BBC news: "Virtual cash exchange goes live"

A brief blurb on BBC News website about the Gaming Open Market. Curiously, there's a screenshot of "There" with the caption "Second Life is about meeting and greeting."

Link: BBC New: Virtual cash exchange goes life

Cool, someone should tell them about that error though, would hate for SL to get the wrong... image. (double meaning, woo!)

I can't help thinking that this resembles - and supercedes, renders redundant - what I was thinking of doing to "join" SL MMORPGs together in this thread:

/8/39/7055/1.html

"Philosophy of the project

"Anyone can create a zone and add it to the MMORPG. Ideally anyone can add content and the system will integrate this seamlessly into the game. Ideally I can create a single avatar, with corresponding health, money, XP, and use him/her across all integrated zones. "

[...]

"How this would be used

"Joe decides he wants to make a dungeon. He gets hold of copies of copies of the core, live modules and adds them to his weapons, monsters, and avatar token. He adds in the MMORPG Library API modules, and writes surrounding wrapper code to customize how his zone behaves.

"People come and visit the zone. Hopefully. They play for a while and accumulate experience and money in this zone.

"As time goes on, the system learns how easy it is to get xp and money in this zone and can compare this to other zones, in order to generate exchange rates.

"The exchange rates set the equivalent xp and level as one moves between zones.

"Now the MMORPG just got bigger! People can choose where they are going to level. Zones that are a posteriorae hard to level in get assigned a favorable exchange rate, and visa versa. "

What we could be seeing is a Globalisation across all GOM-enabled MMOGs/MMOPs, and possibly between MMOGs/MMOPs and RL.

Azelda

I bet Sony (Everquest) are writhing with fury They went off on a massive hoo-ha over eBayed currency and accounts a couple of years ago, and actually forced eBay to stop selling in-world items IIRC. Wonder what they'll make of these people.

I'll go with the Linden view/quote I keep hearing about... it's "interesting." Good for them etc.

Well in reguards to Sony and their issues with the selling of items/plat, its like Napster. You can stop the original, but in its place will be 5 newer, better, and more accepted "Napsters" that do the same thing.

Right now, there's an open offer to buy blocks of L$. None of the sellers are offering at that rate yet, but someone could make some RL money if they have some L$ burning a hole in their pants.

Sort of reminiscent of M.U.L.E. if anyone remembers that game.

Dating ourselves, arent we? For those that don't remember, M.U.L.E.

Phoenix, you guys really want us to dump some Lindens, eh?

On the other hand, as more people buy large plots of land for US cash, and then find they need Lindens to do business in-world, people with Lindens should be able to start making some investments that actually pay off in interest.