The awaited leeching debacle!

I already explained what the big deal is. The economy would be way less crap if no one was leeching. A single high level weapon wouldn't (and shouldn't) cost you 3 billion mesos. Same with rare skillbooks and such.

So college/jobs = bossing in maple, those who deserve to be there are left out most of the time because of the extraordinarily high number of people who meet the expected level. Even if those people end up sucking, it's going to discourage party leaders from choosing you or me without making us jump through hoops to prove ourselves first.

Drawing parallels to real life can certainly be valid, but why even bother? This is still and always going to be just a game. If others make it harder, then work harder yourself to overcome them. You mentioned expensive weapons/books. Oh well? It does suck, absolutely I agree. However, I can still obtain them if I work hard enough my way. It's slower, but so what? Or I could even (in some, not all, cases) get them myself! Or learn to accept I don't need them, anyway (if you don't want to work harder to acquire them, that is).

 Spoiler

As an aside, I'd like to mention that it's not leechers ruining things. It's the hackers and meso sellers. Leeching doesn't help the problem, and it does make it worse, but it's not the cause. You're misplacing blame to suit yourself.

I never had to jump through any hoops to go on boss runs, and I'm not even the kind of guy who makes a lot of friends.