Economy

Like all other things, the economy should be dynamic. The laws of supply and demand should be in full effect. Not just in the player buying realm, but also with the NPCs. Players and NPCs use the same money, so why should they not be able to use the same vendor systems. If there is an auction house, then hell yea NPCs should be on it. If an NPC can set up a store, a player can set up a store.

The NPC merchants should set there prices based on the demand for items in the surrounding areas. Not just for player purchases, but for inter NPC purchases as well. Guards need swords and repairs too right.

The biggest problem I see in current crop of MMO enconmies is they have no clean way to deal with the addition new cash into the system by the "on the spot" creation of monsters and NPCs. The spawning of a critter that drops any sort of loot that can be converted into cash, just adds cash to the system. It's a forced inflation pump. Mobs that drop "vendor trash" should just as well drop the cash, cus a player is just going to sell it to a vendor who is going to pay for it out of his infinite bank. This has given rise to the inclusion of money sinks such as item repair, home upkeep, and the like. All these things are designed to pull money out of the system to prevent inflation.

A better solution would be to let the system be dynamic and even itself out. Resourceable items (fur, bone, etc.. ) that drop should only be sellable to people who can effectively use them. You'll get the best prices for a wolf hide if you sell it directly to a leather worker. Sure you can go dump it off at a wholesaler, or a pawn shop, but you won't get it's max worth. If the market is flooded with wolf hides, the prices go down, as the vendors and NPCs aren't willing to part with there cash as easily. Then maybe people will go an hunt something else, or take there load of furs to another city that is need of them.

Vendors use resource items in new item creation, AND in repairs. This takes non cash items out of the global pool as well, and increases demand, unknown to the meat based users. Gems, leather, ores, etc.. are all needed for repairs. The same crafting system that is in place for players is in place for NPCs. All items have a value in resources and cash used in there creation.

Along this lines, the NPC vendors should have dynamic cash stocks based on there sales, and full production model. The NPC leather worker has to buy his first from somewhere, and that affects his cash on hand. If a Vendor starts to have too much product and not enough cash on hand, he lowers his profit margins and has a sale. He also has to pay his rent on the place, and a fee to the city to list at an auction house, same as a player. The money collected from fee's goes to the city, who uses it to pay out quest rewards, and pay guards, etc..

It should be possible to create a simple enough simulation of an entire city system that makes the economy dynamic. Players benefit from knowing the ins and outs of the trade system, just as they do in real life. GMs benefit from being able to track the cash flow in the entire game, and are able to adjust profit rates for NPCs to balance the economy. Large City/Kingdoms can keep a treasury buffer for "hard times" as a way to keep cash of the the players hands when they have too much, or use it as quest rewards to infuse the economy in times of slup.

I would think this would also allow for a simpler tracking and management of "gold farming" players. seeing a large percentage of the total wreath pool into a single player who isn't active in adventuring or is a merchant, can flag that user for investigation. If the account is found to be doing actions against the TOC, then the account can be banned, but not BEFORE the users accounts are liquidated into the server government coffers. This would prevent large scale economic adjustments when users are banned in typical MMOs, the cash isn't gone, it's just distributed by someone else. Heck you could even have world governments offer loans to merchants, with in game houses and resources as collateral.

Use of the supply and demand system can easily tie into the quest system as well. It would be possible for someone to flood the market with a product to drive the price down, and possibly competitors out of house and home. These competitors could commission PC quests to shutdown the sully lines, or distribution networks of the person flooding the market (PC or NPC). When you go into the merchant role, you take on risks, risks that all merchants face, loss of product, supply, theft, etc..