Day 49 - of money and scrolls

 

Day 49 of this log.

Elder Scrolls Online is experiencing deflation, it's economy is crumbling and the whole case is fascinating!

 

let me start with a little background. Most of the MMORPG games experience a strong inflation, because having players literally print gold by doing gold-awarding activities is perfect way to have hyper-inflation. Money for those rewards comes from thin air and never runs out, kinda like government printing bills. This is why every MMO has some kind of gold sinks, places where money leave the economy vanishing back into thin air. 

 

Elder Scrolls Online has extremely strong gold sinks due to it's decentralised economy. In most MMOs players have access to centralised trading post where they can buy and sell goods between themselves. That's not the case for ESO. In this game every guild has it's own trading post and guilds can buy one NPC trader each via an auction, to serve as access point to their trading post for the players outside guild. Those auctions happen every two weeks and depending on location such NPC can go for few thousand to even over a million of gold coins. Every two weeks trading guilds together flush down the toilet literal mountains of gold.

But that's not all! When you want to sell something you have to pay 1% of it's listing price up front, and 7% os the listing price is split between game and guild when item is sold. This means every time you sell something you loose 8% of it's value/... though 3.5% goes to your guild so not all is lost. Guild will most likely use this money on NPC auctions. Aaaand! If your item doesn't sell within 15 days, it's returned to you and you have to list it again. 

What ESO lacks though is material sinks, game mechanics that consume vast amounts of materials. Crafting is one and done - once you have your dream set, you only repair it... with gold! Travelling consumes gold, upgrading your horse consumes gold, houses cost gold etc. Most resources are now vendor trash that nobody will ever buy and all the others loose around 8% of it's value monthly.

Resources a plenty, money scarce, deflation stalling any economic activity. Many traders stopped selling because prices are racing to the bottom, while many clients stopped buying because waiting just a week or two will lower the price for them. This attitude causes prices to drop even lower and gold to become even more powerful.

Fascinating!