I was having a look at the rather depressing Runes of Magic forums the other day when I came across
this thread. It is fairly substantial and quite complicated so I will try and summarize. This thread has over 12000 views, and all over one topic; a single player's weapon. To make a long story short this player has the best weapon in the game by a long, long way, and it is impossible that he should have gained the weapon without spending a lot of money at the cash shop. People have done calculations and have come up with a minimum of 300000 diamonds (3000 dias/99.99 euros while not on sale) needed to craft the weapon. Further calculations estimate that the weapon cost over 10000 euros, making the player who owns it one rich little kid, or one really sad older person.
An investigation is taking place at this moment as the GMs look into how exactly he was able to do this. This is perhaps the most extreme case I have heard of where microtransactions go wrong. One person in the thread said that he fought the player in an arena and was one-shotted for 30k dmg. To put this into perspective, a good tank has roughly 15k health. (Give or take) To me, this is unacceptable, and it highlights many players' greatest fear. In no circumstance should a player be able to one shot the best tanks in the game even after spending a fortune on the cash shop.
Unfair disadvantages abound in MMOs which allow microtransactions. Sure, most of the shops have the standard special mounts/potions/costumes/pets/teleportation or whatever, but many also have items that can give a player an advantage over others. In this extreme case it is clear that some people will do anything to be the best at a game, anything to get an advantage over the other players. It is up to the developers to ensure that this situation does not happen, as eventually it will kill the game as the PvP is pointless, and the end-game is constructed for those who either play for 70% of the day, or spend significant amounts of money in the cash shop.
