KuaKurta Games

Would you have paid $1000 to see Indy 4 a few months early?Unless you’re a real hardcore Harrison Ford fan, probably not. But that’s the conundrum facing the 10 million players of smash online RPG World of Warcraft, some of whom are forking out hundreds of dollars for early access to the game’s latest expansion.

Wrath of the Lich King, Warcraft’s second expansion, is due to launch later this year, and in the last few weeks it began “beta testing” — becoming accessible to a small group of specially-selected subscribers, to help the developers find bugs and game balance problems. And although this role is often filled with professional, paid game testers, Blizzard isn’t short of volunteers who’ll do it for free or even pay for the privilege.

So high is the demand that logins for the beta test are currently selling for between $400 and $500 on Ebay and, according to Eurogamer, fetching the equivalent of about $1000 in the UK.

Lich King, which contains a new continent for players to explore, a new playable class, and raises the maximum amount of experience characters can earn, is expected to be released before the end of the year. Any new testers will only have a few months of play time before the game’s release, when all their characters will be wiped and the game will become accessible to anyone for a mere $40.