Again, another post pilfered from my blog site. I'm a dirty thief.
Something I've wanted to rant about while shaking my head in a fit is account auctions. I can't find which side of the fence to stand here without being a hypocritical jerk. Is it ok to buy character accounts, game currency, and game items? Well it's obviously against game companies policies, that fact isn't stopping websites from making millions of dollars from fictional wealth.
Part of the problem is one every experienced MMO gamer has been through. You get a group, and the warlock doesn't know what your talking about when you tell him to summon his Imp for Blood Pact. Maybe you've grouped with the hunter who blinks at you when you tell him to CC a mob. These are, more then likely at least, people whom bought their accounts over Ebay or some other website. They come to the game brand spanking new without a CLUE how to play their class. This hurts the entire group that has to suddenly give out RPG 101 lessons. There is such a huge learning process as you level up with your character.
Then there is buying in-game currency. This can be a pain as it can hurt the game's economy. If your wondering why that even matters, check out the inflation in some games like EverQuest. On new servers an item would be like 1000 platinum, while on an older server it would be 100k platinum. This kinda slaps a newcomer in the face until he either gets lucky with an item drop, or goes out to buy gold. Players wanting to raise their professions in World of Warcraft have a hard time having to compete with people only farming mining nodes/herbs/etc with people farming to make gold which they turn around and sell.
So what's the solution? The business of selling game accounts/gold/items isn't going anywhere as long as how the games we play stay the way they are. No matter what, I think it's the players right and choice here. I also think if a player decides to buy a character account, don't be a jerk. Look up your character on the web, look up play guides, experiment with your character for a few hours to get the hang of all those shiny spells. It will make your first impression go from people shunning you to people's silent respect.
If my opinions don't wanna make you find me and remove my bodily organs, come over to my blog site and post your own experiences or just talk about whatever.
http://themmoexperience.blogspot.com 
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Selling gold though is a terrible crime because it destroys the economy like you point out.
nice post
But for gods sake, stop plugging your stupid fucking blogspot. All of your posts have 0 comments on your blogspot for a reason, nobody reads it; your blogs get 5+ comments here ;P
I used to play an MMO called EVE, and finding a person who bought their account/bought in-game currency was awesome, because they would have really expensive stuff and not know what to do with it, so when i blew these people up, they pretty much just handed all the things they bought over to me.. it was wonderful. Also for an MMO like EVE buying and selling characters is quite legal and is fine (as long as you pay with in-game currency), there is actually a forum section devoted to just that. In some cases it was a necessity for some, in game mechanics can actually prevent you from going to major trade hubs, so a second character might be needed.
I agree that buying in-game currency can screw with the economy, but it depends on the volume that it is bought in, also as I'm aware in WoW there is a lot to spend gold on that has nothing to do with other players. For instance mounts and skills, they both can cost a bunch (skills not as much as mounts) and someone might be willing to spend a few bucks to get something really cool. Of course, i think we would agree that some of the gold bought is to purchase things off the auction house, but i cant imagine it being that much as most of the really sick gear you can only get off of mobs or through PVPing.
Also, there are a lot of loopholes to look at. A person can, at least i know for EVE, sell something completely different (say a picture) for an odd price but offer a winner's prize of a free game character (which is entirely legal).
I will agree that buying character or currency is quite stupid, and in my opinion would be better if it was unable to happen. But in order to do that they would have to cut off trading in all MMO games, which would make them more like enhanced single-player games, that just happen to have more players.