Old days Prydwen: economics

[Borf]

if you go through a "middle man" or buy it off a player there is no gaurantee that the money you pay will get you the goods you require. therefore the market will fluxuate dependant on the amount or "ledgitimate" businessmen and "crooks".

It's true, that even when the goods are all the same, you still need to be able to trust someone to make the trade work.
On the other side, what is actually trading? It's an exchange between two people wanting the goods the other person has. You never know if the goods are 100% quality (in real life) and you might end up buying crap. In the virtual world you still need to have that trust, not for the sake of the goods, but even 'getting' the item you wanted.

Thanks mordsythe for pointing that out, forgot all about it. Guess i'm used to buy something while having the item in my hands (in the real world).

to be totally honest the prices varied depending on where i looked for it. if you go to "recognized" sites then you know for sure that when your money is recieved by them then your goods will be delivered to you no matter what.

part of the trust story, but to link it to my previous post; Does it make my assumption false by it? The prices might fluxuate between buyers, but that's because it's a market that just started growing (I think). they are still testing how much they can ask for it and still keep their share of the market.

Or was my previous story incorrect and do you, as a new supplier, need to go below the "normal price", used by the "ledgitimate" businessmen, because nobody trusts you ?

hmmmm

 

[Krill]

Nice reasoning Borf, I think you have hit upon something in your analysis of pricing. The thing is there is no evidence (I've found) of how it works so it's unclear what effect gold selling has. The issue of middle men needs to be added in, though that is often not as difficult as it may seem as Ebay is such a mediator. If you go to people who have lots of recommendations on Ebay you can get an idea of their trustworthiness, even if you then go and use their dedicated web-site. However, that's not always possible and then it is a matter of someone paying and hoping they'll get the goods.

The point about monopolists is interesting as you are completely right about there being low barriers to becoming a seller. However, in fact the market may bring about monoplies. If you look at the data I produced on Prydwen for 2004 it seems pretty clear there was something close to a monopoly held by xroadgames which was then contradicted when favgames moved in. The price then dropped as they progressively underbid each other. I'm not sure what would have happened next because then Wow's emergence seemed to wipe out both companies.

It's interesting if plat selling is coming back as that indicates a market which indicates Pryd daoc has survived and stabilised after the Wow eruption. I'm hoping to do more research on this, I've put in for a grant to collect a years worth of data but it'll be on Warcraft not DAOC. Thanks for the comments, it helps a lot thinking this through.

Ducky! Hey there.

 

[lmb]

Krill / Bork

You guys really should try out EVE Online http://www.eve-online.com/

It's a MMO in a unique position, it's a unsharded universe, so all players ( been up to 17k online at the same time lately) are in the same market, and players have influence over pretty much every aspect of the market.

You could write papers on the ingame market there, not having to look at the game/real world interaction for material.

I don't wanna tell you too much, but if you really are into MMO economics, EVE online is the place to look for them

And heya btw Krill //Kzanderf, Leanara, etc...

 

[Sinnica]

Hello Krill nice to see you again!!

 

[mordsythe]

glad to know that my input towards this thread has added another variable. not like u had enough anyways
had another thought. If a "non-trustworthy" player decides to cut in to the market and starts taking RL money off peeps and not delivering the goods and then a "legitimate" businessman comes in and starts charging more than the "cheat" do you think that people would pay the higher price as they would think that they stand a better chance to get their goods?