And now, we have the World of Warcraft connection that highlights the level of destitution. The currency on this platform is seven times more valuable than Venezuela’s actual currency (via [CNN]
The virtual gold in “World of Warcraft,” the online role-playing game, is now almost seven times more valuable than real cash from Venezuela, whose economy is in shambles.
As the South American country suffers an economic crisis due to extreme inflation, the value of bolivar has cratered.
One US dollar today is worth 68,915 bolivares, according to official rates, but it goes for 690,854 on the black market exchange rate the locals use. The black market rate is considered more trustworthy than the official rate, because the Venezuelan government has lost credibility among many of its people.
By contrast, an official token, or in-game credit, in “WoW” is worth $20. Tokens also are sold to other players for gold, and their value changes through worldwide auctions. According to [a WoW token price tracker, ]a token is currently worth 201,707 pieces of virtual gold.
Which means a single dollar trades to 10,085 gold pieces in WoW. This makes the fake money used in Azeroth, the mythical world of the game, about 6.8 times more valuable than the Venezuelan bolivar.
This same scenario happened with Old School Runescape once it started getting popular and continues to effect the game to this day. A few times the power has gone out in Venezuela causing the prices of all easily botted materials to skyrocket due to the demand remaining the same but, the supply suddenly drying up. Its a pretty sad state of affairs for the whole country really. Slaying green dragons in the wilderness in osrs or farming skimpy outfits in old wow dungeons is a better paying job than being a surgeon in their home country and the government doesn’t seem terribly interested in trying to fix that problem.
Bunch of factors play in there, including how US economy is currently undermining their government for oil and other valuables.
I’ve got several coworkers who ran away from Venezuela and tell horrible stuff that’s going on in there, ranging from the incompetence and almost complete authoritarian regime from external economy pressure to keep the country weak and exploitable for foreign companies. Kinda like what happened in the middle east.
It’s sad that humans can be so cruel just to earn cash based on the pain of others, but that’s how the world works.
Good luck and stay strong my dudes, this might just happen in any place on the world on any given time.
Skills in Rs are more of a long term goal than they are in Wow. Just getting to the max level in even the fastest skills with exorbitant amounts of money can still take several days worth of time. Every skill is also required to do at least a few quests in the game, as well as some more hidden stuff. Basically, theres a reason for everyone to want to train mining and blacksmithing.
Lol you think it can’t happen in the West but guess what US and Europe are printing money and making it out of thin air. They call it ‘quantitative easing’, the next recession is going to make 2008 look like child’s play, they didn’t solve anything, just kicked the can down the road. There is more debt now than in 2008 and bigger asset bubbles.
Edit: oh and civilisation is probably going to collapse by 2050 because of run away feedback loops in climate change.
Venezuela dug itself into a hole it can’t crawl out of, not easily at least. It wasn’t the people’s fault though. The leader didn’t invest in the the sole money maker they had. Oil is nice and all but countries need to diversify their industries and keep up with technology to avoid a situation like that. With the price of oil where it’s at, and them using outdated methods of extracting the oil, it costs them more to get it out of the ground than they get for selling it. It’s sad. You hear stories of mothers starving themselves to death so their kids can eat twice a week. I don’t know why the U.N. didn’t step in and make sure people had food and water at the least. Oh, that’s right. Our government pays farmers to grow nothing when there’s too much being produced. You know, instead of letting them grow it and pay them for it so they can ship the excess to regions of the world who desperately need it. Free of charge.
Communism has never been fully implemented because people in charge of redistribution of wealth don’t ever give it back. Why? Because people are greedy and wealth is power. USSR equal Union of Soviet Socialist Republics