[Lucifar]

I never played MMO's for the economy side of the game. Never made much money in EQ, I think after 5 years I had built up 200k pp - most of that bening in the last few months sellings OOW tradable armor drops while farming for spell runes. I never considered buying any money in EQ though becuase plat was not a requirement to raid. At most it could get you crap for alts, toys or the odd earing type upgrade now and then.

I finally had to buy WoW gold for the first time recently, and I resent the game a bit for doing that, but I still enjoy raiding a lot and I'd rather spend $30 to give me the gold to keep up repairs and potions for the next 6 months than just quit the game.

I might play 3 or 4 hours a week outside of raiding tops. I only have so much time to play, and without levels or AA to work on, raiding for me is the main fun in the game.
Ideally I would be able to spend those 3-4 hours doing the 60 instances with a group of friends. It would probably just cover repair costs for the week. However, they aren't necc on at the same time as me, ot they might prefer to spend their time in BG's. Others who are in the same situation as me seem to find solo gold farming tolerable - so there aren't the people out there looking for instance farming groups (of my guild/friends).
Solo stuff in WoW is totally boring to me and so when its an option between doing something ingame I dont like and achieving the same thing with secondary market for 1/10 of the time invested, the choice was simple.