It's impossible to prevent people from starting with a clean reputation. They can always just re-roll.
Account trading is a good thing. It helps the economy and allows people to jump around classes they may not have ever played. Most people do not have the time or inclination to level a class they've never played before into the 40s or 50s just to determine if they like it. That's a huge time commitment. Account trading allows people to test out other classes without being irrevocably bound to the toon. If you buy a character and don't like the class, you can turn around and sell it again -- no harm, no foul.
This is an emulated server. It shouldn't be about having the big, swinging e-peen. It should be about letting people re-experience a great game, and letting them explore elements of it that they didn't have the chance to explore way back when. Account dealing allows players to experience more of classic EQ. Personally, I have very little interest in waking up at 3AM to kill a dragon with 60 other people in a trivial encounter that I've done 100 times before, just in hopes that I obtain a minimal gear upgrade. But I do have an interest in, say, trying out a bard for the first time. That's fun, and I could do it when I want and when I have time. But if I had to actually start a bard from level 1? Meh, not real appealing to me. I don't have the time to do that with every class I want to give a go. It's so much easier to just farm for a couple nights and buy a toon.
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