Gratuitous Shower Scenes and Virtual Money-Making

It's back to Stranglethorn again, as I now have to use the Mind's Eye previously acquired from Mai'Zoth to mind control a baby raptor and help it escape imprisonment from a tribe of trolls. This was a pretty interesting quest that required a lot of puzzle solving. We had to avoid patrols and set up traps for the guards so that Udderwin and I could sneak past heavy security areas of the encampment.

Avoiding Guard Patrols

Just when we were about to reach the exit however, their leader saw through our plan and recaptured the raptors. It seems there is still much work to do before we can come back to rescue them, so we headed southward near the coastline goblin town of Booty Bay. There, we battled some Naga, which are serpent-like humanoids that fight with tridents.

Booty Bay

We were also tasked with acquiring some special water from one of their fountains and collecting some of their old statuettes along the way.

Turns out the fountain serves doubly as a nice shower. :3

Returning to the goblin encampment nearby, we were sent out again to slay some basilisks and collect items of value from them. Along the way we ran into a human from the Alliance, but decided not to battle her as she was much more powerful than us.

Not messing with that beotch.

It was taking a while for us to collect the items we needed from the basilisks, so we ventured directly into their caves to speed up the process.

The Basilisk Caves

With the basilisk goods acquired, we decided we were done for the day and retreated to an inn to log out.

My analysis this week deals with the economics of Warcraft. As seen from previous examples I gave this week, virtual goods in WoW are primarily sold through the auction house, which can be found in any major city throughout the game. Auction houses are separated by faction, so Alliance players can't purchase goods from the Horde or vice versa. However, some neutral towns like Gadgetzan have their own separate auction houses which both Horde and Alliance players can sell and purchase good from, although they are usually much less populated because their locations are less convenient to reach.

At the auction house, any item that isn't permanently bound to your character can be sold for whatever price you choose to set for it. You can have players bid up the price of the item or have a fixed buyout price if you so choose. The auction lasts for a maximum of 2-3 days and requires a small percentage deposit of the in-game currency to create a listing.

There are two other lesser methods of trade in Warcraft. You can personally open a trade window with any player and trade directly with them, or you can send items via the mail system. The mail system allows you to set a gold fee for an item, and if the player refuses to pay it, the item gets sent back to your mailbox.

There are many types of virtual goods for sale ranging from bags and weapons to clothing, armor, and trade materials. The economic system in Warcraft in many ways mimics real world economies. If an item is in high demand, its pricing rises. The more rare an item is, the more typically expensive it is. If an item is very abundant in the market, its price will start to fall as players keep trying to undercut each other's prices. Servers eventually become mostly populated by max level players who earn currency faster than lower levels, causing market inflation because players have more gold to spend.

Since becoming the dominant MMO on the market, World of Warcraft's economy has affected the larger online market as a whole. Hackers have made a business out of compromising players' accounts and hijacking their characters to empty out their gold and then sell it for real world money through external websites unaffiliated with Blizzard Entertainment. It's not uncommon to hear the phrase "Chinese gold farmer" when discussing Warcraft's economy, as many Chinese companies have made businesses out of earning gold in Warcraft and selling it for real world currency. It is probably these very practices which are what led to Blizzard's eventual decision to embrace a more fully-featured digital marketplace through the Real Money Auction House implemented in Diablo III. In the future if Warcraft's subscribers decline significantly, a similar auction house system may be adopted as the game turns to a free-to-play model.

This concludes my analysis for this week. Next time I will be covering different types of player behavior in World of Warcraft.