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MMOGs are extremely popular with the players due to their immersive design and tools allowing them to create and participate in the virtual realities. As players create trade, buy and sell their Runescape Gold assets within games with real money commerce naturally follows as a consequence.
Having assigned real value to the virtual currency and other assets, players created a secondary market for MMOGs, the release of Blizzards' World of Warcraft in 2004 and its subsequent huge success across the globe has forced both MMOG and their secondary markets into mainstream consciousness, and many new market places have opened up during this time.
A quick search for WoW Gold on Google will show a multitude of sites (90+ sponsored results as of June 2006) from which Gold can be purchased.
Law aspect: Inasmuch as players are ascribing real money value to virtual game assets and thus those parties who sell MMOG items earn real revenue the industry started attracting attention of government and taxation agencies.
Earlier in January 2009 Washington Post and other papers reported that IRS has plans to closely watch on the millions of small firms along with individuals making profits on virtual economies. Taxpayer advocate Nina Olson in her annual report told the IRS that it should proactively address emerging issues such as those arising from virtual worlds. Her report said that about $1 billion in real dollars changed hands in computer-based environments during 2005.
Additionally, more than 16 million people are said to have active subscriptions in these worlds, many of which have their own virtual economies and currencies.
Still earlier in 2006 Korean government was reported as proposing a bill named Amendment for Game Industry Promoting Law for prohibiting acts of exchanging in-game money to real money.