So while we all wonder how long the AH will be down and how it will perform once it comes back - my question is If you were the Blizzard staff member tasked with "fixing" the economy now - what would you do?

I have three ideas off the top of my head...

1. Add another gem tier.

It may not be sexy but a new gem tier requiring 3 marquise gems + say 50 mil gold would be a quick way to suck some extra gold out of the economy. An extra 20 - 30 stat points, 10% extra crit damage and another 1% - 2% to life or xp would hardly be game breaking and would be a quick way to take a billion or two gold out of the wallets of those who absolutely want to be the best and now have the gold sitting around. You might even get more if they are willing to outfit multiple characters.

2. More complicated programming wise - bring back the Ethereal property for gear.

Dont have it use an affix slot on an item, just have it be a random (and fairly rare) item property. Make the items bind to account upon being damaged. Then increase all of their stats by 10% - 20% including allowing them to exceed normal maxes for slots. Make them wear at a slower rate but when they are gone - they are gone.

3. Raise the maximum price in the AH. Gold will only be worthless if there is nothing to do with it. Let prices settle in to a new higher normal. Higher prices mean higher AH fees which is more gold out of the economy and gives people something to do with their gold even if the numbers are stupidly large. Part of the reason gold was worthless in D2 was the ludicrously small cap on how much a character could hold in the inventory/stash (at least compared to collection speed.)

What ideas or thoughts do the rest of you have?

Posted by Mylton at 05/08/2013 09:58 PM

So while we all wonder how long the AH will be down and how it will perform once it comes back - my question is If you were the Blizzard staff member tasked with "fixing" the economy now - what would you do?

I have three ideas off the top of my head...

1. Add another gem tier.

It may not be sexy but a new gem tier requiring 3 marquise gems + say 50 mil gold would be a quick way to suck some extra gold out of the economy. An extra 20 - 30 stat points, 10% extra crit damage and another 1% - 2% to life or xp would hardly be game breaking and would be a quick way to take a billion or two gold out of the wallets of those who absolutely want to be the best and now have the gold sitting around. You might even get more if they are willing to outfit multiple characters.

And people would get more pissed off about it than they did when Blizzard implemented Marquise gems.

Posted by Mylton at 05/08/2013 09:58 PM

3. Raise the maximum price in the AH. Gold will only be worthless if there is nothing to do with it. Let prices settle in to a new higher normal. Higher prices mean higher AH fees which is more gold out of the economy and gives people something to do with their gold even if the numbers are stupidly large. Part of the reason gold was worthless in D2 was the ludicrously small cap on how much a character could hold in the inventory/stash (at least compared to collection speed.)

15% tax on items sold in the AH is the same, whether it be 100K or 1 billion.

The reason gold was useless in D2 wasn't because of how little you could hold but because gold had no use in the game other than repairing and gambling every once and awhile.

Posted by NightCrawler9 at 05/08/2013 10:09 PM

Posted by Mylton at 05/08/2013 09:58 PM

So while we all wonder how long the AH will be down and how it will perform once it comes back - my question is If you were the Blizzard staff member tasked with "fixing" the economy now - what would you do?

I have three ideas off the top of my head...

1. Add another gem tier.

It may not be sexy but a new gem tier requiring 3 marquise gems + say 50 mil gold would be a quick way to suck some extra gold out of the economy. An extra 20 - 30 stat points, 10% extra crit damage and another 1% - 2% to life or xp would hardly be game breaking and would be a quick way to take a billion or two gold out of the wallets of those who absolutely want to be the best and now have the gold sitting around. You might even get more if they are willing to outfit multiple characters.

And people would get more [filtered]ed off about it than they did when Blizzard implemented Marquise gems.

Posted by Mylton at 05/08/2013 09:58 PM

3. Raise the maximum price in the AH. Gold will only be worthless if there is nothing to do with it. Let prices settle in to a new higher normal. Higher prices mean higher AH fees which is more gold out of the economy and gives people something to do with their gold even if the numbers are stupidly large. Part of the reason gold was worthless in D2 was the ludicrously small cap on how much a character could hold in the inventory/stash (at least compared to collection speed.)

15% tax on items sold in the AH is the same, whether it be 100K or 1 billion.

The reason gold was useless in D2 wasn't because of how little you could hold but because gold had no use in the game other than repairing and gambling every once and awhile.

People might get "pissed off" about another gem tier and some may not use it, but others would - and how many people do you think are going to quit the game because if something like that were added?

15% may be 15% but it is a hell of a lot more in absolute numbers when applied to 1 billion than when applied to 100k. There are already many people trading BIS mempho's and similar items outside the game due in part to the price cap. What is going to happen when every item costs 10x what it did a couple days ago? Right now those transactions arranged outside the game are paying 0% bringing any portion of that back into the AH will serve as somewhat of a gold sink.

As for D2 gold - the ultimate purpose of ANY currency whether in real life or in a virtual world is to serve as a medium of exchange and placeholder of value. It doesn't need any further "use" to have value. However to serve that role it must be liquid or freely tradeable. D2's cap on how much gold you could hold created a situation where it was not freely tradeable, If I had an item you wanted you would literally be incapable of handing me the currency therefore different mediums of exchange or direct trades were necessary. If there had been no cap whatsoever on how much you could hold prices might have been stupidly large but it would have at least been able to serve as an actual currency.

Gold sinks or "uses" in games don't serve to create value in the game's currency, they act as a hedge against inflation in a closed economy that otherwise has near infinite input of currency based on gameplay with no outlet for it.