Guild Wars has a similar customization system, but offers players more freedom. Players can choose whether they wish to soulbind their weapons before equipping them. (Soulbinding gives the player a 20 percent boost in weapon efficiency.) Armor, on the other hand, is soulbound from purchase, though players can trade various enhancement runes.
City of Heroes and City of Villains have made the economy very low priority, placing emphasis on guild prestige, which is no-trade and can only be earned by supergroup (guild) members in "Supergroup Mode" (dressed in preset colors while playing with members of their supergroup). Currency is extremely easy to earn, and there is only one thing to buy with it: Enhancements for skills. Once these Enhancements have been used, there is no way to remove them and trade them to other people; in effect, City of Heroes/Villains does not have an economy.
Some MMOGs have tried to adapt to the secondary market with varying degrees of success. SOE's Station Exchange, available in EverQuest II, is seen by many players as a failure. Sony tacked an official and sanctioned secondary market onto a game not prepared for it. While a secondary market would no doubt exist in the game with or without the publisher's approval, many players view the Exchange to be Sony's surrender.
Puzzle Pirates' doubloon servers have an additional currency (doubloons), as well as the game's standard pieces of eight. Players can earn pieces of eight and trade them for doubloons, or purchase doubloons via the official game site. In the comparatively noncompetitive environment of Puzzle Pirates, this has much less negative impact than the Sony Exchange in EverQuest II.
And then, there are games like Second Life, which have embraced and prepared for the secondary market. Second Life's secondary market does not squelch opportunity, it creates it; just as Lineage initially allowed me the chance to shine and show my potential, Second Life allows creative minds to flourish. And yet, Second Life's secondary market is largely different from other games: You don't buy virtual property or virtual items or time; you buy ideas and concepts and art.
And yet, these partial solutions are imperfect, and, while they may work for some, they require key parts of the MMOG experience to be removed from games. Economies are a huge part of many MMOGs, with rare equipment and spells earning players bragging rights as well as powerful advantages over others. Many of the new methods being used to combat the secondary market result in more casual and less complex gameplay.
So does this leave players who are seeking worlds free of outside influence out of luck? While honest players can still find ways to earn large amounts of in-game money and compete with those who buy their virtual currency, the secondary market always affects everyone. Money is constantly changing hands in these virtual worlds, and it is impossible to completely avoid tainted money without avoiding trading altogether. The economy is warped, with prices on upper-level gear hugely inflated. No one wants to be "second best," and as such, the demand for mid-level gear is often extremely low. In Lineage II, very few people run around in middle-of-the-road, "C-grade" gear; they have the best armor and weapons that their character can wear. In City of Villains, having the best Enhancements possible is a given.
In games not built with expectations of secondary market interference, this creates huge problems for most players. Videogames have yet to go the way of "everybody's it" tag; there is competition, there are limited and contested resources, and only a select few can be at the top of the top. Buyers drive prices up with ridiculous amounts of virtual money, forcing non-buyers out of the market. For example, there is limited guild housing in Lineage II, and as soon as a house goes to auction, one guild or another will immediately put the maximum bid of 1 billion adena down on the house. And no, they didn't earn that killing bugbears.
