I took several more, but none of them were particularly exciting. This one kind of hits on something we talked about in class back during the gaming unit: gold sellers. As you can see in the chat box (lower left), I received the message in purple from a gold seller's account.
This is a semi-common occurrence in Rift, as with many MMORPGs. Usually what'll happen is the seller will be on a different account from the actual gold farmer. At times (at least from anecdotal evidence from forum posts), these accounts can be former regular players' accounts that had their password compromised in some way. Usually if that is the case, the seller will have a pronounceable name like Garnadoir does here. Other times, more typically with games that have free trials, the character names given to sellers will be some sort of random gibberish so that the seller can make trial account after trial account and repeatedly send messages to actual players soliciting their services (though many games restrict communication for trial players expressly to combat this).
Rift makes this a pretty easy thing to deal with. Simply right-clicking the name of a player who has sent you a gold seller message will give you the option to report them for spamming, which will immediately "ignore" the player's further whispers as well as reporting the account to Rift's administrators. There's similarly a spam report option for people who send you these offers through the mail.
Of course the primary concern to players is the effect on in-game inflation gold selling can have. This is separate, of course, from the real-life labor issues tied to gold farming, though regardless the prevailing attitude toward farmers in-game is one of disdain... except of course for those who use their services.
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