Some frequently cited major bannable offences in most MMORPGs are selling / buying of virtual currency for real money (called RMT, real-money trade), selling / buying an account, or powerleveling, that is paying somebody to level up your character on your account. The legal position on account selling and powerleveling is relatively clear cut: the player only has a single-user license for his account. For account selling or powerleveling people must necessarily give their account password to somebody else, which is against the terms of service, and thus bannable.
 
The legal position on RMT is a grey area in most jurisdictions. It rests on the assumption that virtual items are part of the intellectual property of the game company. Thus the game companies claim that you can’t legally sell something that doesn’t belong to you in the first place. Some people try to get around that problem by claiming they aren’t actually selling the virtual item (which doesn’t leave the game and thus remains the property of the game company), but are selling their time. That doesn’t stop the game companies from banning gold sellers, because “selling time” here is just semantics. What actually happens is that the buyer sends cash, and the seller sends gold, which very much looks like a sale.
 
In spite of being bannable offences, RMT and powerleveling are still going on in large scale, it is a multi-million dollar business. So I was wondering what would happen if the game companies got a better grip on it, and could really manage to completely suppress all gold sales and powerleveling. Would there be a way in which companies could offer services which help players advance faster in the game for a payment of real money without breaking the EULA and TOS as they exist now?
 
And I think the key here is the selling of time concept. Powerleveling is only not allowed when it involves sharing accounts and passwords. But if a player paid somebody else with a level 70 character to run behind him and help him leveling, no violation of the EULA or TOS would take place. In a similar vein the gold farmer could also group with the gold buyer, put the group loot options on free for all, and receive cash for running around for one hour with the buyer collecting all loot. I remember that at the time of the opening of the gates of Ahn’Qiraj there were several servers where powerful guilds encouraged other players to contribute resources by holding a lottery in which the winner would get a spot on a Molten Core raid with first dibs on all loot useable by his class. If such raid spots would be sold for cash, I don’t think it would break any existing rules. And even if the game companies added new rules, such a transaction would be nearly impossible to detect. You can’t ban people for not pulling their weight in a raid, after all.

大多数网络游戏经常会有封号的事情的发生，封号的目标无非是：出售购买虚拟货币、账号，代练。游戏厂商在用户服务条款中对游戏账号法律地位的阐述已经相对明确：玩家是游戏账号的唯一拥有者和使用人。厂商认为，由于在出售账号，代练账号时，玩家将账号密码授予了另外一个人，违反了用户服务条款，所以要封号。

现金交易处于司法领域的灰色地带，其根源在于虚拟物品乃厂商知识产权的一部分这个前提条件的存在。因此，当双方产生冲突时，厂商会首先拿起法律的武器告诉玩家：所有人都不可以出售任何不属于自己的东西。一些玩家则试图为自己辩解，我们出售的不是虚拟物品，而是我们的时间。尽管如此，厂商还是没有停止封号，他们认为“出售时间”不过是语意上的噱头的罢了。本质上是买家付钱，卖家出货的交易行为。

尽管有着封号的风险，现金交易和代练还是广泛地存在。这可是一桩有着几百万美元收入的大生意啊。因此，我想搞明白的是，在游戏厂商游采取了更好的压制措施之后将会发生什么，会有更好的方法使得玩家在不违反用户服务条款的情况下进行现金交易吗？

我认为问题的关键就在于“出售时间” 这个概念。代练等的现金交易只在共享账号和密码的时候才被禁止。如果玩家只是付钱让一个70级的玩家跟在后面帮助升级，那么就不会与条款相违背了。同样，卖金币的玩家也可以通过与买金币的玩家组队，将战利品分配设置为自由模式来完成交易。我记得在安其拉之门开放的那天，一些大的工会组织鼓励玩家向工会贡献原材料来获得奖券，以此获得在Raid“熔火之心”时各种族专有战利品的优先权。如果出售这个优先权，我不认为这样做会违反当前用户服务条款中的任何内容。即使增加新的规则，这种类型交易也很难被查出来。别忘了，你是不可以因为玩家自愿放弃Raid中的某些优先权而封玩家的帐号的。