[intended]

Actually the game designers completely understand those human emotions like greed, envy and fear.

They design these things into the game [i] on purpose [/i]

The economics of video games, in terms of GDP is simple - people constantly produce thing from a never ending well of digital resource nodes.

As a result of crafting + drop + trash sales, total gold in the servers always goes up, causing unending price inflation.

Its a pretty cool example of what would happen in a world with plenty.

Game designers create gold sinks to give people - especially the stupidly rich - something to dump their gold into.

I've been on the wow servers soon after vanilla launched - some gamers (and some human beings in general) are just wired to enjoy amassing wealth and gaming the economy.

These sinks were created to ensure that those players end up doing minimal damage to the average player.