[Dawnrunner]

I'm not overly familiar with MUD based economies as I'm a primary MUX/MUSH player --

However I did feel obligated to contribute a bit to the discussion after having read people comment about how to make an ecoonomy 'succeed' simply by matching gold input with gold output. That is actually inheritly false. The biggest economic misconception is that economies are zero-sum. (As much that goes out has to equal what comes in.) That isn't the case in the least, Economies are naturally growing. This growth is measured via several means in 'real' economics (GDP, Inflation) For a game to have a successful economy it needs to keep in mind that more players means more gold/product being produced which means there will be a steady increase in the amounts of gold in the system, otherwise you will have depreciation of currency as it loses its capability of a trading medium.

Vice versa, a massively bloated economic system with more gold than needed (ala pretty much every game in existance) reflects massive inflation where the gold holds no legitimate or real value since anything/everything can be purchased with little effort.

I would submit to y'all the following economic concept. The true thrust of economics is in limited resources, scarcity. Design a system that requires your players to make a choices. Things they want versus things they need. Then, force the players to take those choices and recognize they must give up item A in order to purchase item B since they wont' have the resources available to do both. That is the foundation of economics -- and a key aspect that a majority of games I have ever encountered fail to access. Mainly because finding things that are 'needs' for players are difficult and denying a player all their 'wants' leave them pouty and sadface.