I R Newb - In depth
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The following is an interview with Marty, owner of IRNewb, on May 4th, 2007:
How long have you been doing this? Did you start selling casually or has it always been a full time business?
IRNewb has been in business longer than any other currency seller that I am aware of. We started in August of 2002 under the auction name KatiTM on an auction site and since grew into IRNewb. We started selling only casually only on one server and one game, Tarew Marr on Everquest I. From there we expended to 4 servers, then to 8 then to all of Everquest I. We moved more into full time mode in 2003 and 2004 and now cover all servers on Everquest, Everquest II and World of Warcraft.
What gave you the idea to start this type of business? Did you use to be a gamer, maybe even a buyer or did is there some other story behind your entry into this market?
Kat (my wife) and I (Marty) played (and still play) MMORPGs for much of our free time. I started playing The Realm online in 1997 and then moved to Everquest. Kat and I became the leading tradeskillers and one of the leading bazaar sellers on our server. Soon we found ourselves with a lot of currency every week that we did not need or could find anything to do with. Kat got the idea to start selling it on an auction site and we started making quite a bit of money from it. To this day I continue to have a strong interest in online economies and online trading and am always looking for ways to facilitate and making money in online commerce.
Did you come across any strange customers or business deals? Can you share one of the more weird experiences as a currency seller?
Often times we see these stories about the $6000 sword or the guy who made millions doing xxx. I honestly ca not think of any of those as they pertain to our company. We have always marketed ourselves more towards the casual player rather than the hardcore gamer, and as such we tend more towards the norm of people and sales :)
What was the largest currency amount a customer has ever bought?
I ca not answer in very specific terms to protect our customers privacy, but we have a whole range of customers from people who buy 100 gold or 20k to people who are interested in 5 or 6 million platinum at a time.
How about the customers that are not just strange, but really fraudulent – how do you deal with those and is it a big problem?
Again I can not comment very specifically on our fraud prevention techniques but we have many of them, and they have become more important as time goes on. It is a much bigger problem than most tend to think. I remember I was shocked to even learn that people steal credit cards for the sole purpose of buying online currency, but it happens quite frequently. We do our best to help the industry by reporting all stolen credit card information to the authorities and assisting with prosecutions. To date we have assisted in two prosecutions of individuals purchasing currency with stolen credit cards.
Are you able to expand on any future plans of your company for this competitive market? Any particular goals or predictions you can share?
IRNewb.com has always had fairly modest goals. We are a secondary player in the market as we do not spend millions in advertising, and we refuse to engage in practices that are invasive or illegal in order to attract customers. We will continue to work in games where customer need is greatest such as Everquest and World of Warcraft and games we feel we can have the most impact in by being experts in them ourselves. We only work in games we play or have played.
As for predictions, I see the market becoming more crowded and I think that good business practices, fraud techniques and honesty and customer service are going to make or break a lot of companies that up until this point have paid little attention to these areas.
Are you playing MMORPGs yourself? If so, what game do you play and for how much would you sell your main character :) ?
My wife and I have always played, and will continue to play games ourselves. Currently we play world of warcraft and have high level characters there. Ironically I value my character very much and really would never sell him for any price. Of course, for us we have other means to make money in this industry rather than selling our own characters, so the value of our particular characters are much higher to us :)
Thanks for giving me an opportunity to answer :) and best of luck with your site as well.
Thank you very much for taking the time to answer our questions!
