Of course, players who are against these transactions point out that this method of having fun is at the expense of other players who worked hard in the game to attain those achievements. It's not about buying fun as much as it is about destroying other players' sense of achievement in the game and rendering their effort meaningless.
I have neither bought or sold, but as someone who plays a lot of games and takes their time leveling, it does cheapen the 'value' and 'accomplishment' of reaching say level 50 when you are grouped with another level 50 who just 'bought' the character. I guess it's a way of life in today's MMORPGs, I would prefer it were not so. [CoH, M, 44]
If your goal in playing the game is to amass a fortune (a goal which, by the way, is fully supported by the game itself) and you do so by playing fairly (working hard, no cheats, no out of game transactions) and playing hard, how do you reconcile that in your mind? You are who you want to be, and someone, simply because they have more expendable real-world money, takes that away and the staff does nothing about it (this is acceptance, by the way...passive acceptance) how do you feel? /em steps off soapbox. Sorry about that. [SWG, M, 29]
Personally, the fact people will pay RL money in order to buy say, a gun in Star Wars Galaxies, is the mark of ignorance and laziness. Any item can be had with enough effort in the game, so why does someone take a shortcut like this in order to not have to play the game.... Isn't that the point? To play the game? [SWG, M, 28]
But players who support these transactions would argue that players who purchase in-game capital are indeed working as well. After all, RL currency doesn't appear effortlessly either. They would point out that the effort was comparable but merely took place in a different location in a different mode.
I don't see anything wrong with buying or selling items -- if a person works and has extra disposable income, it is a nice way to 'make up' some play time that they lost by working. [CoH, M, 31]
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