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UO Players Donate Virtual Gold for Tsunami Victims
J. R. Cook writes "A man by the name of Crazy Joe recently set up a site to start taking donations of virtual gold to convert them to real life gold on ebay. All proceeds made from the auctions are being sent to the Red Cross for help with the Tsumani fund in Asia. Crazy Joe has houses set up on every server in Ultima Online to accept the donations. You can take your character to the houses to donate your gold in-game. He's raised hundreds of millions of gold which in turn can be converted to thousands of dollars."
NEWSFLASH: US GIVES 10,000,000,000 GIL in AID, 300 DEXTERITY POINTS, and 5,000 HEALING POTIONS
Now then, Dmitri, you know how we've always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the Bomb...
Nihir Nighthawk: Great thing you're doing with the gold donations. If my UO account were still open, I'd give you what I have. :-P
CarnivorousJoe: thanks for the kind words!
CarnivorousJoe: http://games.slashdot.org/
Nihir Nighthawk: Yep, that's where I heard about you.
CarnivorousJoe: my host may go down soon, so say hi to it now!
Nihir Nighthawk: It's responding fine to me, but you did make the front page, so we'll see how long it takes to fry
CarnivorousJoe: haha
CarnivorousJoe: i warned my host
Nihir Nighthawk: they respond?
CarnivorousJoe: not yet. may call
Nihir Nighthawk: Maybe your host is more resilient than you think, it's still responding fine. By now, the server should be on fire.
CarnivorousJoe: ya they are awesome
CarnivorousJoe: but i like to cover the bases
Nihir Nighthawk: How much have you received so far? I didn't see it listed anywhere
CarnivorousJoe: http://www.crazyjoe.us
CarnivorousJoe: and go click on "Status"
He's gotten over 310 million gold, which amounts to a few thousand $USD. Assuming all of it sells, he'll have donated at least $5,000 to the Red Cross.
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
Do you have a credit card? I'm just curious, because you seem to have some fundamental misconception on how they work. They're not magical-money-cards (even though some people treat them like they are). Just because you have a credit card does not mean you can spend money on it willy-nilly. You are still subject to the normal budgetary constraints in your life. Just because these people are paying $15/month for a game, doesn't mean they can afford even another $1 as a donation. Maybe they can cancel their subscription, but that's pretty idealistic if you expect anyone to actually do that.
Perhaps I misunderstood you, and you're referring to the people who are buying the 'gold' who could make the donation directly. If that's what you're suggesting, then you've missed the point: the people who are buying the gold aren't doing it as a disaster relief effort. They're simply BUYING the gold. They're paying real money, and they want gold for their character. It's a simple business deal. The people doing the donation are the people who are giving their in-game gold, for free, no strings attached, so this guy can sell it and get real money to donate. The people buying the gold probably couldn't care less where the money is going, besides out of their pocket.
Random and weird software I've written.