I used to make some money selling pixels as well, mainly from UO ('real estate' mainly since land in that game was very limited), City of Heroes, SWG and WoW. If you got in at the start (when selling on eBay was still 'legal') you made a pretty penny.
But it was unsustainable due to new MMOs, new tech and the rise of professional farmers. You had to constantly adapt, see where the game is going, and jump ship before the game collapses. I remember getting calls in the middle of the night from the west coast, asking about my auctions and how it all works and if there was more. And getting interrogated by my mum since I'm getting all these calls from strangers.
Farming by hand, or playing the auction house no longer is the optimal way to go. Now people offer full blown services to play your toon for you, using VM, to mask/hide your IP incase you/they get caught (so you can claim you got hacked), with really good players charging up to thousands of dollars to play your character.
Good times.
EDIT: Now that I thought about it some more, I noticed my pattern at the beginning was doing everything myself, whether is scouring for bargains, farming gold, flipping properties – then I moved on to hiring people within the game and paying them in-game gold for them to farm for me (in SWG, I would provide locations of mineral fields to my 'employee's and set a price ahead of time how much I'd pay per unit, and I'd buy all they have) – then I moved on to automatic botting/scripting in WoW. Interestingly, this aligns somewhat closely to real life industries and how they improve output.
Then I also realized first there was the emergence of sellers (the farmers), then came the companies that has its own farming team in addition to buying pixels from farmers and flipping them for profit. And finally, the arrival of platforms – connecting direct buyers with direct sellers while taking a cut (similar to eBay) – and it's these guys are making the real money – taking zero risks (not worrying about getting caught), providing minimal support and very scalable.
And now the gaming companies wants to keep everything to themselves and take a cut. Blizzard's D3 will be paid close attention to how its Auction House system works out – it will be very, very interesting to see where it all leads.
Comments
I used to make some money selling pixels as well, mainly from UO ('real estate' mainly since land in that game was very limited), City of Heroes, SWG and WoW. If you got in at the start (when selling on eBay was still 'legal') you made a pretty penny.
But it was unsustainable due to new MMOs, new tech and the rise of professional farmers. You had to constantly adapt, see where the game is going, and jump ship before the game collapses. I remember getting calls in the middle of the night from the west coast, asking about my auctions and how it all works and if there was more. And getting interrogated by my mum since I'm getting all these calls from strangers.
Farming by hand, or playing the auction house no longer is the optimal way to go. Now people offer full blown services to play your toon for you, using VM, to mask/hide your IP incase you/they get caught (so you can claim you got hacked), with really good players charging up to thousands of dollars to play your character.
Good times.
EDIT: Now that I thought about it some more, I noticed my pattern at the beginning was doing everything myself, whether is scouring for bargains, farming gold, flipping properties – then I moved on to hiring people within the game and paying them in-game gold for them to farm for me (in SWG, I would provide locations of mineral fields to my 'employee's and set a price ahead of time how much I'd pay per unit, and I'd buy all they have) – then I moved on to automatic botting/scripting in WoW. Interestingly, this aligns somewhat closely to real life industries and how they improve output.
Then I also realized first there was the emergence of sellers (the farmers), then came the companies that has its own farming team in addition to buying pixels from farmers and flipping them for profit. And finally, the arrival of platforms – connecting direct buyers with direct sellers while taking a cut (similar to eBay) – and it's these guys are making the real money – taking zero risks (not worrying about getting caught), providing minimal support and very scalable.
And now the gaming companies wants to keep everything to themselves and take a cut. Blizzard's D3 will be paid close attention to how its Auction House system works out – it will be very, very interesting to see where it all leads.