Regarding the "wrong-ness" of gold buying / selling, most folks are focused on whether this breaks the game. I don't think this is Blizzard's main concern when policing gold selling. I think the primary reason is to avoid the sticky subject of virtual taxation. If Blizzard were to make no attempts to prevent real money transactions for their virtual items, Blizzard could be said to encourage or allow real money transactions. If that is the case, then it is a legitimate business. If it is a legit business, governments are going to want to get their hans on a cut through taxes. And if you can tax the purchase of virtual gold, it isn't much of a stretch to tax in game purchases made with that virtual gold.

And if you don't think this sort of thing is already happening, think again. Congress was to release a report in August of this detailing their findings on taxation of virtual goods

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/06/26/u_s_to_tax_virtual_worlds_/1

Scary stuff. I'm sure Blizzard doesn't want to have their name attached to a new type of tax, and this is a good way to make sure that doesn't happen.

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