An Attempt at Economic Stimulus in Everquest II

You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves. 

  –   William J. H. Boetcker, 1916 (often attributed to Lincoln)

In case you’ve missed it, SOE is considering giving away Master level spells to any player that wants one:

 All research requires a base amount of information to work with. In the case of the Research Assistants, this manifests in that they require you to have the previous tier of the spell being upgraded before they can begin work for you. So, in order to research that Master I, you’ll need to first know the Adept III version, though it doesn’t matter whether that Adept III version came from researching or from your friendly neighborhood sage, jeweler or alchemist. The time required to research a spell increase will vary based on the level and tier of the spell. A level 20 Adept I may only take an hour, while a level 80 master will likely take a month or longer. 

 –   Jennifer “Kirstie” Gerull, Mechanics Supervisor, Everquest II

There’s a couple of restrictions they’ve announced, but the one thing they haven’t yet conceded is an actual cost.  That’s right, no cost other than your monthly subscription and a little bit of time.  Since you’re required to have a subscription to play the game and since we all earn time at the same rate, this is no cost at all.  No gameplay required, just tell your research assistant you want X master spell, log out and come back in a month or so and you’ve got a brand new master level spell.  Even CCP requires you to pay for the skills you earn in real time in EVE Online. 

On the surface, I have to hand it to SOE, though:  it’s a truly noble idea.  It’s a way to provide master level spells to every person in the game – at least the important ones.  It’s a way to make sure that you’re never held hostage to the random number generator or the greed of plat farmers.  From a player’s point of view, why would anyone possibly be against such an idea? 

In a word:  standards. 

Several years ago, I was involved in a discussion with some friends over an article we’d read regarding Bill Gates’ total worth.  At the time (this was the late 90’s, mind you), he was worth around 64 billion dollars.  Over a couple of beers on a perfect Minnesota summer evening, we bandied around some “what if” scenarios on how to spend the vast Gates fortune.  One of the ideas that came up was a way to eliminate poverty.  One of my friends came to the sudden realization that Bill could single handily “wipe out” poverty in the U.S. if he would simply give away $100,000 to the 600,000 poorest Americans (there were around 260,000 Americans below the poverty level that year).  After all, my friend reasoned, f the reason they were “poor” was simply because they didn’t have enough money, just give them money.  The problem I saw in the issue (and apparently I wasn’t the only one to notice this) was that the moment you put that much new money into general circulation…you simply raised the bar of what that mimimum standard was defined as. 

Now, we could get into a much more detailed debate over that beer fueled discussion I held with my friends a decade ago, but I still stand by the general logic I based my conclusion on:  if you give something away to everyone in order to equalize the playing field, you get exactly what you pay for – a more equalized playing field.  Is that a problem?  You bet it can be, especially in the context of an economy. 

When Echoes of Faydwer launched, the standard for spell quality for the average player was only Adept I.  Rare tradeskilling components were still sufficiently rare that not everyone had immediate access to crafted Adept III spells and transmuting had not yet artificially increased demand for the dropped Adept I spells.  This meant that while Adept III spells were relatively expensive to acquire, Adept I’s were cheap and plentiful.  For those which weren’t, the Adept IV was considered a viable alternative, since the content in the game world was still designed around an Adept I standard and Adept IV’s were close enough to the standard that skilled players could still get by without anything better.

Sometime during Echoes’ lifecycle, SOE increased the rate of rare harvests while the transmuting secondary tradeskill was itself released with Echoes of Faydwer.  This lead to less cheap Adept I’s on the broker since transmuters were snatching them up as fast as they could while simultaneously increasing the supply of rare tradeskill harvests which meant more access to affordable Adept III’s.  In the short run, this meant an overall easier experience for the casual player, since content seemed to be designed around that Adept I standard.  Besides, more players were grouping at the higher levels of the game (which capped at level 70 at the time), which meant that even underskilled players were able to hide more of their personal flaws by allowing better skilled/geared players to handle the lion’s share of the work in their nightly groupings.  Week by week and month by month, the average spell quality began to creep higher and higher till more players had access to more Adept III’s. 

When the beta buffer was introduced in Rise of Kunark, I was surprised to see that Adept III’s were the spell quality we were being asked to test with right from the word go.  Right away, I could see a significant difference in difficulty between the hardest solo content in Echoes of Faydwer and the easiest solo content Rise of Kunark.  Though several tunings occured throughout the beta, it became apparent to many of us that this new expansion would be based around a new Adept III standard.  The result of easy rares was revealed as a generally raised standard.  In other words, we’d simply raised the bar of what that minimum standard had been defined as. 

Most of us simply adapted to the new, more challenging content.  Frankly, without immediate access to viable grouping pathways for advancement, we had to adapt.  The new world order was decreed to be the path of the solo quester and you either adapted to this new world or you found yourself in the tar pits of inflexibility.  Even today, when players first complain about the difficulty of those first Kunark encounters, the advice they are almost always given invariably includes “make sure you have all of your Adept III’s”. 

…and now SOE wants to increase the standard to Master I.  Oh, they’re not saying they want to increase the standard to Master I.  However, what other possible message could we possibly take from this new concept.  If everyone has access to free Master I spells, the standard over time will inevitably once again raise the minimum standard.  The average spell quality will continue to raise from Adept III to Master I across the board – not just for raiders and 40 hour a week players, but for everyone.  After all, there’s no cost being referenced by the SOE proposition thus far, and without any cost save for time, there’s no real cost at all. 

That’s right:  if time is the only cost, there is no cost.  It’s not a contradiction.  It’s a truism of logic. 

Time is a currency we all earn (and spend) at the same rate.  The next 60 seconds I have available to me is the same 60 seconds available to everyone reading this.  There is no difference between a Minnesota minute or a New York minute (regardless of what popular cliches may state to the contrary).  There is no difference between an American hour or a British hour.  German hours, Russian hours, Swedish hours, Australian hours are all earned and spent at the exact same rate.  Casual minutes and hardcore minutes are identical.  There is zero difference. 

So while it’s true to say that time is a cost, it’s ingenuine to claim that time as a cost requires any effort at all.  It does not.  My expenditure of time does not speed up, slow down, or alter in any way when I am sleeping or running a marathon.  A hardcore player may do more during the same amount of time than a casual player (or not – some of the most serious players I know spend less than 10 hours a week in-game and some of the least achievement oriented players I know are online at least 4 hours each day), but the amount of time both earn and spend is identical each week – regardless of what those players actually do during that time.

Time never stops.  It keeps moving.  It keeps flowing.  It keeps spending itself for us, whether we choose to spend it or not.  In that way, it could be said instead that we dont’ really earn time and we don’t really spend it, either.  Frankly, it spends us. 

Over time, Master I spells become the new standard for all of us.  This means that just as there were casual players who found themselves frustrated by the new Adept III standard, there will be players who find themselves frustrated by the new Master I standard of the future.  It’s not merely a possibility, but an eventuality if Master I spells are allowed to be so readily available to any and all callers.

The short term gains would be outstripped by the long term difficulty standards.  Players who feel the game is too difficult today – the ones who seem most attracted to the idea of “free masters” would be the same ones upset in a year or two that the game is suddenly even harder than before.  Those players who today feel the game is very challenging with all Adept III’s can at least increase their spells to Master I quality over time, through effort and coin gain.  In a world where the Master I is itself the standard, there is no way to improve upon the spell quality – casual players will have no additional upgrade path in that regard. 

So, while the goals of a new, less capitalist “research assistant” are themselves noble, the results would be anything but.  Instead of “rewarding” players for their monthly subscription, we’d end up penalizing players who had not played enough to gain the masters everyone else already has access to.  Now, I’m not against the idea of a research assistant to help us find master spells.  The idea is not a bad one unto itself, but so long as the only “cost” is time, there is no cost at all.  There is no meaning to the rewards.  There is no effort.  There is no value.  At that point, master spells are no longer a reward…but an obligated standard which we are all due.

The only way to have any kind of meaningful reward is through effort.  Add a cost.  Add ANY significant cost and you change the rules completely.  You add meaning.  You add effort.  You add…a reward.