How much money will you spend on a virtual item just to achieve “absolute power”?

I try to visit Khan Online Philippine’s official board everyday to check what’s happening in the community. Khan Online’s community is composed of very loyal Khanatics that has stayed on with the game since open beta. In my visit, I would click on “View New Posts” and start my browsing from there. Every time I go through that list of new posts, a thread or topic from the marketplace forum will always grab my attention and those are threads that sell in-game accounts and/or items for real life cash (PHP).

One time, I saw a thread at the marketplace forum with a title that says something like “selling a level 140 set for Mickos”. A mobile phone number was posted and out of curiosity I sent a text message to the seller offering 1,500 PHP for it. The almost instant reply kind of surprised me. I was not expecting the vendor to reply immediately. The price given to me was 6,000 PHP for the set. I was surprised at the amount. I never realized that an “armor set” in Khan Online would cost that much.

I tried contacting a few other vendors of in-game items through texting but I never received a reply. Well, I did receive one reply but he said he was buying not selling.

What I did is just out of curiosity. A lot of these offers were being posted on the marketplace forum everyday and since I don’t know how much these items are worth in real cash (PHP), as an experiment, I decided to send a text message to one vendor to find out and find out I did.
Who would have thought that a virtual item or in this case an “armor set” in Khan Online Philippines would cost or worth that much? I thought that it would only cost a few pesos but I was wrong and I believe that players are buying these items because if not then these type of trading would have died a long time ago.

Almost everyday, you will see at least 1 of these illegal offers posted at the marketplace forum. Although the moderators are quick in closing illegal trade threads and banning forum accounts yet it doesn’t seems to discourage these players from posting these kinds of offers. Forum account banning is not enough to neither discourage nor stop these black-market/illegal traders from posting their offers because they’ll just create new forum accounts and continue on posting until their items are sold. Sad but true!

Black-market trading of virtual/in-game items isn’t new. In fact, there are many websites that deal with this type of trading and it is present in almost all MMOs specially the more popular ones like WOW, Everquest, Lineage, Guild Wars, etc. In Philippine published games, I’ve seen it everywhere not only in Khan Online. It’s big business.

Fortunately, game publishers like Netgames highly discourage black-market/illegal trading. The risk of being scammed is very high and since it is conducted outside of the game publisher’s server, the game publisher can do nothing to protect you. If something goes wrong and you lose both your money and game account then you alone will take the consequences of your action.

The question now is, “How much are you willing to pay to achieve absolute power? 6,000 PHP? 10,000 PHP?” For me, achieving absolute power in Khan Online or in any other game for that matter shouldn’t cost you more than what you are normally spending for the game. In my humble opinion, items acquired through hunting while partying with friends have more value than items bought from illegal means, besides, these are virtual items which will eventually be replaced by newer items once new game updates arrive.

I guess it all boils down to whatever makes a particular gamer/player happy. If achieving power in an online game by black-market trading makes them happy then who am I to stop them? It’s their money. They can do whatever they want with it but always be very, very careful when engaging in these kinds of transactions. There are hundreds of scammers out there who will not have second thoughts of stealing from you and like what was stated above the game publisher won’t and can’t help you if something goes terribly wrong.

Khan Online has the tag line “Absolute Power”. How you attain that so called “absolute power” is all up to you but I am strongly encouraging every Khanatics to achieve “absolute power” through legal means. Shortcuts through black-market/illegal trading might get you there faster but after that what’s next? Nothing, just waiting for the next new items to purchase. The joy of getting there through hard work and through partying with friends is much more fulfilling and for true hardcore Khanatics, is the only path to “absolute power”!