Deal with having a player economy and instanced dungeons? I would think being able to go outside of the world and bring loot back into it would seriously screw up an economy. What I know of WoW is only hearsay, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.

Quote:The way I would think that the item issues could be solved is that there is X number of objects permitted at any time in the game world. For example, there is one orange item that is only dropped in a very high level instance and exists only twice on the entire server.

This presents a lot of extra problems. What if for instance these two orange items are had by players that don't use thoes characters anymore, or if they leave and their account is still active (or at least not deleted from the server yet). Might this make your other players dissatisfied with the game, knowing that they have no chance to get these good items. And also horders and exhtosionist that just collect all these rare items and then not pass them on, or pass them on at very high prices?

From what I remember of WoW (its been a while since I played), a list of items just has a percentage of being dropped by a certain creature. So if you run into a skeleton in a dungeon, its the same (or atleast usually similar) list as one on the outside. As such, the instanced dungeons are the same as the rest of the world.

As far as the economy, that is in constant flux based on what someone is willing to pay for an item. Its not like your dupping an item 5 million times, its just like you've been adventuring in the game world but instead its in a dungeon.

Most is regulated by the fact that soulbound items can't be traded between players. And the best (= most expensive) items in instances become soulbound once you get them in your inventory.

Upgrades. Every time you upgrade an item, the old item gets effectively removed from the game with soulbound items.

The people who play the most want soulbound items. So most of their gameplay isn't causing items to flow into the general economy (well, other than enchantment components -- but your new gear needs new enchantment components!).

The less often playing people will find that if they can provide the post-soulbound people with goods or services, they can make lots of money (post-soulbound play alot, and have limited tradeable items they want), then buy all the pre-soulbound upgrades they want. This results in items that the post-soulbound want skyrocketting in price.

After a period of time, they'll raise the level cap, all the current high-value gear becomes worthless, and they start the cycle all over again.

Predictably inflationary/deflationary economies are not that unstable. I mean, look at the computer economy -- every year, better computers for less money, yet it seems to work.

On a related subject, MMO's have many things they called "money sinks" - things that require you to put money into that are not players. Things such as buying mounts and repairing require you to put money into the NPCs which effectively makes it disappear, otherwise economies would be flooded with gold and the prices of things would be rediculous (well, more rediculous =P )

I realize you might have no idea what everyone is talking about since you say you haven't played WoW, so here's an explanation:

Soulbound - Most items can become "soulbound" to you. Once an item is soulbound to you, you can not give it to any other player or put it in the auction house. The only way to get rid of it is destroy it or sell it to an NPC merchant for a fixed price. (And things you sell to NPC merchants disappear, so other players can't buy it back from that merchant.) Some items become soulbound when you equip them, so you can pick it up and carry it and then give it to someone or sell it as long as you never equip it. Other items become soulbound as soon as you pick them up; like quest rewards, quest-specific item, and high-end loot. This stops inflation by ensuring that when you upgrade your current gear (which you do constantly), you can't give or sell your old gear to anybody; it gets removed. Also, if you want the best gear, you have to go get it yourself, by farming soulbound-on-pickup items in raid dungeons, or completing quests with soulbound rewards, or racking up a huge PvP score in the battlegrounds. It also presents a choice every time you find a good item: you can either sell it, or use it yourself, never both.

Level requirements - Most items have level requirements, meaning that even if you have seven billion gold at level 3, you can't buy anything useful with it. Overall, it makes having tons of gold not as useful as it is in other MMORPGs. Gold certainly helps, but if you want to have all the best of everything, you need to go get it yourself.

Money sinks - The more you play the game, the more money you will end up spending. You pay every time you ride a flight path, every time you learn new skills. You need to pay to repair your equipment every time you die or have been getting hit a lot. Most players need to buy food and water a lot. A lot of classes need to buy a constant supply of reagents for their spells. You can sink huge money into redoing your feat tree or buying a cool-looking but not very important epic mount.