http://media.www.bgnews.com/media/ [...] 2381.shtml  
 
Lots of things affect the stock market and the value of monetary currencies. For example,  
 
politics, current events, the rise and fall of various companies, or how much gold a mob of  
 
elves are able to get from a murloc all effect … Wait a minute, half-fish, half-man  
 
murlocs? Elves? Seriously?
 
You'd better believe it.
 
What started as a little ripple has slowly become a great disturbance within the already  
 
turbulent waters of the economic market. There's now another fish in the lake, and so far  
 
it appears that this lake isn't big enough for two.  
 
Who is this new intruder that obeys only the rules of environments that don't even exist  
 
physically? Welcome the new age of the digital economy.
 
The digital economy, also known in the gaming world as Real Money Trading (RMT), involves  
 
the trading and selling of virtual items, items that exist only in virtual worlds such as  
 
World of Warcraft, for real life currencies or other physical items of value.
 
That's right, selling virtual items for physical dollars. This is a practice that  
 
organizations such as Swagvault Internet Gaming Services Co. Ltd focus their entire  
 
companies around. Swagvault collects and sells items collected within virtual markets, such  
 
as items, in-game currencies or even gaming characters of high rank, in the physical  
 
markets.
 
Mr. Power Kong, CEO of Swagvault, explained that his company simply offers services to  
 
players who wish to enjoy the game further, but do not have the time to invest in the  
 
games.
 
"Our mission … is to allow them [the items] to be enjoyed freely in the virtual world  
 
instead of simply being 'virtual assets' within themselves," Kong said.
 
And like most similar companies, Kong and his company procure their products through the  
 
currently controversial method of "gold farming." Gold farming is where a company pays  
 
players to play the game and acquire objects or characters of which the company then later  
 
sells.
 
"The services we offer our customers are fulfilled by professional online game players,  
 
most of who live in China, and some who live in other developing countries," Kong said.  
 
"They log in the North American and European game servers, and farm the in-game items or  
 
level up a character manually, just like other common players."  
 
And just like in the physical economy, there are economists, such as Sam Smith, owner of  
 
www.gamerprice.com, an impartial price comparison site for gold prices in online games.
 
While running his comparison site, Smith noticed that there was a gap between prices per  
 
unit of gold on the European servers as opposed to the American servers. Curious, Smith  
 
decided to investigate the substantial gap through comparing gold prices on the two  
 
servers.
 
According to their findings, the price difference within the American servers could be as  
 
much as 14 times the cost of gold was in the European ones.
 
"This just goes to show how much the game owners can influence things," Smith said.  
 
"Blizzard [World of Warcraft Developers], at the time, was obviously doing a much better  
 
job in cracking down on farming and exploits on the U.S. realms, while not trying as hard  
 
on Europe."
 
However, beyond even the controversies of selling digital goods within a physical market,  
 
there's still another huge debate going on between game owners and these virtual sellers.  
 
Who owns the digital products within a game? The game owners or the players who acquired  
 
them?  
 
In games such as Second Life, the company actually gives away the rights to people at the  
 
beginning when they sign up in the user agreement, however, in other games such as World of  
 
Warcraft this is not the case, which causes difficulty for peaceful relationships to form  
 
between the gold farmers and the game operators - and has resulted in banning the sale of  
 
virtual objects via sites such as eBay.
 
"It's the operators who have the copyright for the online game programs while the players  
 
possess the property rights of various 'game scores' they got during the gaming process.  
 
They do not contradict to each other," Kong said.
 
Personally, Smith agrees that gamers should have the option to do whatever with the objects  
 
they collect within the online worlds.
 
"People have different work and game balances," Smith said. "I have bought gold, and I am  
 
not ashamed of spending a little money to get more enjoyment from my hobby."  
 
With all of these various twists and turns within the virtual world, it is not surprising  
 
that it has created its own environment that has begun to bleed over into the physical  
 
world.  
 
"This same factor is what makes virtual worlds so interesting for economists," Smith said.  
 
"Games can have hyperinflation, just like real economies, and it's interesting how the  
 
exact same economies can have such variation from realm to realm."  
 
But how does one compensate for a digital item? Does it really have the same standing as  
 
its physical counter parts?
 
Teresa Regio, a lawyer in Portugal, is one of the many people who are attempting to answer  
 
that question while dealing with cases that come up from time to time, involving virtual,  
 
and not physical, goods that have forced the legal industry to adapt.
 
"In one case we saw come through, a boy bought some ammunition in a game to use at some  
 
specific level," she explained. "But after he bought it the Webmaster, or game owner,  
 
changed the level, and he couldn't use the ammunition anymore. According to our law, he  
 
should get his money back."
 
However, despite the translation of the law allowing persons to seek compensation for  
 
digital goods when applied to physical good principles, as to whether or not a person can  
 
consider virtual items as physical items, is a difficult question to answer.
 
"You can own something that doesn't have a physical existence," Regio said. "We don't have  
 
specific law that predicts this type of situations, and we have to adapt it. The theory  
 
here is the same whether the item has a physical existence or virtual."
 
As the virtual economy inches closer and closer to merging even deeper with the physical  
 
economy, it is apparent to all sides that more specific laws will need to be decided upon,  
 
in order to control this new breed of economy.
 
"Without protection of state law, rectifying the market is an impossible mission," Kong  
 
said. "As a result, all transactions will be conducted in a disordered environment."
 
Whether the world is ready to embrace it or not, the virtual and physical economies are on  
 
a collision course to an end of which no one can currently predict the result of. Will this  
 
destroy the physical markets like some fear? Will this open so many legalities the digital  
 
world becomes a legal nightmare and not the playground for creative minds it currently is?  
 
Or perhaps the most important question to consider: when all is said and done who will  
 
remain? How many elves and murlocs will it take to fight the digital economy's way into  
 
acceptance of the real world?