In Mabinogi there are 2 formal routes in which to participate in the economy, either player-run shops (think swap meet gatherings) or selling items out of your house (think an at-home business). Since I don't have the gold to own my own house, and the shop licenses restrict where you can set up your wares, I chose the unofficial third method: party advertising.
Officially, party advertising is meant for gathering people for a dungeon run. Starting such a party puts a dalogue box above your character's head with the party information. At regular intervals, the party opening is also displayed in the chat window. Naturally, this feature can be (and is) used to put the word out that you're buying or selling specific things. The dialogue box is then more like a sandwich board that you wear around Mabinogi advertising your deals. The server-wide chat notices makes sure that anyone anywhere also gets the message. Here's what one of my early ads looked like:
The message "[Dungeon]S>C,S,G/ore (3/8)" is shorthand for "Selling> Copper, Silver, Gold ores," while the dungeon and 3/8 tags are artifacts of the party system. This ad gets the basics across in the constrained space allowed, but my later more effective ads evolved to include the asking prices. A good ad looks more like this: "[Dungeon] S>C,S,G/ores 300-750,1kNOTE." Choppier to read because of the imposed slashes and hyphens of the party system are unavoidable, but all the relevant information is there. My copper is 300 gold, silver 750, and gold ore is 1000 gold. "NOTE" specifies that I should be contacted via the private note system.
My first large sale was 13 copper ores at 300g and 4 silver at 1000g, for a total of 7.9k. I was loitering around the refinery with my party sign up, and a user in a rush needed the goods to finish a piece of armor.
Aside from advertising goods for sale, it is common for users to post buying ads. I pay particular attention to the buyers' posts because they take the work out of finding a customer. Plus, if their buying price is too high, it's to my benefit to oblige them and profit. One user, named DISQUALIFIED, wanted units of Finest Leather at 16k gold each, which is about 6000 gold over market price. As it happened, I received a piece of Finest Leather from a quest and I had no use for it except to sell it. Most buyers' ads request that you mail them the item and they send you the money upon receiving it, like the cash-on-delivery option of the US postal system. I sent DISQUALIFIED the leather and asked for the 16k COD, and was very pleased to see a pile of gold in my mailbox the next day.
Currently I'm reading Edward Castronova's Synthetic Worlds, which covers the important aspects of what makes virtual world economies tick. One of the scourges of MMO health are the gold farmers who blend the virtual economy with the real world economy (selling virtual items for real cash; real-money trading). They damage the fantasy world in a number of ways, but they seem like a fungus that just can't be erased by the developers:
Unfortunately, I had a momentary lapse in judgement and sold my ores very low to a naked character sporting two pickaxes--a sure sign that the user sold their shirt for whatever gold they could get, and would slave away in the mines to make valuable equipment for sale. Because I had gone for days without selling the abundance of ores that clogged up my inventory, I was quick to liquidate my stock so I could get back to mining. I learned later that I had fed the fungus. NOTICE: DO NOT FEED THE GOLD FARMERS!
By my notes, I've sold about 36.2k in goods since I started playing the market. I will have a more detailed sales history in my individual research paper at the end of the quarter.
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