The Alphaville Herald

Quarter 3 Results, no QPC, but introducing TPH

by Jessica Holyoke on 07/11/09 at 10:12 am

by Jessica Holyoke

The Lab'ts latest economic blog post by T Linden promised an in-depth look at the their quarter 2009 economy.  However, the Herald's economic friend, Positive Monthly Linden Flow, was not reported.  PMLF as its known,  reports in-world business profits on residents who have earned more money then they have spent the previous month.  Its the numerator in the Herald's Quarterly Profit per Capita or QPC.  Using the QPC, the Herald's economic offices were able to measure the strength of the in-world economy by comparing how much people were earning with how many hours people were spending online.  

To compensate, the Herald's offices are introducing Transactions per Hour or TPH.  Even though I don't like User to User Transactions because it includes transactions with banks, ATMs, automated Zyngo gam(bl)ing machines, and other exchanges, and even single players when you exchange money between alt accounts. By looking at the numbers, you see a much larger variation in values of TPH than you do with QPC, with a relative leap in Quarter 3 2008 which relates to the drop in user hours during that quarter.

It might appear that the user hours should be adjusted, as T suggests, to take into account the anti bot policy the Lab put into place, even though the policy was just as much about camping as it was about Bots and camping was in place long before bots were able to be used.

TPH appears to show a general growth trend to the in-world economy.  The blip in Quarter 3 2008 appears to be an anomaly to the recovery growth curve we are seeing.