MMO-ECON :: Economics, Statistics, and Rationality of MMOs

Wrath on Thursday – What Does that Mean for MMO-ECON?

Tuesday, November 11th, 2008

As the gamers here already know, Blizzard’s second expansion to WoW, Wrath of the Lich King (WOLK) hits stores at 12:00 a.m. Thursday morning. As with the first expansion, WOLK will rewrite the economic rules underlying WoW’s markets. We can expect to see many changes, including the following:

• Entirely new input factors into crafting professions.  New types of leather, stronger metals, and exotic herbs all will be introduced with the expansion.  Watch for shifting demand patters, initially focused on primary inputs required for skilling-up one’s professions, and later focused on providing high-end items for entry level raiding.

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Tags: data collection, expansion, GDP, WOLK
Posted in Econometrics | Comments Off

WoW Econometrics and Data Collection Methodology

Tuesday, August 5th, 2008

One of the promising things about analyzing online gaming economies is that the data are abundant and already in digital format.  Extracting the relevant data, however, has been much more difficult than I first expected.  But good news!  Over the last few weeks, I’ve cobbled together an approach that captures the entire set of all auctions extant on a given server’s Auction House.  These data include additional information, such as seller’s identity, time available for bids, number of identical goods up for auction, buyout price, and current highest bid.

The approach for extracting these data can also be repeated over set intervals to construct pooled data (combines cross-sectional data with time-series data).

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Tags: Auction House, Auctioneer, data collection, Econometrics
Posted in Econometrics | 5 Comments »