Making Real Money In Virtual Worlds Are you still waking up doing the nine to five grind? Monday through Friday get up and do it all over again….living for the weekends? Well perhaps it’s time you gave up your “real job” for a “virtual job.” That’s right, in today’s economy; you could probably make a better living on line as a night elf or a troll playing World of Warcraft. World of Warcraft is a wildly popular, massively multiplayer online role-playing game, or MMORPG, that takes place in a Lord of the Rings-inspired world of wizards and warriors. With all the advances in video game technology, they have allowed users to assume a complete virtual identity. So when mom said, “you can be anything you want to be,” well hey, here’s your chance. As a virtual person you can live and interact with thousands of other gamers in three-dimensional, Internet-based worlds. MMORPGs (the virtual world games), allow gamers to build up their character's attributes by completing goals and collecting items. Most of these technologically sophisticated and inviting games typically charge a monthly subscription fee for access to the servers that power the vast online realms (think servers the size of eBay’s). Sony Online Entertainment's Everquest II and Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft both launched in 2004, and remain the most mainstream and popular games. Fueled even further along with increased access to broadband Internet access, it turned a niche market into a global phenomenon. In January, industry Web site MMOGchart.com put the total number of MMORPG subscriptions at over 13 million, and The NPD Group estimates that game developers raked in $292 million in subscription fees in 2005, that was in its infancy, just the first year of business. So let’s get you a Virtual Job! In Pictures: Ten Ways To Make Real Money In Virtual Worlds As the popularity and sophistication of MMORPGs has skyrocketed, gamers have found ways to make real money playing them. Get...
