Amazon To Launch Questville Virtual World, Entering Virtual Currency Market With Quest Coins

Amazon.com will soon launch a virtual world and entering the virtual currency marketplace with a new service called Questville, which ties in with its new human-powered answers site, Askville. The company has adopted roll playing game terminalogy including leveling, experience points and virtual currency in the form of Quest Coins.  Askville is currently live and individuals can start earning Quest Coins (details on how below).  Askville will give you Quest Coins for providing great answers, according to the FAQ.  Quest Coins can eventually be used on an upcoming website called Questville.com which will launch in 2007. On Questville you will be able to use your Quest Coins to participate in "exciting new adventures and other cool things!", the FAQ adds. Once Questville.com launches (coming soon) they will have "exciting new ways to use your Quest Coins."

Quest Coin information (from the FAQ):

Quest Coins is a virtual currency on Askville that users can earn by participating on Askville.  To encourage participation and reward great answers, Askville users can earn Quest Coins based on specific actions you take.  The table below summarizes the number of Quest Coins you can earn for different actions. Eventually you will be able to use Quest Coins when we launch Questville.com (coming in 2007).  In the meantime, collect as many Quest Coins as you can and show everyone how active and helpful you've been on Askville.

Action	Quest Coins Earned
Ask a question	1
Submit an answer to a question*	1
Use widget in an answer**	1
Vote on an answer*	1
Login to Askville (once per day)	5
Get a Best Answer Bonus	5
Get a Great Answer Score	10
Get a Good Answer Score	5
Get an Okay Answer Score	1
Get a Weak Answer Score	-5
Get a Awful Answer Score	-10

* Coins earned by an answerer for submitting an answer to a question and for voting on other answers are revoked if the answerer’s response gets a final score of ‘Weak’ or ‘Awful’.

** Coin paid out only if the answer gets a Final Answer Score of ‘Good’ or ‘Great’.

You can also earn bonus Quest Coins based on what level you have reached in a topic.  The following table lists the amount of bonus coins you can earn based on the level you have achieved in a topic:

	bonus
Level	coin payout
0	0
1	1
2	5
3	10
4	20
5	40
6	75

You can only earn bonus Quest Coins for answers that were voted either Good or Great.  For example, if you answered a question in a topic (e.g. music) where you have earned enough experience points to be level 5 in that topic, and you received either a Great, or Good score, than you will earn 40 bonus coins on top of your normal Quest Coin payout for that answer.  Below is a summary of your Quest Coin payout in this example:

Level 5 user in topic “music”
Great Answer = 10 Quest Coins +  40 bonus coins = 50 Quest Coins
Good Answer = 5 Quest Coins +  40 bonus coins = 45 Quest Coins
Okay Answer = 1 Quest Coin +  0 bonus coins = 1 Quest Coins
Weak Answer = -5 Quest Coins +  0 bonus coins = -5 Quest Coins
Awful Answer = -10 Quest Coins +  0 bonus coins = -10 Quest Coins

If a question is associated with multiple topics, we will reward your bonus coins based on the highest level you’ve achieved in any of the topics.  For example, if you were level 5 in the topic “music”, level 3 in the topic “shopping”, and level 1 in the topic “mp3” then we would reward your bonus coins based on your “music” topic level.

Experience Points and Levels

Every time you answer a question on Askville you will earn or potentially lose experience points in the topics that were associated with that question.  Askville uses experience points to determine how knowledgeable a user is in a given topic.  Experience points are broken up into various levels.  To reach a certain level you need to have earned a certain number of experience points in that topic.

The following table tells you how many experience points you need to earn in a topic and how many bonus points you can earn per answer once you've reached a certain level:

	# of topic	bonus
Level	experience points	coin payout
0	0-19	0
1	20-299	1
2	300-749	5
3	750-1499	10
4	1,500-2,999	20
5	3,000-7,499	40
6	7,500-?	75

More details at the FAQ