Thursday, March 11, 2010

WAR's Economy

As I mentioned yesterday, Mythic is looking for feedback on some of their upcoming patch ideas.  Only the one about improving the WAR economy is causing me some concern.   There is a lot to say about this topic, but I am going to make it concise as possible. There is a TLDR version at the bottom too.

What Mythic is proposing:  Players do not have enough to spend gold on which may be helped by more BoE (Bind on Equip) items from PQ's, drops and other avenues.

That sounds all well and good, so why am I concerned (based on the info we have)?

PvE.  Nearly every PQ in the game is PvE, including dungeons.  Mythic is finally getting rid of the PvE in the city siege, so why add a new economic emphasis based on PvE?

World Drops.  The most popular world drop is probably the Sandstorm class of weapons.  From dungeons it may be the Odjira fragment.  Both of which are BoE and sell for a nice price.  However, these are obtained through PvE. The only valuable drop from PvP is a piece of Sovereign jewelery which a small segment of the population can use. 

All of the armor set (glove, boots) drops cannot even be sold to a vendor.  The market is usually flooded with them, so selling on the AH is not productive either.  This leads me into my next concern, how will PvPers get gold?

Gold.  It seems to me that gold is a PvE currency, for PvP it is tokens.  This is partly due to there being no reliable way to earn gold by PvP.  There are kill quests, but you have to travel to each warcamp to pick it up and turn it in.  You'll spend a large chunk of your reward just traveling. 

Unless a new way to make gold by PvP is implemented, many will forced to PvE to get items that actually sell.  If that happens, I will be quite discouraged. 

Gold Sellers.  There are a small amount of gold sellers in WAR now.  Putting more emphasis on gold will just increase their presence.

Alright, that went longer than I hoped.  Here is the TLDR version:

Please do not make me PvE in order to get gold.  I get tokens from doing what I like already, why can't they be used?

It is possible Mythic may have addressed these concerns, but all we have to go on is what they posted.  WAR is about fighting other players, at least it is to me.  The economy should support that, not encourage people to PvE.  Next week I will offer up my half-baked ideas :)