Success in an MMO is in part a balance of these opportunities where a character can trade time for value. It created an economic stream for players who could 'farm' the correct materials to disenchant to get the most in demand reagents (as I recall Greater Eternal Essence was a big seller). For example you could sell magic reagents which an enchanter could use to level up their skill, this was a quick way for someone to exchange gold for skill points. What I noticed during my years of WoW playing was that the market functioned very much like the 'in app purchase' market of more casual games. One of the more interesting experiments in the StarWars universe game was the market economics of things like furs. There are some excellent game theoretic problems in there, the ecology is just one of them. SL runs about 40,000 concurrent users, which would place it at about #12 on Steam if it were on there, around where GTA V is on Steam.Įssentially MMOs aren't just one hard problem, they are a collection of hard problems. SL now has a NPC system, 'animesh', but, as is typical for Linden Labs, they just implemented it and gave out a few demo objects. All this is server side, so it's hard to break the protection. Anything which is both Copy and Transfer can be duplicated and sold. Clothing is usually Transfer, no Copy, so only the owning avatar can wear it, but you can sell it at a rummage sale. Items like furniture and vehicles are usually Copy, no Transfer, so you can buy one chair and set up a room, but not set up a car dealership. With Transfer privilege alone, you can give or sell the item to others, but can't make more copies. Owning an item with Copy privilege lets you make more copies, but you can't give them other people. The privileges are Copy, Mod, and Transfer. Objects in SL have privileges, but not quite like files. LL takes a cut when converting from Linden dollars to US dollars, but it's under 10%. This is entirely player based - players are buying from other players. The biggest operations make US$ 6-7 figures this way.įashion is a big deal in Second Life. Most of the administration of Second Life is handled by landlords. They have most of the problems of real landlords - collecting rent, handling evictions, dealing with tenant complaints and tenant disputes. Second Life has landlords, who pay money to Linden Labs for land and get a bulk discount, then rent it out. The economy is driven by land ownership and fashion. Second Life has a functional economy, but no NPC ecosystem. Look at the success of Fortnite - 8 million peak concurrent players. This is a big problem with MMOs - big working worlds can be built, but mostly people just kill each other.

Red Dead Redemption online has all the great graphics, but play is mostly people randomly killing other people.

Ultima online forever vs ea