Virtual Worlds #3: Sony's Great Experiment

It was only a matter of time before a major publisher officially sanctioned real-money trades for virtual items. There's just too much money flying about for them to ignore. Sony turned out to be the first -- its Station Exchange site, which allows players to trade Everquest II currency, characters, and items for cold, hard, US dollars, went live last week.

What's for sale, and for how much? Data from the beta test indicates currency and inventory storage items like boxes were popular. The highest price paid was $315, for a stack of just over 20 platinum pieces. The average price paid for a character was about $66. Each beta participant spent, on average, about $14 over the two weeks of the test.

Sony is by no means the first publisher to make inroads into this "secondary" market, just the biggest. Two smaller MMOs, Second Life and Project Entropia, both already include ways to invest real money in your online persona. Entropia recently made headlines when an Australian player, Deathifier, paid $26,500 for his own island, and plans to make his investment pay by taxing players for access to the island or reselling smaller subdivisions.

He's got to be a fairly wealthy individual to invest that amount of money in a game that could cease to exist tomorrow, taking his island, Atlantis-like, with it. But wealthy individuals don't often get that way without knowing a good investment when they see it. Anecdotal evidence of full-time Everquest players isn't hard to find. Actual examples of individuals who made their living selling EQ gear and characters aren't so common, but they're out there. There's gold in them thar hills.

Steve Salyer, president of secondary-market trading firm IGE, told me earlier this year he personally knew of repeat customers who've spent upwards of $50,000 with his organization. Someone's buying this stuff, but few of them are prepared to own up to it, and the secondary market remains a contentious area. Hardcore players feel their personal stake in a game is threatened when other players can buy their way to epic status.

So that's why Sony's decision to open new servers for its Station Exchange program is a smart one. Every player on there has "opted in" to the new economy, either transferring existing characters or starting new ones, and presumably is either fired up at the thought of translating their characters' assets into real-world wealth, or doing the reverse.

Why do these players want to spend their (presumably) hard-earned money on objects that, after all, don't really exist in any reasonable sense? Talk to a range of MMO players, and you'll hear a variety of reasons, but lack of time is chief among them. After all, getting experience or money in most MMOs just requires time, not skill. Any fool can farm gold, and there's seldom anything inherently difficult in the grinding experience.

No, it's all in the time. Working people, family-oriented people, and anyone with conflicting demands on their time understand this. If you only have a few hours a week to play, you're not going to see the end game for years... and some content will always be out of your reach. You're paying the same subs as everyone else, but you're only seeing half the game. In that position, who could blame you for reaching for your wallet?

But it doesn't work that way. Having been there, I know it doesn't, or not for long. Like many things in life, the anticipation of the payoff is always better than the payoff itself, and the longer the wait the more pronounced the effect. Jumping straight to the carrot and skipping the stick just doesn't hit the spot for more than a few minutes, even when it is officially sanctioned. As far as traditional, big MMOs go, the game is the stick, and the carrot is just a mirage.

To take a specific example, one of World of Warcraft's biggest problems right now, as reader "Keith" put it in response to my first column, is that it just runs out of steam at level 60. Keith says: "The quests are always the same. Once you are level 60, then what is there to do besides kill in the same instances all the time? Even with Battlegrounds, you do that a couple hundred times and what is left?" It's no different with items, or currency. Once you're at the top, the fun stops.

In that situation, it's hard to see who'd be happy spending money on a high level WOW character -- you've missed the best the game has to offer. Everquest 2, in contrast to its predecessor, which still keeps high-level players busy, isn't much better. Maybe Desert of Flames will improve matters, but all it'll be is a new collection of carrots. I don't think I'll be paying $60 for an EQ character anytime soon.

Virtual Worlds provides a regular in-depth exploration of thorny issues, news, analysis, and commentary on everything happening in the massively multiplayer world.

More Virtual Worlds:

• Virtual Worlds #2: Marveling at the Opportunities
• Virtual Worlds #1: Two Million and Counting

Have you had experiences, pleasant or otherwise, with trading MMO content for real money? Email us your stories.