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Gold Buying - Time Saver or Cheating?
Sunday's online version of The Wichita Eagle has a piece on buying gold in a MMOG. The author of the piece examines what's involved, and ponders whether such an action is cheating, or just a shortcut. From the article: "Getting my gold was a snap. The smallest quantity for sale by IGE was 500 pieces for $60, about twice what I wanted to spend. I decided to go for it, however, as I simply could not abide the prospect of skinning even one more level-10 boar. Within 20 minutes, the gold appeared in my WoW character's mailbox." From a Cathode Tan post. What is your opinion: Cheating or Shortcut?
I have to agree.
I bought "gold" for City of Heroes twice, both times spending like 20 or 30 USD. This was while I was in my fullblown addiction phase. I've since kicked the habit entirely.
Anyway, my reasons were mostly to correct pas mistakes. I would normally play characters I'd created since the game came out a while ago, and eventually wanted to fix a bunch of my newbie mistakes. Ie, designing a costume that didnt suck nd re-outfitting him with the correct enhancements.
Looking back at it, I can't believe how stupid it was. It wasn't a lot of money and did make things a little easier/nicer for a while. But it was stupid.
As for cheating... there's not a whole lot to get in CoH. I mean, if someone from WoW used bought gold to buy a rare mount or something I could sort of see it as cheating. But in CoH, where you're limited to costumes and enhancements, there's not much benefit.
The IRS doesn't distinguish between "income" due to hobby and "income" due to work
Actually, it does, but both are taxed. If you claim "hobby income" you can deduct "hobby losses", but "hobby losses" can never exceed "hobby income", unlike business losses which can exceed income and reduce your tax bill.
Because of this, very few people use the hobby income rules, instead opting to just treat their hobby as a business if it is enough income that they are afraid the IRS might catch on.
IANATL (tax advisor), but I've been doing my own business taxes for years.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.