Selling Virtual Gold for Fun and Profit

Grimrod writes "Dave Long of GamerDad has some musings in his column this week on the virtual world of massively multiplayer online games and the legality of selling virtual goods." Mr. Long is commenting on a story posted last week at Plaguelands detailing a supposed duping bug in EQ2 that allowed a small group of players to make thousands of dollars in U.S. currency. From the GamerDad article: "For me personally, it's impossible to grasp the idea of buying virtual goods to make my in-game character better. A lot of people seem to have a lot more money than sense though and for them that's perfectly reasonable. To further cloud the issue of who really owns virtual goods, in EverQuest II a crafted weapon keeps my name on it as the creator. If I want to sell that to someone for real money, there's no better defense than to say, "I made that!" and look right there online to see my name on the item."

Comments

Paying for virtual items... my 2 cents...

[losman]

I've played Ultima Online for a long time but recently took a break because of my schedule. I have some friends on one particular shard and I wanted to move to it. I was not about to take the time and level up my character from NOOB status to where I was in past. For a fair price (less then creating three advanced characters with EA) I purchased an account.

To me it was worth purchasing so I can quickly get back in to the swing of things. Ultima, being on of the most seasoned MMORPG games out there has a unique economic system that has been battered by different events. In the early days it was tough to make a million gold pieces, now it's not so hard. With a solid character I can easily turn out 25-30k in gold by just visiting some dungeons. If I have some vendors then I can turn out an extras 25-30k just selling the loot I gathered in addition to the gold. Pretty good for about 1 hours worth of playing.

So let's say I can make 50k in one hour. I can make about 1 million in 20 hours. Mind you that is 20 hours as a solo player, not with a massive group hording some area. On ebay you can by 1 million gp for about $8.00. Hmm... $8.00 or 20 hours of my time??? To start off I will take enough gold to get me going then I will make my own money in the game. That's why I'm in the game, to play and make things.

UO suffered a gold duping bug about 3 years ago and it hurt the economy. All of a sudden everyone had lots of money too spend and gold lost its value. Very much like a real world economy. Even the gold that was sold on eBay lost its value. It use to sell for about $25 and now it is only $8.00 on average. So did duping help the sellers? Absolutely not.

So the author states he doesn't understand why people would buy something. Try this out, what is owning stock in a company? It is very intangible and gives you the right to a certain portion of an entity. There isn't a physical thing you can touch, it is very intangible. That is the same premise with an online item. It has value to someone and they would like to have it for a certain price.

Re:Paying for virtual items... my 2 cents...

[Sylver Dragon]

I would think that it's fairly obvious that inflation will always happen in MMORPG's.
Every time a new monster spawns with treasure, there is that much more money in the economy. While there will be some downward pressure from new people joining the world, the number of people joining will always be less than the number of spawned, treasure bearing creatures. If this wasn't so you would have a very dull game. Add to this the ability of characters to sell crafted items to NPC's, which effectivly adds more money to the economy, as the NPC's purses magically refill.
The only real downward preassure you have on the currency is the need to buy stuff from the NPC's. And again, since we are making a game where people want to progress, they will necessarily be able to generate more money doing stuff than the cost in materials from the NPC's.
All in all, MMORPG economies can do nothing but inflate, without intervention. There is just too much money being added to the economy, and nothing to pull it back out.

Rich Players Are Not A New "Problem"

[ec_hack]

The disparity of incomes allowing some gamers access to more resources or opportunities in games is not a new problem. In the play-by-mail games arena, it was a problem from day 1. When I played Starweb (http://www.flyingbuffalo.com/) in the late 70s, I had access to free long distance calls at night (this was before Bell was broken up and long distance was pretty expensive), quite an advantage in doing diplomacy compared to the players that had to rely on letters. The Schubel and Sons game "Tribes of Crane" allowed players to run multiple tribes and pay to submit extra order sheets with each turn. A basic turn was on the order of $10 in constant dollars, and there were players spending $200 per turn. On multiple positions. Submitting orders every 10 to 14 days. Needless to say, they owned your posterior if they took a dislike to you.