Old news now, of course, in this whirling helter-skelter of Information Superhighways and what not:
Slashdot: eBay Virtual World Delisting Skips Second Life
All quite complicated, and still on-going I think, but the basic gist of it is that the megalithic online
car-boot sale that is eBay, has decided that it wants nothing more to do with the mind-wrenching conceptual hijinks that is Online Virtual Asset Ownership, and have decided to just pull the lot. Including imaginary stuff from Ultima Online, which is actually allowed to be traded in this manner, and yet not including imaginary stuff from Second Life for some reason.
Can't say I blame them really, and wouldn't be surprised if the real reason is that they simply can't be arsed to piddle about with the numerous Customer Service Issues they must end up having to resolve when 'lazynewguy' goes to meet 'isellUgold', on the Twistey Burning Flaming Dawn server, and is shocked...SHOCKED! to find nobody there. Or being robbed blind because of 'account hacking' some weeks later. Or just having the game operators confiscate it all. Next point of call in that scenario, is eBay's hotline helpdesk, who
can actually be tracked down, after the money has left our fool fool's pocket, and a lot of torturing whatever delivery guarantees
they might have offered. Best shot of the whole thing, indeed, when millions of Normal People quite happily buy and sell Cars, Tumble Driers, Holiday Villas and limited edition
Kajagoogoo picture discs every day without any kind of bizarre metaphysical wranglings on the nature of Property, Ownership, Existence or the Virtual.
Just had a quick skim through the usual keywords:
"World of Warcraft": 4000+ entries, mostly selling/reselling the boxed game itself or flogging on rare CCG cards. Many, many Levelling and Farming 'Guides'. Anyone buying those is likely to get hit by a huge truck with the words 'Caveat Emptor' painted down the side, and indeed, for real tips and guides, just click through my Ranterbury Tales and do exactly the opposite of the things you read there. Or just click
anywhere else on the internet, for free guides. (I always found the
WoW Wiki helpful, if anarchic in places.) Quite a few accounts still to be found there though...mostly boasting of how many Epic (and now mostly obsolete) Set Items they have. My heart bleeds. Plenty of gold to be had too.
"Everquest 2/II": 50 entries, or so. A good smattering of accounts and plat to be found, but again, mostly game box sales and the ever popular 'guides'.
"Guild Wars": About 400. Not so many accounts, Max Level being a fairly quick job in itself. Loads of gold though. More games boxes and guides.
"Eve Online": 90ish. Interestingly, many of these entries are for afk-macro mining software. Installable cheating software from random strangers you've never met on the interweb; interesting! ..mind that truck! Heaps of ISK and unusually, individual items for sale - mostly Capital Class ships that take a LOT of time and effort to build, or Mining Barges, presumably for use with the aforementioned macroes. Not many accounts though, but quite a few Game Timecards. This is the inevitable darker end of CCP allowing Game Timecards to be bought for in-game money. People are just going to sell the cards for US$, effectively turning ISK into real money.
"Ultima Online": 70ish. The usual mix of money, rare items and due to the UO implementation of player housing, land spaces for houses and castles, which were always in limited supply per server. Couldn't see any accounts, but again, the 'grind' in UO was never anything like EQ and the like.
"Planetside": 22, none of which were in-game assets at all, just proving the best was to beat RMT, is not to have an economy at all! Was hoping for at least $1000 for my BR25 guy though...damnit!
"Second Life": 150, although many of those were just unrelated things with 'second' and 'life' in the title. The remainder were mostly game money. A few printed guide books here and there, but almost no 'in world' assets at all. It surprises me that there's anything there at all, since the game itself offers a secure and fully functional currency exchange, and most land transactions have to go through the centrally run LL registration process anyway, which isn't that difficult or costly. In general, there are better places to sell your Prim Creations - dedicated websites with interconnectivity to the world itself, allowing instant and automatic buying and selling;
www.slexchange.com and
www.slboutique.com to name but two.
So all in all, perhaps not the huge thriving black market I was imagining, (perhaps as little as 2000 entries in total at present), and in many cases, not actually breaking the rules anyway, including these new ones. If some bright spark wants to sell copies of a text file he's written that basically says
'Kill monsters fast. Don't die. Remember to loot bodies for money!' that's still permissible, meaning that eBay can't just wipe out the whole 'Internet Games' category, and are likely going to end up spending just as much time, effort and hastle, policing the remaining lists anyway.
The whole Linden Lab, eBay Inc. Conspiracy Theories notwithstanding, it is rather odd that SL gets the exemption though, when by the look of it, hardly anyone bothers using eBay for SL stuff anyway, instead opting for the in-built mercantile tools, or dedicated SL-centric auction websites anyway.
Quite bemused by it all really...the only game I've ever dabbled in RMT in, is SL, where it's not only allowed, but encouraged and fully supported by the game technology itself!