VIRTUAL WORLDS AND REALITY COLLIDE

People making a profit off of virtual gold

There was a fascinating article in the New York Times today that talked about online virtual worlds. If you have time, please read the story because it is quite good. It is also quite long, but I couldn’t stop reading it. (Its over 5,000 words long!)

Basically, the story focuses on the daily pursuits of Chinese gold farmers in World of Warcrft, an online space where you can be any “Tolkien-ish” character you prefer (wizards, orcs, elves, etc.). The object of the game is to advance to the next levels that include difficult tasks and missions and cool objects to collect. However, getting there is the difficult part. More often than not a character runs out of gold coins in the world and must “farm” for more, by tilling, fighting and stealing from others.

The farming process can be long and tedious, so some companies have set up online gold plantations, where workers do nothing but farm for gold and then sell it to players for real world money. Sounds insane, doesn’t it? Paying real money for a virtual benefit?

In fact, a simple search for “World of Warcraft” and “buy gold” returns well over a million and a half results in Google. The article I mentioned documents the pursuits of Chinese laborers who work getting the online gold to sell. It is an amazing look at how something that was originally intended for playing around has transformed into a way and means of sustaining life.



The economies of World of Warcraft and other online virtual realities such as Second Life, rival those of developing countries. Each world has its own economy and currency. It is amazing to me that the online world and reality are colliding and people are using physical means to obtain virtual dreams.

So how does this relate to public relations?

If the over 50 million people who are participating in online worlds are willing to pay real money for virtual benefits, would they also pay virtual costs for physical benefits? In other words, can a PR firm establish itself in the online world? I definitely think we should, if not us definitely getting our clients to open shop. We need to take advantage of the growing opportunities in the online space before we are running to catch up.

One of the continually changing challenges in PR is to be able to connect with our audiences. And if they are in online virtual realities, we must be also.