The wartale economy.

[exyzus 64]

I’ve been wanting to write about this for a while now and I think by going through everything that’s happening in wartale, it will provide players a good perspective on how the game operates and why the GM are making the decisions they are making.

 

Disclaimer: I’m not an economist by trade. I work in a bank and my team has a lot of economists who discuss these concepts on a daily basis.

Disclaimer 2: this is a long read and you may not agree with all of my theories, please feel free to leave your thoughts and comments but let’s keep the discussion clean.

 

Let’s first establish some facts.

1.       Wartale is not a charity. The developers and GM’s need to make money to make a living, to get rewarded for their effort, to purchase server and equipment to keep the game up and running.

2.       Wartale’s major source of income comes from in game donations. USD/EURO to coins to in game items, gold etc

3.       Price is driven by supply and demand

 

Let’s also introduce a term you may have heard of but don’t really know how it works – inflation. Inflation is basically the process of a currency becoming less valuable. This is typically driven by an oversupply of money. Put into wartale terms, if 1 day the GMs went nuts and gave everyone 100kc. This act will simply make coins worthless because no one is going to sell their 146/148 at that price anymore, because everyone would be able to buy it with the coins in hand. The price of 146/148 will probably to up to 100000kc. This devaluation of coin is basically inflation. In the real world, inflation is linked to interest rates, however, in wartale, there’s no bank that will give you free money for depositing your gold there, so that’s not a concern. Inflation is something the GM's don't want to have, but it's almost inevitable. 

 

Since we are already talking about inflation, let’s discuss gold supply and gold consumption. Wartale provides a very limited list of supplies for gold: drops, selling equipment drop to npc, quests, SOD. Similarly, the consumption of gold is also limited. (Note we are talking about places that only gold can be used): potions, cores, wrapgate, aging, mixing, crafting, repairing. Controlling gold inflation is easy because wartale can see how much is getting supplied and how much is getting consumed. The job here is to maintain a healthy balance between the 2. Note that there is always a certain amount of gold circulating among the players. This does not matter because this can be controlled by controlling the consumption or supply.

 

You may wonder: why are high level items always traded in coins not in gold. The reason is there’s not enough gold in circulation to support that type of transaction. For example, a 148 armor is worth 100kc. This is 112kkk gold. Since the amount of gold in the market is a relatively fixed value, no single player will have this much gold. So this is why gold is more valuable than coins. There is always new supply of coins (donating), but there’s no new supply of gold. This is also why the ratio between gold and coin always go up and rarely go down. The trade ratio of gold vs coin is actually a reflection of the inflation of currency of the game. Like I said previously, inflation can be controlled but is inevitable. 

 

Now, let’s talk about EB and LC. EB for the drop and xp, LC for the keys and xp.

 

The reason the drop rate is set so low at EB is because it’s necessary to do so. Going back to our fact #1. If the drop rate are set higher, what’s going to happen is that everyone will just get end game items by hunting for their own. The price of the 146/148 items will drop significantly. No one will donate to the game anymore because it’s so easy to get these end game gears. And the game will get shut down as a result. So in wartale, in order to equip the best gears, you will need to either spend $$$, or spend a lot of time at EB in hoping for something dropping. Both scenarios are actually fine with wartale. Spending $$$ will generate income for the developers, spending time will keep the game active and keep players engaged. This cycle will continue to roll forward as developers create new maps and higher lvl items. This design may not seem to be fair to players but it’s just like real life, if you are rich, you likely will have more power. The GMs need to delicately balance between the drop rate vs donation rate to ensure the game does not get out of balance.

 

The XP players are getting in EB is a benchmark for the worthiness of L-KEYS. Since the drop rate for Lkeys and Lchunkc are fixed, we have a fixed supply of Lkeys. Going back to fact #3, the only thing that will move the price is the demand. During XP events, the demand goes higher, the price of Lkey also goes higher. During none event, this price reflects the additional xp a player will get from LC compared to EB during the 30 minutes of play time. This should in theory, line up with the xp service people are selling. So we should in theory, convert xp to gold/coins. So the next time you are buying a naked char, take a look at the xp table and ask yourself, does it make sense in terms of the Lkey prices. Note this only applies to 148+. 

 

Mounts, skins, flashy stuff: all of these are extensions to get more coins out of the donators.

 

If you read this far, thank you and enjoy wartale!