The Daily Grind: Selling your MMO accounts

The debate over whether or not players should be allowed to sell their MMO accounts is almost as old as the genre itself. Most end-user license agreements prohibit players from lawfully selling their accounts and even eBay wants nothing to do with virtual items anymore. We thought it might be poignant to bring it back up again given a couple recent evolutions in MMOs and gaming in general.

First is the rise of the Free-2-Play sub-genre of MMOs. When a game costs nothing to download and nothing to play, what sort of effect do you think this should have on the argument? Does this mean that players are even less entitled to "ownership" of their accounts than before when they at least paid to play? On the flip side, there's the increasing popularity of trade-ins and used game reselling (from GameStop to Wal-Mart). If players are entitled to some kind of value for their previously owned console games, why not MMOs and their associated accounts? Let the debate begin (again)!