Yep, read both those earlier.
As for in-game assets converting to real-world capital - it's a very real business no matter how many lids you try to put on it. In the case of WoW, eBay/auction gold litteraly keeps a good portion of the hardcore players subscribed. Where they'd spend weeks grinding in order to afford certain items, they can now one-click-buy the funds to acquire them, and spend weeks using them to.. you guessed it, get better stuff.
It certainly inflates the existing in-game economy, something that destroyed games like SWG. Blizzard, however, was very wise in regulating it by creating several money sinks; the most prolific being the obvious inability to resell Soulbound/high level items, and having to vendor it for a fraction of its value.
In terms of cost-benefit ratios, farming for that currency or those items is easily 10x as time-consuming as it is to work a real job, earn those fifty or so dollars and cash them online.
The danger isn't in the actual purchase, but in the valuation of that purchase. When does buying game land, items or gear become more important than financial security for your family? At what point do virtual assets now take priority over true assets? Some claim there's no difference - time is time, and money is money.
Can you put a price tag on a sequence of bits, in some array of some cell in some row of some table of some database in some catalog of some suite on some server on some rack in some basement in some country? V-V-D...
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