I think it’s amazing how people actually say that they live in the virtual worlds. It’s very important to learn the economics of them as well. I enjoyed reading the first article. The person who wrote it did a great job with making his journal entries intriguing, but he also seemed like a complete noob when it came to making money. Because the article also touched on supply and demand, I think I’ll use my own experiences in how to make money in a virtual world.
When I play World of Warcraft it was difficult to make money without devoting a ton of time to the game. I eventually decided that I wanted to be rich and worked hard to get a small sum of money. I also realized the more characters you had, the easier it was to make money. I made a second character and had them learn different professions from each other. One was a rogue that could sneak around and enchant. I learned that questing for about an hour would generate one 40 gold or so. I found that with a rogue, I could stealth past enemies in high level old dungeons and solo bosses. Then when the bosses dropped gear, I could disenchant it to create materials and sell the materials. I could make 100 gold in one hour this way by auctioning it off. Doing this a lot eventually led the prices of my materials to drop. This gave me another idea. I now had enough money to control small portions of the auction house. I started buying out somewhat rare materials that were very important for people to increase their professions and reposting them at higher prices. A good example is the orbs that it requires to move up in enchanting. To become a better enchanter, one must make a new rod which requires rare orbs. I would buy all of them, post them at higher prices and make a 100% profit on them. People who were buying them were already leveling new characters so they had the money and could not complain about the prices because they had no where else to buy it. It was working, but then I decided to make more. I used my other character, who was a blacksmith and jewelcrafter, and began to learn rare blacksmithing patterns by doing high level dungeons. The materials for the patterns too were very costly and were purchased with emblems that one would receive from killing high level bosses. I would use all of my emblems to buy materials and then undercut the competition and sell the newly blacksmithed pieces. Once I generated enough money from that, I started driving the price of the expensive items up in the auction house and made a killing. I had also made money by using witty lines in trade chat. While waiting for a raid to start, I would post witty comments with a trademark symbol in trade chat and sit in one location. I would say things like, “Extreme Blacksmithing: Get your hard on!” or “Extreme Jewelcrafting: Cheaper than a divorce!” I charged 40 gold for a cut of a gem which was quick and people would pay just to have my name on it. I had branded myself and became one of the wealthiest people on the server.
I found it crazy that gold farmers made so little too. I mean, when I played the currency was easier to come by because gold was paid out easier by quests. However, the toll that that game takes on your eyes and body is so much that I really feel bad for the gold farmers. It’s not longer a game but your life.
I thought it was also neat that IBM used Second Life for its meeting. I heard about this before, but the article was interesting to read. I don’t know if I will use Linden Labs for my business though.
