I’m a Wowhead. I play World of Warcraft (commonly referred to as ‘WoW”) all the time (really!) and have created several characters in the game with lots of virtual gear, items and currency, more than enough to play the game. This is a story about how selling WoW Gold helped me survive through hard times. First, you have to know that Real Money Trading or RMT has been the subject of endless debate between online game publishers and game players who buy and sell virtual game items (the stuff you acquire during game play, like swords and currency). I’m going to leave those two factions to their argument. But let me tell you, RMT saved this starving student, and gave me the ability to pay the monthly subscription fee required to play the game!
I’ve invested a lot of time and effort (and admittedly, skipped a few classes) in order to level my characters up to the level cap of 80 (as you play the game, your character earns experience…and you slowly increase your “experience level”…which is desirable because every time you earn a new level, your character’s attributes improve). One of the side effects of spending a lot of time leveling up is that you acquire lots of virtual stuff in the process. My friends joke that my toons have more WoW Gold than Fort Knox.
Unfortunately, in the real world where the subprime meltdown has financially nuked everyone – even my parents are struggling – my pocket money shrank to the point that I wasn’t sure I could continue to pay my monthly subscription to WoW. If you’re a WoW junkie, you have a pretty good idea of the panic that thought causes.
I sold some stuff (a guitar I never really played anyway) and reduced my “entertainment” budget to pizza and leveling up yet another WoW toon. At the suggestion of a gamer gal pal (whom I’m hoping has a fetish for poor WoWheads) I started selling my game items to friends and guild members for real money. Eureka! Just when I thought I was going to have to alternate a slice of cardboard with each slice of pizza, selling WoW Gold afforded me that third important daily meal and another 90 days of playtime! Did anyone ever REALLY imagine that buying and selling swords that don’t really exist would become a billion dollar business and (along the way) save my skinny, starving behind? What’s that? It’s against the publisher’s rules? Please, don’t start. Welcome to the AIR AGE.
