[Threshold]

That is a good point that is related to the powergamer thread Mina created. It takes a mature, experienced developer to know that you can never balance a game by focusing on the extreme. People that have tons of time and tons of money are just blessed. You can't balance for such lucky people.

Two people make a similar point:

and:

I think those two people really hit the nail on the head. Fairness in any other context is an unattainable fantasy. The only type of fairness a developer can reasonably achieve is fairness of opportunity. Let everyone know the rules in advance, give everyone the same access to the paths of advancement, and then let people decide how much time and/or money they want to invest.

Also, as Mina noted, I'd much rather buy perks from the developer than from third parties. At least the developers won't spam me all day, compete with me for access to content, hack people's accounts to get gold to sell, or all manner of other things third parties do that are FAR worse than having a developer sell perks. Furthermore, if the developer is getting the money, at least some portion of that will go back into the development and maintenance of the game I enjoy.