Are All MMORPG Currencies Destined to Fail?

Millions of people play massive multiplayer online role playing games like Warcraft, Everquest, Guild Wars, and others. In these games as you defeat monsters and complete quests there are monetary rewards for whatever currency is in the games. With the money that is created players can spend it on items with in game vendors or with other players. As times goes on items tend to get more and more expensive. With this model are these games' currencies always going to fail?

While there are quite a few money sinks that are put into the game to try to control the money supply ultimately the game is structured so that money is constantly being printed in the game. Everyday players are gaining more and more money making the money supply much larger. As there is more money in the game items tend to cost more as those with the most money are bidding on items driving the price higher for the more rare items in the game.

The constant increase in the money supply makes it difficult to have a balanced economy. There are some ways of trying to control the economy.

Banning the gold farmers is a start. There are some who work real jobs internationally who spend the day getting more gold to sell to players for real money.

More gold sinks in the game are needed. This means expensive items sold by vendors in the game that will remove money from the game. If there are ways of balancing the money that is generated in the game as well as removed from the game the money supply will remain constant.

Another strategy is to add items in the game with controlled reward systems that are outside of using in game money.

With a bit of creativity some of the inflation problems can be controlled, but as long as there is a never ending supply of money coming into the game's economy each day it will probably always be a problem.

Posted in: MMORPG