Ever bought something for MMO on ebay?

joxer

joxer

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https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/59p7qd/this-man-has-survived-by-hacking-mmo-online-games

On a boring day, he discovered a bug that would change the course of his life. In Ultima Online there was a pre-set, finite number of houses that could be created within the game, so they were a scarce resource. Manfred says he found a way to delete people's houses and take over their lots, allowing him to build more houses than he normally would be able to.

One day, Manfred told me, he had the idea of putting an Ultima Online castle on eBay to see if someone would buy it. He ended up selling it for almost $2,000, according to him (Manfred says he sold around 100 houses since then for an average price of around $2,000.)

"Hey this is real money!" Manfred recalls thinking. "That pretty much paid for my college. I pretty much sold houses and castles from Ultima Online for three or four years and paid my way through college."

But Ultima Online was just the beginning. In the two decades since, Manfred says he found ways to hack and profit off of several games: Lineage 2, Shadowbane, Final Fantasy XI, Dark Age of Camelot, Lord of The Rings Online, RIFT, Age of Conan, Star Wars New Republic, Guild Wars 2, and others.
Click to expand...

I wish I wasn't a lousy singleplayer worm, hacked every MMO out there and become a billionaire.

Then again, I probably wouldn't even try selling hacked stuff, I don't buy any ebay gamerelated stuff ever so I'd just assume noone would.
What about you?
 
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I'm just astonished by this name : "Manfred" is a German name.

But whatever … GREED is the answer … And Materialism.
 
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I used to sell houses and server rares from ultima online when it came out. The amount of money people would pay was absurd. I never had 2000$ from a single sale but a house in a prime location could bring me 500-1000. Server rares could fetch anywhere from 25-500.

I made some money on Lineage 2 and Guild Wars (crafted/rare gear and dyes). Dark Age and LOTRO required more real life work. You bought items from the cash shop, sold it online for ingame gold, used gold to buy rare items, sell rare items on ebay.

EVE online was my last moneymaker. The corp I was in was ridiculously weathly because of pooled resources and time. Selling alternate accounts for real world cash after using in-game money and time to "level" them. Same with rare and expensive ships. Plus they had time cards that could be converted to ingame item so if the market was right you could buy time cards in game with in game cash amd sell them outside the game for real world cash cheaper than buying them from retailers.

I have zero regrets and never scammed a soul.
 
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