About gold and gems

So about a week ago all hell broke out when Arena.net posted about their micro transactions. I'm not sure what people were expecting since for me it was pretty much a given that their would be micro transactions.  There was at the same time, and my say with malicious intentions imho, leaked images from the store.

The reasons seems people are angry that Arena.net is trying to make from their game.  I mean how "dare" a business try and make money.  It's a totally absurd to point of view.  How do you expect Arena.net to maintain servers over the coming years with just the upfront payment when you buy the game?  A game I might say that is cheaper than most other PC games at places like Kalahari.net (linky)

Then their are others that are saying that people can buy power.  Being able to buy small XP boosts that last an hour is hardly going to make you more powerful that someone who plays the extra 10 or so minutes to get the same amount of XP.  Everything that has been leaked of the shop relatively benign and you don't need them to succeed in the game.

And then their is being able to trade the gems you buy with real money for ingame gold and vice verca via the Auction House.  I applaud this.  Hopefully this will cut down on gold spammers in general chat.  It also gives a solution to both those who want to buy gems with real money and those that don't want to.  It will give both groups access to the shop.  Don't want to spend your real money to get something from the shop, play more. Want an item from the shop and you don't want to play more then pay for it.  As Benjamin Franklin would say: "Time is Money".