This, interestingly, is also focused on the high price of vanity items. There is no mention here of combat advantages for sale.
Like most things in EVE, it isn't quite that simple. I'll give you an example.
One of the 'vanity items' that CCP plans to introduce is a custom paintjob for your ship. You spend some currency and you get a neat new paint job that will give your ship a unique appearance. Sounds cool, right? The problem is the way CCP has implemented this. Instead of allowing you to buy a paint job and apply it to your ship, they're allowing you to buy a ship that already has a custom paint job. The reason that's important is because thousands of players (myself included) make their living in EVE by researching technology, assembling components from raw materials, and then selling ships on the market. With the exception of a very small number of very specialized items, virtually every single item found in EVE Online is manufactured or researched by other players. Ships, components, blueprints, weapons, rigs, outposts -- it's all manufactured and sold by players. Even the raw minerals and ores that serve as the building blocks of everything else are mined by players and processed into ores for sale in EVE's markets.
So by seeding custom ships for sale via real money sales, these microtransactions will completely destabilize and ultimately destroy important parts of EVE's super competitive, player-driven market. These 'vanity ships' weren't manufactured by other players, nor were they created using ores mined by players. Instead, they simply appeared out of nowhere and were manufactured out of thin air. The addition of large numbers of such vanity items will have a huge effect on the market in the form of inflation or deflation; such items are the equivalent of printing money, or an unregulated ISK faucet. Why would anyone buy battleships manufactured by me when they can buy a battleship with a custom paintjob from the vanity store? This would destroy my ship manufacturing business. This happens all the time when a rival moves into the area and starts undercutting my prices. But I have options for dealing with that in the game. I can reduce my own prices, start buying up my rival's inventory and then re-sell it, cut off his supply of minerals and starve his business, or simply declare war and attempt to drive him away. But if the items just magically appear, then gameplay is dead and there's nothing to do but abandon that part of the market.
Everything in EVE is PvP. Ship vs. ship combat, alliance empire building, piracy, corp theft, espionage, drug smuggling, and market trading are all player vs. player warfare of one sort or another. By directly injecting items that came from the "real world," it causes ripples in the virtual world and upsets a very finely balanced ecosystem. Custom paint jobs and other vanity items should somehow be manufactured by other players, just like everything else on the EVE market. But this, of course, would upset CCP's plans to morph virtual streams of currency into real world streams of currency.
This is just one example. Incarna, the vanity store, and the introduction of yet another type of in-game currency are all combining to create a perfect storm of player rage. EVE already has ISK, Plex, GTC, and now Aurum is being introduced as well as the ability to trade real world money for Aurum and Plex. CCP is risking turning EVE into a convoluted mess that only the gold farmers will really enjoy.
