In discussion with the good Dr. A and Miss B. in Amsterdam (and we weren’t stoned) I conceived randomly of a kind of alternative or next stage business model for WoW gold farmers. I don’t know if the model itself is viable, but were it to become so it would represent a huge contribution of the gold farming business to the online economy of world of warcraft, though not necessarily for the better.
The model I envisage is one in which a gold farming company establishes a kind of value-added process for producing gold. Instead of sending lowly warriors out to grind weak beasts for small amounts of gold, this farmer employs moderate level characters, and buys in-world large amounts of raw materials – gold, herbs, essences etc. – and all day has his employees use their secondary talents to turn these materials into product – swords, potions, etc. – which are then sold in bulk to guilds (or individuals) for real money. They could also be sold in-world for gold, and the gold sold to players for real money in the usual way.
For example, according to thotbot an Insane Strength Potion costs 7 gold 53 silver at auction, while its ingredients (3x terocone and an imbued vial) cost a total of 2 gold 60 silver at a vendor. So by buying these objects in world from a vendor, our enterprising businessman can recover 5 gold. Apparently these things sell at auction in lots of 5, so there is already an option for bulk sales. I imagine before a big guild raid one would need at least 5 of these, and a lot of mana-enhancing stuff, so a guild practicing one of its big raids could easily fork over 30 or 50 or 100 gold in a single night to a suitably equipped business. Maybe this would be a more rapid way of generating money than merely farming it…? By comparison, a mottled boar (again according to Thotbot) drops items in general worth 4 or 5 coppers… so grinding those poor bastards is going to take a while to build up gold.
It occurs to me that there could be a whole vertically-integrated business model for this. One enters Gold Farmers Inc as a level 1 loser, and spends time grinding monsters for coppers. One will of course ultimately gain levels doing this and become more powerful, capable of killing better monsters faster for more gold. One could also do after-work study (i.e. play a lot) to build up skills, and when one had reached a level with talents, one could apply for a promotion. Then one would be sent around the world gathering raw materials based on one’s talent – e.g., gathering herbs or metals. One might be content to do this, but if one was really career focussed one could aim higher, continuing to play one’s level up in one’s spare time until one could build items oneself, and then apply for a promotion to start making items with the raw materials one’s junior colleagues provided to the company. And of course there would be a role for middle management, who would collect all the raw materials coming into a mailbox from across the world and send them on to suitable characters; or one would spend a lot of time going backwards and forwards from the mailbox to the auction room and the vendor… I can see a whole corporate structure building here, with peoples’ position in the office determined by their character’s role in the world…
… but the whole business would be completely dependent on the economy of the WoW world, since there is a finite rate at which resources replenish, and others might compete for them. Flooding the world with potions would push down their price, etc. And of course players would object to this industry – currently the players occupy a position in-world very similar to the individual artisans before the industrial revolution (though occasionally they gather into … appropriately … guilds), so any industrialisation of the means of production of magical items would of course impact the value and esteem of what they do. They might be tempted to try and pass laws against these industrialists – and if that happened they might scapegoat the workers, attack the looms, or even attack the workers themselves. Economic change is never an uncontested thing…
The idea that I really like behind all this is the possibility that an enterprising company could pay the gaming company for the right to change or manipulate the underlying physics of the world, to make new items or spells. Obviously they would need to make items which were useful for people, which would require some kind of R&D process. And they would need to stay abreast of the plot and quest changes going on in the world, since they would need to know what new markets for their products to target. The best way to do this would be to petition the gaming company for particular quest lines or monsters… a kind of lobbying, if you will.
Lobbying God, effectively. I think the possibilities inherent in this are endless…
