My first thought is 'What kind of idiot would pay real money in a game? A few dollars a month maybe...' But such people do exist so why not exploit them?!

But seriously it's an interesting idea, especially since you seem to be actually promoting it. I'll follow what happens - will you post here as things continue? I actually had an idea about real money in games, but that was more on the purely gambling side - you had to pay to enter an event then the winner would get a prize. But I always considered having each game dollar worth like 0.01$US.
I really can't see where your money will come from though. I'd be interested to hear more - you can PM/email me if you like...

well the idea for the MMORPG came out of my head like 3 years ago when I was in college. After about 6 months I wrote idea down of how the actual game world would work. About 6 months ago I came up with the crazy idea of a real money system. At first, I kept saying no way this could never work. Then WOW came out and I realized something could work. Then I started to look at second life and project entropia (i think thats what it is called). The original idea was just a regular MMORPG. I have ran an online community for about 1 year that was like in 2000 and I also spent a year working on a RPG I also spent a year working on a MMORPG that never got made. I was also working on the War of the Worlds game, but I haven't heard from that team for over a year. Therefore, I decided to start up again on this project. Now there will be other ways to make money from just selling items. However, thats part of my secret and I won't let it out until I think people are ready for it. I have also contacted companies like Liden Labs to see how they control money laundering and how they control inflation.

Anyone here knows mtgOnline ? It's the good old "Magic: The Gathering" collectible cards game, but you can play it online.

To play, you have to buy (with real money) virtual cards (like the real ones, except... they are not real).

I don't know how they have dealt with all the legal aspects.

i think one of the main things would be not players cannot simply just drop items. There will be a trade window like in Diablo2 were players can trade items with each other. However, every item will have a rating system on it that way players will be able to see if the trade is worth wild or not.

Now of course this becomes a problem when you kill a monster how will they drop an item that like 10 people in the area might be able to pick it up. Thats something I am working on. I talked to Liden Labs and they say that they don't have any monsters in there game, so drops never really occur.

Quote: Original post by jods
Anyone here knows mtgOnline ? It's the good old "Magic: The Gathering" collectible cards game, but you can play it online.

To play, you have to buy (with real money) virtual cards (like the real ones, except... they are not real).

I don't know how they have dealt with all the legal aspects.

They are just a plain old reseller and service provider, without 90% of the OP's ideas.

Law and the govt don't generally recognise medium as relevant, they only recognise effect (c.f. if you act like a bank you're probably de facto a bank unless you prove otherwise). Of course there are 1m + 1 exceptions to this, but for specific real-life reasons rather than because of the medium difference (e.g. food is treated specially compared to virtual food in a virtual game because the former actually lets you *eat* and *survive* as a human)

Quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
A contract MUST be signed by both parties. Each party gets a copy of the contract which they sign. Then they mail each other the copy and would have to sign it. Though transactions dont require contracts. your company does since there will be TOS and a EULA. both are pretty meaningless if you say the items are real and want to avoid lawsuits by saying "you cant sue us". A written contract hols more weight (in fact some places click through agreements are about as good as not having anything at all).

FWIW you've got that completely wrong. The shrink wraps are invalid for a different reason (stuff to do with if you are FORCED to sign a contract, it doesn't hold water; the main question is whether you really had a choice, and whether they violate your right to "try before you buy" (currently enshrined in law) - it is generally illegal for contracts to take away your rights).

All a contract requires is:
Intent
Offer
Acceptance

In some jurisdictions he particular intersting bit is that it's the act of acceptance that counts, not the receipt - so a contract you offered is considered valid IMMEDIATELY I accept it, even if it's another 6 months before you actually discover I accepted it.

Then there are implied contracts: if you and I exchange anything, that's generally regarded an automatic contract - we don't need to write anything, we don't even need to say anything, but the moment we exchanged, it became a full bona fide contract (this matters because there are times when you want to avoid the obligations of a contract, but the law won't let you wriggle out of it. FOr instance, people sign "licenses" for software that are disallowed because there was a de facto contract).

But then again IANAL, only a trainee, and I don't do multiple nations law, so YMMV.

redmilamber

however without a spelled out contract on paper signed by the parties, you wont get far in court. Verbal contracts are useless if the parties conviently forget the certain details of the contract.

What is a contract, and what will hold up in court are very different.

Isn't this whole idea dangerous for gamers?

Why would you play a game in which other players can buy the items, levels, etc that you worked for? If you were the one that buys, how long would you *actually* play considering you have nothing to work for?

http://www.project-entropia.com/

I reckon this can be done. Admittedly there are a whole array of issues, but they can be resolved with enough man-power and thought. I'm basing this on the fact that there is already a virtual stock market simulation called WarTrade (www.wartrade.com) where you put real money in, the system converts the real money to virtual money, and juggles it around a little - virtual stocks rise and fall, and then users can take real money out at any time. The company makes money through virtual brokerage fees. It's a pretty clever system, and from what I know is quite stable.

If someone can simulate a virtual stock market and make good money out of it, I see no reason why a virtual market can not be built on top of a game. Good luck to you. :)