Fans of MMORPGs love the genre for allowing them to save countless worlds from the perspective of characters they create, especially across various classes and with varying degrees of epic gear. However, one of the more interesting aspects of MMOs that can grab a player’s attention would be an MMORPG’s in-game economy. After all, it’s in these spaces where players can exchange various items and even start investing in creating items to be sold in order to acquire more resources in the game.

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While most MMOs already have their own in-game player economies, some stand out among the rest either from the perspective of history or for offering something new to the table. Among some of the most intense in-game economies in MMOs include sprawling game markets devised by an economist, a massive in-game stock exchange-esque market in an open-world MMO, and a fully player-crafted economy.

8 EverQuest

EverQuest

Considered as one of the pioneers of MMOs, 1999’s EverQuest built the prototype of what would be today’s massively multiplayer online landscape. Players take on the role of adventurers in the world of Narroth, where the cutthroat atmosphere of character versus character for domination. With barely any other equivalent of an in-game market, economist Edward Castronova made a study where he analyzed market movements in the game at the time - especially taking into account the selling of items for in-game money.

Despite Sony’s measures in hindering players from conducting the buying and selling of items in the historic EverQuest game, Castronova clarified that Ebay and other online marketplaces had seen quite a lot of movement in item trading, something unprecedented at the time. In his findings, he realized that a rough equivalency in real world dollars at the time had Norrath have the 77th highest GNP per capita, making it as rich as Russia and Bulgaria in that period. Despite the existence of potentially deeper economies today, EverQuest gave economists a firsthand look into the “future” of economics at the time, where virtual marketplaces can become just as active as the ones in real life.

7 EVE Online

EVE Online

Compared to other MMOs set in space such as Star Trek Online and Knights of the Old Republic, the persistent sandbox of EVE Online allows players to be more than just questers and bounty hunters. In fact, thanks to the efforts of EVE devs CCP hiring economist Eyjolfur “Eyjo” Guðmundsson, PhD, players are given access to an in-game economy with enough complexity the website EVE Online Market Data was created to track it. At its core, it’s perhaps EVE Online that made possible the idea of all items in the game being created and traded. This is largely due to how processes in the game almost always lead to the creation of various byproducts, all of which can be exchanged for various currencies.

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Key to the economy would be ISK, a currency players can purchase with real money, as well as devs having little oversight to whatever is happening to the market - leaving it completely player-driven. This is why players need to be wary not just of bots manning pirate and mining ships, but also veteran players who actively deceive and scam each other to get ahead.

6 RuneScape

RuneScape - Grand Exchange

It’s perhaps RuneScape that popularized the open world MMO concept for players since its 2001 release, giving players room to not just kill monsters and overcome dungeons but also live a “normal” life through tasks such as cooking, mining, and fishing. However, since the release of the Grand Exchange in 2007, RuneScape characters received yet another career prospect: the trader.

Since its release, the Grand Exchange replaced the ordinary “marketplace” in the game with the equivalent of the largest auction available for players. Similar to a trading floor, the Grand Exchange allows players to put in items for auction and engage in active RuneScape buy-and-sell activities, with some players capitalizing on the market’s many movements to become rich in the free-to-play MMO. Given its popularity, RuneScape even released an official Grand Exchange section in their website where players can track the prices of items.

5 Black Desert Online

Black Desert Online

When rivaling nations Calpheon and Valencia fight for control over the mysterious Black Stones of the eponymous Black Desert, players of Black Desert Online are thrust into the middle of their conflict. Thankfully, players who make a name for themselves in their adventures become reputable enough to recruit people into their cause, paving the way for assistants and gatherers called Workers that could help players in their various gathering resources.

Unlike other MMOs, Black Desert Online has a rich microeconomy of sorts that allows players to establish their own settlements, with farms and other production nodes that they can assign Workers to work on - providing players with a steady supply of resources they can use for trading or crafting. This system becomes much deeper when players also get into the management of not just their farms but also their Workers, with a lot of thought included in the selection of the right Worker qualities, having enough money to pay them, and even ensuring they’re fully-energized with food to secure the highest-quality products.

4 Ragnarok Online

Ragnarok Online

Being an MMO that has a class built exclusively for trading, it makes sense that Ragnarok Online has one of the most complex in-game player economies even in its initial 2002 release. Despite Ragnarok Online meeting its untimely demise in 2018, various iterations of the franchise remain in platforms through the recent years. Economy-wise, the MMO’s claim to fame would be Vending, a Skill exclusive to the Merchant and Super Novice Jobs as long as they have access to a Pushcart. This has become the source of the iconic imagery of Ragnarok Online characters sitting down in city centers, with items in the Pushcart available for purchase. In a game set in Midgard where players choose from up to four (4) tiers of Jobs to stop the end of the world, a Job that allows players to enjoy the normality of a vendor’s life is a breath of fresh air.

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Contrary to modern in-game economies where almost every player has a means to trade, Vending in Ragnarok Online gave Merchants and Super Novices an “exclusive” allure as official in-game vendors. Players do have various other means to buy and sell items, such as in player-generated Purchase Shops, searchable Catalogs, request-like Catalogues, and even automated in-game Auctions. The variety of means players can buy and sell items in as early as the 2000s made Ragnarok Online instrumental in providing players with a complex in-game economy.

3 Albion Online

Albion Online-1

Considered by many as the spiritual successor of RuneScape, the MMO sandbox Albion Online offers players another opportunity to make a name for themselves in whatever means possible. Aside from adopting the RuneScape mechanic of gear loss after death, Albion Online has a complete player-driven economy. Unlike other MMOs, every piece of gear in Albion Online can be created by players, meaning everyone has a chance of acquiring some of the game’s most powerful gear and even the opportunity to sell them for a high price.

This allows players to completely take a trading path as part of their progression in the game, which is a relief for free-to-play players as this means they’re able to contend with other high-level characters given enough time and training. Not to mention, the in-game Marketplace is one of the cleanest trading auctions in the modern MMO space, boasting a clean UI with accessible controls - much-needed features considering its contents are all items available in the game, regardless of rarity.

2 World Of Warcraft

World of Warcraft-1

With World of Warcraft entering 2023 with the Dragonflight expansion marking the return of the Dragonflights as Azeroth’s protectors, it’s no surprise that World of Warcraft players would want to come equipped with the best gear possible. However, even during the early days of the Alliance versus Horde conflict, players have been active participants in the game’s active in-game economy.

Similar to other MMOs, World of Warcraft has a variety of currencies in place - Copper, Silver, and Gold. However, one of the more unique innovations of the game in regard to its currencies would be WoW Tokens, or special currency purchaseable in real life that gives players access to a wide array of benefits such as game time within the MMO’s subscription model, or to even trade said tokens for expensive Gold. Even the game’s transactions in the Auction House is extremely active given the wide array of items players can trade for various needs. In a Splunk’s.conf presentation, Blizzard’s Shawn Routhier explained that as of 2021, players of the MMO make transactions that earn a total of around 21-billion Gold daily.

1 Guild Wars 2

Guild Wars 2

In the Guild Wars 2 world of Tyria, players become adventurers that need to defend their realms from the five (5) Elder Dragons seeking to wreak havoc, forcing players to make alliances and connections throughout the game’s story. However, fans who want to have access to some of the game’s best items may do so through the Trading Post, the game’s equivalent of an auction house where Guild Wars 2 players can earn money aside from their Professions.

However, unlike other games where trading doesn’t become a huge part of the gameplay loop, players can find the Guild Wars 2 Trading Post to be one of the more rewarding and stable in-game markets in MMOs. Compared to other markets, players can check sites such as GW2Efficiency and observe relatively slow but steady movement in items sales. Moreover, players are more encouraged to flip items as there are certain moments of extreme high profit sales that need player patience, emulating the usual long-term experiences of real markets today.

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