Gold, is it really that important?

I used to think it was. But the other day I was looking around at all the different sites that had info on GW and came across one that made me shake my head in disgust. It was a site where you could buy gold. I mean pay real money so your character in a GAME could have more gold. It was ridiculous. 250,000 gp for something like $200. Who would do this? It's the same in alot of online rpg games, you can pay real life money for something that you'll eventually get in game for free. Even if I was a millionaire I wouldn't pay some shmuck $200 for some gold that my character could spend. I mean come on, are people really that desperate? Things like this make me wanna puke.

this has been happening since the early years of everquest at the very least (possibly longer im not sure). Sadly, people do pay the price for this, and many great game economies have been ruined as a result of it. The fact that it continues today is a glowing icon of how such a tastless business is indeed still booming.

You can buy an entire set of the best eq ingame (same stats, better looking) for 75,000 gold total and after that, you can pretty much throw gold coins in the wishing well. Hell, you can run around Ascalon handing out platinum pieces to new people if you're feeling spiffy that day and it wouldn't really matter. Pretty soon, people are going to realize there is no market for selling items on IGE or EBAY because all it takes is a week or 2 actually playing the game and you'll get nearly everything you need.

People did it in UO wayyy before EQ.

Yea, let them sell gold, its not as if theres a lot of use for it, if you could expand or improve your guild hall it would be completely different mind you
Would give you something to shoot for after the games been beaten

You really need to look at it in perspective. In most MMORPGs it takes time to farm gold, and depending on your class often lots of it. In some games you will find that the economy has begun to run away as the powergamers are capable of farming massive amounts of cash and controll the rare item markets. When faced with the prospect of having to farm cash for maybe 4-6 hours a day over a few days or even weeks to be able to afford what they need, many may feel their time is more valuable and spend the $50 for the cash rather than spending 50+ hours farming it.

There are other posts like this in Riverside Inn. Locked.