This is old, but i thought i would share it.

I was talking to meakin about newbs with high level shit, and i remembered this, and thought i should share it with you all.
The dumbness of americans (my title not from the article)

One anecdote chronicled a teenage boy whose parents bought him a high-level character for his birthday—at a four-digit figure. While many games employ various reincarnation schema to reanimate player characters who have been killed, EverQuest practices what is known in game circles as "perma-death." Once a character dies, he’s…well…dead. The young man almost instantly got the character killed due to the fact that he was more or less "out of his league" with other players at the same level. The parents raised a ruckus, trying to hold the company accountable for the loss of their investment. To avoid this sort of problem, EverQuest prefers to force players to play within the rules: you may only play the character your build yourself. This assures that you are playing at the appropriate skill level.


HAHAHHA
the figure was reported to be around $5000.