Originally Posted by Akryn
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If the economy got as bad as it has been in some games, it would be impossible to properly tweak your character (enchants, pots, etc.) without guild organization -- which would break a lot of casual raid/pvp guilds, who are Bliz's target audience.
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It would hurt the ones it would aim to help. I completely agree, but making this point is extremely hard to do to those who want it most (people who are "busy with real life", or lazy-ish people).
When I try to explain to my friend's kid what he does to his server's economy (and trade chat sanity) when he buys gold, I get a blank stare looking back at me like I'm attempting to steal his dog. If buying gold from WoW directly becomes available, a lot of people would buy it to escape farming mats, which drives prices of mats up because less people are farming for their own. Also, Crafting in WoW isn't rocket science; every crafted item has the same benefits (or iLevel, in the case of random stat crafted items). When mat costs rise because fewer people are farming them, crafters will start dwindling in numbers too, because there's less profit in the time invested... driving more and more need for players, casual and hardcore alike, to buy gold from Blizzard.
This is all hypothetical, as it is now, but still real concerns of people looking at what the future might hold for their game.