rip|TEAM

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070130-8731.html

eBay has been quietly pursuing a policy of removing auctions for in-game goods from its site. World of Warcraft players seeking to avoid the sun a bit longer will now have to turn elsewhere when they need to purchase the +10 Mace of Divine Smiting.

An eBay spokesperson tells Ars that "virtual game items" are now banned on eBay's US and UK sites. This includes everything from accounts to characters to currency to items. The new policy was instituted "due to the legal complexity associated with these types of items."

If you don't play such massively multiplayer online games, this might sound like a small change that will only affect a limited number of people, but serious money is at stake, and eBay is walking away from it faster than a Puritan from Second Life. The Korean market for in-game goods and gold is estimated to be worth $1 billion a year and has gained enough prominence to be the target of potential legislation there. Korean gold farmers, who profit from their activities in these virtual worlds, even formed a trade group to defend their business model.

eBay appears to be banning the auctions because they are generally illegal under the games' terms of service. There are exceptions, but World of Warcraft dominates the market, and Blizzard has repeatedly made clear that it does not allow the sale of in-game material. The company routinely cracks down on those trying to cash in on the virtual economy, going so far as to periodically ban thousands of users for gold farming and item selling.

eBay doesn't want the potential liability that it incurs from hosting such transactions, but it does make an exception for items from Second Life, which the company does not consider a game. eBay tells us that "there is still some question internally as to whether virtual worlds such as Second Life should be regarded as 'games,' and so, at this time, we are not applying this policy to the trade of items that exist within Second Life, while we continue to investigate this issue." Linden Lab, Second Life's creator, imposes no restrictions on what users buy and sell, instead letting the market work for the virtual world much as it does for the real one (in both cases, pornographic fantasies are big business).

Will eBay's decision to stop posting game property auctions help World of Warcraft players—40 percent of whom are addicted to the game, according to one doctor—make it easier for folks to break the habit? Probably not. There's already a thriving marketplace beyond eBay for buying gold and weapons, and people in search of a few quick ingots will turn to such sites instead.

Massively multiplayer titles, which started out simply as ways to have a good time, have found an increasingly large number of real-world issues invading their pristine virtual territories: plagues, globalization, gay rights, and even (inevitably) taxation.

Build it, and they will come... bringing their greed, resourcefulness, lust, creativity, loneliness, and generosity with them. These may be virtual worlds, but they're filled with very human characters.

i know that ebay was big with wow... people selling there gold and  all that good crap..

This has been a hotly debated topic ever since I played EQ1. I was always of the mindset that I could careless if items are traded using real world currency. Over my numerous years of playing MMORPGs and witnessing rage posted in forums and in game over "Ebayers", I have to say that the only people that really had an issue with it were hardcore gamers (playing more than 8 or so hours a day because they had no job) whom had no money to keep up with the Ebayers. They would always accuse them of cheating.

In fact, my entrepreneurial side, would love to take advantage of the "secondary market". If mmorpg companies were a tad more intelligent, they would also make the most of the market and implement a means to conduct transactions of ingame items using real world currency. EQ2 implemented it on two servers (which merged to one) but Ebay as well as other popular sites still did tenfold more business. This was most likely due to the cumbersome nature of SOE's market interface.

Linden Labs has it right. If you don't know anything about Second Life, you can exchange ingame money for real world currency. It's brilliant if you ask me. The size of your subscription dictates how much in game land you get and typically the more land you have, the more visitors and the more ingame currency you earn.

For as long as you can trade items in MMORPGs, there will always be a secondary market. If ebay wants to turn away from it, it's their folly.

VERY WELL PUT

EVE online does a good job of this. They allow you to buy their "game time cards" and then sell them to other users for in game currencey. So basically its like buying game money....

Quite intelligent I think.

If some company would allow you to do the same with item's in game it would be pretty damn smart imho.

I play wow (a lot it seems) and as everyone knows the best items can't be bought or traded on the in game auction house or private trade, known as "bind on pickup" items. The only thing huge amounts of gold can get you is one-time purchase of faster mount training or extremely rare "bind on equip" items but they still aren't as good as what hardcore raiders or pvp teams can get. Most of the secondary market is for those who don't play the game much and are leveling their first character and are gearing up through AH items.