Limited resources seem to be the best option, becausse they allow for more story development. The more people who come in, the less resourcees there are to go around. When that happens, people start to fight over resources. You might have an iron mine situated near a town, which would be a good reason for sentinent incursions. Perhaps when the game world becomes overpopulated, the admins can say "Gold has been discovered east of Kalajibabwa" And then watch the gold rush, the battles for the land, the following defenses, plus the business that would go on, the squatters. Follow the real world models. Overpopulation leads to fights over resources, and new resourcec discoveries leads to perhaps a sudden devlopment of a sleepy community, a massive influx into a worthless region (look at the Central American Indians-given the plains then push off when they were found to be worth settling).

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
I think the fundamental problem is that the game is limited to the core kill-for-swag economy. You''re stuck on an escalator that only goes up.

That''s one problem, but there''s another one - the game is expected to adapt to people entering the system and give everyone an equal chance at getting that ''swag''. In other words, the economy has to scale to match the number of players, or everyone''s gameplay experience is degraded. And of course, if you inject more resources into the game, this just means that the potential difference between rich and poor grows. The real world isn''t much better, although some of us in richer countries like to pretend that it is... This is why I''m of the belief that the best way to model an economy in a game while keeping some semblance of fairness is to try and reduce the importance of money as far as possible.

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I agree with Kylotan to a certain extent. Yes, we have it GREAT in the western world.

There are children engaging in slave labor regularly in 3rd world nations, nations that we act like these things don''t happen in, these things generally never happen in 1st world nations.

Should money be gotten rid of? No, it''s an excellent way to reward players for hard work in a way that they can easily understand. I prefer to force the players to use that money for things that they need, whether it be training, equipment, or whatever. Gut them of their cash and keep ''em relatively broke. Tax ''em when they come to town (x gold per level! [mathematical ''!'']) and gut ''em while they''re there. Keep the ''ubers'' out of town, make them pay noobs to get them stuff in town if they want to save money, but they still have to train in town, the noobs can''t do it for them. They still have to get quests, they still have to complete quests, so they have to go to town.

Give them a carrot, then take it away... LOL!