Shroud of the Avatar post 2 virtual real estate.
I for one jumped into SOTA early in order to acquire some virtual real estate. I remember struggling to get a house in Ultima Online, sweating as I risked buying game gold with real cash and then praying that I was't being scammed. I made no money on this venture and eventually stopped paying the subscription for the game.
Then Entropia made a big on-line splash with a player paying something like $200,000 usd for a virtual space station. According to the following article he made half a million when he sold it.
I played the game and bought and sold minor in game stuff but eventually ended up with about $500. I am not sure how much of that was profit as I am not a very good book keeper.
Jump to 2003 and Second Life hit the web and Kaptin Hornpipe (my avatar) worked as a "door-man" at one of the hundreds of casinos eagerly sucking up players real money. By working the casinos Kaptin found some black-jack tables with no upper limits to bets. By using the sucker strategy of doubling every time I lost I parleyed my avatars casino earnings up to around $200 usd.
Virtual real estate in Second Life boomed. Anshe Chung was reported as the first to be worth a million.
http://fortune.com/2006/11/27/anshe-chung-first-virtual-millionaire/
Sometine in 2007 most of the casinos closed. The virtual stock markets were plagued by scams and theft. I lost some money but still had about $1000 left so I cashed out and put the money into a real bank.
No other on-line games kept my interest until 2013 when the Kickstarter for Shroud of the Avatar and Star Citizen was announced. Finally I was back in the virtual real estate business.
Hundreds of players are now waiting to see what happens when the game is released, some dreaming of selling that little blacksmith shop for $10000.