This is more of me going over the games neat economic development, and what to expect from the future. Something I’ve always liked doing is studying how a games economy’s pans out, and how some things can turn out different then you expect.
For example, The Vindicator, Pulsar and Ax-Slash are all a 1/60 chance, much rarer then any single boss item, but because of the lack of people able or wiling to farm the bosses for hours on end, boss items perceived value is much higher then it should be, allowing one to trade only a few of these for any one of those items. For example, you could receive a trade where someone offers you a vindicator for a few boss items, sometimes just one as the Vindicator itself has a very low practical value due to only being usable by warriors.
Now of course this comes with practical value. To a mage player, the vindicator is absolutely worthless, they don’t need it, and it only holds value to trade for something like Pulsar, that they actually CAN use. The same could be said for all these rare weapons.
Enchantment scroll drops aren’t particularly rare, but the fact there are so many enchantments means getting a strong one specifically is unpredictable. This unpredictability, coupled with the high demand means strong scrolls are almost as valuable as items that are, on paper, multiple times rarer then them.
Crimsons Economic Lecture
Just a little tip, try to avoid trading for items right after a big content update drops
When a new update drops, say the Dark Sea, the prices are gonna be in flux for a while. Generally, the more experienced traders will have a better ‘feel’ of what their value will be, especially if the drop rates are public. However, until the items have had time to get out into circulation their prices will be in flux a lot. You can see this sometimes, like when AO came out people were offering seasonals for Pulsars/Vindicators/Ax-Slash scrolls, in spite of the fact we knew they weren’t obscenely rare. Overpaying or underselling happen a lot when people don’t take time for the price to stabilize.
How do I tell somethings value?
All you usually have to go off of is word of mouth and ‘communal perceived value’. What everyone ‘thinks’ is valuable. Are seasonals ACTUALLY worth anything? Not really, but it’s their rarity that makes them an excellent commodity in the higher end of the economy. Especially since there can always be new Sunken items, but seasonals are always going to remain stable, as far as we know, there will never be more of them. In fact, traders could artificially boost the price of seasonals by destroying them.
Companies like Louis Vuitton actually burn their unsold clothes to make sure their value doesn’t depreciate. Luckily, I don’t see this practice coming to AO, as there are very few traders rich enough to actually effect the market like that. You’d need to burn dozens of headless anyway for their value to spike in any noticeable way.
As well, Rarity can apply to production. During the first week of the game, being able to consistently farm King Calvus for drops was actually a rare skill few had. This made Calvus drops incredibly valuable, and some of them could be sold for strong scrolls/pulsars. Nowadays, Calvus drops are still the most valuable boss items, but the price has greatly depreciated as more people found out how to farm him.
Anyway, perceiving value can be intimidating for people trying to get into trading. Normally you can get a decent idea by just playing the game a lot, but this can also lead to skewed perceptions. Some people can get a lot of an item they initially thought ‘rare’ and as such their idea of how much it is actually worth goes down. If you have 10 Calvus chestplates, a single one doesn’t seem as valuable to you anymore, right? Some people get that, some people don’t just felt it noteworthy to point out as identifying habits can help break them.
How Seasonals remind me of TF2 Hats
The first game that got me into studying virtual economies was TF2. To this day it has one of the most in depth and complex game economies you’ll find outside of mmos. For explanation, the community operates on an incredibly similar trade hiearchy that AO’s seasonals do. These hats, cosmetic items in TF2 don’t have any real value. It’s not like an MMO, you can USE calvus armor, but Seasonals and TF2 Cosmetics are just that, cosmetic items.
So let me tell you a story, one that might sound familiar. When Sam and Max: The Devil’s Playhouse dropped on steam, people were awarded with a free hat in TF2 if they bought the game before a certain time frame. After that time ran up, no more hats would be awarded. This simply promotional event would alter TF2’s economy entirely, it was one of the rarest exclusive items in the game. Like Headless, it became a cornerstone of the games trading economy, being traded for several items of lesser value at once.
Of course, all seasonals were limited time, so why is it that only Headless became a benchmark item, something with such agreed upon value that it reigns supreme in the games economy? It has to do with a sort of ‘consistent rarity’. Everyone knows how difficult headless were to acquire.
As you can see I’m pretty passionate about studying virtual economies, and with that I can usually make a few predictions.
Some basic Crimson Trade predictions
Aside from what I said previously, about waiting for prices to stablize, I think in the future, items like Pulsar, Ax-Kick and the Vindicator will see a rise in value. For one, come the next story update and level cap increase, more classes will be able to access these items and their abilities. Right now they are confined to pure builds only. Once that changes and hybrids can use them too, their value will jump up. Right now I myself have six or so pulsars and about seven ax-kicks on my Warlock, none of which do me any good at the moment.
This kind of logic will apply doubly to things like Lost Magics/Lost Fighting Styles and partially to exotic/legendary weapons. With their exceptional rarity, they will always be in demand. Someone, somewhere, is gonna want one to use on themselves, so they will have both a practical value and a trade value. I can’t fathom a guess as to how rare exactly they will be, but if the drop rate is anything above 1/100 (anything below a 1% chance), AND you have to be good at exploring the dark sea, I could expect to see these being valued just below or around the level of Sunken gear, maybe even higher as the Sunken market gets saturated as people fish up new items.
I’ll be honest I don’t know why I felt like ranting on in a lecture about the economy, it’s just a hobby of mine, and I can’t wait for things like the auction house or further story updates as they will drastically change the economy. Like, yeah, Calvus items are valuable now but they will eventually, inevitably, fall off, and I am excited to watch how the games economy changes and molds over the coming years.