Economic Life Lessons from an MMO

If there's one thing about my leveling experience in Classic Fresh that's a truism, it's that I almost never run out of Rested XP while playing. When you think about it that's not a great surprise, given that I'm leveling 10 toons:

For Joan, I went with a vaguely unsettling look with
a shock of white hair and piercing blue eyes with her
mocha skin tone. In her red robe, she had that look.
She had to have been a Wednesday-esque sort of child
growing up. The listings are current as of January 14, 2025.

Right now, I'm at the point where I play a different toon every evening, so I might get around to them once every week or week and a half, and I can now go an entire evening session on WoW without leveling at all.* Admittedly, a bit of that is that I'm cheap and don't take a flight from a flight point if I can help it, because my lack of gold means every flight cuts into my money quite a bit. 

The economics of an MMO aren't exactly what people signed up for when they started playing --EVE notwithstanding-- but it's a reality that has to be addressed sooner or later. I've never played Everquest or any of the predecessors to WoW, but I have played several games released after WoW. I'm not sure whether the in-game economy of WoW necessitated changes or whether it was in response to other MMOs making life easier, but I never truly appreciated how easy it was to obtain gold by the time Wrath of the Lich King rolled around until I began playing Vanilla WoW in 2019. 

In Wrath in 2009, I discovered very quickly that the gold coming in was greater than what my needs were, and by the time I reached max level and started running dungeons I wasn't hurting for gold. I wasn't rich enough to by fast flying or the Battered Hilt at the drop of a hat, but I had a couple of thousand gold on me at any given time. I didn't have repair bills due to raiding (or enchantments or whatnot either), so just doing a dungeon or two per day was more than enough to keep my gold supply increasing. In other words, I never had to really think about how to obtain more gold. When I decided I wanted fast flying or that Battered Hilt, I just waited for my supply to get high enough and I bought it. 

Other MMOs I played had a similar approach: just playing the game and leveling meant I would have a supply of gold available to me. That supply was nowhere near what the likely "average" amount of money was out there, but I was happy with that because I didn't really use it that much. To use another game's currency as a reference, I get a supply of Cartel Coins per month from SWTOR for subscribing. That being said, I can't tell you the last time I actually used those Cartel Coins for anything.

Over 57,000 Cartel Coins as of January 14, 2025. Yikes.

I don't buy cosmetics, and I'm happy with the (relatively unfurnished) housing I do have, so I really have no need to spend that currency.**

But coming back to Vanilla WoW in 2019 and once more on the Anniversary servers is a bit of a shock to the system.

There's simply not enough money to be had while questing to cover all of your expenses, so you have to prioritize things a bit. You have to pick and choose which abilities to train, consumables to obtain, and even whether to take that flight point or not while out in the field. 

Now, multiply that by 10 and you can see where the problems are, especially if you never played the majority of these classes before and you're dead set on figuring it out by yourself. There have been evenings where I spent the majority of my time finding ways to make some gold, whether it be by fishing and selling my catch, grinding mobs for drops, or crafting to sell raw materials or finished items on the Auction House. If I'm not doing that, I'm basically making things for my own toons to use, because it's cheaper than buying it on the Auction House or from a vendor.

My insistence on following Operation Spread the Love means that I've hamstrung my ability to make gold as well, because people are making gold selling max level services, such as ports or water/food or highly desirable potions while I'm back at L20 making pretty basic stuff to distribute to my various toons. Even low-end magic items that drop off of mobs that I would ordinarily disenchant for Enchanting raw materials I instead distribute to my various toons because, well, they can use them. 

And so my penny pinching continues. 

***

Some of the people I played with back in my old Retail Orphans guild have returned to WoW and begun playing the Anniversary servers. I'm not especially surprised by this, because the Anniversary servers are explicitly going to The Burning Crusade expansion, and they've previously expressed to me their love for Karazhan, one of the first raids in TBC. The irony is that the last time I spoke with them I was powerleveling a Shaman and they were stunned at how rapidly I was leveling. Now, the tables have been turned as they're in the mid-L30s even though they started two weeks ago, while I started in late November and only have some toons at L20. 

I had a lengthy conversation with a player in Westfall while I was on my warlock, Joanofdark, the other week. He, like me, is a member of Gen X and we bonded over playing D&D back in the day as well as books we liked. He, like me, was taking his time leveling because he wasn't wanting to get caught up in the rat race. All in all, it was a pleasant hour spent just chilling with a random person in a 20+ year old video game.

*That's happened on my Warlock, my Warrior, my Rogue, and my Shaman.

**Obviously, this doesn't apply to real life, as I have enough projects around the house just to fix things up that there's a constant "gold sink" in my life.