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URL:
http://www.theworldjournal.com/2002/notsocheap_print.htm Print Date: |
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URL:
http://www.theworldjournal.com/2002/notsocheap_print.htm Print Date: |
| Not So Cheap Thrills By Matthew Knott, TheWorldJournal.com It has often been claimed that software giant Microsoft earns a seat at NATO due to it's enormous size and wealth. However now a virtual kingdom has entered into the league of real countries in the world economy. The massively successful "Norrath", the scene for the online Everquest game finds itself the 77th richest country in the world - richer than Bulgaria with a gross national product per capita of $2,666 beating mini continents such as China and India. Each player on the virtual community pays a $10-15 per month subscription fee and this allows them to take part in online games such as Everquest, Ultima Online and Lineage. Members of the community will spend hundreds of hours perfecting their characters skills resulting in characters being sold for hundreds of dollars although trading is against the rules of the community. It is predicted there is yet more to come with Star Wars Galaxies, another online gaming community, is being launched later this year and is estimated to have at least 1 million subscribers. It is no great stretch of the imagination that a successful cult phenomenon such as Star Wars will attract millions of lucrative customers to further dominate the world market with countries that only exist on the phone lines of the world and the imaginations of the users. Game designers expect that with increasingly spectacular graphics, interesting games and powerful computer available to the home user the gaming industry will become even more lucrative. Already technology heavyweights - Microsoft have realised that the gaming band wagon is one worth the jump releasing the X-Box console earlier this year! For more information about this gaming phenomenon see the following sites: PlanetEverquest (GameSpy) - http://www.planeteverquest.com Official Star Wars Galaxies Site - http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com © April 6, 2002 |
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