The online realm

I am an avid online gamer. I started off with Ultima Online and moved on to World of Warcraft (WoW) later. Today World of Warcraft is a behemoth with over 6 million subscribers. The next biggest game is the recently launched Aion. It has about 1 million subscribers but so far has not been able to take a foothold in Europe and North America. It will be very hard to take the marketshare from World of Warcraft and for this reason one of the safest shares right now to buy will be Activision. Electronic Arts would also be another share that might be a good buy. The problem I have with EA is that the success of their games have been rather mixed.
The economics of WoW is fascinating. Money is a necessity if you want to do well. I have been able to transpose my work skills and philosophy to the game and I make a good profit in the market. Buy low and then sell high. Buying things whose demand and purpose I understand is what I do. I take a few high value, high risk investments once in a while. Thankfully most of my trades have been successful. I would be willing to hire a person that has been successful in WoW to trade shares for me because the opportunities to make money are limited and things are extremelly competitive. Apart from that there is no bank system so there is no official leverage. There is no shorting either. The result is that people who become successful and have money in WoW are mostly people who can identify opportunities and capitalize on them or they will be people who buy safe stuff and are willing to hold them until the price is right.
Yes I play WoW to relax from work but the thrill of making a profit is in my blood and try as I may I just cannot escape it. If I was a professor and had to teach students about the markets then I would use WoW as the training ground and the required reading would be "The Merchant Prince" by Raymond E. Feist. Who knows maybe one day I will be able to create a browser based game that incorparates a serious trading and economic system into the game. What better way of incorporating my love for the stock market, hedge funds and gaming?
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