I'm doing some research on real money trading in online games. I'm trying to get some opinions about people using real money to buy virtual items. Do you there are legitimate reasons to trade or is it cheating regardless? I've gotten a lot of responses from WoW players, so I'm hoping I can get a few from Lineage II players. Hopefully we can keep things civil.

Also, as part of my research, I'm also doing a survey (link at the bottom). It's only for people who have either bought or sold virtual items with real money. So if you have a few minutes, I'd appreciate you filling it out. If you don't know the answer to a question, just guess, I'd rather have a bad guess than no response.

http://oir.richmond.edu/Student/onlinetradingintro.htm

Are there legit reasons? Maybe, but I've yet to hear one. The typical reason people take advantage of RMT is plain and simple. They convince themselves that it is just a game and that they should not have to work to have fun. I've sold plenty of in game things in various games for real money, and I always feel dirty doing it.

Lineage2 is a strange animal, in that it is vitally important that your gear remain on par with your level even though it is almost impossible to do so without near constant effort. Be it setting up buy shops overnight or farming for things that have insane drop rates.

WoW is the one game where I fail to see the point of buying gold. I've been playing for about 3 weeks now, I was given 10 gold to twink myself out with early, and and currently nearing 40 with almost all my gear being blue. Making money in WoW is childs play, put every green item you find on the auction house. Sell any and every material you find and do not need. I had over 100 gold when I hit 35, and the majority of my gear was blue stuff already.

Im sure other games have the same problems, but I've not played any of them other than UO, and UO was new ground for people to work with, and as such it is no surprise that people bought and sold stuff for insane amounts of cash.

RMT is basicly a waste of your resources. If you can sell your ingame stuff for money that might be something else but using my hard earned cash to buy item x in game y sounds pretty lame to me. If i need to cheat i play a singleplayer game, cheaper and easier.

The only time i would accept RMT is when its a games basic concept. Like in Silkroad and some other asian games. Where there are no monthly fees and the game is financed by the developer by providing an store with various items to buy for real money.

The only legit reason I can think of is probably because if you don't have top end gear and spam SS all the time, you would be kicked out of the group. This is especially true before lvl 52.

Before I got alot of my alts upt o higher levels, my main was in his high 50s wearing Fine Plate and mostly D grade jewelry/ RIP gaunts, etc. It was pathetic. Luckily that was when the game was relatively new, but if that was the case right now you would get laughed out of every group.

I have different views on this issue.

Many will think that it's considered "cheating" since all you have to pay is money and it'll be more than what a regular player farms all day.

However, sometimes it's a "good" thing to pay for adena... if you could make 10$ an hour and you can only make 1 million by farming all day... I'd go with working for an hour and pay for 10 mil lol. I'm not saying that I do, but if I was desperate need of adena I'd just go out and work. Sitting in front of the computer for hours to "WORK" on adena is stupid. I'm going to work in real life and get MORE money FASTER.

Now if you were using money that's essential to your living (such as food, rent, kids etc), then you are very stupid to do RMT. I know people in korea that if they get a $1500 monthly check, they'll spend 500$ or so on adena EVERY MONTH to try make high enchanted weapon. Often times, people waste A LOT OF MONEY and have nothing left at the end. Crazy people...

The BIG reason I do not support RMT is that it brings chinese farmers that bug the hell out of real people who play for fun. If a chinese or any farm group/bot group takes a place that's a good place to farm/level, it bugs the hell out of people.

My major problem with RMT is that it ruins the economic system in the game. If anyone remembers back in the day when the websites listed prices for A grade and S grade items, you'll remember that an S grade weapon is supposed to cost somewhere around the neighbourhood of 20m. Evidently the rarer the item, the more expensive but 600m for an S grade weapon? that is a huge leap from 30m.

If not for RMT, S grade weapons would be even rarer and therefore would probably cost the same. Those sites were never based on any fact, just a random calculation based on NPC values most likely.

At this point, the economy is actually balanced because RMT is just so ingrained into the system. The only problem is the initial acquisition of capital (adena) in a large enough amount given the massive inflation of the adena currency and low rate of non-raid gear drops.