Folks, I want to talk about money – video game money. I was surfing the City of Heroes subreddit a while back when I bumped into a thread about the “wealth gap” in the game – specifically, on the now-two-year-old rogue servers. The meme needs to be seen.
There’s so much to unpack here. First, it’s only been two years – how is the wealth gap that bad already? But second, I get it, and I suspect it’s more about casuals vs. hardcores than newbies vs. vets. To listen to the hardcore emu players talk, some of them really do have billions of inf (that’s money in CoH). Casuals are not playing the converter game or farming for hours a day; they’re just leveling and rolling alts on private servers that could poof tomorrow. That can definitely mess with the price of enhancements and recipes and even high-end salvage, even on the servers where the player devs have implemented crafting and pricing stopgaps to keep small economies from being toppled. But it can also benefit poorer players too as a lucky drop – or wise spending of merits – can make you enough cash to fund several toons in regular enhancements.
In fact, while I think the “wealth gap” is a problem in CoH, I’d still say it’s one of the MMOs where it matters the least. I can think of a dozen other MMORPGs that have a serious problem when it comes to the wealth gap – and I bet you can too. So let’s do just that:
Which MMORPG has the worst “wealth gap” between old and new players? How exactly does the problem manifest in that game?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
