Artard issues with 2nd Life & World of Warcraft

Is World of Warcraft and Second Life really just an online game? Some may say "yes", but others might have a slight disagreement. I've seen kids, as well as adults, put many hours into these virtual worlds. Their lives are sucked up by this false reality and they form a new one where they can interact with other people around the world. The community of these groups has grown so large that they have formed play groups and economies, which work together and form an alliance to cooperate and function like a real world. Whether its casting a spell or flying aroud chatting with your virtual buddy the virtual life seems to be endless....but where do we draw the line?
Second life is program, which allows you to create a character an enter the 2nd life world and interact with others around the community. You can purchase clothes and develop trades to interact with more online players. With Second Life you can actively play online; buying and selling: Land, homes, clothing, etc. It's almost like living inside of the Matrix--for those who haven't played, minus the gun fights and physiology. World of Warcraft is an MMORPG that allows you to interact with your friends in a mid-evil time, were your stats increase with experience. World of Warcraft doesn't allow the selling of online products and discourages this form of virtual interactive economy. With both games comes a purchase. You have to buy the program and pay monthly as a subscriber. World of Warcraft is $15 a month, were 2nd life is a one time payment $9.95 for a basic plan and $9.95 a month for the premium plan.

Putting money into virtual worlds arises many economic issues with people from the "Real World." First of all, if you charge something in a virtual world it cannot be taxed by the federal government. It's basically like going back to "Old School" economics with buying and trading styles were a simple exchange. (If you dis-consider the use of paypal and credit card exchange, but that's beyond the concept).

Some of the benefits of selling virtual goods is it allows people to have an extra currency coming in. It may not be something you can live on, though a few people have managed to live of the currency they've made off of Second Life. But its definitely using intelligent marketing skills. Perhaps someday, modern day businesses will evolve into a more Second Life characteristic were people don't have a choice and must purchases quality goods off the Internet. The traffic in virtual goods, after all, isn't just another new market. It's a whole new species of economy - perhaps the only really new economy that, when all has boomed and crashed, the Internet has yet given rise to (Dibbell, J., 2004). If the Second life program begins to take off, like what happened to World of Warcraft, the MMORPG might be in trouble. Due to online competion of market value and fight for property the World of Warcraft might need to evolve and change some of its guidlines to keep up with its ecomonmy.

This could very well lead to the end of the world.... of warcraft.

>Levy, S. (2006) World of warcraft: Is it a game? Newsweek, MSNBC.com (Sourced November 6th, 2008)

>Barboza, D. (2005, Dec. 15th) Orge to slay? Outsource it to chinese. The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com. (Sourced November 6th, 2008)

> Dibbell, J. (2004). Weird. The Conde Nast Publication Inc. (Sourced November 6th, 2008)