The BBC have ‘finally’ had some primetime coverage for the shadow economy of WoW gold. People paying real money for in game gold in a virtual world. The BBC News website has covered WoW, Second Life and other online worlds comprehensively over the last couple of years but this is the first time that I’ve seen it break into primetime news on TV.
I first bought 5 gold in Everquest II about three years ago, I think I paid about £15. Fundamentally it allowed me to save a ridiculous amount of time griding my character, mining, crafting, and most importantly selling items. I bought some special item rares so that I could craft some great lower level items to ‘twink‘ a second character that had just started in the game. This enabled me to be significantly more powerful than other characters of a similar level - pretty much what everyone wants in such games. I clocked up a 15000-1 kill ratio, battering Goblins on the beginner’s Isle. I was ranked 3rd in the World for kills to deaths ratio on the Lucan-D’lere server. But, like many things that I engage in, I lost interest and haven’t played EQII for a good little while now. So I spent hard earned cash on an experience that didn’t last that long. Just like several other practices I can think of, like going to the movies :-).
This topic has been covered in some depth several times, with books having been written on the subject telling how people quit their day jobs to set up gold farming companies for World of Warcraft.
I remember when a Jedi character in Star Wars Galaxies (when Jedi were rare) sold for $1200 on eBay. Now an Elder Jedi character sells for something in the region of $300. The laws of supply and demand apply to everything, virtual worlds included.
This article predicted in 2005 that Blizzard, the producers of World of Warcraft, would make more money from WoW than it had made from all the other single player games it had produced (Diablo, Warcraft, Starcraft) in two years. That assumed 1 Million subscribers. In 2007 WoW has 8 million subscribers.
The success of WoW is quite incredible. It has spawned a massive fan base and has even had the recognition of other industries and parody in the form of Whorecraft. And come on, if something gets parodied by the Aduly Industry then you know its successful.