[tseabrooks]

Many games add "Gold sinks" to tackle this. Just ways for players to use gold that completely removes it from the economy. I believe the trick of this is to scale it with the amount of gold in the system.

Complete conjecture, but I suspect this is related to things like the increased price to craft gems in Diablo II (bigger gems are more expensive) which was a stark contract to Diablo 2's simple method of "3 small gems make a big gem".

Diablo 2 felt like it had an economy that happened almost by accident whereas DiabloIII feels like they put a lot of effort into the economy and trying to have enough ways to remove gold from the economy.

[intended]

Adding to gold sinks -

WoW I think had some of the most visible impacts in terms of gold sinks (some I am sure were pioneered by other games and MMOs)

They brought about the concepts of vanity items, which were absurdly expensive and went from there.

Whats even more interesting is seeing the progression and evolution of these economies.

Wow 1.0 auction houses and others barely had the concepts of gold sinks, nor any of the finer tuned economic catches that blizzard introduced by the time it reached its 3rd expansion - Wrath of the Lich King.

[Retric]

Diablo's largest gold sink is the Auction house has a 15% transaction fee. If 1100 DPS 1h becomes worth more because people spend more time farming gold vs items then the auction house will just eat a ever larger share of created gold so eventually people spend more time farming items so there are more 1100DPS weapons and the price drops.

[xsmasher]

> I believe the trick of this is to scale it with the amount of gold in the system.

That would make the items too expensive for normal players - only the gold farmers and their customers would be able to afford it. Tricky business.