The D2 economy is in a major depression
I have a few concerns about the d2 economy, and why it has to be improved in d3.
The need for perfection gone to extreme levels
I'm not sure I understand prices on items with a defense bonus range, and I understand how it got this way even less. For some reason, a defense 141 shako is 10 or 20fg, but a 139 is worth almost nothing. The same goes for belts like arachnid's. I'm not sure I understand because the defense is so low that it becomes irrelevant in practice anyway... and when taken into context with all the mods - the REAL reason you'd want to use the helm anyway - the defense stat probably has .01% effect on the overall effectiveness of the item. It's irrelevant in pvm... in dueling... in anything. The only person that knows it is perfect is the player themselves (and whoever that player happens to show it off to in a trade window).
I guess it gets this way because there is an excess of shako and arachnid meshes floating around, but it's weird why the market would say, "The defense stat is going to determine the value of Shako from now on!". For a Herald of Zakarum... I can understand... because a good one compared to a piss poor one will make 1000 defense difference after you apply holy shield to it. A shako though will hardly make anywhere near that level of impact, especially when just considering the average ones to the perfect one. The arachnid mesh is even more a joke. Some people won't even use non-perfect ones.
Perhaps this kind of mentality could be rectified with WoW's method of binding items to the player... that way the market never gets over-flooded with the same items. Either that, or they need to make the ladder resets more frequent.
Dupes
Duping and Botting has also expedited the problems within the game. It is frankly impossible for legit players to compete with dupes and botting. Playing legit can still get you lots of runewords, most of the best uniques, etc. to enjoy the game... but the bots and dupes take it to a whole new level.
Dupes actually hurt the poorest on the server the most. The rich get to sell off the dupes before the economy is affected, so they essentially get top price initially. This happens until the economy realizes, "Wait a minute... there's a lot more of these *these* than before... I guess the demand isn't so high for them anymore or are not as rare as we thought."
As a consequence, any poor player coming across a legit item that has been duped en-mass suffers because it is harder for them to gain wealth and real purchasing power. Of course, once the economy has been stabilized after dupes, these poorer players can now get runes much more easily, but they are still leaps and bounds poorer to the people who started the duping in the first place by comparison. These people managed to get harder currency for the dupes, which survives the inflation, and thus gives them more purchasing power as time goes on.
Duping, if possible, would always exist no matter how rare the items were... but I do think the extreme rarity of the high runes encourages people to figure out ways to dupe items. Maybe that was Blizzard's intention - to make them so rare that only a few people on the server would have BoTD. But if you ask me, it encouraged it even more. The same goes for Rare item dupes in classic, or the ones that managed to do well in the expansion on non-ladder.
It goes without saying that D3 has to make it impossible to dupe items, and if such duping exists, they need to take a firm stance against it.
Bots
Bots affect the game in different ways, by increasing the supply of items that are supposed to be hard to find. Of course in D2, this will happen naturally as the ladder servers get older, but botting accelerates the process exponentially. The only cure without any additional programming is a ladder reset, which would piss a lot of people off.
Bots are more or less perfect. They don't miss that Stone of Jordan on the ground, whereas the player might. They don't miss that special boss pact holding the 2-socket perfect crown of ages. Bots also pick up every magic and rare and scrutinize everything, where the real person probably won't due to time-constraints. We also don't have to mention that the human player will traverse the map many times slower as well.
The fact that mephisto is so easy beaten makes him so easily botted... and thus anything he drops is now worthless in the economy. There is virtually no point to running him at all. You can find 1 magic item from gambling that someone wants and get 30-50 amazing uniques all at once. Why even bother?
As botting has become so easy that just about anyone can do it... it encourages the poor to try and "catch up" to the rich. Of course, this only compounds the problem further. Now, just about anything you find is worth nothing within the game. The only real items of value of gambled rares and blues, crafted items, charms, etc. The fact that a tyreal's might was selling for 30fg the other day is proof that there is a very real problem. Is there really an over inflation of tyreal's might now? That's pretty sad.
Unique Item Quality
Part of the problem is the items themselves. Crown of Ages is a fantastic example. A poor generation of the item is not worth using by any character, yet it's hard enough to find that it is unlikely to find several legitly unless you've been playing for a really long time.
Armors like Leviathan, while looking cool, are worthless because of excessive strength requirements. When compared to runewords like Engima, there is virtually no point to using something like this. If Enigma was actually extremely rare, then we'd see more uniques in play... but with all the dupes... it makes MFing many, many uniques pointless.
MFing
Part of the problem is the real lack of variety when MFing. Imagine what the game would be like if you stood to get difference items just by running through all the levels as opposed to running bosses? Of course, bosses would give good drops... but just imagine that you had strategy in every location in the game. This would encourage people actually PLAYING THE GAME. Perhaps even getting mfing bonuses by doing various activities/quests rather than being 100% item based.
You lose purchasing power by playing
If you actually get items and play the game, your purchasing power in fact goes down. Not by a little - but rather, by a whole lot. Therefore, if you really care about your wealth in the game, you should always liquidate to FG whenever you are not playing. This hurts anyone who has items and goods in the game and prefers to keep these on their accounts.
I did not play for several months. I had a lightning die facet that was 5/5. It was worth 45fg. Now, people offer 10fg. It was just sitting in a stash for just a few months. I lost 35fg by simply keeping it on my character - 350% the value.
Inflation happens in the real world - the Fed makes sure to that - but they at least only do it by fractions of that number. This is how depressions start, and the D2 economy is in fact in a great depression. The moment someone can not play the game for just a few months and probably lose 2-4 times their wealth is dangerous for everyone that plays. I probably had 2500fg worth of stuff on my accounts. Now, it is perhaps worth 700fg.
Without a way to easily liquidate our wealth then, a lot of players simply won't. I personally can't be bothered trying to sell "my junk". It just takes too long. Why bother when I could bot or dupe my way faster than trying to trade it all?
That's why the economy is suffering, and why it needs to be discussed. I hope D3 does a very good fixing these problems.
I have a few concerns about the d2 economy, and why it has to be improved in d3.
The need for perfection gone to extreme levels
I'm not sure I understand prices on items with a defense bonus range, and I understand how it got this way even less. For some reason, a defense 141 shako is 10 or 20fg, but a 139 is worth almost nothing. The same goes for belts like arachnid's. I'm not sure I understand because the defense is so low that it becomes irrelevant in practice anyway... and when taken into context with all the mods - the REAL reason you'd want to use the helm anyway - the defense stat probably has .01% effect on the overall effectiveness of the item. It's irrelevant in pvm... in dueling... in anything. The only person that knows it is perfect is the player themselves (and whoever that player happens to show it off to in a trade window).
I guess it gets this way because there is an excess of shako and arachnid meshes floating around, but it's weird why the market would say, "The defense stat is going to determine the value of Shako from now on!". For a Herald of Zakarum... I can understand... because a good one compared to a piss poor one will make 1000 defense difference after you apply holy shield to it. A shako though will hardly make anywhere near that level of impact, especially when just considering the average ones to the perfect one. The arachnid mesh is even more a joke. Some people won't even use non-perfect ones.
Perhaps this kind of mentality could be rectified with WoW's method of binding items to the player... that way the market never gets over-flooded with the same items. Either that, or they need to make the ladder resets more frequent.
Dupes
Duping and Botting has also expedited the problems within the game. It is frankly impossible for legit players to compete with dupes and botting. Playing legit can still get you lots of runewords, most of the best uniques, etc. to enjoy the game... but the bots and dupes take it to a whole new level.
Dupes actually hurt the poorest on the server the most. The rich get to sell off the dupes before the economy is affected, so they essentially get top price initially. This happens until the economy realizes, "Wait a minute... there's a lot more of these *these* than before... I guess the demand isn't so high for them anymore or are not as rare as we thought."
As a consequence, any poor player coming across a legit item that has been duped en-mass suffers because it is harder for them to gain wealth and real purchasing power. Of course, once the economy has been stabilized after dupes, these poorer players can now get runes much more easily, but they are still leaps and bounds poorer to the people who started the duping in the first place by comparison. These people managed to get harder currency for the dupes, which survives the inflation, and thus gives them more purchasing power as time goes on.
Duping, if possible, would always exist no matter how rare the items were... but I do think the extreme rarity of the high runes encourages people to figure out ways to dupe items. Maybe that was Blizzard's intention - to make them so rare that only a few people on the server would have BoTD. But if you ask me, it encouraged it even more. The same goes for Rare item dupes in classic, or the ones that managed to do well in the expansion on non-ladder.
It goes without saying that D3 has to make it impossible to dupe items, and if such duping exists, they need to take a firm stance against it.
Bots
Bots affect the game in different ways, by increasing the supply of items that are supposed to be hard to find. Of course in D2, this will happen naturally as the ladder servers get older, but botting accelerates the process exponentially. The only cure without any additional programming is a ladder reset, which would piss a lot of people off.
Bots are more or less perfect. They don't miss that Stone of Jordan on the ground, whereas the player might. They don't miss that special boss pact holding the 2-socket perfect crown of ages. Bots also pick up every magic and rare and scrutinize everything, where the real person probably won't due to time-constraints. We also don't have to mention that the human player will traverse the map many times slower as well.
The fact that mephisto is so easy beaten makes him so easily botted... and thus anything he drops is now worthless in the economy. There is virtually no point to running him at all. You can find 1 magic item from gambling that someone wants and get 30-50 amazing uniques all at once. Why even bother?
As botting has become so easy that just about anyone can do it... it encourages the poor to try and "catch up" to the rich. Of course, this only compounds the problem further. Now, just about anything you find is worth nothing within the game. The only real items of value of gambled rares and blues, crafted items, charms, etc. The fact that a tyreal's might was selling for 30fg the other day is proof that there is a very real problem. Is there really an over inflation of tyreal's might now? That's pretty sad.
Unique Item Quality
Part of the problem is the items themselves. Crown of Ages is a fantastic example. A poor generation of the item is not worth using by any character, yet it's hard enough to find that it is unlikely to find several legitly unless you've been playing for a really long time.
Armors like Leviathan, while looking cool, are worthless because of excessive strength requirements. When compared to runewords like Engima, there is virtually no point to using something like this. If Enigma was actually extremely rare, then we'd see more uniques in play... but with all the dupes... it makes MFing many, many uniques pointless.
MFing
Part of the problem is the real lack of variety when MFing. Imagine what the game would be like if you stood to get difference items just by running through all the levels as opposed to running bosses? Of course, bosses would give good drops... but just imagine that you had strategy in every location in the game. This would encourage people actually PLAYING THE GAME. Perhaps even getting mfing bonuses by doing various activities/quests rather than being 100% item based.
You lose purchasing power by playing
If you actually get items and play the game, your purchasing power in fact goes down. Not by a little - but rather, by a whole lot. Therefore, if you really care about your wealth in the game, you should always liquidate to FG whenever you are not playing. This hurts anyone who has items and goods in the game and prefers to keep these on their accounts.
I did not play for several months. I had a lightning die facet that was 5/5. It was worth 45fg. Now, people offer 10fg. It was just sitting in a stash for just a few months. I lost 35fg by simply keeping it on my character - 350% the value.
Inflation happens in the real world - the Fed makes sure to that - but they at least only do it by fractions of that number. This is how depressions start, and the D2 economy is in fact in a great depression. The moment someone can not play the game for just a few months and probably lose 2-4 times their wealth is dangerous for everyone that plays. I probably had 2500fg worth of stuff on my accounts. Now, it is perhaps worth 700fg.
Without a way to easily liquidate our wealth then, a lot of players simply won't. I personally can't be bothered trying to sell "my junk". It just takes too long. Why bother when I could bot or dupe my way faster than trying to trade it all?
That's why the economy is suffering, and why it needs to be discussed. I hope D3 does a very good fixing these problems.