The Economics of Online Gaming

CHAPTER 7

The Guild Party

RICH was on its way to becoming the fastest and most efficient production force in the game, but it was also becoming difficult to manage. On June 7, 2005, near the beginning of the manufacturing strike, RICH was officially listed as the largest guild in the game, with 152 members. To direct such a large group of players, I needed to come up with a new way to organize the guild’s leadership. But that was easy. The RICH guild’s recruiting methods captured some of the smartest players in Eternal Lands (EL), a diverse group of professionals with legitimate real-world experience, most of whom were between 28 and 36 years old:

• seanodonnell and his friend gadai (it means “thief” in Irish), a pair of Irish programmers
• trollson ...