Biggest On Line Games

Ten million players. However you look at it, that’s a lot. World of Warcraft not only dwarfs all other massively-multiplayer games, it dwarfs a good number of countries — not silly countries like Monaco and Greenland, either, but perfectly sensible ones. Like Sweden, say, or Israel. But how do the holdings of this legion of players compare to the corporate giants of the world?

Or do they? You may not be able to buy shares in your Warcraft server, but you can certainly invest in its future. Even continuing to play on a particular server is in a sense an expression of confidence. Unsuccessful online games, like floundering companies, are bound to have the plug pulled on them at some point. As you play, your character accumulates value via experience points, equipment, currency and commodities. What do you get if you total that value across the game’s whole population?

You don’t really get a corporation, of course. Neither, though it’s fun to play the relative-population game, do you get a nation. Here, Warcraft’s users pay a monthly fee to Blizzard to be part of the world, like some kind of exclusive gated community, rather than being citizens, employees or shareholders. Nevertheless, the sheer scale of the trading going on across Warcraft’s hundreds of realms certainly qualifies it as an economic force in its own right.

If you’re part of the ever-shrinking majority who’s never taken a step in Warcraft’s world, you probably aren’t prepared for the richness of the ebb and flow of supply and demand that’s taking place every day in Azeroth. On each of the game’s many servers, a system of auction houses lets between 15 and 30 thousand players trade goods they’ve acquired from killing monsters or manufactured from raw ingredients harvested from the world, all for the game’s glibly-named currency, "gold." A casual network of barter and exchange thrives, filling players’ screens with rapidly-scrolling want ads whenever they step into a major city. Player organizations, equipped with collective resources and shared goals, set up elaborate supply chains to funnel materials to experienced crafters for processing into ever more valuable items.

All this economic richness creates opportunities aplenty for the canny player. Commodities trading is a great place to start; the auction houses offer the perfect opportunity for wannabe day traders to play, away from the gaze of regulators and, of course, away from the risk of losing anything more than your virtual shirt. Assisted by custom-created, specialized user interfaces, the Warcraft trader pores over auction listings, watching price trends, studying supply levels and analyzing upcoming game tweaks in an attempt to be the first to spot a new opening.

Don’t think that this has escaped the attention of the game’s creators. Although Blizzard doesn’t release much demographic or economic data about its server populations, they keep a very close eye on the stability of each server’s micro-economy. After all, if one slips out of a cozy equilibrium — inflation gets out of control, for example, or a wealthy player monopolizes a particular commodity — someone has to tweak the game’s knobs to restore normality and ensure the rest of the server’s players a smooth experience devoid of the lumps and bumps of unfettered economics.