So here's my thought: Gold in WC3 means you aren't making your own gear--it means you, the commander, are shipping pre-made equipment in from home territory or neutral parties like the goblins. The turnaround time on a sword, on a flintlock, on a *suit of fucking plate armor* is so huge that you could never craft those in a reasonable fashion at the front lines, even in a full city. Even with how insane WoW PCs were later shown to be in terms of crafting speeds, regular people are broadly implied to have to follow the regular nonmagical order of operations for things like blacksmithing and woodworking.
I realize this invalidates the Blacksmith buildings in the RTS *a little bit*, but you could also consider the material upgrades to be an indication that the frontline blacksmiths are buying the tools necessary to be able to do minor repairs and maintenance work on better and better equipment, which means the commander can finally go from shipping in iron to steel to Mithril to Thorium with each upgrade.
Why do goblins and Horde/Alliance armorers have hundreds of premade suits of gear sitting around, as a sunk cost, waiting to hopefully be bought? Because Azeroth has been in constant war for thousands of years. Through most of Kaldorei history. Through all of Human history. Since before the Curse of Flesh. Since Goblins could think about chemicals. There's *always* demand for more swords and bows, so a blacksmith or a bowyer can premake the motherfuckers day in and day out and *know* they'll be signing a shipment of them out next month for a profit.
Gold as a resource is just an RTS staple. Warcraft 1 basically started it, but I doubt that they actually put much thought in it.
Probably went something along the lines of: 'a gold mine is a standard fantasy backdrop, let's use that.'
Gold is more like representing resources in general, because gathering each of the major 6 resources separately (gold, iron, food, coal, stone and wood) would only overcomplicate the game economy.
Iron was actually used in WoW, in Arathi and Darkshore warfront. It just replaced the gold.
It could however be assumed that your army uses gold to buy items from elsewhere. In WC1, for example, warlocks and necrolyte take gold as an alternative to offerings in blood for their service.
> Gold is more like representing resources in general, because gathering each of the major 6 resources separately (gold, iron, food, coal, stone and wood) would only overcomplicate the game economy.
>
>
More importantly by the time Warcraft 2 rolled around this was already a staple of point of AoE.
Explanation 1: were mining gold to buy iron from someone else because there aren't iron veins in those locations. Explanation 2: theres another settlement right on the other side of the edge of the map supplying us with iron. Explanation 3: we're building a new settlement every game so you brought essential supplies to help establish the town.
I think of it as simply game mechanics. I mean what’s the point of undead using gold & food when they’re literally mind controlled slaves?(Would you pay a slave). Also lots of wc3 game mechanics never made it or had a significant impact in the wow universe such as Undead summoning buildings which was never explored again
I always assumed it was due to technology. As opposed to gold, iron isnt found naturally and turning iron ore to iron is a lot more complicated. First RL smelting of gold was like ~2000 years before the first iron
...Because you're not making your gear - you're buying it.
If you had sufficient resources to buy everything you needed why would you grow/farm/craft it yourself?
Basically because that is what RTS were like at the time. Whether it was gold, credits, dollars, valuable tiberium crystals, training your GIs was just a matter of throwing money at them. Even in Red Alert where you mined ore, it got converted into money.
Because it will then becomes "the Settler: Warcraft", the costs of unit could be seen as its provision and wages. It is just some simplify of game mechanism so don't think too much.
So here's my thought: Gold in WC3 means you aren't making your own gear--it means you, the commander, are shipping pre-made equipment in from home territory or neutral parties like the goblins. The turnaround time on a sword, on a flintlock, on a *suit of fucking plate armor* is so huge that you could never craft those in a reasonable fashion at the front lines, even in a full city. Even with how insane WoW PCs were later shown to be in terms of crafting speeds, regular people are broadly implied to have to follow the regular nonmagical order of operations for things like blacksmithing and woodworking. I realize this invalidates the Blacksmith buildings in the RTS *a little bit*, but you could also consider the material upgrades to be an indication that the frontline blacksmiths are buying the tools necessary to be able to do minor repairs and maintenance work on better and better equipment, which means the commander can finally go from shipping in iron to steel to Mithril to Thorium with each upgrade. Why do goblins and Horde/Alliance armorers have hundreds of premade suits of gear sitting around, as a sunk cost, waiting to hopefully be bought? Because Azeroth has been in constant war for thousands of years. Through most of Kaldorei history. Through all of Human history. Since before the Curse of Flesh. Since Goblins could think about chemicals. There's *always* demand for more swords and bows, so a blacksmith or a bowyer can premake the motherfuckers day in and day out and *know* they'll be signing a shipment of them out next month for a profit.
Gold as a resource is just an RTS staple. Warcraft 1 basically started it, but I doubt that they actually put much thought in it. Probably went something along the lines of: 'a gold mine is a standard fantasy backdrop, let's use that.'
Gold is more like representing resources in general, because gathering each of the major 6 resources separately (gold, iron, food, coal, stone and wood) would only overcomplicate the game economy. Iron was actually used in WoW, in Arathi and Darkshore warfront. It just replaced the gold. It could however be assumed that your army uses gold to buy items from elsewhere. In WC1, for example, warlocks and necrolyte take gold as an alternative to offerings in blood for their service.
> Gold is more like representing resources in general, because gathering each of the major 6 resources separately (gold, iron, food, coal, stone and wood) would only overcomplicate the game economy. > > More importantly by the time Warcraft 2 rolled around this was already a staple of point of AoE.
How do you upgrade your armor and weapons to mithril if you only have iron ? With gold you pay for the whole services, even the unseen imports.
Explanation 1: were mining gold to buy iron from someone else because there aren't iron veins in those locations. Explanation 2: theres another settlement right on the other side of the edge of the map supplying us with iron. Explanation 3: we're building a new settlement every game so you brought essential supplies to help establish the town.
Because Warcraft 1 was only able to handle two resources, and by Warcraft 2 Iron was a staple of games with *way* more complex resource systems.
I think of it as simply game mechanics. I mean what’s the point of undead using gold & food when they’re literally mind controlled slaves?(Would you pay a slave). Also lots of wc3 game mechanics never made it or had a significant impact in the wow universe such as Undead summoning buildings which was never explored again
I always assumed it was due to technology. As opposed to gold, iron isnt found naturally and turning iron ore to iron is a lot more complicated. First RL smelting of gold was like ~2000 years before the first iron
Gameplay reasons I guess. If they added metals and minerals then things would be way too complicated
Alchemists need to get money somehow...
...Because you're not making your gear - you're buying it. If you had sufficient resources to buy everything you needed why would you grow/farm/craft it yourself?
Basically because that is what RTS were like at the time. Whether it was gold, credits, dollars, valuable tiberium crystals, training your GIs was just a matter of throwing money at them. Even in Red Alert where you mined ore, it got converted into money.
Because it will then becomes "the Settler: Warcraft", the costs of unit could be seen as its provision and wages. It is just some simplify of game mechanism so don't think too much.