Wage Slave article from 1up Options

[Dive]

Interesting article on gold/gil "farmers"

excerpt

[Crushinator]

I agree with you, that the time spent earning real money is just as valuable as the time you spend grinding on a game. If you have the means, you don't need to waste hours upon hours to get that sword or whatever to progress in the game, when you only get a small time to play the game because of your real life. Unfortunately there is no even-exchange for hours worked at a job and hours spent dicking around on an MMO. Conceivably, from ground zero everyone on a game has the same potential to reach the same ends. But with real-world money, obviously everyone is coming from a different income. Dropping the cash for 500 gold in WoW for one guy might mean one less gold backscratcher, but it might be the month's rent for someone else.

Like you said, gamers won't see it that way, and in the end aren't all MMO players gamers? Since the basic nature of a game is competition, keeping the playing field even is in the best interest of everyone's enjoyment.

With all the new features of X360's Live packages, (most prominently: user-created marketplace, Live currency (some kinda points thing) system, and MicroTransactions) it looks like we will get a first taste for "legit" character twinking and cash for in-game content very soon, if the publishers latch onto the programs.