It depends really.
I don't despise begging, I give out items sometimes. But it's so funny how 1 person begs for items, gets it from you, and then logs on a different char, and beg again. Its ironic how he/she tries to sound like someone else but ends up muttering the same damn lines which makes you go, WOOOW. Perhaps even begging requires some skills.
It's considerably hard to start building up your own items pools in FRO, and to gear yourself up without any help.
Boy I spent months, oh. I think a year, to try find my way through. I did almost everything, farming for those armors worth 68k in for_fild01, ended up getting killed half the time, farming for ores for the fdun pass, buying and selling, vending, and yeah. Eventually with a few help from some friends, I managed to finally get some gears for WoE, PvP or what not. Not to mention the very helpful gears I got from some friends who quit or left.
One note: When D.coupons were of the considerable amount of between 18-20m, the vending money daily did come in handy, but obviously not now anymore. It's really hard to try push your way through so many rich powerhouses, the rich gets richer, the poor can never get more than enough taste of how Poor they are, each day. It's a very competitive server with dominance mostly laying on the rich ones, and those who donated. Not saying that it's impossible to get rich, just that it's a cumbersome process and takes way longer time.
It's a subjective view, really.
Everyone has different views on different things, so there's no real answer to this.