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I don't play bashing games except for research purposes (Everquest, etc), but think of it this way: In Everquest, most people pretty much only have one goal: Get to the highest level and kit yourself out with cool equipment. People won't react well to the company selling them that equipment (though, of course, it's still for sale, and it's a bit irrational to care whether other people are buying it from the company or from 3rd party sources). That's because something like Everquest is focusing largely on MUD-as-game vs. MUD-as-world. In something towards the 'game' end of things, selling the point of the game is a bit like selling extra moves in chess (not that bashing games are as tight a game as chess, of course, but you get the idea I suspect).
In games that lean more towards 'world' than 'game', there's much less reason to object if you're the sort of player who might object. Inequality is part of worlds, where it might not be part of games.
I mean, players generally certainly will buy things in any type of environment that they value. Doesn't matter whether it's a chatter, a roleplaying intensive game, a bashing game, pvp, political, economic, house-wife simulator, whatever. If people are playing it, the context has value to them, and if the context has value, things within the context will also have value. I just tend to believe that players (and potential players) will react better to selling things in 'worldy' environments as opposed to 'gamey' environments. PvP is often instituted in MUDs as more of a 'worldy' feature, though that's just a design decision. Buying items in Quake or some other purely gamey PvP environment probably wouldn't fly so well.
So I guess what I really meant to say is that it's more a matter of distinguishing between world and game when you decide what you're going to sell. There are few to no examples of black & whiteness here either aside from extremes like Quake (pure game) or Habbo (pure socializer).
--matt
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