FC: Virtual fantasy game kingdom may be richer than Bulgaria

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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From: "paul music" <pmusic () mmcable com>
To: "DeClan" <declan () well com>
Subject: Virtual kingdom richer than Bulgaria
Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2002 21:52:28 -0600
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. . . Norrath, the setting for the online game Everquest, has been found to 
be the 77th richest country in the world, sandwiched between Russia and 
Bulgaria.

. . . .Research carried out in the United States shows that virtual 
internal markets, combined with illegal online trading on auction websites, 
mean that Norrath has a gross national product per capita of $2,266, bigger 
than China and India.

. . . ."You'll log onto the game world and meet them in a tavern or in a 
town so the virtual you will meet the virtual other player who will hand 
over the gold to you or they'll hand over the sword to you and the whole 
transaction actually occurs in virtual space."

. . . . He said that people are putting hundreds of hours a year into these 
characters and you can tell how valuable that is in terms of money by 
looking at how much these characters sell on open markets such as auction 
sites like ebay where they can fetch hundreds of US Dollars.

 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1899000/1899420.stm>http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1899000/1899420.stm 






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