Making Money in a virtual world

The gaming genre of MMORPG's (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) typically give you a character or avatar to control in the game you must use to complete missions, explore the game, and earn money(game based currency) whether that be gold in WoW(World of Warcraft), or gil in FFXI(Final Fantasy 11), etc. But in the real world people use these virtual characters to make real world money. How do they do it?

Some of the most common practices for making money in these types of games often rely on how advanced your avatar is. The higher the level of your character the more money you can often make.

One practice is to offer a service that is often known as "Power Leveling." You charge people to level there character for them. You do all the grunt work of taking them to the maximum level and get paid to do so. Payment is usually done via a Paypal transfer or through a Power Leveler's website.

Another way that someone can make money from there avatar is to sell them to other people. Some games allow character transfers between accounts as long as you provide the correct account information or if they do not you will typically sell your entire account that contains the character. Using Wow as an example: depending on your characters items, rank, level, class, and race(some races are more popular and therefore sell at a higher price). you could sell them for anywhere between $200 and $1,000.....Huzzah!This is more often done by people who no longer wish to play the game and want to make some cash on the way out, or at least earn back the money from their subscription costs with some change to spare.

The other most common practice is to sell game currency or rare items for real money. There are websites with offices based often in Asia that are solely dedicated to "Farming" for game currency and items. The term farming is used as a slang term in many games for the act of repeating certain actions(killing monsters, gathering resources, etc) the net a gain in the game's currency. The derogatory term of "Chinese Ebay Farmer" is often used in reference to these individuals. There actions of making rapid amounts of currency often have negative impacts on the in-game economy. raising prices of items and causing inflation. the current value of gold in Wow has ,like real currency, suffered from inflation. The current rate of $3 per 1000g and when the game first released it was about $100 per 1000g.

Big Deal! its only a game right?! for now yes, it is just a game. but if the future holds a world where "second lives" and virtual worlds have a direct impact on our real lives, these may be issues that we may have to face.

Happy Farming!