Someone please write a D2 thesis or something similar.....

Are there any business or economics business majors out there looking for a great topic for a research paper???
Look no further than the interesting economic phenomenon that is D2R.

You can find elements of inflation, arbitrage, price gouging, supply/demand, currency exchange. virtual/real world money exchange, foreign economic interests, etc.

By far the most interesting aspects for me are the creation of currency (grinding to find a rune) and "making change" - 3.5

Ist for

Vex instead of 4

Ist"
Could you imagine going to a bank and getting 4.5 dollars for a $5

Bill???

I've also learned that the old adage "it takes money to make money" also applies to the world of D2R. Now that I have access to high runes and higher gear, I can definitely make more "money" a lot faster.

If someone write a paper on this, I would love to proof read and offer my 2 cents.

Not Diablo-related, but one of the Tibia creators ("gods") wrote a master's thesis about the game's economy.

I'm no economist, but a media scholar with a focus on games and I can at least tell you that several economists have looked into the virtual markets of MMOs in the past. Especialy Edward Castronova comes to mind ("synthetic worlds").

Additionally, several big publishers (e.g. Valve) have cooperated with economists in the past in hopes to get a better grasp on the complicated virtual markets they had created (but didn't understand) in their games and on their platforms.