Real Millions Spent on Imaginary Assets

July 13, 2005 -- -- Heaves was fed up with working night and day to make ends meet. On top of an already demanding day job, he was spending his nights laboring over the same repetitive tasks just to put a little coin in his pocket.

Heaves, like most of us, wanted the good life and he didn't want to break his back day in and day out to get it.

But unlike the rest of us, Heaves isn't real. He's an invented persona, an inhabitant of a vast and mythical online computer game world called "World of Warcraft," where players around the globe take on the role of adventurer extraordinaire in the shoes of their personally crafted virtual alter-ego.

The games are known as MMOGs -- Massively Multiplayer Online Games -- because they allow thousands of players to inhabit the same game-space simultaneously, and offer players a more social gaming experience than any other genre.

MMOGs are big business with millions of players around the world plunking down money for the games' software -- usually retailing around $50 -- and, in most cases, additionally requiring a contribution of about $15 a month in subscription fees to the publisher's coffers.

Historically, these games reward players for the time they put into them. The longer you play, the more your character progresses and the more access you have to the game's content, like places and items.

But for players like Inti Einhorn -- Heaves' real-world better half -- the monotony of repeating the same tasks over and over again just to get the items and currency he needs to have fun and stay competitive -- isn't always worth it.

"In these games time is money," said Einhorn. "I sit at work and I can't play and the only way of getting that gold [currency] is devoting hours and hours to the game."

As a result, a secondary market has emerged around MMOGs, where players buy, sell, trade and donate in-game currency, items, whole characters and even real estate.

Einhorn, a 31-year-old system administrator for a major entertainment company in New York, has been playing MMOGs for years, but only recently made his first purchase from the secondary market.