Look, the thing is that you are sliding a little off the topic here.
The point is not whether or not some people make a profit in EU, of course they do, depending on your definition of the word "profit". If you take into consideration the vast herds of sweat gatherers who are making $0.50/hr, then sure, lots of people are profiting. The reason so many people are objecting in these threads is the way in which MA markets this as a way for people to make actual RL cash.
The whole problem is that MindArk really likes to push the whole "sign up, come in, make a bunch of PEDs" aspect and that is not realistic for a new player. Not to take away from your accomplishment, but you started a very long time ago. I'm sure that you'd admit that things are much, much tougher for new players now.
If you watch either of the TV videos, the only thing they show is you shooting Hogglos and the MA guy talking about hunting, mining, and crafting. I'm not really seeing how anyone could even pretend to say that a new player can come into the game and do any of that and make real life money. And that was the whole point of these stories.
Now, I will agree that it is possible to turn a small profit trading (or at least it was when I was doing it 2yrs ago). The two problems that I see with that are a) we are talking about a very small amount of money in RL terms, and b) it is completely dependent on the number of people doing it. When I was doing it, there were maybe a dozen of us, probably less.
As far as this game being gambling, I am not saying it is and I'm not saying it isn't. But when you enter an online game in which real money is used to buy tokens (bullets) and you then click a button (shoot) and wait to see if you hit the jackpot (global/HoF/ATH), all the while watching the ticker (chat window) scrolling messages about which other players have just hit a jackpot (global/HoF/ATH),
you will have to agree that the perception is there. And the perception is all that matters when you are dealing with the media/government.
Over the years, many of us have said that they really need to get rid of the global/HoF/ATH's all together. Or, at a very minimum, they need to remove the scrolling messages.
But, I really want to get back to the main point here, and that is that many of us have a big problem with the way in which MA is marketing this game. If they were out there saying "even though this is the most expensive MMORPG that ever existed, it is really cool and really worth the money"; or if they got off of their asses and added even a small opportunity for player-generated content beyond makeup masks and picture frames, then I think a lot of us would be a little more pumped up about it. But marketing it in it's current form as a way for kids to make money is just an unfortunate choice.
oh, yeah. The poker thing. If you are in a "table tournament" or "sit and go", as some people call them, there are typically ten players and the top three get paid. If you are in a decent sized multi-table tournament, at the very least, everyone at the final table gets paid. If you are in a tournament on television, much, if not all of the purse is subsidized and they still pay down a few places. Although I really hate big multi-table tournaments, I've even been in some online ones where 50 or 100 people got paid. but that is way off-topic.