Ur-World is a new MMO city building, economic, & resource gathering virtual world 100% driven by the players. The only NPC's in the world are animals used for resources. Players can purchase land, gather resources on that land, make buildings that make everything more efficient, evolve the world over time with new suggestions to make it truly their world!
I've created a forum space for the game where people can comment and track the progress of the game.
Let's build a world together!
Your economy system seems interesting.
(I apologize if you don't wish to discuss these issues in this thread - just let me know; I'm not sure what kind of feedback you are inviting, if any)
In this sticky on your forums, you say:
In Ur-World each player will start with some currency. The total amount of currency on a server is player count * starting currency. There is no concept of money out of thin air by selling to NPC's because NPC's do not exist in Ur-World. Players will buy/sell goods to meet their needs because a player cannot meet their needs on their own. Players must work together to build this virtual world and make it a success.
Preventing someone from getting multiple accounts to pool their money together to become more powerful is STRICTLY FORBIDDEN as it creates an unfair advantage in game. Methods are being created to prevent this.
In Ur-World you get 1 character per server per account. So make the best out of the character you get. We will add methods for customizing and changing your character so you can spice the character up some over time.[/quote]
There are several problems with this, and I'm interested with how you plan to deal with them. Economies in MMOs is a topic that appeals to me, though I have no education special in economics.
The problem with blocking multiple accounts:
As you mentioned, players can just create multiple accounts and loot the money from their accounts and pool it on their main account. Putting in underlined, capitalized, bold text "Strictly forbidden" won't actually stop people. You say "methods are being created to prevent this", but I can't think of any method that'd prevent it entirely, so you are opening up yourself a new battlegrounds against cheaters, in addition to the pre-existing battlegrounds of (1) players scamming other players, (2) players hacking their client, (3) players gaining access to your servers, and (4) players exploiting glitches and gameplay flaws.
(1) Impossible to prevent 100%, since humans aren't perfect and can be easily exploited. A simple keylogger does huge damage, but social hacking is very effective too.
(2) Impossible to detect 100%, if using a rootkit.
(3) Hey, it happened to Valve software when they were developing Halflife 2. Are your servers better protected than theirs? Admist the many layers of interacting software systems running on computers, people can find cracks in the defenses. The best security experts all proclaim that security is never a guarantee.
(4) Unless you are the best designer in the world, things can't be perfectly balanced. Unless you are the best programmer in the world, code always has bugs in it.
(X) And now you need to also worry about preventing multiple accounts? How? Emails can be created. IP addresses can (and do) change.
One method is requiring a credit card for a tiny transaction (of between 0.01 and 1.00), and have users type in (after viewing their bank account) how much you randomly withdrew. This increases the frustration of regular users as well, unfortunately, and would keep non-credit card users (teenagers and foreigners) from playing your game without help.
This increases your workload (reducing your time for actually improving the game), whereas cheaters out-number you in manpower, pool their knowledge, and are bound to have one or two people that are more intelligent than you within their masses. Sorry for the pessimism! 
Another thing is users like to have multiple characters. Why remove a feature that many many people are used to and love and use? If when growing up I wanted to play the game, and my siblings also wanted to play the game, you would block us from doing so? Only one of us could play? We shared Everquest accounts, Dark Age of Camelot accounts, Shadowbane accounts, Maple Story accounts... each with our own character on the same account. But your method would block families from playing, and also keep hardcore users from starting new characters without completely destroying their hard work on their original characters.
If you are targeting a niche, you might as well go all the way and make it so users start with zero money. Yes, it sounds horrible, but it's the only real solution.
You said, "There is no concept of money [appearing] out of thin air by selling to NPCs". But at the same time, you have money appearing out of thin air whenever a new player is 'born'. I wasn't born with a hundred-dollar bill in my hand, or a gold coin in my mouth - or at least nobody told me if I was. 
Also, players hoard money. Like crazy. If "the total amount of currency on a server is player count * starting currency.", that means that the median average of currency per player will be (starting currency / 2), with 10% of the population holding 50% of the wealth and not spending it back into the economy.
Imagine this: A player starts with 100 gold, somehow accumulates 1000 gold, gets bored and logs off and never returns. How will you fix that? Any solution you come up with will actually be a bandaid over the problem instead of resolving the real core issue, unfortunately. 
Most vritual world economies use what's called a 'Faucet and sink' economy. A million tiny faucets where money 'magically appears' in the game, and a million tiny sinks where money 'magically disappears' from the game. As the economy fluxuates, the administrators can dynamically open more faucets to combat depression, and open more sinks to combat inflation.
A Working Mud Economy - Shattered Worlds (a mud) used the 'Loads Standard' economic model, similar to what you are talking about.
Removing NPC economy - a recent GameDev.net thread.
Full employment - A nice graph that might give your some inspiration.
What are your plans for all this? How will you actually fix these issues, or will you bandaid them and be fine with half-solutions (which are definitely acceptable choices, and sometimes the right choice)?
Have you put in any heavy thought into this, or is this project more 'for fun', and it doesn't particularly matter of the economy needs to be reset or manually balanced every year or so?
I love comments/thoughts/ideas! I want to make an open community in my game. I'll try to address some of your concerns as I see them or as I plan on handling them. I first would like to thank you for your interest as with such a long post you must have put a lot of thought behind it. Thanks for taking the time for that.
Not sure if I mentioned blocking multiple accounts exactly (if I did on my site I'll have to change that. I know I made a post about it but at the end come to a different conclusion), but it's OK for players to have multiple accounts as long as they aren't pooling their funds and play them separately. There is no trading in the game. Goods MUST be purchased with currency. Below I talk about some of that.
This increases your workload (reducing your time for actually improving the game), whereas cheaters out-number you in manpower, pool their knowledge, and are bound to have one or two people that are more intelligent than you within their masses. Sorry for the pessimism!
I agree 100%. Keyloggers there isn't going to be a ton I can do about this, but every game faces this. It's more profitable for those cheaters to do this for WoW than my game honestly.
I'm giving players incentives to find and prove cheaters. If someone finds and can prove a cheater said cheater will have their currency removed and put into a lottery system for any other player to win. Some might go into randomly placed treasures in the world. Said cheater will get banned. I want to give some power to the honest community members and build a player base that rewards honest people. My hopes are that the good in people will win out. I hope to create more of these good people than the bad to even the playing field.
There is no in game trading. Everything must be done with cash via "contracts" or marketplaces. Both will be automatically watched by the server for either consistent small amounts or large amounts of transactions. Item cost averages will be tracked on marketplaces and anything out of the ordinary transaction wise will be flagged and followed up on. This starts to funnel cash through highly monitored systems in game to ease the searching field. This also means you have to have something to sell. Getting these things to sell takes time and effort and in doing so your needs have to be met or you won't be efficient enough to make anything, which means a good amount of time has to be put into each character, making it less likely someone will start multiple accounts and go through the effort to try and funnel the starting cash because it'll take a good amount of time.
Also, players hoard money. Like crazy.
Hoarding money isn't really an option in this game. The majority of the needs of the players cannot be met by themselves. They will have to pay for them, which means they will have to spend money.
Most vritual world economies use what's called a 'Faucet and sink' economy. A million tiny faucets where money 'magically appears' in the game, and a million tiny sinks where money 'magically disappears' from the game. As the economy fluxuates, the administrators can dynamically open more faucets to combat depression, and open more sinks to combat inflation.
I don't wish to be like most virtual worlds. I wish to experiment 
.
Imagine this: A player starts with 100 gold, somehow accumulates 1000 gold, gets bored and logs off and never returns. How will you fix that? Any solution you come up with will actually be a bandaid over the problem instead of resolving the real core issue, unfortunately.
I'm thinking of a taxing system which will be progressive. This tax will be taken out if online or not. The tax, like found cheaters money, can be put into lottery or treasures around the world. The lowest tax bracket will not pay anything. So over time in the above situation, that players money will eventually end up back in the system. Players that quit the game will have their money put back into the circulation over a certain time amount (3 months).
Have you put in any heavy thought into this, or is this project more 'for fun', and it doesn't particularly matter of the economy needs to be reset or manually balanced every year or so?
I have, which is why I do leave a spot open for the government to inject funds if needed in various, creative ways. I do however expect there to be rich people and poor people. People who are smart business people get the rewards of being rich. Over the course of the game I plan on bringing new inventions to the world (voted on by players) that could shift the economy. Raw materials that were once maybe not so high in demand could suddenly be very high in demand and boost anyone holding then to rich states. This is the part I'm really excited about. I'm going to give players a chance to submit what they want in the game, then from the most have a vote to let the community decide what I make next available via "patterns", "plans", whatever you want to call them that allows players to make things.
There will be challenges no doubt. I haven't seen a system like this before, and maybe there's a reason for that, or maybe people were just afraid to tackle the issues. I accept the challenges and look forward to being creative with solving them
As always questions/thoughts/comments are welcome!
Small progress report: http://ur-world.forumotion.com/t10-jan-30th-progress-next-steps#13
As always ideas/thoughts/concerns are always welcome here or on my game forum via the link above.
