Was there only one? I’ve lost track of all the points I shot down.
If you want to know how SWG galaxies went after one guy monopolized it, you can read his blog.
http://www.mediumdifficulty.com/2012/03/06/how-i-helped-destroy-star-wars-galaxies/
The game always had a lot of problems with money sinks, too, and didn’t seem to be very well playtested. I’m surprised no one has found a way to tank World of Warcraft or something yet.
Interesting. There’s also miniconomy, which unfortunately looks to have a statist backdrop: http://www.miniconomy.com/en/explanation.php?short=1
I’m not sure to what extent it is a free market in practice though. I’ll have to check it out.
Have you heard of Viritnomics?
Again, no private roads or anything, but it’s an entrepreneurial browser game.
I think it would be a good thesis or a study at least: The study of online markets in virtual environments.
I don’t usually purchase games but recently I purchased Diablo 3 because I played the original two games when I was a youngster and had some nostalgia value to it. They have an online market and I have found it interesting to watch its development. If you ignore the existence of so called Gold farming bots. The actual basis of the economy is Time for gold or real money. To get the best items in the game you have to play the game for a long time. The better you are at the game the less time it takes for you to get the good items. You can then sell those good items for real money or for more gold in the game. Gold in the game can also be sold for real money. The gold for money rate is set by the market. The creators blizzard benefit from the high fees.
Here is an interview with a gold farmer. The motive behind the so called asian gold farmer in having the interview was that he feared there was too many gold farmers and this was reducing the value of his gold.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NUQTATy5dc
People have been selling items for $100s and some people have made $1000s. But I don’t know how much time they had to put in or what sort of return on their time they are getting.