| I bought several thousand dollars worth of FFXI gil from the Japanese market and sold it to the US market for more than 100% return rate until the markets balanced out.
When switching games sometimes I'll sell off extra cash in the game to give me a bit of a start on my new game. It can be hard to start on an established server with nothing at all. Its one thing I love about new servers. For a while you can actully play the newbie level of the game and earn good stuff without having high level help. After a while low levels can be the hardest money wise because you are competeing with a ton of alts trying out a new class spending mass gold for the low level gear.
WoW repair costs are huge and basically require you to farm trash which I don't like. I made a lot of money in WoW by having exclusive access to some tradeskill recipies so I never had to farm for cash. If I was faced with farming for 10hours a week to learn new content or spend $50 and be set for several months I'd certainly consider buying some in game cash. I think for a lot of people its a matter of time investment required to farm the gold vs the time it took to farm the RL cash.
I think epic mounts encoured the buying of in game gold the most. | 