Addressing the Economy (mudflation)

[Gadwen]

Originally Posted by Ezrick [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It was called "The Great Turkey Day Massacre".

There were several games before EQ of course, not even including MUDS. One was called "The Realm". It still exists today.


It was actually the only online game released by Sierra Online. It was quite successful and while the graphics were a bit hokey, and PvP rife with cheating (cheaters would intercept packets giving away the opponents next move in the turned-based combat) it did entertain us quite admirably for several year before EQ sucked us all in.

What happened was that a new version was planned, everyone was promised that all items and gold would carry over into the new game. They promised the players this six months in advance and EVERYONE hoarded gold waiting on release of The Realm 2.0.

The economy, on release, was a disaster. Combat item decay was part of the money sink, but it was stupidly easy with the 50k gold you had sitting in you chest at the house. EVERYTHING about the economy sucked. The smallest magic items sold for incredible amounts (sound familiar?).

So on Thanksgiving in 1997 they simply took it. ALL of it. Any items that were overpowered in the new version, gone, every character no matter their level was given 10gp. That was IT.

Of course there was great gnashing teeth. Many of us, for weeks, ran around in armor that was literally falling off, because we couldn't afford to fix it. People WAILED.

But in the end, it worked. It was a much healthier game in the end.

Ezzy


WTS a 4 CHANT WRATH! (because real men use adamantium mauls)

In the example here it made sense, they injected way too much money into a brand new game, they set up a flawed system by letting all that wealth carry over so they had to correct it.

Not really the same situation here on P99, assuming that people haven't duped or RMTed all their plat, it was earned legitimately through game play or interaction with other players as it was intended. The fact that there is a ton of plat floating around isn't a mistake. Resetting peoples banks would just kill this server, not simply from people leaving because of it, but people would never have faith that what they were doing was "permanent" and would always have that fear in the back of their minds that they were going to log in and find that what they spent 6-12 months working for was gone.