Guild Wars 2

I would say that the primary way that MMO economies are similar to real world economies is the presence of lots and lots of people making independent decisions about how to spend their money. People who all have different (and this I think is key to lots of forum arguments) priorities and goals. Not only do they have different goals, but they have different preferences about how they want to meet those goals (Trading, Farming, Dungeons, etc.). Therefore, we can use theories developed in the real world to understand the behavior of aggregates of people in game.

To munkiman’s point about the lack of real consequences if you run out of money; yes, game economies have inherently lower stakes than the real world. However, players have strong emotional attachments to their characters and guilds, which makes them act like they matter a lot (thereby ‘raising the stakes’). Which for ANet is fantastic because it keeps people playing so they can keep making the game and paying their employees.

It’s true that GW2 doesn’t have any ‘mandatory or you die’ type expenses, but I think there’s a category of goods that are much like necessities. Things like armor repair and waypoint travel, while not strictly necessary to play, make it much harder if you don’t.