Difference between revisions of "About Making Money in Entropia Universe"
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In general MindArk PE AB, the company developing and operating the Entropia Universe platform, as well as the Planet Partner companies creating content for Entropia Universe are for-profit private businesses. Entropia Universe and its planets are supposed to generate income for them coming from the players playing the game. | In general MindArk PE AB, the company developing and operating the Entropia Universe platform, as well as the Planet Partner companies creating content for Entropia Universe are for-profit private businesses. Entropia Universe and its planets are supposed to generate income for them coming from the players playing the game. | ||
Development and operation of games like Entropia Universe costs a lot of money, usually Millions of USD per year | Development and operation of games like Entropia Universe costs a lot of money, usually Millions of USD per year. The total of costs has to be defrayed by charging players depending on the business model of the game, for example one time payments for regular 'offline' games, monthly subscription fees for [[Massively_multiplayer_online_game|MMOGs]], microtransaction models utilitzing "item shops", etc etc etc. | ||
When in Entropia Universe players profit from playing the game these are from the developers perspective a part of the running costs too. To defray costs and generate profit in Entropia Universe players are charged based on their ingame activities, for example consuming ammunition when hunting creatues in game, fees for auctioning ingame items, deterioation of equipment used in game and many more. | |||
Consequently the majority respectively the average of players has to spend money to enable a minority of players to earn money in Entropia Universe or simply use the service for free. | |||
==Activities that usually cost money== | ==Activities that usually cost money== | ||
Revision as of 00:23, 3 June 2013
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How to make money in Entropia Universe is a question regularly asked. This guide will give you an overview and discusses what is possible and what is not possible.
Real Cash Economy
In Entropia Universe 'making money' is possible at all because the game features a "Real Cash Economy", meaning you can deposit real-world money into the game and also the other way round withdraw money from the game to your real-world bank account. The ingame currency Project Entropia Dollars (PED) has a fixed exchange rate of 10/1 to the US Dollar.
Entropia Universe, virtual property and real money
It should be noted that by the Entropia Universe EULA and ToU there is no real-world money inside Entropia Universe. Also there is no virtual property whitin the legal meaning of the term "property". Everything in game incl. avatars, their skills, in-game money, etc are parts of the Entropia Universe system belonging to MindArk and partner companies who are licensing the use of these to the players. However, it is a unique feature in Entropia Universe that players are able to convert in-game money to real-world money by "withdrawing" it to their bank accounts.
These are the relevant sections in the EULA and ToU discussing virtual property:
Entropia Universe End User License Agreement (EULA):
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7. Virtual Currency Transfers and Fund Transactions
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The terms in this paragraph 7 do not apply to Your participation within the Entropia Universe Starting Area.
The Entropia Universe incorporates a PED Card System connected to each Account, through which MindArk administers the funds You transfer to and withdraw from the Entropia Universe (the “PED Card”).
You may use MindArk’s approved and secured fund transfer methods to increase by deposits and/or decrease by withdrawals the PED balance on Your PED Card. The deposited funds are converted by MindArk to PED that may be used by You as virtual currency in the Entropia Universe. If You choose to deposit or withdraw funds to or from the Entropia Universe You hereby agree to any costs and fees involved in all fund transfers.
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Entropia Universe Terms of Use:
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4.1 MindArk’s Proprietary Rights
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Virtual items are fictional in-world graphical objects with a predefined set of parameters in Entropia Universe and will often have names similar or identical to corresponding physical categories such as "people", "real estate", "possessions”, “currency”, “cloths” and the names of specific items in those categories such as "house", "rifle", "tools", "armor", “coat”, “money” etc. (“Virtual Items”). Despite the similarity in terminology, all Virtual Items, including virtual currency, are part of the Entropia Universe System and/or features of the Entropia Universe, and MindArk and/or respective Mindark’s Planet Partner(s) retains all rights, title, and interest in all parts including, but not limited to Avatars, Skills and Virtual Items. These retained rights include, without limitation, patent, copyright, trademark, trade secret and other proprietary rights throughout the world. Notwithstanding any other language or context to the contrary, as used in this EULA and/or in the Entropia Universe in the context of Virtual Items, You expressly acknowledge that all terms like “exchange of”, “trade with”, “purchase of”, “sale of” or “use of” Virtual Items, and all similar terms in context of transactions with Virtual Items, refers to the licensed right to use a certain feature of the Entropia Universe or the Entropia Universe System in accordance with the terms and conditions of this EULA.
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Entropia Universe is a business
In general MindArk PE AB, the company developing and operating the Entropia Universe platform, as well as the Planet Partner companies creating content for Entropia Universe are for-profit private businesses. Entropia Universe and its planets are supposed to generate income for them coming from the players playing the game.
Development and operation of games like Entropia Universe costs a lot of money, usually Millions of USD per year. The total of costs has to be defrayed by charging players depending on the business model of the game, for example one time payments for regular 'offline' games, monthly subscription fees for MMOGs, microtransaction models utilitzing "item shops", etc etc etc.
When in Entropia Universe players profit from playing the game these are from the developers perspective a part of the running costs too. To defray costs and generate profit in Entropia Universe players are charged based on their ingame activities, for example consuming ammunition when hunting creatues in game, fees for auctioning ingame items, deterioation of equipment used in game and many more.
Consequently the majority respectively the average of players has to spend money to enable a minority of players to earn money in Entropia Universe or simply use the service for free.
Activities that usually cost money
Possible ways to make money in Entropia Universe
- most of the items listed below are rather theoretical but nevertheless listed to ensure completeness.
- most of the items listed below need a lot of dedication and time
- some of the items listed belelow need a significant starting capital
Sweating
Sweating or formally "Sweat Gathering" is the process of gathering "Vibrant Sweat" from the various creatures around Entropia Universe. Sweating is a free-to-play activity. Since "Vibrant Sweat" is used for further processing, mainly for creating "Mind Essence", it has a small market value and can be sold to other players. Depending on your strategies and dedication you can gather a couple of 100s of units of sweat per hour. Sweat usually sells best in stacks of 1000 units with the market prize for 1000 units between 1 and 3 PED currently (May 2013).
While sweating you will also get in-game skills that theoretically can be sold to other players. But to get a substantial amount that is possible to sell at all you probably need to sweat for 100s if not 1000s of hours.
Collecting fruits, stones, dung and Broken Elysian Technology
- Various types of fruit, various types of stones, Common Dung are resources that can be found on the ground of planets occasionally
- "Broken Elysian Technology" can only be found on planet Next Island occasionally
All of them can be used for further processing, mainly in Crafting, therefore have a small market value and can be sold to other players. Depending on one's luck the profit can be in about the same range than the profit from sweating but is somewhat boring since it only involves walking around and keep your eyes open for the items on the ground.
Oil Rig and Beer Gardens
- The Oil Rig on Planet Calypso is regularly producing stacks of Oil which can be picked up from the ground by everyone.
- On ROCKtropia one can find the Motörhead Stadium Beer Garden where Motörhead Kegs appear on the ground.
These free goods spreading facilities are regularly found in areas with Player-versus-Player combat (PVP) enabled and usually controlled by groups of high-skilled and well-equipped players. The costs to control and defend control over these facilities quite likely eat up all possible profit from collecting the oil.
Free Competitions
Free competitions or events are usually run by other players but sometimes also by Planet Partners, ingame or on community websites. Depending on the setup of the event one does not necessarily have to spend PEDs to achieve good results. Often those events offer low value prizes for the winners. Considering the chance to win and the rather low frequency of these kind of competitions this is merely a theoretical way to make money.
Skill selling
A small group of skills can be acquired for free. They increase while Sweating or getting hit by creatures. Skills can be extracted to Empty Skills Implanets (ESI) and sold to other players. But due to the relatively high prize of ESIs compared to the relatively low prize of most of these free skills you need first need an substantial amount of skills to make selling of these profitable.
Missions
There are a few missions that can be completed without spending any PED and which reward completion with items or skills theoretically worth PED. Since each can only get done once and the value of the rewards sums up to a maybe few PED (<10) this method is actually not worth mentioning.
Mentoring
Entropia Universe has a Mentoring system that allows experienced players to be mentors for new players. New players need to reach specific skills level to "graduate" and if they do the mentor gets awared with a low value ingame item. Considering the time spent to mentor a new player and the low vaule of the rewarded item this is just a theoretival way of earning money.
Citizenship program
In November 2011 MindArk announced a citizenship program and started to sell Calypso Land Deeds for 1000 PED (=100 USD) each. Each of these deeds entitles its "owner" to get a share of Planet Calypso revenues on a weekly basis. Considering an investment of 1000 PED/Deed the ROI is around 25% p.a., condidering the current (as of May 2013) market value of Calypso Land Deeds of about 1350 PED/Deed the ROI is around 18%.
Trading
Trading is one of the more promising ways to profit in Entropia Universe but requires a beginning balance depending on the scale of trading. The capital can come from depositing monry into the game and/or building it up by the other methods.
Offering services
Most of those activities require a significant amount of starting capital and profitability is not at all to be expected.
Piloting and Transportation
Customizing
Many items like clothes, vehicles, furniture can be customized by applying textures and colors to them. The ability to do so is largely depending on ingame skills in the area which enables higher skilled players to offer customization services to lower skilled players.
Beauty
Event Management
Playing for profit (Pro Gaming)
There is no "Professional gaming" in Entropia Universe in the common meaning of playing competively in tournaments or leagues. Playing for profit is not a true feature of the game but rather MindArk allowing for a few success stories to support the marketing concept of 'getting paid for playing a game'.
In Entropia Universe playing for profit mainly relates to having a huge amount of in-game skills allowing you to efficiently use high-end ingame equipment performing regular activities such as hunting, mining and crafting. The according equipment is rare allowing only a small cirlce of players to profit regularly. Consequently both, acquiring the skills and even more the necessary equipment are fairly expensive, at least costing 1000's of dollars if not ten-thousands of dollars. And then, merely having the skills and equipment are not sufficient to profit on the long run, it also involves deep knowledge of the game mechanics.
Making PED outside Entropia Universe
Entropia Universe Emisary Program
The Entropia Emissary Program is a Facebook app that allows players to share promotional material via Facebook and receive points for these activities which can be turned into low value ingame items. Considering the limited content to share and low value of the rewarded items this is just a theoretival way to earn money.
Sometrics
???
Questbomb
???
Free Competitions
Free competitions or events are usually run by other players but sometimes also by Planet Partners, ingame or on community websites. Depending on the setup of the event one does not necessarily have to spend PEDs to achieve good results. Often those events offer low value prizes for the winners. Considering the chance to win and the rather low frequency of these kind of competitions this is merely a theoretical way to make money.
Entropia Partners
Entropia Partners (http://www.entropiapartners.com/) is crowdsourcing website that rewards small amounts of PED for performing more or less simple tasks. Tasks include things such as flagging inappropriate content in photographs and taking marketing surveys. Simple tasks that take around 30 or so seconds to complete pay 8 to 16 PEC. There are also surveys for marketing purposes available which reward up to 20 PED and take about 10 or so minutes.
When having gathered e few PED you can request a withdrawal session with a representative of Entropia Partners in game. The request is done on the Entropia Parnters website and the ingame meeting is negotiated in a chat window on the Entopia Partners website. On the website lets there is only an display of who of the representatives is currently online.
Entropia Partners also features a referral systems that allows users to place referral links on the internet. Before posting referral links anywhere please make sure that this is allowed on the website in advance.
Comparison of money making methods
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| Method | Sweating | Collecting fruits & co. | Rigs & similar | Free competitions | Skill selling | Mentoring | Missions | Calypso Land Deeds | Trading | Services | Playing for profit | Sometrics | Entropia Emissary Program | Questbomb | EntropiaPartners |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Short description | |||||||||||||||
| Official/Non-official | Official | Official | Official | Both | Official | Official | Official | Official | Official | Official | Official | Official | Official | Official | Non-official |
| Provider | Entropia Universe | Entropia Universe | Entropia Universe | Entropia Universe, Planet Parnters, Community | Entropia Universe | Entropia Universe | Entropia Universe | Entropia Universe | Entropia Universe | Entropia Universe | Entropia Universe | Entropia Universe | Entropia Universe | NEVERDIE Studios | Entropia Partners ("3rd party") |
| In-game/off-game | In-game | In-game | In-game | In-game, off-game | In-game | In-game | In-game | In-game | In-game | In-game | In-game | Off-game | Off-game | Off-game | Off-game |
| Locations | All planets | All planets, Elysian Tech. exclusivey on Next Island | Planet Calypso, ROCKtropia, Hunt The THING | In-game events, off-game on websites | All planets | All planets | All planets | All planets | All planets | All planets | All planets | Website | Website | Website | |
| Requirements | None | None | None | None | ESI | Specific skill levels | None | Investment of at least ~1350 PED (as of May 2013) | Investment, amount depending on scale of trading | Investment, largely differs between various servies | Significant investment, probably USD 10k+ | None | None but Facebook account | None | None |
| Profit potential | max a few PED/hour | max a few PED/hour | max a few PED/hour | depends on available competitions, usually tiny | max a few PED for many ours of skilling | usually max a few PED per graduated disciple | limited, probably between 10 and 100 PED in total for all free missions | ~ 18% ROI (considering the market value of ~1350 PED/Deed as of May 2013) | depdends on scale of trading | largely depends on the service | unpredictable | limited, max a few PED/task | limited, max a couple of 100 PED in total for achieving all levels | 10 PED/review | a couple of PEC to max a couple of PED/task |
| Fun factor | little | very little | little | depends, can be high | little | individually | high | not really applicable | individually | individually | high | very little | little | individually | very little |
| Further information | Sweating guide | Oil rigs and similar facilities | Skilling guide | Mentoring guide | Missions guide | Calypso Land Deeds | Trading guide | Sometrics | Entropia Emissary Program | Questbomb | Entropia Partners |
Links, references, contributors, categories
- Parts of this guide have been copied from the guide Successful Non-Depositing on the wiki of the Soaring Eagles society, unfortunately not available anymore
- my-entropia-universe-life.blogspot.de: Concerning Making PED In-Game
Contributors:
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