[machina_ex_deus]

It wasn't socialist, it was the extreme case of anti-money-laundering. In some way it was the most strict social-credit-supervisor sees all economy and prevents illegal dealings experiment in a game. You couldn't trade any value at all to other players above some low threshold, and everything was explicitly priced to prevent all transfer of value. If you tried to trade something whose grand-exchange price difference exceeded a limit, you'd be blocked.

I remember there were items which were intentionally mispriced in the grand exchange, and other items which were unsellable "junk" were used to pad trades. So if you had "junk" you could find "mints" (it was literally mints) and make an "equal value" trade that really isn't equal value, or it is but not because of the values the game expects. It was interesting watching how true economic value tries to wiggle its way through a dystopian all-seeing anti-money-laundering system.

They eventually killed that system because obviously it ruined the game, but it was interesting that even in a game someone tried to take absolute totalitarian measures to fight money laundering, despite the huge players backlash.