I had an interesting idea recently, and I can't say I'm fully versed in all of the legal/business issues involved in what I am proposing... but it's an interesting idea nonetheless.

The vast majority of gamers are pretty well acquainted with idea of purchasing virtual goods or characters in any MMORPG through eBay. Not long after beginning of the genre certain players realized that other players would be willing to buy the goods they've acquired. When you think about it, this mentality makes perfect sense. If a player is willing to pay a monthly subscription to play a game, then it would stand to reason that they would also be willing to purchase items, equipment, or whatever.

Essentially it's the creation of a virtual economy; supply and demand at it's finest. Players want certain goods or skills without having to go through the time and effort needed. Even the money needed becomes an issue if you have to pay for the method of acquisition itself. In the real world, people constantly purchase goods on this principle.

This is still viewed as a major problem by every game company that has an MMORPG, and even eBay itself just recently removed all virtual content from their site. The logic is simple; these players are making profits from a platform that the game company created. Thus, these companies do what they can to prevent any player from selling or purchasing any virtual content with the product in question.

What if a company went the complete opposite way with it...? Total commitment.

What if Blizzard or NCsoft or whoever decided to hire players as employees to do nothing more than create characters and collect items that could be sold for cash through the company's own online store?

I don't know how I feel about that as a player, this could certainly be exploited to the average player's disadvantage; but the business side of me says that there is definitely a profit to be made.