Even if you sometimes don't want it.One way that a lot of the mandatory (And I use the term loosely, as you can comfortably drag yourself through the game alone, though you'll be missing out on a lot of the content) social interactions comes through is through crafting professions.
Crafting has wisely been designed, in Rift along with many other games, so that no one person can master everything. In Rift, crafting is divided into manufacturing and gathering professions. As the names imply, gathering professions gather raw materials from the world (metal ores, skins, herbs) and manufacturing professions take those raw materials and turn them into usable items (Armor, weapons, potions, etc.).
You can already see where I'm going with this: players need to cross-pollinate for their mutual benefit. Gatherers sell the things they don't want to or can't manufacture to manufacturers who do. Manufacturers sell the things they make but don't want to people who will use them. That's how the player economy essentially works. As you get higher along, higher-level raw materials become more scarce and require more skill to harvest. This leads to higher-level raw materials costing more, which in turn affects the price of the more advanced manufactured items that require them. In a healthy economy, this ensures that the upper level items are harder to come by and are more expensive.
Most of this training is done fairly impersonally through Auctioneers, who are non-player characters available in the main cities. You simply post your item, choose a starting bid, buyout (if desired) and run time, and after a small fee your auction is up and someone can buy your stuff.
One interesting thing to look at in MMORPGs that is kind of tied to this is how inflation works. In MMORPGs, if you sell an item to an NPC, you're not taking some of their money in exchange for the item. NPC vendors have an unlimited supply of money, so when you sell things to NPCs, you're slightly inflating the in-game currency. Many items dropped by enemies have no use to players, and exist solely to introduce money into the economy. Similarly, killing enemies will sometimes net you gold directly, as will turning in completed quests.
To deal with the constant inward flow of money, the game (as with most MMORPGs) has introduced a few mandatory expenses that help to deflate currency a bit. First of all, there's the death penalty. That is to say, a penalty you incur for dying. Every time you die in Rift, you lose 10% of your "soul vitality." When that bottoms out, all of your stats drop and you're basically rendered useless. You repair damage to your soul vitality by speaking to healers, who of course take a nominal fee. The fee scales with level to ensure that higher-leveled players, i.e. the ones who have the most money, are paying the most. Monetary rewards for in-game actions scale as you level, so it makes sense that so should the penalties. A flat penalty would be extremely punishing to a low level player and laughable to an upper level.
Aside from this, players must pay to upgrade their abilities when they level (which again, scales with level) and crafters must purchase reagents from NPCs that cannot be found regularly in the world (with upper-level crafting recipes requiring more expensive reagents).
Despite these efforts, MMORPGs tend toward inflation as the amount of money coming into the economy always greatly outweighs the amount going out. Rift was only released a few months ago, so right now prices are still pretty low, but if it follows the trend other popular games (notably World of Warcraft) have, the economic landscape should look wildly different in a year's time.
Crafting has wisely been designed, in Rift along with many other games, so that no one person can master everything. In Rift, crafting is divided into manufacturing and gathering professions. As the names imply, gathering professions gather raw materials from the world (metal ores, skins, herbs) and manufacturing professions take those raw materials and turn them into usable items (Armor, weapons, potions, etc.).
You can already see where I'm going with this: players need to cross-pollinate for their mutual benefit. Gatherers sell the things they don't want to or can't manufacture to manufacturers who do. Manufacturers sell the things they make but don't want to people who will use them. That's how the player economy essentially works. As you get higher along, higher-level raw materials become more scarce and require more skill to harvest. This leads to higher-level raw materials costing more, which in turn affects the price of the more advanced manufactured items that require them. In a healthy economy, this ensures that the upper level items are harder to come by and are more expensive.
Most of this training is done fairly impersonally through Auctioneers, who are non-player characters available in the main cities. You simply post your item, choose a starting bid, buyout (if desired) and run time, and after a small fee your auction is up and someone can buy your stuff.
One interesting thing to look at in MMORPGs that is kind of tied to this is how inflation works. In MMORPGs, if you sell an item to an NPC, you're not taking some of their money in exchange for the item. NPC vendors have an unlimited supply of money, so when you sell things to NPCs, you're slightly inflating the in-game currency. Many items dropped by enemies have no use to players, and exist solely to introduce money into the economy. Similarly, killing enemies will sometimes net you gold directly, as will turning in completed quests.
To deal with the constant inward flow of money, the game (as with most MMORPGs) has introduced a few mandatory expenses that help to deflate currency a bit. First of all, there's the death penalty. That is to say, a penalty you incur for dying. Every time you die in Rift, you lose 10% of your "soul vitality." When that bottoms out, all of your stats drop and you're basically rendered useless. You repair damage to your soul vitality by speaking to healers, who of course take a nominal fee. The fee scales with level to ensure that higher-leveled players, i.e. the ones who have the most money, are paying the most. Monetary rewards for in-game actions scale as you level, so it makes sense that so should the penalties. A flat penalty would be extremely punishing to a low level player and laughable to an upper level.
Aside from this, players must pay to upgrade their abilities when they level (which again, scales with level) and crafters must purchase reagents from NPCs that cannot be found regularly in the world (with upper-level crafting recipes requiring more expensive reagents).
Despite these efforts, MMORPGs tend toward inflation as the amount of money coming into the economy always greatly outweighs the amount going out. Rift was only released a few months ago, so right now prices are still pretty low, but if it follows the trend other popular games (notably World of Warcraft) have, the economic landscape should look wildly different in a year's time.
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