i ran across this article and thought is was an interesting read http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/47220.
basically about a group of wow players in floridia that has actually filed a class action lawsuit against a gold selling company that spams them in wow. it also mention s about blizzards lawsuit against another one.
this got me thinking thant maybe a solution would be to change how the marketing of the future and current mmos are done. i mean switch to some thing that has proven to make a profit for the company that runs them. possibly goto something like guild wars. where you buy the game play for fee just buy campaigns/expansions once a year. and in between the devs do in game events like double xp weekend or weekend of increased rare drops/spawn ect. and make all servers exchange servers. and open up a game store where the company sells extra char char slots, gold. items such as potion to give a short term xp boost you name it. it similar to guildwars marketing except they don't have exchange servers. but even tho they still have some spam it no wheres near as bad as with eq2 or wow there by easier for them to deal with. this would be better than the pay to play based games on account these spammers don't like to compete directly against the ones that runs the game cause they will most likely lose. and another benifit would be the game would recieve a continual influx of new players and reduce server decline and with more people that would use possibly use exchange services or the store it would potententially increase soe profits and comtinually renew the community and resulting in a win win situation. plus reduce the spam as those gold sellers will now have to compete with the the big boys and possible get sued by them for trying since legally with th eula this would be soes ingame monoply.
it something to think about or ponder isn't it??