No shortage of currency options

Blimey there are a lot of currency trading sites all of a sudden.

Dave Ricky posted this fascinating observation as comment 134 of the ever popular IGE Speaks thread and I really did not want it to be missed:

Okay, here's something interesting:

Comparative currency prices for every US game of any size

Also, even more intriguing:

WoW Gold on Google

EQ Platinum on Google

Look at all those sponsored links. Those cost money, and every variant combining game names and their currency kicks up a crapload of them. And in case you think it's just a fluke:

WoW Gold on Yahoo

While the game operators and developers have had their heads in the sand, this *huge* market has been growing and maturing. I always said that sooner or later the ostrich approach was going to bite us in the ass. Looks like Sigil just felt the sting.

Well spotted Dave!

They say that in a gold rush the only ones that really make the money are those that make shovels; there is obviously a market in advertising, what’s next out-of-the-box currency trading portals? And how soon before we will see weirder instruments like Futures being traded on virtual currencies?

Comments

[Scott]

1.

So, you get equal if not greater amounts of sponsored links when searching for "Viagra". Clearly, knockoff pharmaceuticals are the market of the future!

[magicback]

2.

The pharmers make money too. It's a "license" to print money. And once money is created, there is a multiplier effect on the total currency turnover in a given year (e.g. one gold pharmed changes hand five times would mean a multiple of 5).

What is your estimate of the current multiple and the multiple in 5 years?

[iamblichos]

3.

I have to say, the idea of futures on MMO money and virtual currency speculation just cries out for a graduate study. :)

[CmdrSlack]

4.

Ren said "And how soon before we will see weirder instruments like Futures being traded on virtual currencies? "

Well, actually, it's sort of already here in a way. Take a look at Gaming Open Market. I don't think they allow people to short sell, etc. but take a look at their page for $Linden.

http://www.gamingopenmarket.com/market.php?symbol=SLL

Granted, Linden Lab has been ok with the whole selling of currency, so maybe that's why these guys are so in-depth with their graphs and info.

Certainly, if you compare it to the IGE page for Second Life, you can see that there's some distinct differences (for example, IGE just charges a flat fee of $5 US per $1000Linden.)

[Barry Kearns]

5.

One of the things that initially attreacted me to Gaming Open Market (back when they were trading in multiple markets) was their stated goal of working towards futures and more exotic instruments.

I was particularly interested in the possibility of speculation and arbitrage across multiple games.

Unfortunately, they were clobbered as the money sink for inevitable set of fraud transactions, and given the reluctance of PayPal to unwind fraudulent transactions for non tangible items, and the obvious lack of cooperation from game compaines that opposed / prohibited commodification, they were left holding the bag.

Kudos for Linden Labs for stepping up to the plate and working with GOM to counter the effects of fraud.

[Dave Rickey]

6.

Would some of you legal eagles mind checking out this post on my blog and tell me if I'm hitting the crack pipe? It seems that the "Blind Escrow" approach should let us try to solve some of our problems the secondary market has raised, without irrevocably compromising the legal position of the operators in regards to the whole virtual value/real liability subject. But I'm not a lawyer, and this is really a legal problem.

--Dave

[Hugh]

7.

I know many of us read TerraNova anyway, but I thought the site Ren Reynolds mentioned today was compelling enough to cross-post.

http://www.gameusd.com

Basically, it lists the the real world dollars sales per X units per reseller per game. For example, for EQ2 it lists IGE, Mysupersales, MMORPG-shop, Favgames, Belrion, Enotts and EQ2sale dollars per 50 gold. The WoW page lists those outlets plus Ezgaming and Exchange based on dollars per 100 gold.

In total, it lists 15 games. I've included links to their listing pages and the average price across all resellers, with additional notes.

Anarchy Online- Only two servers. Price per 50 million Credits (Average: $20.98. No real variance per server.).

City of Heroes- Price per 5 million Influence (Average: $31.88. No real variance per server.)

Dark Age of Camelot

Everquest- Price per 50k Platinum Pieces (Average: $33.31. Slight variance per server).

Everquest 2- Price per 50 gold (Average: $29.76. No real variance per server.). Shows both Evil side and Good side economies, mostly at the same price, which means pharming must be about the same regardless of origin.

Everquest Online Adventures- Price per 5 million Tunars. No listings. None at IGE nor Mysupersales.com either.

Eve- Tranquility server. Price per 50 million ISK (Average: $34.29). There's also a listing for Euros (131.03EURO).

Final Fantasy XI- Price per 500k Gil (Average: $22.85. No real variance per server.).

Lineage 2- Price per 2 million Adena. Relatively wide range acorss the nine servers listed. Average across the entire game is $23.90; however, this could be as low as $18.99 on Sieghardt server to as high as $28.99 from the same vendor (OffL2) on the Teon server. Goldmatrix has the most consistency, but matches the other vendors in charging the most for Teon server. Must be pretty competitive over there.

Second Life- Price per 10k L$ (Average: $51.50). Funny that Linden Labs even lists real world currency resellers within their FAQ. CmdrSlack also provided a link to some graphs at Gaming Open Market, which track the SL Market.

Shadowbane- Price per 25 million Gold. Ingameparadise charges twice as much as the other three listed. So the "real" average (to me) would be $36.31. No real variance per server. Also tells ya just how easy it is to auto-AFK farm gold in SB and how quickly it can be spent on repairs, city upgrades and to recover other losses.
The Sims Online- Price per 1 million Simoleons (Average: $35.10. No real variance per server.)

Star Wars Galaxies- Price per 5 million Credits (Average: $38.04. No variance per server). Seems about right given the relative ease with which money can be made, even from hunting.

Ultima Online- Price per 5 million Gold (Average: $36.77. No variance per server).

World of Warcraft- Price per 50 Gold (Average: $37.03. Some variance per server). I imagine this is going to decline in a few weeks/months.
I don't know that it'd be very easy to compare the relative "value" of a dollar across all 15 games though. While $29.99 will buy you 100 gold in WoW from Mmorpg-shop and around 75 gold in EQ2, the ingame value of 100 gold and the difficulty to attain it is different in each game.

However, inevitably, the comparison will be made. I can see this being the beginnings of a Stock Market though. As one respondent at TN put it:
Iamblichos wrote:
I have to say, the idea of futures on MMO money and virtual currency speculation just cries out for a graduate study.
Considering Edward Castranova posts there as well, it'll be interesting to see if a followup to his 2001 study on virtual economies (EQ) comes from this.

I wonder which company will start selling "stock" first (though not anytime soon). I have my guess

[a player]

8.

The funnhy thing here that ALL of you have missed is that the site www.gameusd.com is nothing useful, they dont list all of the sites, they list sites that IGE owns. IGE has purchased many sites over the past year, ezgaming, the mmoshop network, possibly tekgaming as well as others. If you notice, when clicking the mysupersales link or IGE link on that site you get wetrackit.mysupersales.balh.blah.blah, the site gameusd is nothing more than an affiliate for IGE, thats it.. no big service getting prices listed by one company. Yes maybe there are a few others, but i dont see any listings from Mogs.com, a site that is at or lower than IGE on all games they sell for the most part.

[swg credits]

9.

What are we talking about? Just read the last post :) Anyway as a seller my self I know that IGE does own EZgaming, mysupersales, mmoshop, uotreasures network.. I don't think tekgaming.. and a few more they will own shortly.. can't talk about that now..

And POS gameusd is like 'a player' says, just another affiliate trying to get their piece of the mmo secondary market. There are a few sites like gameusd.. Which I thought of first... just didn’t have time to work on it because of my site... but that’s another story.

Buy from our group. www.mmorpg-exchange.net

-Roger

[zeegoo]

10.

i need the 50 mil cred in Anarchy online ... paying any money wanted from me.

[John Ellison]

11.

As Roger says many of the sites listed are all owned and operated by IGE. Sadly since these sites are the well known ones they tend to get listed, cutting out the other providers.

Frustrated at this situation myself and some other likeminded individuals have been working on a solution to these limited listings for the last few months.

I would have to say that the results are satisfying although at the moment we have only nine providers listed we will be adding many more providers over the next few weeks and months. mmorpg-exchange.net is one of those on our list. Looking forward to doing business with you in the future Roger.

Check us out at http://www.eyeonmogs.com We welcome feedback and further site submissions.

[WOW Gold]

12.

The funny things is most of the listing are owned by 4-5 companies or affiliate sites for that these company. So your options are not as great as you might think.

[99igt]

13.

99igt(interenet game trader) is MMORPGs currency and service provider.
99igt promise do the best service for each game players, we offer game players with great prices and quality services. our service is 24hr*7days,and we try to our best to make you satisfy.

[tom]

14.

there will be another option ,soon ,with the most copcompetitive price on virtual currency.

[virgolds]

15.

Ragnarok Online (US)
MapleStory (US)
Lineage II (US)
Guild Wars
Final Fantasy XI (US)