CNet has recently published an article entitledVirtual Gaming's Elusive Exchange Rates (http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/08/05/news_6130377.html), in which they discuss the difficulty in putting a fixed exchange rate on MMORPG coinage. They spoke with the Terra Nova guys, who everyone knows are an academy for virtual economy.They covered IGE and GameUSD.com,a non-commercial research site providing price trend graphs for currencies of most top MMORPGs(Ffxi gil (http://www.gameusd.com/ffxi-gil.htm), Swg credit (http://www.gameusd.com/swg-credit.htm)Wow gold (http://www.gameusd.com/), Lineage 2 adena (http://www.gameusd.com/lineage-2-adena.htm), Everquest Plat (http://www.gameusd.com/everquest-plat.htm), Eq2 gold (http://www.gameusd.com/eq2-gold.htm),etc.).

According to the graphs and talking heads, what is interesting is that , ironically, given the dollar's weakness in world markets, in almost every case the games' currencies are losing value against the greenback because of inflation.

Should we care?

it's kind of silly to do a study on that and not eliminate inflation as a variable, imho. you'd think they'd just be studying the price trends after factoring in inflation rates. the information would be a lot more valuable that way.