Comment Re:Fiat money causes inflation in WoW? (Score 2, Insightful) 479
A "Gold Standard" version of Wow would simply mean there is a fixed amount of gold in the world. Since none of the NPCs actually exchange gold with each other or function as anything other than animated figurines, any gold-giving NPC would permanently run out of gold at some point and any gold-receiving NPC would constantly increase their inaccessible stash.
The reason there's no massive inflation in Wow is two-fold:
1) Since player actions are what generates gold, the amount of gold in the world is roughly equal to (the number of players in the world) * (the amount of gold-generating work they are doing). Gold-supply scales perfectly with player-supply.
2) NPC item prices are fixed and don't respond to the 'market'
The reason there's no massive inflation in Wow is two-fold:
1) Since player actions are what generates gold, the amount of gold in the world is roughly equal to (the number of players in the world) * (the amount of gold-generating work they are doing). Gold-supply scales perfectly with player-supply.
2) NPC item prices are fixed and don't respond to the 'market'
