Lemon Dungeoneers

In 1970, economist George Akerlof released a journal article about the used car market. In it, he drew the distinction between cherries (good cars) and lemons (faulty cars), and predicted how those selling cherries would be driven out of the market (and conversely how the proportion of lemons would increase).

There is often comment by World of Warcraft players how they would, at times, join a sub-par pickup group (PuG) and resultingly endure an excruciating dungeon run. The 'market' for dungeoneering 'labour' may well degenerate similarly, for the fellow dungeoneers likely do not know how skilled each other is.

The thing about asymmetric information
In the lemon market as described by Akerlof, it is asymmetric information that drives cherries out of the market. In such a market, the buyer does not know much about the quality of the seller's product so as to form a price. In the used car market example, the used car has many parts hidden away from view, so the buyer cannot completely know whether the car is free from defects. As a result, they make a best guess that the car is of 'average' quality and so will be willing to pay an 'average' price.

Looking for Equilibrium

When using the Dungeon Finder to find a group, damage-dealers (dps) endure long waiting times, while tanks and healers enjoy a much shorter time in the queue. Since the facility was introduced, this has remained the case.


One may wonder why the average waiting time for a dps has not decreased, but instead even increased, since then. Having economic insight, one may envision the three roles as three choices a dungeoneering player decides on as part of an economic decision, and also that the the three choices, on the large scale with several people, tend to economic equilibrium with each other.

Cost and benefit
When faced with a choice of activities to perform, a person makes an economic decision whenever they try to gain the most satisfaction by choosing the best activity for them. For each activity, they need to compare the costs incurred with the benefits gained. The excess of the benefit over the cost is their (accounting) profit from the activity:

Accounting profit = Benefits - Costs