Another solution would be to use RL money to buy the coins that you need for the premium account
With all due respect, I find answers like that to be nothing more than juvenile flippancy. It offers no attempt at actually
solving a problem. It just sounds "cutesy" on the surface. If it were that simple,and only about money, Upjers would have just made this a pay-to-play site, and gone out of business due to lack of interest.Everyone knows that the company needs a certain income to continue. It is sophomoric to repeatedly use that point as an argument in problem solving. It keeps everyone on square one all the time.
Having said that, I think it is only fair to also say that we, who cannot afford to continuously spend a lot of money on a browser game, are grateful to those who do. There is nothing for anyone if it doesn't happen somewhere. As Professor Nash (the real guy from A Beautiful Mind) proved, and received a Nobel Prize in
Economics for, we are all in it together, and we all do best when we help each other!
So thanks to those of you who do.
However, it is not in anyone's best interest to create an environment that crosses the lines of balance. At some point, new players will never be able to afford to buy coins enough for premiums from sellers because of senseless inflationary actions. Advertising to buy them high (aimed at newbies, really) just to sell them higher is like the ridiculous speculating in RL markets that is ruining economies world-wide.
It is inflation for the sake of inflation. And that can never serve any productive end for the whole.
Back when I used to go to Negril, Jamaica 3-4 times a year, I watched as the "street vendors," not understanding exchange rates, used to sell "JA" (Jamaican dollars) for more than the exchange rate, which was about 10-1 when I started going there. It was not illegal, at first. The only thing they knew is that $ US was worth something and JA wasn't, in their minds. They would try to out-hustle each other by offering more JA per dollar than the guy just below them on the hill. (apt metaphor, as it turned out) Over the course of a couple of years, I watched them so destroy the value of JA that it became illegal to sell outside of the Exchanges and Banks, and a massive public awareness campaign got launched on the radio and TV stations there. (which meant less music, dammit!) But it was just not enough to get people's bias for the $ US out of their heads. In only a couple of years, the exchange rate went from 10-1 to a whopping 35-1!!! Money was flowing into the country, but it was being given right back to the tourists, with interest(immediate inflation, actually), by the massive number of street venders all over the country. Amazing! And very sad. Everyone got poorer, but the already-poor got totally hammered!
So, when it comes to these kinds of issues, I have a particular viewpoint that makes it hard for me to accept a "buyer beware" kind of response. The problem affects too many people, and deserves better.
We may think it is OK for the
Wealthy Only sign to hang on the Real World, but it should
never hang in the game world!
Just sayin'...