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Virtual Island Sells For $26,500
Aziphirael writes "The MMORPG Project Entropia has just announced that its first treasure island sale via Auction has gone for a grand total of US$26,500. Project Entropia's unique selling point is the ability to convert real money into ingame cash and vice versa. The owner is Zachurm "Deathifier" Emegen who intends to develop the island into a place for the community." From the article: "A large island off a newly discovered continent surrounded by deep creature infested waters. The island boasts beautiful beaches ripe for developing beachfront property, an old volcano with rumors of fierce creatures within, the outback is overrun with mutants, and an area with a high concentration of robotic miners guarded by heavily armed assault robots indicates interesting mining opportunities."
SUCKER!
From the "I have more money than sense department"
Jeez, I hope they down shutdown the game's server. Then his island may as well be called Atlantis.
...you are eaten by a grue. Game Over.
Since nobody bothers to RTFA anymore:
The first ever virtual Treasure Island is for sale in Project Entropia, a Massive Multi-Player Online Universe with a real cash economy. This extremely desirable piece of real estate promises to make the highest bidder very rich and very influential within the rapidly growing Project Entropia universe.
So the reason it might be worth paying 26k for this virtual island is that there is a real cash economy in the "game" - in other words, presumably the in-game resources he can extract from his island can presumably be sold or utilized to make items in the game that can be exchanged for real US dollars. So it's a virtual investment, but one that has potential real-world payoff.