Guild Wars 2

I applaud this game for hiring an economist for assistance in the Market and overall economy. More and more companies are doing this and I think it is a positive move by game developers. MMOs draw people that are interested in many different aspects of the underlying world. Some are pure PvPers, some are pure crafters, and most are probably somewhere in between. Its important for a successful game to appeal to each of these people and make it entertaining for them. More importantly, these different types of people must NEED each other. This is the major role of crafting in a MMO. The pure crafters get what they want. They make things that the PvPers want and compete with each other over prices. Its truly a beautiful thing to see in action.

With that being said, I think Mr. Smith’s job is a difficult one. The underlying mechanics of the crafting make the market perverse. Not bashing on GW2 here, most MMOs do this. Perhaps they want to focus more on PvP rather than on crafting. I can’t answer this. The root cause is that the free market system is not really there. People make things, not for profit as should be the case, but for xp to get to the end of crafting where there is some degree of a true market. IMHO, any player making something should only being doing so for the profit of making that item. If there isn’t any profit in making that item, people will stop making it until it reaches an equilibrium. Conversely, if someone is making a large degree of profit for a particular item, more crafters will enter this field in search of profits and the market will work amazingly well on its own with very little input from the creators.

EVE Online has arguably the best virtual economy of any MMO ever created. There is no benefit to crafting a component other than the pursuit of profit. People who dont like to craft never have to craft a single thing and those that do can do so until the heart is content. Price discovery happens very efficiently in most cases. Before you get all, ‘well go play eve then’, you should know I am playing 2 MMOs religiously. EVE since 2006 and GW2 since it came out. These are just my opinions and may differ greatly from the games creators. They may have intended to really build a PvP game that had some crafting in it. And, to this end, they have succeeded greatly. The game is really beautiful and I love the PvP. Unlike GW2, I find the combat in EVE to be unstimulating.

Anyway, that’s my 2 copper(LOL). John Smith, I am glad you are on board and wish you the best of success and look forward to maybe seeing GDP estimates, projections, employment numbers, and trade statistics. That would be HOT! Fell free to contact me to banter about the market. I have a Ph.D. in Finance and would love to chat.