHI addons, and we'd need to ask people to use GHI to participate.

[Theik]

Why in heaven's name would it be called the "Stormwind Dollar"? Why not just settle for Copper, Silver and Gold coins, but made in GHI? This isn't a modern day game, they do not have printed money on paper.

[noscere]

Moving away from the Bank idea for a second, one way to stimulate the Auction house market I can think of would be for the Grunts as well as the higher level Peons etc to maybe do a lower level dungeon run once and a while say SM or even RFK just to pick up some low level items and put them in the AH to help out the lower levels get some nice gear for their PVE antics as well as some RP stuff, the same could be said for the gatherers out there who gring herbalism, mining or skinning they can put their wares in the AH for those who are engineers, Scribers, Leather workers or Blacksmiths, The Engineers, Leather workers etc can make and put their wares in the AH for others to buy. You get were Im going here?
What I am saying is for a good economy there needs to be a stable business` to feed the economy.

One of the things I was looking for when I started RP`ing was the ability to not only RP my character but in some way give him a business and a way to make a living other than farming silver and gold.

[Nostra]

I can see a problem when you´re out of money all you got to do is punch some puttong to print new ones, migth just be me but I have a feeling that it would have about the same effect as the Grunts getting a lot of money on being leveling.

[Hogral]

I've always been interested in this kind of thing, without being able to make up some viable system without an important flaw or two. Both alternatives, as I see it, has flaws of their own. I'll describe them anyways, in case anybody has any thoughts.

Our main problem is that we've got huge amounts of Incomes (Gruntship Gift, raised droprates,) and nearly no expenses (Silver Tokens, no need to pay expensive enchants or repairs like on Retail).
That means that, if we are to use the ingame wallet IC'ly, everybody will eventually have far more money than what's feasilble for almost any kind of character, and thus have to pretend that the ingame wallet doesn't really count. This means we'd have to sort a system where funds cannot be gained nor spent in anything but an IC manner to make money count more than it does to day (if that's even desirable).

There's basically two ways to sort an IC system, as I see it:

1. Gryphonheart Items
This method has three flaws:
- Everybody needs to have the GHI addon, meaning we risk shutting somebody out of what'd possibly become one of the ways CotH really stands out
- Your money doesn't carry over if you use two different computers
- Everybody can make their own money unless we arrange it in a way that, while making it all work better, includes alot of work for the organizers. If not we're back to start, as people will only be poor because it's entertaining at the moment and not because their character really -is- poor, much like now.

There's no real solution to the first two problems, but the third problem might have one:
If people are to make their own money, there won't be any restrictions apart from those that you put at yourself. This means that everybody needs to have both the maturity to not make more even if they need it, and everybody has to be mature enough to only make a sensible amount of gold to start with, as well as agreeing on a common norm of what's appropriate for the different kinds of characters.

This could be solved trough a "Central Bank" of kinds - Only money made by a certain set of bankier characters is real. The rest are forged, and thus illegal to use. This would involve that some people dedicate alot of time to handing it out though.

I don't really think that the GHI system would work, and certainly don't be worth the effort if it did.

2. An item named "Coin" is made and put out in circulation
With that I mean that we get an item representing ingame money, preferably one that can be put in stacks of 100, or 1000. I'm not sure how difficult that is to pull off, although it'd eliminate all the addon-related problems that comes with an GHI solution.

It'd mean that Kretol has to make them though, and while I know there's quite a bit of custom items at the Shatterspear Vendors, I'm unsure about how much work it involves.

It'd also have to be distributed, somehow.
Seeing as it's not from an addon, I imagine that this could be done in the same way as the Silver Tokens - An NPC that hands a set amount of money out to every character, standing around in the various banks (again, I'm unsure about the amount of work this involves).

To add an additional layer of realism the Character could get a choice between 3-4 "Wealth Classes" (beggar, commoner, Middle-Class, Moderately Rich,) that each get a set amount of money from the NPC depending on what class you clicked. If everybody gets the same amount, that's fine as well, but then everybody would have to work their way up to wealth IC'ly - There'd be no inherently rich characters, except possibly trough special profiles. I don't really see a problem with this if the "Wealth Class" solution is too tricky to arrange.

The Flaws:
- Kretol might/might not get alot of work pulling it off.
- There's no guarantee that the system won't be subject to inflation, or just quite simply stop. Seeing as money is only added to the system when new characters (consumers) are added, inflation would be slow, but that's no guarantee that it'll all be fine and dandy forever. It all depends on how fine and dandy we want it to be though; If the system's only there to add flavour, it's not all that important.
- Some might find that it places restrictions on the RP, especially if everybody starts out with the same amount of funds.

Now, the whole Economy thing has some good sides too:
- It'll really, really encourage greedy / merchant / crafter / adventurer characters, and there'd be an actual difference between poor and wealthy characters (currently, there's only the made-up differences that people want to apply in that particular moment, but no real sense of need, supply or demand. Then again, that applies to nearly all Roleplay). This would quite effectively enforce some sort of economy and realism.
- Finding/Creating items gets some sort of meaning above handing out out to people OOC'ly.
- OOC grinding and gear-gathering is fine, but only IC interaction will have any effect on your IC wealth.


No matter what I make it sound like, I'm frankly unsure if either of these suggestions is a good idea - Personally, I'd put myself 100% behind such a system, but there's also the possibility that not everybody thinks like me, and there's the possibility that it simply wouldn't function as intended and/or involve more work from the organizers than it's worth. There's also the possibility that there's far simpler systems that'd work just as well, that I've not thought about. At any rate: A huge block of text.

[noscere]

The Economy idea I think would not involve OOC grinding so to speak, I have thought more on this, take as a for instance, Kass my lock is a tailor and skinner, he skinns what he kills and uses some leather making some tailored goods, boots, bags etc which he can sell on in the AH, instead of Grinding I think it would be like Kass at work IC gathering the mats he needs to be able to live in a maner he wants, if like he is now, he cant find any wool and doesnt want to go hunting it down because he has other things he wants to do (like RP so he can get his vouches lol) then he could go to the AH and buy some giving someone else money for doing it for him.

Yes I agree this method would create greedy people and merchants in a given feild whos only interest is money and getting it, but then wouldnt this add more to the RP in Coth as well this the idea of working for your gold, silver and copper would rule out the Addon problem and would not cause extra work for Kretol and the GM`s.

As for my idea of the higher levels doing dungeon runs to get some low level gear for those new to Coth, this could be done again IC maybe as a guild RP event with the intent on what ever is sold would go into that guilds bank and so funding them to be able to do what ever it is they want or need. On an OOC not if the Hero`s/Grunts/Higher lvl Peons were to do this it would look good for Coth that the Higher level and more senior players are willing to help out the lower new players, for a price of course hehe.

I think if we want a fluent market and economy the easiest and fastest way to do it is to give our characters IC jobs and to use the professions Blizzard created to feed the market.

(Edit: In Coth leveling is not an issue, its money lol. You want more money? Work for it :mrgreen: )