From what I've seen lately, they're not amateurs. Just google for "wow gold" and look at the number of multi-game exchanges. Many of them are run almost exactly like a real world currency exchange: you can go from USD to WoW to SGD. There are professional WoW gold farmers in several developing countries. They do nothing but continually farm gold and buy/sell items. I was reading recently about a former stock broker who now does nothing but buy retired characters and sell their bits off for cash.

It makes you think about getting into derivatives a little: imagine funding a new WoW guild for the Burning Crusades with enough gold to leap frog over the sub-20 levels, they run the quests and in the end they agree to farm gold for X number of weeks for you. After that they give the retired characters back to you, you sell all of the characters and gold and split the profits with them.

I noticed your tag for break-out sessions "MMORPG monetary systems".

Although not directly related to what I do (SEO), I must say that this is definitely big business in certain areas. Having just moved back to the states after living in Singapore for the past 6 years, and being a MMORPG fan myself, I've seen amateurs making big bucks in this area. It's definitely big out there.

And it of course begs the question of possibilities - what if those involved were not amateurs?