Albion Online Game Director Robin Henkys has a fresh video out today explaining the game’s black market.
Albion is one of those fairly rare MMORPGs that insists that all items in the game — even drops — be originally crafted by players. The black market is how the game achieves that mechanically: Players will take their crafted items to the black market vendor in the capital and sell them to the market boss, and then he essentially “redistributes” those items to the factions to become drops in combat.
He won’t just buy any old crap at a set fee, however; he operates via buy order and the demand generated by players on the combat end of the system. The amount of silver in the game is maintained, and the market serves as an item sink as excess items are deleted from the game rather than be recycled back into it. It’s a unique approach for a sandbox economy and worth a look if it’s your type of gameplay!
