Hi, everybody!
I’m pretty new here, so I had a kinda weird not-super-important question on my mind that I was hoping y’all could answer; what is the state of the in-character economy? Like, what’s considered a lot of money and what’s considered a little bit of money? Of course, different characters get different wages and find their money in different places, but this is just in search of some sort of general consensus on the value of copper/silver/gold.
Thank you and have a wonderful Tuesday!
I would take a look at this link: https://wow.gamepedia.com/Money
Typically, the way I RP, a handful of copper can feed a peasant family of 4 for a day, though it wouldn’t be your best quality stuff.
For sake of our argument, let’s say it takes 5c to feed the hypothetical family of 4 (as per the link, vegetables cost 1c, so 5c should be a day’s worth of peasant food), we can multiply this by 3 to account for living costs, housing, clothes budget, etc. etc. winding our total to monthly living expenses to ~4s 50c for the poorest of the poor. Barely minimum wage.
The average wages of a peasant would be somewhere along these lines, with a generous salary being greater than 4s 50c and a bad salary being less than this number.
Copper would be the primary currency used by the “lower” class. They probably view 1s as a lot of money, with 1g being an impossible pipe dream.
The middle class probably uses a mix of copper and silver on a daily basis, with 1g being a lot of money.
Upper class probably treats copper like pennies, not worth picking up from the curbside. Most likely their daily spending money is silver, but gold isn’t really all that hard to come by. Probably got loads of it stowed away somewhere.
Now, government spending (such as the listed prices for units), are probably accurate to a degree, but you have to remember that these prices are inflated via good old bureaucracy. What the average citizen spends copper or silver for likely costs gold for the government.
EDIT:
Living Expenses:
I’ve gone ahead and written down my own personal take on the living expenses of the social classes. These are just living expenses, not taking into account spending such as educational or impulse buys. For calculation, I’m going to use the good old family of 4 assumption, with the below (entirely speculative) values. I think given the above they are fair estimates.
Again, these are living expenses, not salaries.
Really Cheap Meal: 5c/day
Really Cheap Living Costs: 10c/day
Total: 4s 50c/month
Yearly Total: 54s 0c/year
Cheap Meal: 10c/day (doubled due to the addition of cheap beers vs water)
Cheap Living Costs: 15c/day
Total: 7s 50c/month
Yearly Total: 90s 0c/year
Lower Middle Meal: 15c/day
Lower Middle Living Costs: 20c/day
Total: 10s 50c/month
Yearly Total: 1g 26s 0c/year
Middle Meal: 17c/day (starting to slow down)
Middle Living Costs: 25c/day
Total: 12s 60c/month
Yearly Total: 1g 51s 20c/year
Upper Middle Meal: 20c/day
Upper Middle Living Costs: 30c/day
Total: 15s 0c
Yearly Total: 1g 80s 0c/year
Upper Class Meal: 1s (imports, fancy cooks)/day
Upper Class Living Cost: 10s/day (housing costs spike upwards, salary for servants)
Total: 3g 30s/month
Yearly Total: 39g 60s/year
For upper class going forward, I’d add 10s for more searvants/bigger houses (iterative, of course), and I’d multiply it by 10 if said upper class has a lot of land/castle. I’ll crunch an example “Aristocracy” living cost.
Aristocracy Meal: 2s/day
Aristocracy Living Costs (Med. Castle): 2g/day
Total: 60g 60s/month
Yearly Total: 727g 20s/year
For wages, a good wage would be higher than cost of living, bad lower, and wage slave would hover around it.
These are just some of my personal thoughts on the matter, definitely not a “hard rule” or anything else, just my own interpretations of things with some basic math thrown in. Take it with a grain of salt and not everyone is guaranteed to share these opinions.
Wow, thank you so much! I had no idea there was this much pre-established info on money; I’ll definitely come back to this comment as I RP!
Good post. It’s important to note that salaries in the time periods depicted in WoW still worked on the “meals per year” format. In other words, since it’s outrageous to assume anyone has a bag with hundreds of coins in it at any given time, they’re most likely working with bank notes that persistently track how much food they’re owed.
Interesting. Meanwhile, a character who goes off adventuring and/or fighting in the Broken Isles comes back with literally hundreds of thousands of gold. I know that’s a game mechanic, but I assumed my character came back from WoD and Legion with a similar amount of money. And she’s essentially a mid level military officer. How does one reckon that?
I agree, but you have to take into account how the times of WoW are all over the place. While traditional values and lifestyles are still common, I’d imagine the manner of one’s pay would depend on how urban they are, their social class, and their profession.
Peasants and servants of lords probably don’t get much money at all, as you said. The lords or bank provides them with their needs in exchange for labor. But the Alchemist, Engineer, Enchantress, or even the shop clerk of the big city probably get coin based wages as cities of WoW seem more “modern” than “traditional”.
Probably largely hinges on profession though, I’d imagine a dockworker who unloads boats for a living is probably paid in meals just as the peasants who till the fields are.
Definitely gameplay =! Lore. A hundred thousand gold for an upper level officer’s yearly pay (both Legion and WoD lasted a year IIRC) would effectively break the economy via hyper inflation.
A good example of how valuable gold is actually comes from BFA - it is remarked that our PC adventuring gear is priceless, and if you add up the vendor price of all our pieces I doubt it will be more than a couple thousand gold. I need to find that source though.
As for how much an upper level officer would make? Depends - generals and admirals are probably related to the aristocracy as nobles or lords, and would make gold equivalent to something more upper class (or if a true lord) even beyond.
Entry level officers are probably solidly middle class, upper level being upper-middle/upper class, with generals and admirals being full aristocrat tier.
Edit: saw she’s a mid level officer. Reading comprehension is hard <_<
Double edit: as for OOC PC money, we have basically endless money loops we can use, like farming old raids for greens, picking flowers that regrow in minutes, or repeating the same gold missions daily for two years.
We also have really high mortality rates and are basically gods among men who can kill entire armies of soldiers in a couple GCD’s.