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Buying your way to virtual gold

By Jeremy Rue, CONTRIBUTOR

 

ON MANY DAYS, 23-year-old Andrew Caruso can be found trotting through the pixilated green videogame shrubbery of the virtual online world of "World of Warcraft." Attached to the back of his character is a giant, highly coveted orange hammer of Ragnaros.

This weapon is so rare, so valued, it took Caruso five months of what he calls "24/7 playing" on his computer to achieve the level 60 status to acquire such a weapon.

At the time he earned it, only two such items were known to exist among the 17,000 players who participate on the same server as Caruso. And after long, grueling hours of game play, he became the proud owner of this tool that gives him online omnipotence.

These days, deep pockets have advantages, even online.

What took Caruso months of playtime can be achieved in mere days at the right price. Buying or selling virtual characters and items is an incipient marketplace that is capturing the attention of millions of gamers worldwide.

Brokers connect players with "power levelers," people who will level-up a character. For about $250, these power levelers can get a character to level 60 — the highest level in the game — in about 15 days.

Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games — or MMORPGs — such as "World of Warcraft" are not anything like your average Nintendo game. They require hours, days, weeks — even months of playing to acquire level-ups and virtual "gold," the game's currency.

 It is that type of dedication some say makes it so attractive.

"It's a drug," says Charles Drum, a technology consultant from Fremont. "People are addicted to it. But now it's becoming an expensive habit."

Drum works with Ken Hu of http://www.dr-hu.com, an online broker based in Fremont that allows players to trade cash for characters or virtual gold. His going price: $100 for 1,000 gold, though discounts for bulk purchases are generous.

The game is time consuming. Before you needed to play one week (to get 1,000 gold) now you just pay a hundred bucks," says Hu. "We offer a service."

Here's how it works. Hu has contacts in China. He says one contact works from a room filled with about a dozen players who play constantly around the clock; building levels, earning gold. Hu works as a middleman to connect buyers with power levelers, or with "gold farmers," who hoard virtual gold to sell for real money.

This virtual marketplace is growing like wildfire, Hu says. He has customers who will spend thousand of dollars to buy characters that are already at level 60. Such a feat could take months to achieve for a new gamer. Hu also offers brokerage services for 13 other online games.

Blizzard Entertainment, the maker of "World of Warcraft," boasts more than 5 million players worldwide, each one paying a monthly subscription fee to play.

The company does not condone such virtual transactions. In fact, if one is caught, the company bans a player's account, with the potential of erasing month's worth of work.

But Hu contends what he does is not illegal. As a broker he stays in a gray area.

"It's not fair," says Hu. "The players spend $50 to buy the game, then they pay the subscription fee, and invest lots of time to get the gold. But now Blizzard says we can ban their account anytime? It's not fair at all."

For many of the most loyal players, Blizzard's stance comes as welcoming news but also with little relief.

"Some people have the money to buy whatever they want. They can buy any character," says Tim Huang of Fremont. "When we play, it's hard earned. Not like someone else who goes and purchases it."

Huang said gold farming has also taken a toll on the game's virtual mini-economy, where players buy and sell equipment legitimately within the game. Ever since buying gold with real money has become more common, virtual prices have inflated.

Huang said finding out who has purchased characters or gold is easy because camaraderie among players is strong and news travels quickly.

"You can sort of tell," Huang says. "These people are casual players, you know they only play once in a while ... then it's like, 'how did these people get so much money?'"

While the virtual marketplace for "World of Warcraft," the most popular game, maintains viability under illicit circumstances, Sony Online Entertainment taking a different approach: sanctioning the virtual marketplace and even providing players a safe haven to buy and sell goods.

The Station Exchange is an eBay-type setup where players of Sony games like "Everquest II" can auction their characters or equipment. Sony touts that the Station Exchange interface provides a secure, private and seamless method to sell items in a secondary market.

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