This is the second attempt at this blog. After spending an hour refining my language and written articulation, my computer broke and corrupted the text document in question. An hour...waste.

The sale of virtual currency has been an issue that has been debated since it became commonplace in Everquest and Diablo. For the purposes of this entry, I’ll mainly focus on World of warcraft but there may be reference to other games and companies along the way.

We’ve all seen them – trial character that stand in Orgrimmar spamming trade and /yell with reasons why you should buy gold off them and why you won’t get banned for doing so. One of the most innovative attempts at advertising a gold selling company I have seen took place on Doomhammer EU. A friend of mine got creenshots of it and promptly showed me what had happend and I was quite astonished. An army of Gnomes walked into the centre of Ironforge and moved into formation spelling out the web address of the site they were representing. Then, they used a teleport hack to teleport up to the roof at which point hundreds of Gnomes fell to their deaths, spelling out the web address of the site on the floor. This might not have been the best advertising ploy as it caused lots of lag but it certainly was the most innovative.

So is it right to buy and sell virtual currency?

Firstly, in Europe it is illegal to buy and sell in game currency in World of Warcraft via the EULA. You see, you don’t own your account. Your character and items attached to your character remain the property of Blizzard Entertainment and they can withdraw your right to access the account at any time for any reason. If this is the case, you cannot sell any items because they are not yours to sell and you cannot buy them off a third party because that third party doesn’t own them.

So how do gold selling companies get away with selling gold and not get shut down for it?

Well it is simple really. They don’t sell you the gold as such. They sell you the time it takes to get the gold from the gaming environment to you. In other words, they act as a postal service, moving the gold from the game developer to you and charging you for that process. They simply add nifty footnotes in their terms and conditions that allow then too state that they do not own the property you are receiving. Here are a couple of examples from unnamed sites:

So to all intents and purposes, the sale of in game currency is wrong and nobody really debates that as the law states it is wrong. That said, why have we been debating this question for so long? It seems I have proven it is both morally and legally wrong in a matter of minutes.

Perhaps a more relevant question is – Is the sale and/or purchase of the time it takes and entity and/or entities to farm and/or produce virtual items and/or currency right?

Well, what is, “right?” Is it right as in morally correct or right as in legally correct? It is perfectly legal to sell and purchase the time of another person in any country in the world as long as appropriate laws and legislation is followed so in this sense it perfectly fine. The only way to change this would be to call for a global change in law and that isn’t going to happen any time soon as our leaders have far better and bigger things to worry about, like war.

One of the more likely causes for the question about the moral implications of such activity is the fact that we are dealing with corporate entities. In everyday life, we show a similar contempt for high street chains and stores. “The queues were too long,” or, “the product wasn’t what I wanted,” are commonplace even when they aren’t really true. We even go as far as to take our bad moods out on the nameless, faceless companies employees because they are obliged to treat us with respect.

Another reason for the question of the morality of such activity is the unfair advantage it gives certain players and also the social divide it can cause between players. If you are a rich person who wants an epic flying mount but can’t be bothered to farm the gold required, you could simply buy the time of somebody else to get 5000g and have your mount in a matter of hours. If you are not so rich however, you have to and are forced to farm items and gold if you want that epic mount. This does give the former a clear and unfair advantage over the later.

It still isn’t that cut and dry. If a family member was to play my World of Warcraft account and just so happened to farm me endless supplies of Runecloth, is there any harm? After all, you are allowed to let family members play your account. Perhaps if I were to pay my family member to sit at my PC and he/she just so happened to play World of Warcraft and farm me some gold it would become morally incorrect then? Perhaps it is the inclusion of money and commerce that makes it incorrect?

Ok. I admit gold farmers aren’t family members or friends and once again that could be why it is morally unacceptable to some. Perhaps it is simply to do with the fact that we are dealing with a nameless, faceless entity and there is no interpersonal activity or relationship between the buyer and the seller.

Xfire recently held a debate on this very matter and on the front page of the debate section, they placed a survey asking, “how much value would you give 500g in WoW?” Around 9000 people answered the survey and to my surprise, only 40% didn’t give it any value where as 60% said that 500g in virtual, none-physical property was worth something irl. Perhaps another question to ask would have been, “how much are you willing to spend on 500g in WoW?” After all, people can value something but not be willing to pay for it even though they admit it has value. This value averaged at around $15.

So the issue is generally grey. While in most cases (unless stated otherwise by game developers and administrators) the sale of the actual items is wrong, it is not wrong to pay for someone to get the gold from the game to you in the legal sense. The morality of it all is also in question. If the Xfire survey is accurate, 60% of the player base can’t state it is morally incorrect because they have conceded 500g is worth something. We can’t say for sure it this figure of 60% is a correct projection but it is one of the only figures we have to go by.

This debate is going to go on for a while and inevitably it will get bigger as MMOGs become more massive and multiplayer than they are now. Eventually, some from of consensus will be reached but that isn’t going to happen in the next few years and when it does, there is no guarantee it will go one way or the other.