« Ackadia's Guide to Guild Wars… Gold trades »
A look at the lucrative - and risky trade in farming game money
I was just watching at episode of the BBC's Money Programme entitled Virtual world, real millions (aired June 1st 2007). Mostly it concentrated on the game Second Life, though it did give passing mentions to WoW and Lord of the Rings Online. NCSoft managed about 3 seconds of City of Heroes for the 30 minute show. Our Guild Wars was forgotten!
Anyway, it looked at how some people are making real millions trading items and developing goods for these games, some legally, others, clearly flouting the various games T&C. The documentary featured, lone designers, virtual world - real money realtors and looked at companies aiding advertising companies to get the likes of Reebok and Calvin Kline plastered over the various game worlds. Sony Online did get a mention to the effect, "If you can't beat them, join them" and that they now facilitate exchanges for real money via their Station Exchange site for Everquest II players.
The MMO incidentally is heading towards a billion dollar industry. Blizzards' World of Warcraft alone, with over eight million paying players, generated more than $470m last year! (2006).
Note that most online games will close your account if you are caught trading gold, buying virtual money for cash is a no-no!
Laughingly the programme claimed the eBay had clamped down on the sale of virtual game gold and items. There must be another eBay I don't know about then. 
Perversely, I think, I can't be considered as a 'featured fan site' because I run Adsense and and some of these tend to feature adverts offering to sell gold cheap to players. I pointed out that surely the answer is to get Google to block these keywords as they infringe various copyrights etc, but hey. *Shrugs*
Most, if not all games will rightly automatically ban player that use bots to harvest gold, platinum and items, but what about players farming it properly, then selling it on? Last year, for instance, WoW is reported to have banned or suspended over 15,000 accounts for cheating and other infractions. Guild Wars I seem to recall was on a parr. Basically this "secondary market" tends to unbalance the games and the publishers really don't like it. Also, it's wide open to various forms of fraud. If you get conned buy gold, platinum or items on these trading websites, tough! If the deal goes ahead honestly and you get caught making the trade, well, if you read the T&C you'll probably find you have no legal resource to complain when they cancel your account, regardless on how much spent buying (the licenses) for the games.
Here's a perfect example from NSoft on GuildWars: Game item farming
…when we find people using bots, we permanently ban their accounts. This whole process is largely invisible to the average player, but behind the scenes, we’re regularly banning accounts for using bots.
The third issue, which is quickly becoming the biggest threat to the game’s economy, is companies that farm gold and items professionally and sell them for real-life cash. These companies hire large teams of people, often working in sweatshop-like conditions for very little pay, to play Guild Wars for many hours a day in order to rake in gold and items. The workers aren’t bots but they farm gold in similar ways, using very specific character builds to kill very specific monsters, running the same path and killing the same monsters hundreds of times each day, doing whatever exact sequence of actions their employer has determined is currently the most effective way to earn a lot of gold per hour. They then turn over what they’ve farmed to their employer, who sells the gold and items to other players for cash.
…
Selling in-game items for cash is clearly against the terms of service, and engaging in any farming or storage activity that assists other people in selling in-game items for cash is also against the terms of service. … Buying in-game items for cash is also against the terms of service, so for those of you engaging in this practice, please understand that you're not only hurting the game in a way that makes it less fun for you and everyone else, but also risking getting your account permanently banned.
Looking at the figures
Taking minipets as an example, I've seen the Panda sell for about $300 in eBay, Kanaxai can be had for a staggering $1,350 on one site I've seen. The in-game value of this ultra rare mini-pet is around 7 million gold (about 750+ Ecto). The site that's asking £675 for this sells 1,000 platinum at around $100 - you do the maths. Yep, 100 percent from making a trade! Not bad if you can get it, $700 profit for a few minutes work. Incidentally, there are only 26 of these in the world. GuildWars will see the trade a mile off and cancel your account. You are down all your copies of GuildWars, plus the pet you just splashed all that money out on.
What tickles me is that there is a UK site doing this and they even charge/claim VAT on the deal. £66.74 inc VAT for 1,000 Platinum. It seems the games developers and publishers have no legal resource to stop the trade, but can and will cancel your account for doing so, under the T&C.
Caveat Preemptor: Let the buyer beware!
Facts for new and non-players
There are two denominations of money; gold and platinum. One platinum is worth 1,000 gold. The maximum you can carry is 100 platinum, hence the use of Ectoplasm when trading rare and expensive items. Ecto's are worth anywhere between 5 and 10k, 8 being average and you can carry up to lots of 250 of these. In all the time I've played the game I've managed to accumulate just 13 of them.
