A Seller's Market
by Mike D'Anna 
Dec 20th 2005 at 9:00AM
After playing on a number of different servers of varying types, it's becoming clear to me that, just as there are
two very different factions in WoW, there are also two vastly different economies at work, aswell: the Horde economy
& the Alliance economy. Any Horde player who has decided to roll an Alliance alt immidiately notices one thing upon
his first trip to the auction house: things are far more expensive on the Alliance side.A stack of re-agents that might sell for 20 silver in Orgrimmar might go for more than a gold in Ironforge; enchantments are far more expensive when bought from Alliance players, and although the NPC goods & services cost the same for the two factions, the inflation on the eastern continent makes for a very different playing experience on the side of the Alliance.
The question is: why the big price hikes?
So, what's the answer? I don't have a clue...what am I, an economist? I'm just a guy who's tired of shelling out my entire days' hard earned play-money to buy ingredients for my recipes from some Night Elf charging me out my Dwarven wazoo for something that my Orc could buy in Orgrimmar for 1/10 the price.If nothing else, maybe this can be a selling point for more players to migrate over to the Horde: "Join us! We're ugly AND cheap!"
Filed under: Horde, Alliance, Items, Analysis / Opinion, Economy
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
sproket Dec 24th 2005 9:13AM
It's not a bad thing. You can use the Gadgetzan auction house to transfer goods between your alts if you use a little imagination and a good friend.
I do this all the time to get the best things at low prices from the horde side for my main.
Ted Dec 25th 2005 1:20AM
Cool!
This is classic economics; you mentioned inflation, well that's it. Probably because there are more alliance players then horde ones, or because people usually create alliance characters first, there is greater Aggregate Demand on the eastern continent. It's the same reason why prices on the East coast are higher then in the south.
As MMOs get more complicated, it'll be fascinating to see waht kind of social experiments can be performed on virtual worlds:
If you think about it, once artificial economies become complex enough, we'll be able to test the impact of taxes, government intervention, communism, etc...
I'm ranting, sorry.
Merry Christmas!