The Decline and Fall of an Ultra Rich Online Gaming Empire

[RayBonga]

By age 23, Brock Pierce had been a movie star, media exec, and CEO of a company that made millions selling virtual merchandise.

For a long time, maybe a year and a half, the game was pretty much what remained of Brock Pierce's life: He would wake up, sit down at his computer, log in, and play. Thirteen dollars a month bought him around-the-clock access to this imaginary world, a place of perilous dungeons and enchanted woods where online gamers came together by the thousands in a never-ending quest for treasure. Some assumed the roles of dwarves or lizard-people; some were humans. Pierce would play for hours?as long as 24 hours without a break?slaying monsters, wresting precious coins and jewels and magic weapons from their corpses. Later, he added extra computers to his setup and taught himself to play as many as six characters at once, one per machine. After that he'd sit there in the glow of half a dozen monitors, hands flitting from keyboard to keyboard, eyes shifting from screen to screen, yet still, somehow, not finding time enough for all there was to accomplish in the game.

"There were times I came outside," he says, "and the sun hurt."

Pierce was 19 at the time and hardly the first young American male to step away from the sometimes painful light of reality for an extended, free-falling obsession with an online fantasy videogame. But it's safe to say that the reality he was shrinking from in 2000 was not that of a typical teen. At 16, Pierce had retired from a career as a modestly successful Hollywood child actor; by 18 he was a dazzlingly successful dotcom entrepreneur, living large on a $250,000 executive salary and the promise of millions more in post-IPO equity. By his 19th birthday he had lost it all. Pierce's high-profile startup had flamed out in a blaze of scandal that included accusations of sex with minors, and he and his cofounders had found it prudent to leave the US. He lived now in a rented house in a strange country, on the dwindling remains of a crash-ravaged stock portfolio.

And he played the game. You could call it solace: a way to fill the emptiness of failure with the curiously convincing sense of purpose that comes from steadily amassing a make-believe digital fortune in magic staves and platinum coins. But in time it would be more than that. Much more. Soon enough, amid the daily grind of his obsession, he would see in the game itself a way out of the bleak hole he had fallen into. He would take a clear-eyed, calculating look at what he and his fellow players had been doing all those months?at the countless hours they'd given over to the pursuit of purely virtual but implacably scarce commodities?and he would recognize it not just for the underexploited form of productivity it was but for the highly profitable commercial enterprise it might sustain. He would spend the next half decade bringing that business to life. And though some people would hate what he was building, and others would want to take it all away from him, there would come a day when Pierce, eight years older, could look back on an accomplishment that was bigger than he had ever envisioned?and stranger than he would ever comprehend.

That day has come, and it's a Saturday: a bright, clean Saturday in the hills above Los Angeles, where the views from Pierce's $3 million house are impressive. From the poolside patio, you can look down across West Hollywood and Beverly Hills all the way to the rolling breakers off Santa Monica. In the living room, big canvasses by high-end contemporary LA artists hang on the walls. The views are also impressive in the kitchen, where a row of empty wine bottles includes a $5,000 1945 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti.

That Pierce lives the life of a former corporate mogul at the age of 28 is remarkable enough in itself. Even more so, perhaps, is that he got here by dominating an industry in which orcs, trolls, elves, dwarves, and minotaurs are major segments of both the customer base and the labor

...

http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualw...urrentPage=all

Great read

[Machete_]

www.thewarcraftforum.com for sale at $250 epass only

[andy83]

lol... some mmorpgs really made some of my friends rich.

[RayBonga]

Originally Posted by andy83

lol... some mmorpgs really made some of my friends rich.

Yes, I never really understood the concept well. For me it always seemed a lot like time arbitrage.

Trade cheap Chinese time for expensive American time

[JFK]

long, but great read

[TheSenator]

I am looking for that video clip of an online game where these players are making a plan of attack and then all of a sudden one player bum rushes a room full of monsters. All the players get slaughter because of that one players bravado.

[Juicy D. Links]

Originally Posted by TheSenator

I am looking for that video clip of an online game where these players are making a plan of attack and then all of a sudden one player bum rushes a room full of monsters. All the players get slaughter because of that one players bravado.

"Leroyyyyyyyyyyyyy Jenkns"

[candyflip]

Originally Posted by TheSenator

I am looking for that video clip of an online game where these players are making a plan of attack and then all of a sudden one player bum rushes a room full of monsters. All the players get slaughter because of that one players bravado.

search Leroy Jenkins

[munki]

[TheSenator]

Originally Posted by munki

Awesome....I have been searching for weeks for that video clip.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leeroy_Jenkins

[uno]

Originally Posted by andy83

lol... some mmorpgs really made some of my friends rich.

Let me know if they can get me a Kraken Club on the Quetz server for ffxi.

[KillerK]

hahahahaha what a dumb ass, and he sounds ummm

[mynameisjim]

Originally Posted by munki

I've never played WoW but have played plenty of other on-line games. That was pretty funny.

[Paul Markham]

Originally Posted by munki

Have to be honest and say if that turns you on, your real life has to suck major. Seriously get out and get a life. I could play that for a few hours and that's it. The idea of a game, poker, Monopoly, chess, is the social aspect. You meet people for real. Meeting people online to play a game does not make it for me.

Now you can tell me I'm too old, I'm off to play a game with real people.

[andy83]

Originally Posted by RayBonga

Yes, I never really understood the concept well. For me it always seemed a lot like time arbitrage.

Trade cheap Chinese time for expensive American time

yes thats probably one way to look @ it.

well sometimes when you're in an online community/game and there's word of this one rare super-power item and its on sale for $x,xxx, you can be sure many people would be interested in buying it. thats the way it has been for games and so on..

do in the online world what you can't in the real world.. lol. (owning something thats rare or nobody else has)

[RedShoe]

Originally Posted by TheSenator

Awesome....I have been searching for weeks for that video clip.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leeroy_Jenkins

Congratulations you're now officially the dumbest person online.

There should be a law, if you can't find the Leroy Jenkins video in under 3 minutes you should have your internet license revoked.

[DannysReviews|com]

Haha that's funny, never been a fan of the game, but that is funnnnnnnnnnnny!

[darksoul]

IGE are scumbags, they closed the affiliate program and run with the money.
POS