Virtual Blood Diamonds

These precious stones have various other names, conflict diamond, dirty diamond, etc.

This blog post is about Blood Diamonds in a virtual game.

First, some definitions.

The effects of RMT in virtual worlds is well understood and discussed.  People who are the active agents farming the game (legally) or exploiting (illegally) for virtual assets to sell for real world money, are termed “farmers”.

In general, there’s no rule that says you can’t hoard wealth in a virtual world.  Usually, RMT is bad because eventually it unbalances the game economy.

Now, I need gem stones to further my character, one of his virtual professions is jewel crafting, making earrings and rings of power, etc.

To reach the peak of the jewel crafting ladder, I need hordes of gems.  Mathematically, I need:

• Each time I polish 3 rough Beryls to into 1 Polished Beryl, I earn 6 skill points.
• I need 520 + 1040 points = 1560.
• That means I need 780 Beryls.

Problem, I can probably get 10, per day.  Buying them from fellow players are quite expensive - they sell for 60 silver bid and 100 silver buy-out on the auction house.  breaking it all down, I need at least 46,000 silver to afford this profession.

I have in my possession 9000 silver.

Here’s where I tab into the farmers to do my work for me.

A farmer farms the game all day, killing monsters repeatedly, they end up with some amounts of beryls.  They don’t have time to go around looking for buyers all day, so they are quite welling to make a quick sale.

This morning, I bought 14 beryls off one for 700 (50 silver each).  Then 11 beryls off another for 550 (50 silver each).  Finally, 9 for 400s (44 silver each).

I saved over 50% of my costs.

As far as I’m concerned, I am clean.  I bought gems from another player via the trade channels.  I did not pay them real world money to obtain virtual goods.

But there’s a slight worry.  See, I know they are farmers.  And I know the virtual money I gave them will be sold to their gold-buying customer, so in a sense, I’m contributing to their dirty money!