The Daily Grind: Should reputation matter?
If you have the money, you should be able to buy anything that's for sale, right? Yet sometimes vendors will refuse to sell you that one sweet halberd or armor set that you've been dying to have, simply because you haven't built up enough reputation with their faction/guild/association. Has any such item been worth grinding rep for? What exactly does this reputation system prove, other than that your service can be purchased by the promise of leet loot?
This system only really seems to matter for games in which there is a definitive ending, where moral choices do, in fact, have consequences. In an MMO, even such a moral system can be made obsolete; because the game can continue indefinitely, a player can go from total evil to complete good and back again, given enough game hours. Perhaps we're missing a critical element, but do we really need the reputation element in MMOs?
