Originally posted by Midnitte

I'd say the most "real" economy in a game would be WoW; where else do you see prices of the same products differentiate from place to place (server to server) and massive amounts of inflation and money sink holes.

FAIL

right now EVE is the only MMORPG that has "real" economy

SWG pre-cu had it before the NGE

the common trait of these two systems is that they where not loot based but player created...  they also have/had a system implemented 1) had limited ressources 2)that made your things break, be it destroyed or decayed forcing the need to replace them, thus going back to the player crafter to purchace more, hence competition between the merchants., ergo, the laws of business of offer and demand now apply

(yes i used "thus" " hence" and "ergo" in the same phrase.)

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Originally posted by Laiina
By "real" I mean one where players actually buy and sell things to other players on more than a token basis, and the economy is actually an important part of the game.
Off hand, I only know of two that I have played - EVE Online and EQ2. To some extent EQ1 had a fair economy, but with so many items being outdated or obsolete there was not really that much actual selling and buying, even though EQ1 does have a pretty decent market system.
Been a while since I played DAOC, but don't recall it having much of any, and WOW certainly does not except for a few select items, such as raw materials. WOW and LOTRO both are severely hampered by the clumsy auction system also.

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Final Fantasy XI. The player economy is large, very important, and understanding it is your key to not being perpetually broke. It's not in Eve's class, but it is, IMHO, a real economy.

        I have to agree with the OP that neither LoTRO or WoW have good systems because their auction houses stink......I always hated having a time  limit on items I sold and also having to pay a fee just to list an item......It really discourages the low level player trying to make a little money so that he can buy stuff there also......I also remembe getting pretty good drops but after I paid to list it and then the broker fee it was about the same as selling it to NPC vendor so why bother with selling it?? It seemed with most items there was about a 50 percent chance it wouldnt even sell,,,,,

As I always rant on about, my biggest beef with wow is that it uses Bind on Pickup, which completely destroys any high level economy in the game.  Unless you are twinking a character, there is not one piece of gear that you can ever buy for your characters, thus making wow's economy nothing more than a commodity market.  The guy who thinks wow has a great economy made me laugh...

Like everyone else I say EVE.

A game needs item decay, looting and good crafting to bring a intresting economy.

I guess we all pretty much agree that EVE is the only true game economy, and all others are also-rans or are just plain lame or non-existant.

So the next question is, are there any games on the horizon that might actually have one? I have looked over the upcoming game list here, and nearly all of what I see is hype about the new improved combat system so that you can whack 940 moles more efficiently.

A second question might be, would there be a market for an MMORPG with a "real" manufacturing/marketing/sales economy as a major part of its' appeal?

I agree with everyone on EVE. Its just WAY too deep. Its not a bad thing either, you can get really involved in the inflation/deflation, quantities in stock, etc of various star systems.

Entropia has a good economy to. Atleast for those who like to get involved in it.

Originally posted by Midnitte

I'd say the most "real" economy in a game would be WoW; where else do you see prices of the same products differentiate from place to place (server to server) and massive amounts of inflation and money sink holes.

Actually you see that in almost any MMO that has more than one server. But the kludgy auction system, and the severe lack of many items of value that can be sold (or are worth selling) are the main reasons I put WOW into the "no economy" category.

Originally posted by HensenLiros

Originally posted by Midnitte

I'd say the most "real" economy in a game would be WoW; where else do you see prices of the same products differentiate from place to place (server to server) and massive amounts of inflation and money sink holes.

 

Ultima Online and its less than 70.000 non-japanese subscribers has all that. Prices of items on different servers are different, so people often buy transfer tokens to go to another server and sell items for a higher price. It also has inflation/ sink holes and the value of gold is always changing.

That doesn't make UO's economy any close to a real economy. WoW's isn't any close to a real economy either, unless your comcept of real economy is really basic and poor.

The money sinks are exactly the kinds of things that prevent most MMOs from being a true economy. A true economy in a game will have proper item decay/destruction just like in life. From your statements here, UO has an economic system just like WoW/EQ/whatever other fantasy MMORPG you want to list. I'm not saying that these MMOs don't have an economy. They do. The economy is very artificial and is highly succeptible to manipulation (be that a group of players, devs, hackers, etc).

Basicly, what is being asked (aka my understanding of the question) is: Which games have a real economic system compared to games that just use game mechanics to simulate an economy?

(PS What does the nationality of subscribers have anything to do with the game's economy?)