| Sold - Yes, during Ultima Online's days
Bought - Yes, WoW
I'm well beyond my EQ glory days of viewing it as morally wrong. Frankly, I no longer care. My time in real life is more important than game time. Using a small portion of my income (and thus, hours not spent in game) is worth it to avoid wasting man hours doing tedius/trivial tasks that require no skill.
Just a quick made up example for most people with decent incomes:
It's simple math - 1 hour in the real world could be $25.00+ dollars earned
1 hour in WoW could be 100 gold if I'm lucky on good drops.
100 gold = $6 dollars
My time is worth more than $6.00 an hour in value. I'd rather pay the $6.00 and have money left over, along with building my future income beyond the $25 when WoW is long gone. My comfort 5 years from now is more important than some small pride of paying for repair costs.
It's the same reason I drop my car off at my local mechanic on even minor issues instead of fixing it myself.
Now as for buying gold beyond skipping trivial/tedius features - I haven't done that yet, for gear I generally feel it should be earned. With that said, a few years ago I would have slapped myself for my views now, so that might very well change. There is a line though, I don't want to see real life money buying high end raid gear or group content. |