“Gold Rush”
It’s amazing how economies thrive on virtual worlds like Azeroth. One can buy and sell wares at an auction house to bring in money and spend money. Unfortunately, on my return back to Azeroth after a large siesta from the virtual world, many things seem to have changed… it costs an arm and a leg for almost everything. Perhaps the Burning Crusade expansion has set a new level of cost?
Here’s the deal. If you’re a brand new World of Warcraft player, you’re going to find yourself having to harvest the materials of the world (known as “mats”) for yourself because the auction house is way too expensive for everyday items. Inflation is out of control, imagine going to the store to purchase a leather jacket for the price of a car. You’d go cold wouldn’t you?
Once upon a time things were different, “low-bee” items (items between 1 and 15 let’s say) were a reasonable price, usually in the silver range of money. Today, they’re weighted in gold. The concept of supply and demand is at work but how is it we can purchase the supply at such a high cost? Because we’ve got friends or other characters with a lot of unused cash!
With Burning Crusade we saw basic quests tossing around gold as if it were common place. A character would save up thousands of gold for mounts and then horde the gold as if it were precious until they realized it was nearly infinite in supply and would start passing it around their guild or to other low level characters in their account. The end result, a low level character can go into the auction house with 100 gold in hand and buy whatever they need for basic materials no matter the price.
The laws of supply and demand take on a whole new meaning when people buying have nearly infinate supplies of cash. For me, I’ve decided to purchase some materials while “grinding” for others because they’re just too costly to purchase. However, I’ll do what needs to be done to also exploit the high prices when selling items back to the auction house and contribute to the over-inflated economies.
Perhaps, over time, Blizzard will create a platinum piece to replace the common nature of the gold as it depreciates in value. Although that’s said more in jest, it’s unfortunate that brand new gamers to this MMORPG won’t be able to take full advantage of the auction house as they could years ago with the influx in gold deposits.
If you’re considering the Xbox 360 console, or plan to buy the Xbox 360 Arcade Edition for USD $279.99 please take pause, until the Xbox 360 20GB models dry up, you can now purchase them for USD $299.99. As Microsoft has bluntly stated, get them “while supplies last.”
@Sony drops 3D support, saying customers rejected it
😀 really? How about their pricing, can we reject that as well? The main issue with 3D TV for for now is the lack of 3D content (ah, where’s the porn industry when you need it …). Add to that a pricey TV and you start asking yourself if it’s worth it.
My issue with 3D gaming is that in order to properly display it in 3D, you need to render the scene twice. Basically you need hardware that can do 120fps in plain 2D mode in order to have 60fps in 3D. Don’t know how many can afford buying such gear.
@Oddworld creator to EA: “F— you very much”
😀 I love this guy! As long as he has a good game, there will be somebody willing to distribute it.
@Wii U launch developer complains of lackluster CPU:
Oh my … this is definitely not good. They just aimed for a different ergonomics/usage type and forgot about the computing power …
This reminds me of a particular phone, where the manufacturer focused mostly on user experience, completely forgetting that the device is still a phone that uses radio waves to communicate 😛 *ahem* iPhone 4 *ahem*
@Mists of Pandaria sales below expectations according to analyst firm
Well, there’s that many times you can sell the same game again and again 😛
Kidding aside, Jonah does provide a very good explanation.
@Nintendo Power: it’s bound to happen, due to Internet alone; the more specialized magazine (more niche type of market) the faster the printed version will dead.
I’m with Jordan on this one. Jonah, I send links to my friends …
@favourite game of the 90’s:
Jonah, good point with Unreal Tournament, that game was (if you ask me) the bets of the series. Everything from music to weapons felt better than any of the sequels.
Now, the reason why I went for Quake 3 is (believe it or not) the bots. Play on nightmare any of the maps that has just one bot, and if the hair on the back of your neck stands up due to fear of being fragged, then you might understand. UT was fun, but could not do THAT.