Real Money Trading is the practice of exchanging real money for in-game money. It’s recently become a big deal in MMOs, especially World of Warcraft. But is it a really a big deal? Some say yes, but I say no. In fact, I think that it improves the game more than it hurts it. The only real issue I have with the practice is the Chinese gold farmers that are working in sweatshops to get the gold. But, now, even that is changing.

Chinese gold farming is really becoming a thing of the past. Sites like Sparter (no link so we don’t get sued) are all player-driven. They’re whole marketing plan involves the fact that you don’t have to send your money to a Chinese gold farming sweatshop. They claim that all of the gold they sell is direct from other gamers. So, perhaps this will stop a lot of the gold farming issues.

But that isn’t the issue here. The real issue is the act of buying gold, regardless of where it comes from. Is buying gold wrong? Does it hurt the game? I would actually say that no, it doesn’t. Gold buying, far from being detrimental to a game, actually helps it improve and become a better game.

It doesn’t really change how much enjoyment someone gets from the game. Look at it like this: There are many people all over the world into hot rods. Some people like to buy old cars and fix them up themselves, putting a lot of work into the car so they can show it off. Others like to just buy nice car and enjoy driving them around. Both people are getting equal amounts of enjoyment; one is just paying a bit extra to save themselves some time.

Essentially buying gold is nothing more than buying time. There are a bunch of large, endgame raids in the new Burning Crusade content. Many guilds go through, or attempt to go through, these raids multiple times per week. All of that raiding requires a large amount of potions and elixirs. Those potions don’t come free. Each player has to either buy the potions they need on the auction house or spend their time farming the materials to make them. Many guilds just spend the cash and buy gold to get the materials. That saves time for them, and lets them continue raiding and playing the game.

Also, newbies benefit from gold buying as well. If someone was to buy gold at an early level and deck out their character with good gear at the start, it stands to reason that they’d have more fun and would probably stick around longer. They might even grab some of their friends and tell them about the game. In the end, there’s nothing wrong with more players in game. I’m sure Blizzard wouldn’t complain about the extra revenue.

The same idea can apply to the casual gamer. They’re someone that wants to be well geared and powerful without having to spend all their free time grinding and farming for materials and money. Letting a player like that buy gold would keep them in the game and paying a monthly fee when otherwise they might have quit.

Now, I don’t want any of this to be taken the wrong way. I don’t want it to seem as if I’m saying that gold buying is required for all players to get enjoyment out of WoW. That’s not the case at all. In fact, in the AllRPG WoW guild there is a druid who has managed to get himself two hundred gold at level 28 (there’s your credit, Fabs). So it’s not impossible to get the money you need to play. I just think that buying gold is a reasonable alternative for those that don’t have the time to farm.

There is another side that I’ve heard brought up. Having a bunch of players that rely on gold buying to get all of their gear may just create a legion of newbies that don’t know how to put the effort into the game in order to get what they want. I don’t really put much stock in that though. I think a lot of the people who are buying gold are people that know how to play, but are just buying gold in order to avoid wasting time farming and getting back to playing the game.

And in the end, why does the skill level of other players matter? There are bad players who don’t buy gold as well as bad players who do. To me, bad players aren’t an issue. Change instance groups or join a raiding guild that doesn’t suck. Or, if it’s your guild, make new players go on trial runs before you have them join. There are many easy alternatives to this issue.

I’ve also heard people say that farming gold ruins the economy of the game and makes top-tier items near impossible to get for normal players. There are a few important failings behind this logic though. Many items in World of Warcraft have a required level to use. That means that no matter how rich a level 5 character is, they can’t use equipment or items that a level 65 character counts on using daily. Also, many of the better items in the game can only be gained through instances and raids and are “bind on pickup”. That means that the items cannot be sold or traded to another player. They have to be earned through playing the game.

So in the end, gold buying isn't really detrimental to the game as whole. Some might see it as cheating, which is understandable. There is no answer to what some may see as a moral issue. But as I said, gold buying is something that lets all groups of people enjoy the game no matter how much time they have to devote to the game.