Yes! That’s exactly where I’m going with striation and economic buy-in. There’s a serious incentive to monetize ["monetize" within the context of the highly controlled gold econ of your MMO] your specialist knowledge for wealth and, of course, status. It’s all about buying into the “virtual” culture and economy, a buy-in which slightly obfuscates your attachment to Blizzard’s dependence on your hats of money and within the context of the “real” market. (Quotes to show that the virtual and real markets are obviously enough the same.)

I did think more about alts today… how what game devs are really doing is trying to get you to continue the enjoyable quest game when your main has moved on to the instancing/gear chase game. “Buy back into the early game — now 25% easier with heirlooms and your transferrable gold!”

(Honestly, my DK at 62 is doing Zangramash quests, even 2 players suggested quests, without me even bothering to look at her health. NER-ftd.)

Which is to say that alts aren’t supposed to be about the end game. You can’t and “shouldn’t” be as committed to them. You may eventually have an alt supplant your main, but, whoever your alts are, they’re about a different sort of gameplay and represent another sort of stored virtual-cultural capital living on (and only on) your MMO’s servers.

“And you’ve done a super job”

I wish that made me feel better. No, rather, I wish it didn’t. ;^) Hopefully someone will use the guide at some point and spend that saved time with their family, or a good book, or on GTA V, or just plain go catch up on some sleep.

I get a kick out of completely redoing my reforges to optimise myself after a new piece of gear. Fiddling with my gems and so on.

Enchanting on its own is fairly binary, I agree. Both in Rift and Warcraft I just leveled my own enchanter/runecarver and stopped worrying about it. I quit rift mainly because in the end it was exactly the same dungeon running/gearing/bigger dungeon running/epic gear treadmill/ladder that I’ve done so many times already.

I was a long term DAOC PvE player on the co-op server and am still deeply in love with the spellcrafting system and stat caps that the game had. It made gearing optimally a very different beast to the modern MMO. Awesome if you have OCD. Less awesome if you just want to run around and stab kobolds.

And you’ve done a super job

But now imagine that as well as doing this for every patch (and maybe multiple specs) in WoW, you are also playing multiple MMOs.

I do take your point about striation and I wonder if part of being hardcore for any specific game is having sufficient overhead that it would be difficult to also be committed to another game/ alt/ server at the same time. (I’m putting this badly but I mean it may be key for hardcore players in one game to know that their fellows are primarily committed to the same game and same main character, and one way to prove that is to have an incredibly complex and involved mechanism for gearing up.)

Here’s what is strange to me: back when we only had to get enchants, it was harder to find enchanters. No scrolls on the AH, so we’d end up in major cities looking for them. Half the time we’d have to go farm some special mat like essences of air or crusader orbs. It was an altogether inconvenient system.

Now it is all very conveniently placed on the AH: gems and enchants, or nearby at the reforging elf. And yet it feels more annoying.

But now, you have to enchant, gem and reforge it. That’s just too much work, in my opinion.

Two long points.

The in-house Ultima Online researcher (years ago) had a great presentation on the way UO initially wanted to simulate a closed economy. Turns out a market flooded with n00b leather caps and sandals doesn’t work so well.

The economic paradigm in UO quickly changed from a closed economy to a “faucet and drain” model. You pump gold in, and you provide drains to pull it back out. It’s all subsidies and taxes.

Here, you take the players invested in farming mats (faucets) and crafting (small drain with recipes) who create useful enchants (money magnets/tax collectors) and then you hook larger drains up to these harder-core players — repairs, guild rewards, mounts, etc.

It’s not just demand that’s stimulated. It’s a specific implementation of the faucet/drain system, one that involves setting up a system of tax collectors.

“Am I really the only person who would prefer to be able to just grab a cool drop and be ready to go without being asked to do all the legwork for an extra minor bonus? It’s funny, once I used to find these extra complexities so cool. I think that I’m over it now, or at least I’ve done it over again in enough games that I’d rather just cut to the chase.”

Second point — you have to striate the market to maximize its appeal. This is the same as with difficult games and game guides. Who would finish all of Metal Gear Solid without a little help? Same with many quests in MMORPGs. Casual players can read guides. Minigame players and completists can take the time to learn professions. Harder-core players can challenge themselves and prepare for Heroic dungeons (and I can’t believe how much time I’ve wasted researching and then gearing up, and I’m not that hard core).

As my third foray into Heroics showed me very quickly, many don’t bother with gems, enchants, etc. It’s a way of striating your customer base. These are all games within games ["within games," Frank Herbert added, "You have to say it three times to achieve full effect."].

Very little is more fascinating than “virtual” economies — of gold, of goods, of bits, and, most importantly, of dollars and time.

Maybe if enchants were more varied than “+X to stat Y” players would start having to weigh up pros and cons. A mage could probably have a meaningful discussion about whether he wants “Bladeturn” or “Arcane Might” enchants on his robes, whereas if it’s a choice between +10 Inteeligence or +4 Dexterity… well, you don’t need to already have the Int enchant on you to work THAT out.

I can see why people don’t. But in that case why have a paper doll at all? Why not just get a suit of +5 tanking plate and not have to worry about individual parts of it?