quote: Original post by EvilSteve
So I still don''t see how Everquest money is any less exchangable than a real world country''s money just because it is capable of devaluing under the exact same circumstances that a real world''s country''s money would devalue.

Oh, your thinking it totally correct, the american dollar would be worth jack if everyone wanted canadian dollars. What I''m getting at is that the only real world value any thing in Everquest has is dependant on who would buy it. Less and less everquest players, less and less people to buy things.

Note that in the real world, you could put everything you own in to a uhaul and drive it up to canada. In Everquest, you can''t take your possessions with you. They''re only of any worth within everquest''s world. If you can''t convert it to an american dollar (ebay) then the economic value of whatever it is in everquest you''re trying to unload is worthless.

quote: Original post by benstr
I don''t think you can say that money or items in a game have any real value. Sure, they do have a value as long as someone is willing to pay for them. But if you ask me those items don''t even exist so they can''t really be worth anything.

Is gold valuable? Only as long as people are willing to pay for it. Is a theatre show valuable? People pay hundreds of dollars for something that doesn''t exist after they''ve watched it. Is software valuable? If it comes right to it, software doesn''t exist either, it''s just a pattern of high and low voltages. It would disappear tomorrow if your harddisk crashed.

The value of a thing is what people will pay for it.

King of men is exactly right. People at Projet Entropia make and sell thing in their virtual world and then convert that money to real money. The reason is some people are willing to spend real money in this virtual world becuase they enjoy it, even if it is a complete waste of money. Their are people who pay money for Runescape Autominers because it gets them ahead in ther game and therefor makes it more enjoyable(in theory). Movies, and arcade games and amusment parks are the same in that way.

-CM

quote: Original post by Palidine
[...][EDIT: as a side note, vaguely relating to the OP, it would be interesting and perhaps lucrative to design an MMOG that allows players to use some mechanism like PayPal to add to their virtual coffers. "I''m low on money in game, lemme just spend $30 to buy another 1,000 gold pieces". I don''t know if it would be possible to balance the in game economy with links to the outside world like that (runaway inflation would probably be a direct result), but if someone could figure it out, they''d probably make a lot of money...and hand their soul to the devil, but i digress][...]

GunBound.net has such a feature - it is a free game, and you can earn in-game money by beating other players and getting in good shots etc. You can also pay money to the makers to get ''cash'' in game. ''Cash'' you get from paying real money and ''gold'' you get from winning are not the same, but you can buy in-game items with both (there are some gold-only items though).