[...] Koster has some interesting thoughts about inflation in MMORPGs, With the launch of Burning Crusade, people are already commenting on how much the value of older [...]

[...] designing Dungeon Escape, a friend pointed me in the direction of an article by Raph Koster on mudflation.  The article talks about the age old problem of persistent games.  To briefly summarise, a [...]

[...] drains to account for all the influx. This often means punishingly high costs for players, btw. Link (via [...]

[...] the game at a rapid rate without ruining it. Raph Koster has a nice summary of mudflation on his website, both the symptoms of it and traditional ways of trying to address [...]

[...] is not just a problem in the real world.  Apparently MMOGs like World of Witchcraft  experience a type of inflation as [...]

[...] http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/01/17/flation/ an interesting read for those interested in the economies of mmos… y release of new patches will [...]

[...] of Musdflation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudflation MMO designer Raph Koster (UO/SWG) http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/01/17/flation/ /moo WoW Resource: http://www.wowhead.com WoW Policies: [...]

[...] possible the game designers did this in an attempt to fight the single-player equivalent of Mudflation. A system like this can make sure the player is paced correctly and doesn’t outgrow smaller [...]

[...] CommentTime7 days ago  permalink In the theory department, Raph Koster has an excellent article about dealing with mudflation. He’s got a long history with MMOG design, interesting to see the various approaches and how WoW fits in. [...]

The problem is that this isn’t terribly fun. In the real world we have poverty, credit card debt, and suicides over unpaid bills. Not exactly a compelling description for gameplay, I fear. The secret is, as Sam Lewis said in his Austin talk, that inflation is okay but you really want to avoid hyperinflation.

Most games don’t extend credit, though. Cash-and-carry.

In a game, you want the players to emulate a shark — constantly moving forward to avoid sinking. That’s what a monthly fee is all about right? Play or “die.” The developers have to determine *how slowly* that “swim rate” should be in their economy. I’m not saying it’s not a lot of mental work, but I *am* saying you shouldn’t fear emulating the real-world economy more closely.

Inflation *IS* ok…as long as there’s a “good” reason for it. “The game world is played 24 hours a day and therefore moves through economic swings at incredible, mindboggling rates,” to me, is not a good reason.

by Raph:

In SWG, we actually chose to say “we don’t care what the value of a credit is” precisely because of the infinite spawns. Since basically every good had its prices set by players, the effect of devaluation of currency was fairly minimal in terms of buying power for goods because the prices floated along with the currency. In a typical mudflation scenario, values are “hardcoded” and therefore the buying power of players rises dramatically.

The same was sort of true with items; in SWG and UO both there was big turnover on items, and everything was doomed to break, pretty much. The result was that there were greater markets for items that were not top of the line. In SWG’s case, we also made it so that the influx of resources of varying quality resulted in the best item or goods not always being available.

The devs SHOULDN’T set the value of a credit. The game world should do that (Check), but then you say that “basically every good had its prices set by players.” …which is true, also. What I’m getting at is that apart from the minimal power requirements for harvesting the resources in the first place, there were NO CASH OUTLAYS that were “required” by the game. Resource “barons” needed a little cash which was generally compensated a hundred- or even a thousand-fold… and the end-consumers who needed the most expensive arms & armor would only be limited in their “cash creation” by their time and ingenuity in the game. This is of what I’m speaking. I don’t think the raw rate of cash influx was conceived of by you guys. (I was a *very* modest credit grinder, errrr, Hunter, and I could make 150k an hour with zero risk to me except the possibility of 1-2k of equipment degradation) … 150k was enough to buy… almost anything that wasn’t Top tier in that game. One hour of work for the largest house in the game… from the most expensive Architects…

Anyway, not to turn this into a memory lane post… I just think mudflation is a mitigatable-by-accuracy problem… I *do* enjoy reading everyone’s thoughts though…