“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.
Much better microphone Jonah.
@ RTS’s aren’t dying – just waiting
So scaling down is an issue, apparently … Well, you can always push up the minimum spec, and leave the lower end PC market for indies.
I agree with Jordan, blaming the hardware instead of acknowledging the lack of balls/cojones is not fair.
@UK: Wii U sells just 34,000 pieces of software in January
😛 this is a big surprise indeed, taking into account the huge library of games available for WiiU.
On the other hand, WiiU doesn’t have the market share that other consoles have.
@thatgamecompany had been bankrupt when Journey shipped
Speaking of cojones, these guys had it.
As for a small design doc, well, not entirely bullshit. You can do it the Agile way, with lots of cards, each describing a development story. So yeah, technically you do have just a one page document, but the entire description of the design will take plenty of cards to compensate.
@QOTW:
Not sure, to be honest, I wasn’t a fan of RPGs. Then STALKER came (Steam labels it as an RPG). Warcraft III had RPG elements in it, but it was still an RTS. I also enjoyed Fallout 3, but that was after STALKER.
Some encouraging words for Paul: hope you get a job.
@KOTOR
I loved it. I actually prefer the Old Republic era than the whole Anakin timeline.
@RTS are undead
In my opinion a genre never dies. Few years back people were saying that 2D games were dead. Since then we had some brilliant 2D entries. Terraria. Trine. Same thing will be with RTS. They just need the right conditions for a return. A brave studio that will make a new classic and start an RTS uprising.
@Segsbox 360
I think Microsoft tried to buy everything at some point. I definitely remember Microsoft wanted to buy Nintendo during it’s Gamecube days. If Microsoft would buy Sega, the Dreamcast might have had a chance. Microsoft would flood it with cash and support.
But history chose otherwise. Probably for the best.
@At Wii U sales
If there is one thing I am sure off is that in February there will be at least one Wii U unit sold in UK. Mine. That’s right. I now own 2 Nintendo branded bricks. My £300 Monster Hunter emulator.
@Assassins Creed
Milk the cow while it’s alive and pray it does not turn into a bull.
@QOTW
First RPG I ever played was Phantasy Star 2 on Genesis. It’s funny cause I could never complete it because Russian cartridges shipped without memory and you had to finish the whole game in one sitting. The first RPG I properly enjoyed was Pokemon Emerald. I played a few RPGs before it but they were nothing compared to Emerald. That and Final Fantasy X.
The demo of Journey does not do it justice. I too tried the demo in mid-2012 and was underwhelmed.
Then over winter break, I decided to listen to the great reviews and give the game a shot. Actually bought the disc. It was an amazing experience. The gameplay is very basic, but the immersion and creativity levels are way high.
By the way, you can solo the whole game. It’s only an option to interact with others (who you will not see in the demo). Everyone looks the same, but has unique musical sounds they make. You can only communicate through musical sounds, and so interacting with others becomes this amazing experience, because you are doing most of the interactions in your own imagination!