That's an amazing paper. Non-PDF version is available too [1]. It's quite a laugh and really makes you think. A lot seems obvious to me as a sometime-MMO player, but this was written almost 10 years before I started playing MMOs! I think my favourite bit is this:
> Indulgences. Services such as ‘red hair dye’ which players are willing to pay for but which don’t cost server resources. Extreme examples might be titles; for example, 10,000 gold buys a character the title "lord".
I think I'm going to call such features "indulgences" in the future.
> At first, the designers attempted to solve the deflation problem by pumping more resources into the world – they simply increased the total quantity of resources in the bank. But, no matter how much they added, the resources always flowed into inventory and just sat there. The problem, they concluded, was the lack of drains – not enough stuff was flowing out. However, players are (understandably) extremely resistant to rule changes which take things away from them. Thus, significantly increasing the decay or degradation rates is politically unfeasible. New drains were proposed: taxes, maintenance fees on housing, etc. Unfortunately, many of these drains feel too much like real world "work" and are therefore politically unacceptable. [...]
> Many may argue that this economy is not real; that it is merely a simulation. However, this misses the point. UO players are engaging in this commerce voluntarily; in fact, they are paying real money for the privilege! Proof of the reality of the economy can be obtained by observing the real-world prices fetched by players who auction off existing UO characters and property on the electronic auction house ebay.com. As of this writing, one character sold for $2000! It is this economic reality which makes UO a potentially very interesting research platform.
> Indulgences. Services such as ‘red hair dye’ which players are willing to pay for but which don’t cost server resources. Extreme examples might be titles; for example, 10,000 gold buys a character the title "lord".
I think I'm going to call such features "indulgences" in the future.
> At first, the designers attempted to solve the deflation problem by pumping more resources into the world – they simply increased the total quantity of resources in the bank. But, no matter how much they added, the resources always flowed into inventory and just sat there. The problem, they concluded, was the lack of drains – not enough stuff was flowing out. However, players are (understandably) extremely resistant to rule changes which take things away from them. Thus, significantly increasing the decay or degradation rates is politically unfeasible. New drains were proposed: taxes, maintenance fees on housing, etc. Unfortunately, many of these drains feel too much like real world "work" and are therefore politically unacceptable. [...]
> Many may argue that this economy is not real; that it is merely a simulation. However, this misses the point. UO players are engaging in this commerce voluntarily; in fact, they are paying real money for the privilege! Proof of the reality of the economy can be obtained by observing the real-world prices fetched by players who auction off existing UO characters and property on the electronic auction house ebay.com. As of this writing, one character sold for $2000! It is this economic reality which makes UO a potentially very interesting research platform.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150709101636/http://www.mine-c...