Project Entropia, MMORPGS and Money.
 

A little while ago a guy at the pub ranted on to me about this Project Entropia game he had played for the last few years. This game apparently, which had the usual massive MP type features that we know them for now - BUT - he told me he has made over 20,000 Australian off it. WTF? I say.

So I download it and check it out. Not only can you sell your virtual items/properties and stuff on it, but you can enter your actual details (credit card and other shit) and completely make some sort of online living with this game - All without the need for Ebay or some sort of services 'outside'. They're virtual currency can at any time be converted into real money into your credit card. The fact that the actual game is pretty lame doesn't seem to deter the people who are making out virtual lives on the thing I guess.

This stuff is kind of new to me. I haven't tryed WoW, tho I have checked out some of the Korean MMORPG's, some of which had items you could pay for. I liked Maple Story until they tryed to charge me to go further. But an inclosed online economy? Crazy talk. On one the Gamespot's Hot Spots I think they're called, they were saying how a man supposedly paid $US100,000 for some sort of virtual space station/hotel thingy, IN Project Entropia game - thinking to profit from charging people board (!) and ... i dont know. Amazing! Gamespot guys made a good point, what if the game makers just went and made 50 space stations and sold em. Oops! Anyway i'm rambling now...

What are people's exp specifically with online RPG's with respect to spending/cash on em??

I think there was a thread about the guy buying a space station a while back but its gone now.

The only time ive bought something for an mmo was when i saw some wow gold on ebay for £5, but apparently its a big nono cause youre fuleing gold farmers who ruin the economy or something, but the economy really gets ruined by people overcharging for all the items in the ingame auction house wich leads to people buying gold so goldfarmers just seem to be a scape goat here :P

Interesting. Just yesterday I came across this collection of links to articles on virtual economies. Years ago when I was on Lucasfilm Games' experimental service Habitat, a graphical online virtual world for Commodore computers, I mailed a user $1 real money to transfer to me a unique Halloween mask that he had won at an inworld contest. That was, God... almost 20 years ago now. But given my own early experience (I wonder if I inadvertently conducted the world's first MMOG swag purchase?), I am probably the least surprised by these developments. Still, it's fascinating reading.

Cheers,
doroposo

Was it here at AGers? If yes, it couldn't have gone anywhere. :)

I thought that but I check back and it seems that i can only go 4 pages back, i assumed it was beyond that :confused:

In the "display options" at the bottom of the page you can change the setting of how old threads are displayed (by default, only the ones updated within the last month are, but others haven't been erased).

Or you can always do a search. :)