Poverty and Richness in WoW: The Growing Middle Class

Recently I began brainstorming the various ways that the Warcraft subculture adopted values and systems similar to many global societies, and we are off to a good start.  Today I want to touch on the idea that much like the Western world that many players come from, the Warcraft Society has a large middle-class, and even worse, poverty.  Many Warcraft players are your average middle-class teenagers and adults who are simply looking for a past-time.  They seek glory, gear and fun.  What is often overlooked though is that they are directly becoming byproducts once again in a society that is dominated by capitalism.

World of Warcraft functions on a gold currency, which is used to buy everything from gear, mounts (items that make you travel faster), and even services from other players.  But how does a player make gold?  Most players are able to make gold by farming.  This is not farming in the traditional sense.  Farming refers to going out into the world and looking for goods such as herbs, minerals and leather to sell on the Auction House to other players.  Some players make a living just fine selling off these raw goods.  Much like our first world society, some players take these raw materials and forge items to be sold back into the market.  These players are often the richest in the Warcraft Society and on some realms whole markets of goods can be controlled by a handful of players.  In this sense, we can see an upper-class in the Warcraft Society akin to our real, Western, capitalistic countries.

Middle-class players are more likely to be those who only farm once and a while, and get much of their money from questing, levelling and raiding.  They carefully balance their gold across their account and in-between their characters, making sure they don't waste any.  The middle-class is often worried about repair bills (which eats a lot of gold) and the growing cost of goods from the upper-class.  Very similar to our society, the Warcraft Society's middle-class needs to budget their currency in order to continue living comfortably within the realms of Warcraft.  Often, the middle-class will sell much of their raw materials in bulk to those upper-class players who control the market, and only will make a fraction of what the upper-class players will gain in the broader transaction.  In almost every sense, the capitalistic market is like that of the real world.  I argue that most players within Warcraft would fall into this middle-class, as many players do not have the time to farm extensively nor the means to constantly produce goods and items.

You may be asking, "how does poverty come into play within this world?"  Well, many players while levelling their first characters have no way to make copious amounts of money.  The herbs, minerals and leather they have access to is of little use to higher-level players who seek the more rare raw materials.  Therefore, farming does little for them.  Also, their quest rewards do not give out as much money as one would get from high-level quests.  Often, while in the major cities of Stormwind and Orgrimmar low-level beggars will come up to you and open trade (the way in which most players exchange money and goods).  They will then ask for any gold you can spare.  Most of the middle-class players find this annoying, and upper-class players are often hard to find because many protect their identity through alternative characters (known as alts).  What we then see is an impoverished class of low-level players that are often beginning to play the game for the first time.  Many seek money for  mounts, which has historically been one of the major reasons to attain gold.  During the Burning Crusade expansion, much of the middle-class was forced to ride slower mounts because they could not afford to spend the 5000 gold on the faster versions of flying mounts (60% speed versus 280% speed).

Basic human mount (this would be a human players first mount):

However, with new implementations, Blizzard has reduced restrictions to get gold.  These days, one may not notice as many impoverished lower-level players due to gold prices for things such as mounts being reduced, and the lack of a new player base.  This is not to say poverty has been wiped out though, because it can still exist within high-level players who never levelled the abilities to go out and farm (known as professions).  Therefore, high-level players without professions often have trouble attaining gold and have formulated a new lower-class within the upper-echelon of players.  Although Blizzard can make attaining gold easier, there will always be large contrasts between the higher, middle and lower-classes.

TL;DR - Capitalistic effects of the real world can be seen implemented into the World of Warcraft, causing class divisions similar to those seen in Western Society.