Great article. To me it sums up everything that is bad about RMT trading games, its interesting how they were originally playing a subscriber game but found the world too slow so switched to the RMT one for faster "progress" since there are a lot of people asking for just this (it hits a nerve too with the news that WoW has added in a new cross server LFG tool, one of the features of which instantly teleports you to the instance, just like the RMT game described).

I read an interview with Alan Crosby at MMOFocus where at one point one of the interviewers said something along the lines of "Well when I was younger I had the time to raid all night, but now I want to see it more convenient for people with short play times". The problem I have with that really is that that's fine for him, but 5-10 years ago people like him were enjoying the not dumbed down game, now because he's not got the time like he used to in life he wants the game changed to suit his lifestyle, instead of changing his gaming to suit it.

It made me realise that it wasn't the kiddies that buy WoW gold so much that were driving the RMT and dumbing down, but more often the so called hardcore gamers. I think that they fail to understand the whole point of the games they are playing too often, and how the progress really works, especially like the woman in this article seeing exactly where the money for power was going to end.

Still these sort of games the gamer in the article was playing aren't anything new, flicking through my old Dragon magazines I see the same sort of scams being run with the play by mail. I think its telling when you hear of an entrepreneur deciding to create a game rather then a enthusiastic developer (and that poor excuse for a game did look crap!), the motivation from the start is just so wrong, but its something that seems to be increasingly getting worse in the industry with so many of the bland offerings out there (one thing why when I see genuine enthusiasm I really get excited by it).

Strangely a Amazon review summed this problem up for me perfectly, as they said, basically too many of these companies are exchanging real talent for BA/Bsc graduates.