So the reason for introducing Event Leaderboards is...

[Milan Lame Man]

A gold sink does not mean making the rich poor. It means taking gold out of circulation. That is from rich, poor, middle class, everyone.

Problem is, poor and middle class don't need gold sink.
Anyway, gold sink will never ever work, because rich people will only buy if it doesn't hurt them noticeably. Gold sinks will never eliminate a significant amount of gold, unless it's an über awesome vanity that everyone just MUST have.
I'm starting to think that simply letting the inflation go is the practical alternative to gold sink.

The lb players made money from this event. Even if they invested 50mil, S&S sold for double that. The people that didn't place top 10 definitely lost money running the event map. So some rich people got richer, some lost money.

LB runners who sold the egg did earn money, but from someone else, who is even richer. Still the gold moved from rich to poor, in 2 steps in this case (runner->poor, rich -> runner)

[Rare]

Problem is, poor and middle class don't need gold sink.
Anyway, gold sink will never ever work, because rich people will only buy if it doesn't hurt them noticeably. Gold sinks will never eliminate a significant amount of gold, unless it's an über awesome vanity that everyone just MUST have.
I'm starting to think that simply letting the inflation go is the practical alternative to gold sink.


LB runners who sold the egg did earn money, but from someone else, who is even richer. Still the gold moved from rich to poor, in 2 steps in this case (runner->poor, rich -> runner)

It doesn't have to make an immediate noticeable impact. A good gold sink eliminates gold overtime. Not very noticeable. For example, having gold revives. Good sinks work perfectly fine. Al is not the world's first mmo, and plenty others successfully implement them.

You have to think about it over time, and not huge chunks at once. Taking small amounts from a lot of people over a long period.

A good gold sink must also be something that is optional. Not a requirement to play the game, otherwise you affect poor players as well (e.g. pots are a very poor gold sink)

It's also a very interesting generalization you're making that the winners were poor. Not true at all necessarily.