the problem is it circumvents the staff to sell items to players for real money, the only way to turn real money into in game gold is to buy things from the donation store, and sell them for game gold.
if players could directly buy items from other players for real money, then no-one would ever need to buy donation items - 90% of the ones that sell, do so not because people need them, but because people are happy to buy them because they know they are helping the server. the only things that are actually needed for imo are skillball for crafter or tamer, and donation ethy for low time accounts. everything else is easy to macro up anyway and is mostly bought as a currency item which is given value by everyone agreeing to give it value
the market for them would die off if people only bought them when they needed them, rather than new people buying them when they need gold. it'd be like cutting out the middleman from 90% of trades, but how is the middleman supposed to earn a living when you do that?
and the thing is, that sorta middleman job is where their income comes from, but it's not the main service that they provide, and losing one might mean damaging the other.
GMs shouldn't sell perfect items to players either, cos the real odds on those items are in the millions, and paying what they should actually be worth in terms of game time would be like a million dollars for a perfect 5 mod, it'd become the only legit way to get them and would just mess the game up a lot
