6 Ways to Make Real Money Playing MMORPGs

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MMORPG stands for Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game. These games are well-known for large, active communities of gamers who work in teams to accomplish goals together, such as defeating epic monsters, fighting other teams of players, or obtaining legendary equipment.

Most of these MMORPGs have virtual economies where players can buy and sell goods for virtual money. Within these games, some players become virtually wealthy as they amass more and more currency in the game through activities such as crafting, selling rare loot, flipping items on the market, and even market manipulation.

But, for the most part, this is all virtual and confined to the game world. No real money exchanges hands in everyday gameplay. That said, some gamers make real money playing MMORPGs, whether a few dollars here and there, or a part-time income doing so. In addition, in specific niche games, some gamers have figured out a way to earn a full-time income simply by playing the game and selling things for real money to other players.

In this article, we'll discuss how to make money with MMORPGs. Much of this knowledge can be applied to many of these games versus one in particular. 

Note: What to Know About Real Money Trading (RMT) in Most MMORPGs

RMT stands for Real Money Trading. RMT is against the End User License Agreement (EULA) in most MMORPGs. That means that getting caught buying and selling things in the game for real money could result in your online account getting suspended or banned, which revokes your access to the game world and causes you to lose everything you've worked for.

The tips in this article are real ways that you can earn money playing most MMORPGs, but in many of these games, you could be breaking the EULA. With that in mind, please understand the risks of taking part in these activities if the game you choose to make money on forbids RMT.

Can You Make Money Playing MMORPGs?

You can absolutely make money playing MMORPGs, however, the average gamer may not find it worth their time. Those who make a part-time income playing online games often have to treat the game like a part-time job and aren't playing for fun instead to earn money.

Things To Do To Make Money Playing MMORPGs

There are many activities that can be done to make real life money from the MMORPG that you're playing.

1. Sell Gold/Currency

Selling gold or in-game currency is arguably the most common way to make money in an MMORPG. Often called gold farmers, these players look for the fastest ways to earn in-game currency and then sell it to other players for real money in bulk. This is often done on a website like Player Auctions.

Gold farming can be incredibly boring and repetitive and not pay very well overall, as gold farming is often something many other people who participate in RMT do.

As a gold farmer, you'll figure out how you can earn the most amount of in-game currency in the least amount of time. This might involve finding a repeatable high-paying quest, selling high-value goods, or killing endless streams of monsters that drop money.

2. Sell Rare Items

Rare items can be anything from equipment that makes the character much stronger to exclusive glamour items that give aesthetic effects to the character or their in-game property. 

Farming rare items may require trial and error, and you also may have to rely on luck if the rare item has only a small chance to appear. 

Some rare items in MMORPGs sell for hundreds of dollars, so this way of making money can be quite lucrative if you have a system down.

If you have access to a website that lists every item in the game you play, you might be able to find information on rare items and how to obtain them. Then, using that information, you can get an idea of how desirable the items are and select one or more to go after and sell for profit.

3. Sell Powerleveling Services

Powerleveling is the method of quickly leveling up or powering up another player’s character in a short period of time. Some people charge by the hour, others by how much leveling the client’s character needs.

One of the best ways to make a lot of money offering powerleveling services in an MMORPG is to find ways to powerlevel multiple characters simultaneously. That way you can earn money from each player that hires you at the same time.

For example, if you’re charging $10 an hour to powerlevel a character, and you know how to level 3 characters at the same time, then you’d be earning $30 an hour for playing an MMORPG.

Some people powerlevel others by performing actions while away from keyboard (AFK). This is known as botting, and it’s extra risky to do this as many online games have bot detection software. If you are caught botting, you might get suspended temporarily or banned if you are a repeat offender. 

Because of this, if you plan to powerlevel people, it’s generally best to do it while you’re able to monitor your characters.

4. Sell Gametime

Some MMORPGs allow the buying and selling of gametime for in-game currency. What this usually means is that someone buys an in-game item that grants 30 days of gametime for real money. This is usually bought from the game company itself. 

The purchaser then sells the gametime to another player for in-game currency. This allows a person to use real money to sell 30 days of gametime to another player for in-game currency. Sometimes gametime items are traded for rare gear as well.

As the person trying to make money in an online game, your job is to sell rare loot to another player in trade for one or more gametime items. Then, once you’ve obtained the gametime items, you would sell those for real money on a website like Player Auctions.

Here’s an example.

• Player A buys 10 gametime tokens from Game Company XYZ for $15 each ($150).
• Player B sells Player A a rare item for 10 gametime tokens.
• Player B lists the 10 gametime tokens on a website for $10 each ($100).
• Player C buys the 10 gametime tokens from Player B for $100, saving $50 off the retail price offered by Game Company XYZ

Buying and selling gametime has become incredibly popular for trading high-valued goods and for RMT players to make money.

5. Powerlevel and Sell Accounts

Similar to offering powerleveling services, you’ll start accounts from scratch and powerlevel them yourself. Once the character on the account is sufficiently powerful, you auction the character off on a website and collect money from another player who doesn’t want to do the leveling themselves.

One way to earn more money with this method is to powerlevel several accounts at the same time and sell them at the same time. If you can get $200 per account and you’re able to level 5 accounts at the same time, you would make $1,000 once they all sell.

6. Sell Raid Clears

This method generally requires a group of people working together. Raiding is an in-game activity where several players get together to defeat a major enemy. This is usually considered a difficult act, and many players never have the opportunity to take place in these raids.

When you clear a raid, you often get very rare loot that there are no other ways to get. This is where selling raid clears comes in.

As a team, you charge a player to come into your raid team, and then you allow them to take all the loot while not having to do anything else during the event.

Selling raid clears can be lucrative if the benefit to the client player is worth it. For example, if an item drops that could greatly improve the client player’s gameplay, they might be willing to pay hundreds of dollars to the raid team for allowing them to tag along and get it.

The raid team would then split the money evenly.

Tip: Use Multiple Accounts to Make More Money

Still interested in making money in an MMORPG? If your computer can handle it or if you have multiple computers, consider creating multiple characters on multiple accounts so you can play many characters at the same time. By playing characters at the same time, called boxing, you can do things that the average player would never be able to do by themselves.

When you’re a boxer, you can level faster, obtain more money, get more loot, and are more efficient as a solo player.

Wrapping It Up

Making money through an MMORPG might not always be worth it. It depends on what method you use, what game you’re playing, and how well you learn how to maximize your efficiencies. 

You’ll also want to stay under the radar as it’s against the EULA in many games to participate in RMT.  

While there’s still loads of money to be made in online games, please exercise caution if you attempt to do RMT in a game that forbids it. That said, there are many online games that allow you to participate in RMT. One such is the real cash MMORPG, Entropia Universe.