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[Diablo 3] Reports of the Economy's death were greatly exaggerated
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Eh. An afternoon's worth of billion gold transactions isn't that significant. It likely only affected a very small percent of the overall playerbase.
Man, if they rollback my character to pre-patch status I'll....have to spend a little bit of time regrinding that XP...which won't be a big deal given how easily xp is obtained in this patch...
But i'll surely articulate some righteous indignation on the official forums, since that's what the cool kids do.
The amount of money that would have to be counterfeited in order to have a substantial effect on the overall economy is more than you'd think. I mean, the fed effectively does what you're saying; bailout and such, was all just 'created' money, and pretty much all of the US currency has been 'created' since we went off the gold standard. Large amounts of money can enter the system and it not have a major noticeable effect on the overall economy until it compounds after and protracted period of time.
There is still ostensibly a 'cap' on how many dollars can exist. There's reasons why only portions of deposit accounts can be insured, and why investments and funds are usually unbacked monetarily and rely entirely on the value of a 'thing' to even exist, separate from actual currency. Diablo has no 'cap', as I said before, all the dupe did was speed up the inevitable. That's the bigger problem, not the dupes. Rolling back simply buys time for a much larger problem.
Well, it's a bigger deal if that gold was created out of thin air by dupes, as opposed to the slower normal inflation of the gold supply leading to larger and larger transactions.
If it is small enough that they can limit the damage by just undoing the auctions and going on a banning spree, then it probably wasn't that widespread. I'm just not that optimistic about it given that what I saw of the streams of the dupers, and they made every attempt to flood the markets as much as possible with their duped gold.
Suppose...let's say 200 players each receive 2 billion gold out of nowhere. What exact problem would it cause? If they spend it, then the gold is dispersed among people who had items on the AH. If they sell it...it disperses. I'm not clear on what the problem is.
Edit: Given that there is no limit to the amount of gold that can be on the economy, all this does is push us slightly down the road to where we would have been, say, 2 weeks from now when that amount of gold was "naturally" generated by monster farming. This isn't akin to a real-world economy, wherein limits are set on the amount of currency in circulation. There is an ever increasing amount of gold with no upper limit set or strict limitation on supply. At some point those billions would have been generated through farming. So, again, worse case scenario is that the collective gold supply is a few weeks ahead of where it would have been had duping not occurred.
But honestly I can't help but crack up at the sheer number of "rollback or I quit" threads on the official forums.
What, exactly, is the threat there? "Hey, don't do what I want and the game that I already paid for and i am not continuing to pay for will be unplayed! You have my money and I'm the one not using what I bought! That'll sure show you! You'll have to live with one less person using your bandwidth! Ha!"
I mean...what are they thinking?
At least the "do this or I'll quit" posts in WoW have some weight since there's a sub.
But anyone who cares enough about a game to still be playing and to go post about it...yeah, they'll still buy your xpack.
It's like watching second semester Freshmen Libertarians argue about the gold standard, but with slightly less arithmetic and slightly more profanity.
I don't want to turn this into a general economics thread (there's at least one in D&D dealing with this sort of stuff), but this goes far beyond simple matters of inflation of the money supply. Given the ease of mass duplication of gold from this exploit, it's more like the bags of hundreds being thrown off trucks (though those trucks may not have been operating all over the country, to keep this analogy on track). It not only causes problems by introducing a lot of illegitimate supply into the market, it undermines faith in the currency, be it official currency or diablo gold.
There are reasons why governments have counterfeited the currency of other hostile countries, like the Germans did in WWII or the North Koreans more recently, that go beyond simply having some extra money on hand to use.
Players may not be paying, but Blizzard still needs them. They're depending on the RMAH for continuing revenue, presumably, and that depends on a continued playerbase. Even if these are players that refuse to buy on the RMAH, they still pump items into the economy that circulate among both auction houses.
Since the Auction House is the game, then the other players farming beside you are the content.
The problem was not the duplication of gold.
The problem was people using the duplication of gold to buy gems, selling the gems on the RMAH, and funneling large amounts of funds into their paypal accounts.
That is my take on the situation. There is no limit to the amount of in-game gold that can be created. There is a limit to the amount of blizbucks, since they are tied to an actual economy.
In a system of unlimited supply of currency there's effectively no such thing as counterfeit money. I mean, given the right circumstances, I'd argue that in an actual economy, dumping bags of money on random people could potentially improve the economy.
But again, that is an irrelevant comparison when there is no differentiation between duped gold and real gold, in part because it's fake and in part because it's already unlimited.
Also, again, you're dramatically overestimating the economic effect, in a real economy, of an effectively small amount of currency entering the system; particularly if it is like here, where it is pretty widely distributed.
Stupid on the official forums seems to now be of the "WTF no rollback?!" variety.
And, as with the gold supply, there is no limit to the amount of stupid that can appear on the official forums.
Oh, I know...It just feels a lot more empty of threats than your usual MMO "obey me or I quit" whines.
Plus I imagine, even if for total fun, they keep track of the number of people who "quit" and continue to play.
I'd track it for the lulz and have weekly pots going for them.
The duped gold is essentially counterfeit, since it was introduced to the system through an entirely illegitimate (though straightforward) process. That's the important part you don't seem to be getting, it's not just the fact that the gold has been introduced into the supply by however many billions or trillions were duped, it's how that gold was created and then circulated.
It's not a perfect counterfeit either, though you may think so at first glance since it is close to perfect, because presumably there are logs of just how much gold was duped and where as it was done through AH exploits. So if they decide to put in the effort and had their system set up right, they could trace every instance of the duped gold being mixed into the original supply and undo all the transactions to remove the equivalent of all the duped gold.
I'm not sure if you realize it, but most of the money out there, and I'm talking real money, isn't like the pieces of paper like you may find in your wallet, but is instead just numbers on a computer or numbers written down somewhere. It would still be counterfeiting money if someone fraudulently and arbitrarily increased those numbers outside of the rules of the monetary system, but that sort of thing would be easily caught because the transactions would not match up and could be easily traced and reversed.
I'm also not sure why you are so hung up on there being a theoretically unlimited supply of Diablo 3 currency. The same can be said for real world currencies. Just ask Zimbabwe or the Weimar Republic in its hyperinflationary periods.
Presumably you would agree that, given enough time, the amount of gold now in the economy, after duping, would have occurred in the future though "natural" farming practices.
So, what is the problem with the gold being introduced now, through duping, rather that a few weeks from now via regular farming?
Edit: Simply put, why does the source of the gold matter? What is the effective in-game difference between duped gold and farmed gold?
It should be obvious why, you are already seeing the reasons why: it undermines faith in the system, and pisses people off. Do you seriously think there would be widespread demands for a rollback and reversal if Blizzard just upped the gold find cap a bit? That would increase the gold supply and the rate of growth too.
I mean, I'm having a bit of Mugatu moment right now, and I'm feeling like I'm taking crazy pills. Do I really have to explain why cheating in an online game might ruin the experience for people? Even if the effects of the cheating are indirect?
Well, it shakes faith in the value of items more if it happens quickly, for one. But that's lame, I know.
Also, the distribution of it. It would be disheartening to a player to find out he missed out on the Billion Gold Giveaway because he wasn't online today, and instead he needs to spend the next year farming that the "normal" way.
I guess part of the question I'd have is just how much duped gold remained, and how that compares to the normal daily farming rate (across the economy). Then I'd want to know the distribution.
Of course, the "natural" farming is already rigged, given bots. So whatever. I think by now that's easier not to think about, whereas a big dupapalooza is more obvious to players.
Ah. I thought your point had to do with the functionality of the economic system with respect to inflation of currency and increases in item prices to account for the inflation. I did not realize you were just saying "People are pissed off".
People being pissed off is not an economic issue, or at least not specifically economic.
Edit: If Blizzard bans players or reverts some accounts they are not doing it to remove the gold from the economy. Rather, they are doing it to appease the portion of their playerbase who are pissed off. That is an important distinction.
I'm honestly not sure if this is the right choice or not, since I can't see the data they see. If they can successfully undo all the transactions from the dupers in particular, then that should mitigate some of the damage. It won't completely fix things, since there were a lot of secondary effects and legitimate trading going on in response to the distortions the dupers made.
glad i spent most of my gold
A bunch of supply-siders up in here pushing their Reaganomics on me! More seriously, the economic effects of that pissing off the playerbase are on the demand side of the equation too, by making the game look unsound and curbing the desire to get all the phat loot and build mountains of diablo gold. That's not really all that important in the grand scheme of things, and Blizzard probably cares more about the effects of pissing off the playerbase from the standpoint of impaired reputation and loss of future sales. But that has effects on the meta level too.
Long time lurker, just registered!
There is a pretty massive gold dupe going round so there will probably be a roll back real soon. Just wanted to let you know.
There are details here: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/8769238079
edit: I posted this 15 hours ago. Dunno what went wrong. Well the last night was pretty crazy anyway.
Now I don't know if your actual grievance is "People are pissed off", or if you think something magical happened via this exploit to irritate the Blizzard Economy God.
If it's just "people are pissed off", then what are these "secondary effects"?
And the official forums become a concentrated cesspool of dumb.
anyway i'm surprised they're not doing a rollback. either they really have a way to track all the duped gold, or they just don't care
i'm probably going to be done with the auction house since all the decent items will be gone and prices will be fucked.
at least my wizard is swagged out though!
The duped gold distorted prices on the AH in general for trades today, like with gems and items and whatnot. For example, I would not have paid hundreds of thousands of gold for a gem combine recipe to try to combine and sell my gems in absence of the dupers throwing everything out of whack. I didn't dupe, and I doubt the guy selling the recipe did either.
edit: and then subsequently spent it
that chant's doe
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/pabrt-1613/hero/1960
Edit: Doh I did mean 800-900million.
Diablo 3 Profile
gold isn't worth anything anymore
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