Based on rates that I see in trade chat, it would take around 4-5k gold (let's just say 5k). If you have a max level character in wow as a farming character, you can pretty safely accumulate that amount in materials over a few hours of farming.

Eve is just a crazy game with how like everything is pvp. The one thing I wonder about "thefts" so to speak is what is the motivation, and are these people turning ISK into real life money. Because you'd have to realize that if you stole 10s of billions or even 100s of billions of in-game credit, you can be pretty sure that no one in the game is ever going to trust you (and probably won't even want to play with you anymore). So I have to wonder if those things are like a grand farewell, where they have a buyer for the ISK, steal it as mentioned in the article, and then turn it into real life money. The guy that nabbed 850billion ISK, the article stated that that would be worth a cool $45,000 in real world dollars.

That's not a huge number in this day of inflation, but it's still a nice chunk of change. I could see how someone would be tempted to do that.

In the situation listed in the article above, it'd be like anyone committing fraud in real life.

Fraudsters make friends and allies, they get people to trust them, and then they take their money. The idea is that the person committing the fraud has no immediate tie to the person other than having their money or possessions for whatever reason. There should be no personal affiliation outside of the business one, between the fraudster, and the client.

This allows the fraudster to desensitise themselves from the clients they're stealing from, so that they don't feel any traces of guilt or regret for their actions. This makes it easier for them to continue doing what they're doing, sometimes the simple greed of money eases any sense of guilt.

The risk this guy took is the same any fraudster takes: The people know him, and if he is caught then he is basically screwed in that region. His trust will be gone, and it will be hard to rebuild that for practically any gains, legit or otherwise. He can always, however, move on to the next area of attack. Another game, another business.

I'd probably never save enough since I am an altoholic, but a friend of mine said she made 300k in like a week. Some people would definitely take advantage of this.

"selling 1000g = £0.80-£1 according to a quick look at the site I use to buy my game cards."

A site that sells game time cards would tell you a ratio for converting gold to real money? Maybe I'm reading that wrong, but it sounds like you checked on a goldsite, not a gametime card site. :P

@ Mr. Tastix
This is also how we define a sociopath.

@Rogue unless ofcourse the site does all sorts of stuff, cd keys, timecards, xbox cards, psn cards and game currency too.

Cheapest timecards I can find though.