Slashdot Mirror
EverQuest and the UN
maddugan writes "NewScientiest.com has a
piece on how EverQuest has spawned an economy with a per-captia income comparable to that of a small country. Mostly from profiteering on eBay. If it was indeed a country, it would rank 77th, just behind Russia." It'll be quite interesting to see
what happens as MMORPGs gain popularity and absorb more and more man hours.
"If it was indeed a country, it would rank 77th, just behind Russia."
Must be about time to invade France then. Seems like everyone else does it.
This is a lot like:1 25 9&mode=thread
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/01/23/213
would that be geeks?
Or maybe virgins?
Yes, my girlfriend is a BitchX
And the disturbing thought is, if all of this commerce is going on in a virtual environment, what is the "gold standard" for the monetary unit and how stable is that economy? I'm also curious as to how an "online economy" can function in a complete abscence of necessity. Every item in EQ is essentially a luxury item, there is no food/water/shelter requirement being satisfied.
Didn't we just hear about this the other day?
This article references the one we already had about the Norrath Economical Report...
My stepfather-in-law has almost ruined his marriage with this. It's all he does when he isn't at work.
Don't know what can/should be done about it. The question is, who is benefiting from sucking money out of so many people's wallets?
Wow, A game has more money than a country? What a shitty world we live in these days.
Sent from your iPad.
but the economy truly is enormous. My ex-roommate played Everquest as a JOB. He made anywhere between $500 to $1,000 per month selling EQ money and items on E-bay. The economy has dropped off somewhat after Sony officially declared selling EQ items through the real world was against their policy; if they catch you now they will ban your account.
This article is quite misleading.
Basically, he calculated the approximate real-world worth of people's items, as sold on eBay, and this figure (GNP of Norrath 77th worldwide) would be correct if everyone sold everything they own on eBay, at these prices.
Quote from the article : However, he notes that not all the assets are converted into real-world cash.
Of course they aren't! If they were, the price for each item would be significantly lower, and the real GNP would be nowhere near what he is quoting. So in reality, if Norrath was a country, the GNP would not be as high as his estimate.
Still an interesting thought though.
The full research paper on this can be found here
I tried to post this article last week but it seems like I did something wrong because it got rejected.
Due to EQ's semi-national power and status, they have come under the scope of the Taliban. The Taliban have planned an invasion, complete with dressing all buxom she-elves in burqas, crashing 747s into Luclin, all the while shouting "Allah to Zone!"
--Chag
personal attacks hurt, especially when deserved
Most of the players aren't trading/selling players and therefore aren't earning money from the game. The small percentage that IS making the money is making a LOT of money from it apparently to average out to around $2000 a year.
However, in any economy, per capita INCOME is not the only figure you have to take into consideration. You need to understand that while some people earn money from the selling of accounts, others have to purchase those accounts and unless they purchased the account with money made from trading accounts, then you don't have a closed economy.
To be considered a true economy, there must be a way for Everquest to actually GENERATE wealth. It needs to create something such that the value of the products and services it offers grows completely from within its own environment.
Players (your workers, if you will) need to accomplish something by their gameplay that increases the overall wealth of the system such that the lifestyle of the players improves. However, the best Everquest can be attributed to is the art industry. People buy and sell art, but art alone can't sustain an economy, unless you have a country that only produces art and external counties provide all other basic resources in exchange for the art.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
An interesting question would be how has the introduction of horses affected the economy.
For those that don't know, the latest upgrade (Shadows of Luclin) introduced horses to the game. You can buy a horse which lets you travel fasters. (And look cool).
The thing is, they are *very* expensive. The cheapest one is about 10000 platium for a slow horse going up to well over 100,000platinum for a fast one.
Even the cheapest one is more than the vast majority of players can afford and the expensive ones only a few people can affort at the moment.
I'd be interested to see how this affects the economy.
Obviously it's a huge money sink, which should reduce the prices of things. (If people have spent all their money, they won't pay so much when they want to buy things)
But also, it means that many people have got all the old junk they had in the bank and started selling it. So does this reduce prices as there are more for sale, and people want whatever they can get, or does it increase prices because people want the money to buy a horse and so are unwilling to part with items for a bargain price.
It's interesting. But I have no answers.
Call me anal retentive, but "per-captia income comparable to that of a small country"?
...
Heck - I've got a per-capita income comparable to a small country: my income devided by one.
Well, I guess it is "New Scientist", and not "New Economist", but still...
Gross income? Net income? Anything
yes, we have no bananas
When the game started out, relatively mundane items were pretty powerful because no one as yet had gotten to the high-level areas with the "phat loot". Early on, a guy running around in simple bronze platemail was a rare sight. Weapons with a damage/delay ratio of 1:3 (or 1:2 for two-handed swords and the like) were godly and commanded godly prices--if they were sold at all.
As time went on there was inflation, as people gained thousands of platinum pieces (the EQ currency) and bid up the prices of those items. But the inflation reversed itself after a while.
Items don't decay in EQ. They don't wear out. The only way they leave the world is if they are destroyed by a player, on a character when it is deleted, or poof when a corpse poofs. So as time went on, more and more of the items entered the economy, and better and better stuff was found. Verant has added three expansions over the past two years, and each one has had better toys and phatter loot. As that stuff enters circulation, the former "godly" stuff becomes less valuable and typically gets passed down to lower-level "twinks" (alternate characters equipped with hand-me-down or purchased loot that's better than what they could get on their own) or sold.
Using an example--there's an EQ weapon called a Short Sword of the Ykesha. It looks like a Ghurka khukri knife, and will occasionally hit a target with a 75-point damage spell. In the early game, it used to be the bad-ass one-handed sword, a rare drop off a tough level 40ish monster in a very tough dungeon (Lower Guk). When they would be sold, which was rare, they would go for 8,000+ plat.
Well, since the Kunark, Velious, and now Luclin expansion packs, there's stuff out there that makes the Ykesha look totally lame--plus, the number of Ykeshas on the server gradually increased over time, as more and more people entered that dungeon and killed that particular monster. The price of the weapon spiked up on my server as people started scoring a lot of money, but once the better weapons entered the picture the price went into freefall. Now "Yaks" go for 1000 plat or even less.
It's an odd combination--people have more plat than ever before, but prices are simultaneously falling. The result is that there are level 5 twinks running around in gear that my warrior didn't have at level 40 18 months ago.
The same thing happens as new servers are brought online, but it happens faster there because people already know exactly where to go to maximize their income and their chance at items.
Verant has tried to introduce money sinks to reduce the amount of money in circulation (horses that cost 110k plat, for example), but that won't solve the deflation. Item decay might, but it's way too late in the game's lifecycle to introduce that. If I end up spending 15 hours of my no-life to camp the Frenzied Wumpus for the Ass-Kicking Widget of Doom, there's no way I want my widget to break or wear out in a couple months.
In short--the deflationary aspect in EQ doesn't seem to have much to do with the money supply, it's got more to do with the supply of items that people want to trade for.
I can't wait for this one: ChipNDales
If Russians had more disposable income, they could buy Everquest assets, then Everquest's "economy" would become greater than Russia's. No wait ...
Since Ebay stopped Everquest auctions a while ago under preasure from Sony Playerauctions.com is the main site for Everquest auctions and has been for a while.
You can usually just a search for your server name or use their catagories. Doing a search for "prexus" as an example will show all the auctions on that server.
There actually was (is?) a support group somewhere about EverQuest addiction, where people post their stories about how they were addicted and how they got out of it to save their marriage.
They have also gone so far as to attempt a class action lawsuit against Verant, much like the one that was (is?) being attempted against tobacco industries. They say that Verant is profiting off of the addiction of others, and should pay the consequences.
They also threatened to protest at an EverQuest Fan Faire, and hand out flyers about how evil EQ was. They never showed up, but there was security looking for them anyway to keep them off of the premesis.
Personally, I feel that the point of a game is to get you hooked, Verant seems to have done a great job of that...Almost too great.
[Month 1]
Sure Johnnie, we can go pick up your copy of EQ after you clean your room...
[Month 2]
Johnnie, get off the Internet...I'm trying to phone your Aunt Bertha!
[Month 3]
Dinner time! Where is that blasted kid!??!
[Month 4]
Is that a new gameboy game? I see your paper route is finally starting to pay off..Or at least it's keeping you off that computer, we should have never got that high speed access
[Month 5]
What is this XBox thingie?
[Month 6]
Your teacher called...She asked for something called "Mythril Armor +4"..Crazy teachers
[Month 7]
Ok honey, this is getting a bit nuts...but we have to get you your own mailbox
[Month 8]
A new car? Just for US!? Thank you Johnnie! Don't worry about cleaning your room for a whole month!
"Anybody who tells me I can't use a program because it's not open source, go suck on rms. I'm not interested." (LT 2004)
There is something very wrong with this article's argument. In a real economy, there is production and the produced items are exchanged -- money is just a means of making transactions more efficient. Economists do not deal in terms of dollars but in terms of equivalent tangable goods. In the case of EverQuest there is no production and no infrastructure. Money is simply being transfered between other economies where that money was earned by the production of real goods. Thus calculating dolars spent in transactions relating to EverQuest in order to rank it's "economy" is meaningless. You can't rank the economy b/c there is no economy.
BTW when I say "goods" I mean goods or services or anything usefull for that matter. A programer or movie actor is producing goods just like a factory worker is. The point is that something is getting done.
see topic. p.s. - get a job.
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
Russia is ranked at number 17 according to the world bank
Number 77 is Lithuania, and you thought newscientist knows what they are talking about.
kawai
that I could defect from the US and become a citizen of Everquest?
This seems like a good way to get around the DMCA...
:)
they had resources that respawned daily, too? No more stripmining/deforestation/wildlife preservation, just set a comrade down at the ol' spawn site and wait.
But, at least Russia doesn't have undead. Well, ok, they have muslim separatists, but nobody's perfect.
If you take the hobbies of rich people (and folks, most people posting on this site are generally rich by world standards), you can get a high "per-capita" economy for just about anything. Like:
Economy of California
Economy of luxury goods.
Economy of oversized boats and cars
Trouble is, it's all double counting. Those people's incomes are already counted as part of the US GDP. You don't get to count them again.
As humanity progresses, new layers are added. Each new layer relies on layers below and will run at a higher level of effeciency (i.e. value creation) than thos below.
What we have in this case is an economy which is based on intellectual interactions. People work in the corporate world (service layer on processing layer on manufacturing layer on farming layer) in order to make enough energy to interact on this new plane. It is not the first attempt to build up a new layer of value creation, nor the last.
Everquest is limited by the rules governing it; it will remain on the fringes. Not enough value can be created to liberate this mechanism and let it take over the entire economy as a primary layer (on par with the processing or manufacturing or service economies). It is not flexible eough. I am sure one which is flexible enough will emerge (the web is one very large example).
The same works in ecosystems in which a predator eats grazing animals, which in turn eat vegetation, which in turn eat sunlight and bacteria-processes nutrients.
One particular predator started thinking about some things and a whole new game of layers got started. He started building farms and powered up enough value to support an entire lattice. It really accelerated once combustion engines started getting built.
The real question is: what is the next layer that will feed on the emerging intellectual economy layer?
Many might
The "research" paper this article is based on has been earning some decent discussion in EQ communities the past week or so. In the ones I participate in, some interesting discredits came to light:
1) The survey was self-selecting. Hardly a valid research tool.
2) Poorly worded survey questions. They were geared towards provoking a specific response.
3) Time. This person played the game for an immensely short amount of time. People have been playing this game for two YEARS. The researcher put in around a week.
There's more, like how his favorite city was Qeynos (definetly not a place anyone sticks around to enjoy, Qeynos is at the butt end of Norrath), but you get the point.
I find it appalling that a "reputable" source like new scientist is actually giving this guy's poor research this kind of air time.
Why not create a game where you buy/sell stuff?
The game company could charge a "tax" on everything sold, and you could only sell online via a ingame e-bay, and pay online via a ingame paypal clone.
Make XP worth money, so you could buy XP (at small ammounts), and put in restrictions to keep the game flowing and stop player killers who have everything.
The company should be more like the Ferengi on Star Trek!
As interesting as the talk about the economy of Norrath is, I'm more intrigued by what drives that economy. As a former EQer (although never an addict, per say) and the son of an avid EQ addict, my observations are that the thing that drives the economy of EQ is one of the same things that drives the "luxury" economy of the real world: status.
From a somewhat psychological view, one could argue that one of the primary addictive qualities about EQ is that it allows the player to be represented in a grand, heroic fashion. All the guys are buff and appear strong, all the girls look like a cross between Xena and two coconuts. Riches and adventure are somewhat easy to come by, given that you spend enough time playing the game, so the opportunity to escape one's mundane and unaccomplished life is ample. Given that the rest of the game's world is populated by the avatars of living, breathing human beings, it becomes more than a simple diversion to establish oneself in the society...it becomes a major ambition, just like our normal lives.
Enter the interaction between our real world and Norrath. It is difficult for someone of average income to buy great status. Luxury cars, large homes on prime property...all these things cost tremendous amounts of money. And since most of us did not win the genetic lottery, our appearance will not gain us said status, either (hence, only a tiny portion of the population are models). With the EQ universe, the dynamic is changed. For a mere $100, large sums of game money can be purchased. For your real-world American dollars, you can purchase the most powerful, greatest status symbols of the game. You can walk through the game world boldy, showing off your prized status symbols to other players just as wealthy Americans enjoy going for a drive in their shiny Mercedes.
The ability to re-invent yourself is a major selling point for what is otherwise a chat window with a game around it. Verant, as a business, was very wise to include hard-to-find, rare items that would confer "great champion" status to their owners. It is the same behavior we see in our society, it's just more affordable for the average person.
My sigs always suck.
First of all, it's the per cap (and not absolute) GNP that was claimed to put Everquest right around Russia. That's pretty meaningless, as it's a self-selected group of people from the richest countries in the world who have a lot of time on their hands. I mean, the per cap GNP of my house is several times higher than that of the richest country in the world. So what?
Secondly, France's GDP in 2000 was $1,448,000,000,000, which is a thousand times greater than the number you posted.
The difference between GNP and GDP in a nutshell is that GNP includes income generated by multinationals based in that country. For instance, Microsoft's worldwide income accrues to the US GNP but only its US income is counted for the GDP.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
At the risk of sounding like Katz, this phenomenon is just an outgrowth of meatworld issues. For instance, one of the best tulip-bulb markets of the 90s was the mass insanity known as early edition Magic the Gathering, followed by Pokemon. A small nation's economy was generated by the sales and trading activity spawned by those games.
Witness also the huge amount of activity based on the rotisserie/player franchise sports leagues.
EQ is just the graphic MUD equivalent of all that. Keep yer pants on, this is nothing new.
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
I am not an anti-EQ nazi or anything...I like computer games, and while EQ isn't my cup of tea, I have friends who like it.
But this is out of control. 77th richest country! If people used all that wasted time, the United States (which is the principle players of EQ) we would have the combined economys of us and Russia (?!)
I think just MAYBE this whole thing has gotten out of control.
Lawrence Lessig is my personal hero.
In a game, you spend more money then you get back.
In a business, you get more back then you spend.
It's only a game if you're losing money.
Now there's a thought.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
For example, GDP per capita of Switzerland is ~$30,000. GDP per capita of China is less then $1000.
> Castronova says that EverQuest's economy can be studied like any normal economy, even though Norrath is a fantasy world. This is because of the social importance attached to the game by its players.
Castronova believes that virtual worlds like Norrath could eventually become more closely linked with the real world. "Virtual worlds may be the future of e-commerce, and perhaps the internet itself," he says. "Ordinary people, who seem to have become bored and frustrated by ordinary web commerce, engage energetically and enthusiastically in avatar-based online markets."
Jesus christ. I feel sick to my stomach. Can be studied like a normal economy? Hello? Can we start killing off the players when they run out of virtual water and food? Can we cut a few of their virtual legs off and then tell them they cant play the part in EQ that they want to?
I mean, does anyone actually believe this? Are we all so wealthy that we can't understand the significance of scarcity, poverty, inequality, yadda yadda in the (earth to Castronova) real world? The idea that when you can't get your next meal, you're unlikely to be fit enough to run the capitast race?
"Old man yells at systemd"
Keep in mind that this is not insinuating that EQ is more valuable than a country, or more viable.
EQ has a virtual economy, we can agree on that.
A fraction of players buy/sell virtual items/money for real world money.
This is wta they base the per-capita income on.
The fact is, if everyone in the game started selling things IRL, the value would probably drop to zero.
It's similar, in a way, to large shareholders of companies. Like.. say, Gates.
You have a value on paper, but you can't just sell it all and get cash.
If the company who is in charge of the game actually treated virtual items as real assets, they could get into trouble. Suppose someone trips over the power cord, lets in a destructive virus, makes a programming mistake somewhere in the mudlib, or something else, which causes some virtual items (which some player owns), XPs, platinum pieces, entire characters, etc to be lost?
You know that there should be someone demanding that the virtual losses be restored, and would sue if it didn't happen. There would also be fraudsters who could demand fake losses restored, etc.
Considering the (lack of) reliability of modern computers and the people who operate them, I sure as hell wouldn't want to be responsible for anyone's virtual assets.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The article didn't mention anything about the cost to actually play the game. Surely its not possible for the typical gamer to play the game for free, is it? Even if you crank out your $3/hr, it's costing you more to play the game (Game+ISP at least) than you're making, isn't it?
Pleasure doesn't necessarily translate to wealth. I like to sing in the shower. My singing, though it gives me pleasure, generates no wealth in any commonly understood sense.
The only pleasure I can see attaching to the item (as opposed to that derived from the gameplay involved in acquiring it, which can't be given away or sold) is that of munchkinism, the idea that an RPG is more fun when your character has a +2 sword rather than a +1. (I don't understand it, but I'm not going to deny its existence.) This needs to be distinguished from both the pleasure derived from creating the item and the impact of the creation on the gameworld economy in any economic analysis.
A lot of the comments nitpick details about the economic representation of EQ. As everyone here knows, statistics can be manipulated to show whatever you want. I think the important fact to come out of this article is just what we already know. EQ wastes a lot of time.
Remember, however, that money is an abstraction of value, traditionally the value that was built on the backs of laborers... if people are willing to pay for EQ items, then playing EQ is a valid job. It contributes to the GNP and therefore helps the economy.
The problem with economic indexes is that they really only measure the amount of money changing hands, but does that translate into quality of life? That is the assumption that many capitalists and economists make, but I submit that as we move into an increasingly abundant era, traditional economic indexes become more and more meaningless. I believe earning more money is only the best use of your time up to a modest income level ($30-$60k). After that non-GNP adding activities like spiritual/religious exploration, volunteer work, mentoring, open-source hacking, etc. will not only satisfy an individual more, but may also contribute more to society.
So, to tie up this massive ideology that I've strewn about, my point is that EQ should not be judged by the cash sales it generates, but by the amount of happiness.
Personally I feel that most computer game playing is pure escapism and thus not worth much even to the people who play it, but that's another argument for another day.
The State of CA has a GNP equivalent to the 7th or 8th largest economy in the world.
If the US were somehow to lose CA it would lose about 40% of GNP.
High-tech nations have higher GNP/GDP because money changes hands. If everyone fixes their own car, GNP suffers. If everyone pays $60/hr to have the car fixed, GNP grows. Imagine a home where gourmet meals are home-cooked "from scratch" every day, vs a home where everybody eats at McDonalds. The McDonalds home has a higher GDP.
(iirc) USD $0.0178 / 1 EverQuest Platnium Piece (pp)
.pdf of the study posted elsewhere.
from the
Wow! How do I move to Norrath? Is that in europe?
Bill Gates is the eqivalent of a medium sized country too.
grep -ri 'should work'
Egypt has had an economy for around 6,000 years, continous and recorded. Just because it isn't in US dollars doesn't mean it isn't an economy. But here is the thing, their currency (the Egyptian Pound) is traded openly on the FX markets.
The argument you give is just plain stupid, sorry but its true. If I sell an original painting for $5,000 this does not mean that _every_ painting is worth that much, its diminishing returns, as the original poster said.
The US is NOT the measure of whether an economy has a GNP, GNP is the GROSS NATIONAL PRODUCT of that country i.e. how much it produced IN ITS OWN CURRENCY this can then be traded on the FX to produce a Dollars, Euro or Sterling rate.
But it really is muppet-tastic to think that because you sell one item at X that you can sell n items at X. The example you give demonstrates the failure to grasp simple concepts.
If the US prints 1,000,000,000,000,000 1 dollar bills a day, then they'd be worth a damned sight less a week later.
Supply - Demand, this doesn't determine GNP, it determines scarcity v market. To multiply it up means that either
a) You don't understand economics AT ALL
or
b) You've also been nominated for a Darwin award because "Lead isn't poisonous in small doses so how can a bullet hurt ?"
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Uh no, the only way it works is because of the interaction of the players with the real world, ie real money etc to buy/sell the items.
Correct me (politely, please!) if I'm wrong, but isn't modern economic theory based on the scarcity of goods? If nothing else, the last time this story got posted, we should have realized what a load of bunk this is.
/. oxidant "Eric S Raymond" and poof! Flames.
I don't know the numbers, but I'm sure that if I went and crunched them we would see that assuming growth trends remained the same the per-capita of Norrath would soon (5-10 years) be higher than all real countries. That is, assuming their economic model doesn't implode because they're stuck with surplusses.
Wait a minute! Maybe this isn't so irrelevant to real life after all. All I have to do is, while stating the obvious, use the magic words "Gift culture" and "software paralells" in the same sentence as the magic
On second thought, I kindof prefer having a high karma than a real discussion here. Perhaps some AC will do the honors?
Do you like Japanese imports?
anyway (damn enter on submit for default)
I built a machine for my brother in law a while back.. and kinda got him into gaming. I also took him out on x-mas and bought him EQ as I told him how much fun and great the game was...
He played a LOT - and ended up making about 2K per month off the game... it supported him through college, but he was banned for life from EBAY (those bastards)...
So - yes it is time consuming - however you can farm virtual product for a living from that game if you so choose.
.
russia's GDP figures are wildly misleading, mostly because such a massive chunk of the economy doesn't show up on any official ledgers.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
Looks like 'ww' isn't a valid domain in *.slashdot.org world. I got redirected to MSN, from IE.
Slashdot should really add automatic linking. What the fuck is up with all these people posting text links when they can do HTML!?!
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Apparently not.
If you want to get into it about the buddhist's... they aren't open to further clouding your mind with fiction when reality clouds it enough.
Get your Unix fortune now!
First, sony was getting support calls on people who wouldn't give up their stuff after taking the money.
Second, it upsets the dynamic of the game if rich people who can afford to buy this crap do so.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
It means that the people living in your house are, on average, several times more wealthy than those in the richest country in the world. When comparing economies, that is a meaningful description.
I find this whole notion of selling virtual crafts very strange. Very, very strange.
After all, we could do a reductio ad absurdem whereby there is no everquest online game. Instead, it would be economically the same if Tom just pays Joe 2$ to think of a sword.
Two questions to ask, if you're interested in economics.
1st: what good is an imaginary sword?
2nd: is everquest productive, in an economic sense?
Question #1.
Someone is creating an imaginary object, and someone else is buying this imaginary object. But the imaginary object can't ever be used, except in the imaginary game. From an economic sense, is any value being created? Well, yes, because it improves the leisure of whoever buys it. It makes his game experience more fun, so he recieves a value. And from his perspective, it might be worth paying for: dollars spent for better leisure. However--
Question #2: Is everquest productive, in an economic sense?
In other words, is society as a whole wealthier or more efficient after a virtual trade takes place? My thinking is, no.
Example: Joe spends 3 hours building an imaginary sword in the game, and then sells it to Tom for 2$. Tom feels that he has gotten a fair trade, because he values the three hours saved more than the two dollars spent. And Tom now has a valuable tool in the game. But it's an imaginary game! Jake, the person who runs the game, could just have easily given Tom a sword with no effort required. Or a million swords. Why should Tom pay Joe for effort that isn't really required? So from society's perspective, it seems like the 2$ has been spent uselessly. Money has been moved around, but society as a whole isn't any wealthier or more efficient.
Now, why is buying an imaginary sword with real money pointless, from a macroeconomic perspective? After all, stories are imaginary, but we pay for books. The reason his action in buying an imaginary sword is pointless is because the resource he's paying for may be valuable, but it isn't scarce. A book, on the other hand, is scarce, in that it has only one author. And only that author can think of that exact book. But anyone can think of a generic imaginary sword without any effort or time spent. Why should someone pay for a resource that's so abundant? As an analogy, look at oxygen. Very valuable, because we couldn't live without it, but in most circumstances we wouldn't pay for it because it's abundant and cost nothing in time or effort. Similarly with an imaginary sword; anyone can think of one. The only difference is that in everquest, an abundant resource has been made artificially scarce.
Now if it seems to you in looking back over this reply that the explanation in question 2 seems to contradict that of question 1, you're not alone. It appears that this sword has a microeconomic value, but no macroeconomic value.
Which is why even after my explanation, I still think this is all really strange, and I don't quite understand it.
Anyone with more of an economics background, please leap in.
Of course, as with any other currency, if you try to exchange everything, or even large quantities, either directly or indirectly by buying and selling items, the currency would be weakened due to supply and demand.
Now what would be great would be if there were a way to buy and sell Slashdot karma. Then those of us who are too busy to make insightful, funny posts, or whore ourselves out for karma can simply buy it off others who do. Then I'd be able to buy my way in and mod up all SORTS of crazy things! hehehe!
The low supply of people selling accounts serves to set an intially inflated exchage rate.
The self-fulfilling desire for traders to get those high initial prices motivates some to buy virtual crap for resale purposes, thereby maintaining those high prices.
20 years from now (or much sooner), all the accounts and virtual items will be worth exactly 0$.
Sometime between now and then, the number of players joining the game will be less than the number abandonning the game. A rapid deline in the value of the currency will result when those abandoning the game dump their accounts.