By killing monsters and performing heroic deeds, characters build up experience and rise through the ranks of their chosen professions.

Preparing for battle

"Building a character takes a huge investment of time," said James O'Donnell, who plays a character called Zacarius on Everquest, "I have spent almost 88 days so far playing my main character."

"Some people have the money and not the time. They don't like to wait," said Mr O'Donnell.

Others just want to catch up with their friends who already have powerful characters, he says.

Among the lots for sale on Ebay is a Necromancer called Rallos Zek for $1,000. No bids have been received for the character perhaps because there are a few other Necromancers on offer for around half that price.

Paying for power

Ryan Bowling, a spokesman for Sony that runs Everquest, said it is trying to stamp out the practice because those buying ready made characters do not always get what they expect: "Sometimes a player with a bad reputation will sell their character to an unsuspecting novice," said Mr Bowling.

He said Sony gets a lot of complaints from customers about buyers and sellers of Everquest goodies: "It is very frustrating to go questing for a special item and then find someone who has just paid real world cash for it."

Sony is tackling the problem by making it hard for people to just travel around and gather goodies.

Some magical items are now impossible to drop and so can't be picked up and transported into the real world for sale.

But Mr Bowling says there is little more Sony can do to combat the problem. He said it would be impossible to manage and maintain monitoring and identification systems when there are over 210,000 active subscribers playing Everquest.