Inflated prices. I see no actual issue with the inflation cause I can pretty easily survive here, as can anyone that tries. The argument is that GDKPs don’t cause inflation. I’m arguing the contrary with my experience.
The answer is simple really, harder content x ban wave x bots taken away from wotlk and added to sod, a speed pot on benediction was as low as 4 gold during togc, that’s cheaper than a tbc haste potion in tempest keep
GDKPs do not spontaneously generate gold, they move gold from players to other players. The AH sees orders of magnitude more in transactions than GDKPs could ever achieve. Prices go up as demand goes up. Prices decrease as supply increases. Devaluation of gold doesn’t happen because players trade gold, devaluation of gold occurs in part due to RMT and in part due to the game acting as an infinite minting press.
So then the solution is for Blizz to more proactively, and more harshly, punish those who buy and sell gold.
Banning GDKPs just means you still have RMT, and just as bad as it was before, you just don’t see GDKP ads. I’m also not sure why you think anyone needs to “launder” gold, WoW isn’t irl.
Bots create the gold. The people buy the gold. The people use the gold in GDKPS because there’s almost no where to spend it at the start of the chain. Then non gold buyers get the bought gold from the GDKP. The non gold buyers use their gold to buy consumes to point where the price increases because all the cheap stuff has been bought out. Unsuspecting people are forced to pay higher prices at the last minute. In time the prices get out of control. It’s far easier to run a GDKP and get a several thousand gold payout then go out and farm the peacebloom. More people start running GDKPs for host cuts. More people join them. More people find it easier to RMT and buy their item of choice on the first time it drops. Soon enough, GDKP is the main way people play the game because it benefits casuals looking to easily pay for expensive consumes and RMTers that want to get their item in one shot.
You’re saying that RMT didn’t cause problems before GDKPs. You’re saying that RMT isn’t a problem in games that don’t have anything like GDKPs. This makes you an outright liar.
mmo economies are not real economies, the longer your flavour of mmo exists, the more completely borked its economy becomes no matter what happens. Every single mmo economy is in ruins compared to its early days because gold comes in and never goes out, regardless if gdkp exists or not
Acknowledging this means those who refuse to see past their own nose can’t have an easy scapegoat to point at while ignoring reality or the actual problems.