Trade sucks

[shubla]

The developers' income will immediately drop dramatically. And merchants will start trading only for real money.

If this happens and their noses start to decrease in size they can always revert changes.

Replacement of all token trade with RMT is unrealistic and wont happen.

[Agrik]

The developers' income will immediately drop dramatically.

It will, though not sure about "dramatically". This is a repayment of a debt, in a way.

I mean, one can get more money (than the project deserves at that moment), perhaps unknowingly, by selling the future of the project. By worsening it.

It's a common way nowadays, unfortunately. First you support RMTers by fulfilling their wishes (and getting a share of RMT by legalizing the part that goes through you), and because of this you start to slowly lose a faithful part of the community. I want to emphasize, it does not matter whether you do it purposefully or only as a part of personal priority to have more money. Players, one by one, see that it's either ill will or incompetence to create a fair gameplay, and start to trickle away. (Now that's where publishers turn to the "retention" term, and try to manipulate the dissatisfied players not to leave while not fixing the reason). So later you get stuck with being funded mostly by those RMTers who proudly and truthfully announce that you'll lose your income if you displease them. Yep, you've driven away other payers, now you'll find yourself being actually very poor if you don't get a new loan. The longer you yield to this blackmail, the worse would be your position. You simply increase your debt over and over by not admitting sunken costs. In the end you'll get a work known as bad, on your hands and on your CV. RMTers and players also get a destroyed game, but it's not their project, so they would switch to another (as long as they're welcome anywhere). Well, it's a leisure for them and a livelihood for developers.

I have a hope that H&H at least would not slide down this slippery slope too fast.

I'm not sure what gave you that impression but one of the intentions behind them was most certainly to mitigate the overall RMT taking place. Without having something like tokens as an in-game currency that traders could request or be offered, there were traders that would simply trade for cash directly instead for their high quality goods or players that would make such an offer. In the case of tokens, Jorb and Loftar would at least get a cut out of this process when the trade happens via that method.

That's essentially getting a share in a "business" in exchange for easing it.

The problem, you don't mitigate the RMT in its essence by only switching the money flow and announcing that the process is now fine because it's official. RMT is not about who gets paid, other people or the devs, it is about trading in-game valuables for real valuables (money).

Edit: Fixed a bit some words that were too strong.

[Zampfeo]

Look at what's happening now that it's Autumn: factions are buying up morels en masse. This is a good thing. We need more foragables that cannot be gardened, are consumable in infinite amounts, and important for development. Morels are important for some of the best con food. Chantrelles and cavebulbs used to be treated similarly until updates destroyed their value.