The Economics Of MMORPGs

The entrepreneurial opportunities from exploiting MMORPGs have certainly changed since I last played Asheron’s Call. Back then, you usually just saw people auctioning in-game gold, items, and characters on eBay.

Now, in addition to that, I see there are businesses called “leveling services.” These are companies that will, for a fee, level your character all the way up to 60 as fast as humanly possible. They do this by paying people from India or Korea to sit at computers and play the game in shifts 24 hours a day. As the customer, you are literally paying somebody to play the game for you. One place I saw charged $185 for this service, and required 12-17 days — so assuming the minimum of 12 days, you’re paying 64 cents an hour. Of course we have to assume that the poor guys sitting at the computers don’t get more than a fraction of that. I can’t even imagine a moral justification for using what amounts to sweatshop labor to gain an advantage in an online role-playing game. But it doesn’t take long in WoW to imagine they get a lot of business.

You can also purchase in-game gold from these same types of businesses. Presumably, you give them your credit card number, and they’ll send a character to give your character a sack of gold. One has to assume that they use the same sweatshop labor from India and Korea to farm gold 24 hours a day on every possible realm. Kids in America would probably leap at a chance to play videogames for a living, but I wonder if kids in India feel the same way. (64 cents an hour isn’t much of a living, anyway — even in Bangaldore it’s not enough to pay the rent.)

There also seems to be a market for “get rich quick” schemes. That is, someone will figure out a way to make X amount of gold from some kind of quest or exploit (it is usually expressed as X gold per hour), then write up a little instruction book on how to do it, and sell the book.

Related

• World of Warcraft Redux
• World of Warcraft Addendum
• World of Warcraft