I remember the first time I did it. I felt a little bit naughty. I knew what I was doing was wrong, against the rules. So I did my research and played it as safe as I could. I paid my money and waited anxiously to see how it would go down...

Of course, I'm talking about buying gold.

There is a certain stigma I have about it. Some people don't, but I never got over it.

When I first played EverQuest, it was hard enough for people to understand why I would want to pay a monthly subscription fee for a game you could not win. My justification was that any one month of gameplay provided me with a lot more entertainment for a better price than going to a movie.

Then there were the places you could buy platinum. Gamer Auctions was the site of the day, and you could buy platinum, items and even characters for what seemed like ridiculous amounts of money. The first time my friends bought money I was disdainful (but thankful when they gave me a few plat). The next time they went to buy, I was used to having decent equipment and wanted to maintain that. But I always felt like I was cheating.

To be certain, some game companies *do* consider it cheating, and if caught, you can lose your account and be banned from their game. In an effort to limit it, most of the major players have enabled some kind of controls that limits the way you can transfer equipment (making things "soulbound" or "no-drop" for example). More recently, with World of Warcraft, certain transactions through the in-game mail system are monitored and scrutinized as well. Suppliers get around this by making face-to-face transactions in-game and trading directly.  Could this still be tracked? Of course. But staying hidden in the overwhelming amount of transactions that occur is what it's all about.

It's an odd thing, that these gaming companies are so dead set against a secondary market. Most seem to cite inflation and server economy as the reasons, and buying/selling their property as the reason for a ban. The suppliers try to cover their own asses by claiming that they are not selling anything but the time and effort put in to earn the items or currency. A minor, but handy technicality.

At the complete other end of the spectrum are games like MapleStory where you can go to Target and buy gift cards for in-game goods and currency. This is very encouraged and is, indeed how the games make a majority of their money. I feel this is something akin to how the recording industry is afraid of online distribution and makes up things about the evils of piracy, where the groups embracing new technology and distribution methods are finding that it is lucrative.

Morality aside, now that I'm playing on PVP servers, having decent gear is much more important than on a PVE server, and your time is much better spent levelling so you don't get ganked, than farming so you can afford a better weapon.

How do you guys feel about it? 

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