| I'll be honest and admit that I hate dealing with the economic aspect of MMO's. In EQ1 you needed a bit of plat to buy your gear leveling up, but once you were max level in a good raiding guild after kunark came out and especially after velious, you could get all the gear you needed as no-drop raid loot or quest items. There was no real need to amass currency to buy equipment, pay for repairs, consumables, etc etc except water and food, arrows etc which were trivial in cost and coffins and vox staves and stuff, which the guild bank usually handled.
The side effect of this was massive inflation to the point where most good items cost scores or hundreds of thousands of platinum. In games like WoW and EQ2 it seems the developers are happy to solve this by requiring that even max level players keep a large, sweaty wad of money in their bank at all times for repair costs, consumables, buying fabled armor, epic mounts etc. In EQ1 you farmed for AA experience, but to me this wasn't nearly as bad because once you spend AA points, the ability is useful forever. This is a major sore point for me and probably not a few other gamers who have the skill to play MMO's are the raiding level but not the motivation to spend 20 hours a week farming for gold/plat in order to stay competitive, and refuse to participate in the secondary market. |