During my first year of undergrad, I got hooked on Ultima Online, the first successful massive multiplayer online RPG. I remember playing for hours without embarrassment even as my roommate (you may remember him, doorframe) wondered what the hell I was doing. After a few months, I realized even with my massive amount of free time, there were always other people that had more and would power up their characters with 11 hours of day of “playing” (i.e. button mashing to power up). Others took the easy way out and used programs to do the button mashing or cloned special items illegally. I wasn’t that talented nor did I play 11 hours a day (I played 10), so I’d always get my ass kicked.

Near the middle to end of UO’s heyday, I would search eBay and see people selling their powered up account or even individual items for real money. Sometimes even for a couple thousand dollars! REAL money for fake items and intangible accounts (after money was paid through eBay, the seller’s online character would give the buyer’s character the money).

Now I see this item. Double-you-tee-eff-question-mark $100,000?

About a year ago I heard about Project Europa. It wasn’t as nicely designed or had as good graphics as Everquest, which was the new popular MMORPG at the time, but it allowed to you to trade items in the game to a central computer for real money. The exchange rate was atrocious. But it became famous because alot of “celebrities” played the game, including Alec Baldwin and various directors. The gimmick was that you put in a few hundred or a few thousand real dollars and then cull that into hundreds of thousands of Europa dollars by farming or shit. Then you trade those dollars 10:1 for real dollars, netting you a profit.

Basically, after reading up on it, it was the most interesting and complex pyramid scheme I ever saw. People that put in “only” a few thousand dollars would basically lose it. Only the top 100 or so people actually made money. So this $100,000 of real money that this guy put in for the fake space station will undoubtedly net him a few hundred thousand profit off what are basically the indentured servants of the game, the minor players.