[Theory] Online RPG Game Economics and You, Part 2

It is obvious that in almost all online role playing games, that more experienced players who have played longer will have more money and in-game wealth than someone who has started the game.  In the last post, I established that price fixing and demand will generally be decided more by older experienced wealthy players than the majority of the players around.

There is a concept of "quality" good or "substitute" good in real world economies that also apply online role playing games as well. For a designer, these represent particularly complex pitfalls with itemization. Consider the fact that there may be the possibility of an item found extremely early on in the game that is still useful throughout all levels of the game. This good can be acquired by anyone.

Goods or items that are in demand with few substitutes will have their prices determined "fair" by the most powerful players.

Consider a low level item that is perpetually useful. For example, a useful little trinket that stuns an enemy for 3 seconds. Now, since this item is perpetually useful, every player in every single wealth bracket will desire this item. The free market will then decide the price of the item, most likely, to be the highest price a player will pay for it. This will naturally fall within the "elite" player's wealth bracket. 

Even if the item wasn't particularly powerful, the item's valuation will be determined by the elite player's wealth bracket.  For example, let us assume that the item is worth no more than 1% of your income. For the elite player, this could be two to a hundred times greater than players of lower levels. This common low-level item then will have ridiculously inflated market value relative to the players finding it.

Such things naturally lead to: Farming.

Farming is a horrible process as it disrupts normal gameplay (advancement and progression) and replaces it with a tedious repetitive process. Players are no longer encouraged to play what/where it suits them (or where it will challenge them) but to rapidly incur financial gain by repeatedly doing a simple area.

Combating this is even riskier. Suppose that, to encourage players to move onto new areas, you decrease the amount of items/gold from monsters that are too easy for the player. Now, players have a disincentive to level. If there is so much more gold/wealth to be obtained from killing this set of easy monsters for a low level item that can't be found anywhere else and sells for millions because elite players will pay millions, you'll see players actively make the choice to either not level or the choice to roll dedicated farming alts designed to farm this area.

With too many people farming the same resource, the rise of automated gatherers and high competition naturally occurs. If there is high collusion between player groups for highly desirable items with only one location to be obtained then you may have entire gangs of players "camped" out at a specific spot to acquire. This problem is worse if said location was originally intended to be an area for new players!