[MUD-Dev] Mapping real money into MUD money

[Alex Chacha]

Recently I read (on Slashdot) that some MMORPG people were thinking
about mapping real money into MUD money and possibly vice versa.  A
MUD or MMORPG would act almost like an arcade where you buy tokens
to play and can redeem them for real life items (or in MUD/MMORPG
world possibly relics and super rare items) .

There are many ways to approach this.  The most important one would
require a way to add service charge so that the system is not
lossless (the company running the game would charge a percentage for
withdrawls and deposits); having people use MMORPG as their main
source of income may be tricky to design and may have legal
implications.  However, I am not sure if this has been done yet
explicitly (not counting the buying and selling of items on auction
sites).  Would having a way to get money into the game by paying for
it with real money make sense or will it destabilize the economy by
the people who have money to burn in real life?  Would it make sense
to allow withdrawls or just allow people to "buy" relics and rare
items with the money they earned in game?
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