How to make a living trading items from an online game

[techfreak]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3135247.stm

Can you make a real living buying and selling goods which only exist in the virtual world of an online fantasy game?

[dang]

i know someone who did this for a while (he still might be doing this) for EQ and some other games.
Him and his friend would sit in in their living room with each running 3 computers. They would group their 6 guys together and just harvest artifacts and build up the characters, then sell artifacts, money, characters, etc.

[Ioman]

Wow, crazy. Kinda seems like a waste of time though eh?

[dang]

no kidding. but i guess they can say they get paid to play games, and they always have uber stuff

[brianj]

It seems like the time invested to cull these objects and sell them would'nt be worth the amount of money they get from it. It's not like the are unique and rare items that are in demand just lying all over the place. If that were the case, there wouldn't be a demand, right?

[dang]

Think of it this way. They farm rare items along with high level items. People that are level 20 may want that level 40 armor or weapon and are willing to pay $50 for it.

Also, they just build up characters to the highest level (like in EQ, level 60 or whatever it is now) and then sell those characters for $300 or something. Many people are willing to pay $300 for that high level character instead of spending a year playing 30+ hours a week to get that high.

[pdxflyboy]

This is a new race of Nerd weve never seen

[ECA]

A new word in consumption.
The rich kids wanting to start out HIGH level, and paying for it.

Funny aint it, that NOW, it takes NOTHING to gain skill, you just pay for it. No knowledge needed.