In-game currency

In-game membership items

Some membership-based MMORPGs take advantage of the population of players who wish to buy in-game items with real money through in-game items that can only be generated by buying them from the developer, which can then be redeemed for membership status or traded with other players for items such as in-game currency. This also allows for games to maintain larger audiences of high-level players as they have the resources to buy membership with in-game gold from people who purchase and trade these items for gold. This also allows for an official conversion rate of in-game currency to real world currency to be established, though many 3rd-party item sellers will work to obtain the in-game currency needed to buy the membership items and sell them on 3rd-party markets at a lower real-world price than the official conversion rate. Many games who implement this monetization model often strictly prohibit 3rd-party real world trading and ban players who do so. Some examples of this form of monetization include Runescape's bonds and World of Warcraft's WoW Tokens.