Massively^™

Once more with feeling!

Welcome to the third and final (planned) installment of our series on closed-resource economies in MMOs. So far, we've laid the foundation of the system and discussed how starting out, leveling up, and gaining loot could work. Today we will be exploring how crafting professions could still be possible even when the law of Conservation of Mass applies and how banking might function.

There's been a lot covered so far so if you haven't already, i recommend reading the first two posts. But since I know that gets into the TLDR length, here's a very quick recap.

In order to maintain a constant level of stuff in the game, new items could only generate once old items leave the game. Money would function in the same way, except that it would flow from NPCs to monsters (meaning any monies collected by NPCs would spawn as loot) in order to recirculate. There would need to be additional gold sinks (some of which we will get to in just a minute) and limits on the number of characters per server. Each server would then "age" as the average level of characters on it increased.

Picture this, if you will - You are in Lord of the Rings Online and have amassed just enough coinage to purchase your first house, a minimum of 950 silver. You have looked through the various neighborhood maps for each of the races to determine where you want to be, taking into consideration the proximity of the housing to a town, the proximity of the house you chose to the gate and the water feature within the neighborhood (for safe fishing right outside your door), and the amount you will have to pay in upkeep. You head to the housing broker of your choice, find a neighborhood that has that house available and purchase it.

Ahh, your first property. A place to call your very own in the middle of a bustling game life. You put some nice carpets down, paint the walls, and put some locally-caught fish up as trophies. You might even put a bed in one of the rooms as an homage to real life - not that anyone sleeps in LotRO... at least on purpose. You pay a couple of additional weeks' upkeep in advance to ensure that the house remains yours. Eventually, you unlock the storage container within the house and put some of the items in that would not fit in the bank and you haven't quite decided what to do with. All is going swimmingly.

Then, a few short weeks later, real life calls you away on vacation to somewhere with limited internet access (may it never be so!). You get back to heaps of work and do not have time to log in for a little while. When you finally do, there is a box on the left-hand side of your screen informing you that maintenance is now overdue on your house and you have been locked out until such time as you pay it.

"Oh noes!!!" you cry, "Whatever shall I do now? I cannot get to the things in my storage container to sell them and I do not have the money to pay this outright. My house is doomed!"

Ah, not so, Grasshopper. There are ways to save your house and today we explore my favorite - the crafting method.