All MMOs have money sinks of one kind or another to ensure that players are regularly siphoning-off their cash and, hopefully, maintaining an economy that doesn’t artificially inflate due to everyone being rich and driving up the cost of goods and resources. Accordingly, there are many ways MMOs do it. Some are OK, and some are a total pain.
Which money sinks are you “OK” with, and which do you hate?
For mine, I have always, always, always, hated paying “rent” on my house/apartment in games. Houses are such a non-essential in many ways; they largely serve as places to store equipment and, maybe, decorate with items if the game allows that sort of thing.
They aren’t usually a massive focal point for people in games… yet, there they are, every week, trying to take some stupid amount of money out of your game account, which you feel compelled to pay… yet you hardly ever go to your house to make it “worth it”.
Why can’t a game introduce the concept of buying a house outright? Once it’s bought, that’s it! No more charges! They really are such a minor thing, relatively speaking, that ongoing rent ends up being a real turn off. Yeah, this is my #1 hated money sink.
Conversely, I’ve never had too much trouble with the concept of paying for “fast travel” across a map. Sometimes the cost is a little steep (there’s an absolutely stupid one, simply for going across town in Bree in LotRO, for example), but on the whole, fast travel is usually worth it, and I never seem to pay it too much attention; it is what it is, and does what it says on the box, so to speak.
So what money sinks do you like/dislike? And, of course, what ones do you want to see in TOR?