Bhagpuss wrote:
Lunani wrote:
Raijinn Thunderguard wrote:
Need not worry about this, as we will not be wiping out the money or items that have been traded through the broker system, we'll only be deleting the actual characters who used the beta buffer to attain the high level character that they have on the Test Server.
what about betabuffed chars that got 50g and transfered it to another regular toon? does this mean they're getting free money?
Quite honestly, why should we care about that?
What happens to a player who makes a betabuffed character and uses it to twink a non-betabuff alt on Test ? He ends up with an alt on Test with plenty of money and/or good twink gear.
And then what? He still has to log onto Test and play that character. At that point the character either becomes a regular Test player and will develop a reputation based on how it is played and how the player playing it communicates with the the rest of the community. He either fits in, in which case who cares how he gave himself a leg up at the beginning? or he doesn't fit in, in which case he's just another name on ignore.
Most likely of all, having spent a few days running his betabuff-twinking operation and then playing his twink, he gets homesick for his real server, goes back there and his twink is never seen again.
Test doesn't really have an economy that can be disrupted by a huge influx of plat, anyway. It's hard to ruin a market that runs on the basis of :
/testl "Anyone need this Master Spell I just got" "Sure, I could use it" "Sweet, its in the mail to you now" "Thanks - sending you 50c for postage"
While our broker items may be far less liquid than live, we certainly do have an economy, and it certainly will be thrown off by a massive influx of plat from external sources.
I buy adepts/collectibles/other items for alts and occasionally even Pond all the time. The influx of plat will cause inflation (As has been well proven by history any time a money supply was artificially augmented - ie. a government printing more money to pay its bills) and will decrease the buying power of anyone who did not take advantage of this loophole to stash huge amounts of cash away.
There are plenty of reasons to be concerned about the cash not being deleted. While much of Test does work in the manner you described, not all of it does - and the ones who will suffer most are the new players who have not established themselves yet within the Test community.
The economy Test has is subject to supply and demand just like any other economy. Just because we do more trading through other channels doesn't mean that increasing the money supply substantially isn't going to cause inflation and hardship for those without access to money (new players, who I'd really rather not give up on the server in frustration)