Chinese gold farmers

An interesting article from the BBC News webpages about Chinese gold farming companies.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5151916.stm

Although the article only mentions WoW farmers, it shows the scale of gold farming which is estimated to be worth $900 million a year and growing!

Wow Oo
thats alot of $.

bah old news but it is an intresting amount of $ a year

I kicked anyone that bought gold in my old guild, too bad there was only 1 lol.

While ive never done it personally, its obvious why, spend 50-60 hours farming 1 Mil? or spend one days work at macdonalds , its a no brainer for mr average joe

oooh yeah but at Mc Donalds you can eat all the Sausage & Egg Mc Muffins, Hash Browns, Quarter Pounders with Cheese Deluxe, Chick Mc Nuggets, Large Fries and Curry Sauce that you like before they even open.

Maccy Dee's FTW

That may be true, but most gold farmers use bots and leave the programme running while they go about doing other things, a nice way to make a bit of side income thats probably perfectly legal.. apart from the botting that is :S.

Can I say eww....

An aquaintance* of mine turns out to be the demographic gold farmers sell to. He's single and has revolting amounts of disposable income (he managed to make himself indispensable to a government department's IT system, then ratcheted up his salary requirements to extortionate levels!), and he's got a low attention span when it comes to game playing.

...So he buys MMoGs at a rate of one every three weeks or so, and buys up maxed-out accounts full of expensive gear. Depending on the game he then either jumps into PvP or just wanders around PvE areas showing off his goodies.

(You can see why he'd get bored of it after only three weeks. )


*A close friend's brother-in-law. He'd probably remember my name if pressed...

At first, Id almost say "cool", Im been payed to play! Dream come true! But i dont think the vision would hold long...

Ive been to China, they have macdonalds, but dont forget most chinese people only earn 15$ PER MONTH working on the 'regular' farm. Not everyone can get a job at the Mac, since there simply aint enough of them, so they go back to farming... gold. Which beats the 15 bucks per month. Another advantage is that they dont have to break their own backs farming on a real farm for 90+ hrs per week.

Whats wrong with that, thats a perfectly balanced meal, although perhaps not all in 1 Bun like Skids likes to have it

A balanced meal

I suppose by balance you mean that the total sugar and fat equals the rest of the food

Ketchup and fries are vegetables, right?

Healthy stuff there.... But yeah considering we are living in a society where sometimes money is thrown away just like that I think thats the reason why people buy things like that.

You aren't understanding what he's trying to say. He's saying that for a normal person, not a gold farmer, it's easier to spend $10 or $20 for gold ingame than farm for 90 hours to get it.

i was refering to average joe who Buys the gold

I'm not going to go too deep into this or nothing, but I sell alot of ecto in Ascalon City Int D1 and I check from time to time to see exactly who is doing alot of the buying of "ebay" gold. I have a list and tally marks by how many times I see them there. I know for sure they are buying gold cause they are not spamming the trade channel and they are always in trade with level 1's and 2's with gibberish names. I am not going to name names, but several of them are regulars to guru and claim that their wealth was farmed by them. Some of them I have seen in there more than 5 times.

First off I want to say that I hate how the Chinese/Korean gold farmers have influenced the ingame market. I would just rather see them disappear or just focus on another game. What I hate worse than that is when people who claim they are such uber farmers and traders and that their wealth was accumulated on their own and you find out that they are complete liars. They act elite, but their wealth is all a lie. Just about anyone who plays this game can go and pay $50 or whatever it is for 1 mill gold, but when you try to act big and bad like you are hot shit on a forum and lie about the source of your gold that is just messed up. Its all about the instant gratification crowd that plays this game. ZOMG I MUST HAVE THAT Req 8 Crystalline sword right now, lemme just whip out the credit card and kaching you got one. The inherent mod update in Nightfalls is going to hurt the ebay market really badly if you ask me. Why buy millions in ebay gold when it is much easier to get the items you want without having to farm for hours and hours on end?

I guess what I'm saying is that I don't like what the ebay farmers have done to this game, but I can't stop it only ANet can. The other point is that if you buy gold don't try to act cool and lie and hide it. Just say you buy gold. I would love to see statistical data from some of these ebay stores and online gold services like Swagvault and the others out there. I think it would stun people out there thinking that the ebayers are not out of control. I am willing to bet that more than 50% of the GW population has paid for gold services. I am willing to bet that 90% of the richest players in the game ebayed 99% of the gold they have. You know I could be wrong on these numbers as I did pull them from out of the air, but wouldn't it be shocking if they were true. Looking at the available information out there on ebay farming these numbers may be a little on the conservative side.

Also on occasion I have butted in to trade between ebay farmers and buyers and opened trade with the ebay farmer and they have traded me a few hundred k without realizing it and then when they do they start cussing me out in broken english. It is actually pretty easy to do. When you see a level 1 or 2 running toward a level 20 in Ascalon City Int 1 just click on them and after a few seconds start clicking the trade button until it opens for you and they will accidentally trade you 100k. Do it until they catch on and then put them on ignore. I have made about a mill or so doing that over the past month.

Edit: If you hate ebay farmers as much as I do you should try this.

You mean the level 1's and 2's with gibberish names that are used to store weapons? If I venture into Ascalon Inter low level characters trade me out of the blue, showing 6-7 unid weapons. Not every person trading with level 1's and 2's buy gold.

I would love to see your list if you would be so nice as to PM me a copy. (You have my word it will never go public or be viewed by anybodies eyes but mine, and my cat's)

Why would a Gold farmer representing a company trade you with such a crabby looking character? They would obviously use a Mo/W with black dyed tattoos or Fissure armour... Wouldn't you say?

Also, nice method of claiming your own Ebay money!

Exactly

I am sorry, but I honestly shouldn't have mentioned that some of them are guru regulars. I will not send anyone the list. I do know alot of people would love to see the list, but without proper evidence such as screenshots and a video of some sort it would mean nothing and they would just deny that they were ebaying. The list is just for my own information in case those people on the list make me angry for whatever reason. Nothing is more embarrassing than having everyone who thought you were a stud know that you are just a ebaying liar.

What do you mean by the last comment about the black dyed tattoos? I am assuming you think that because they are so rich they would have nice armor. That couldn't be further from the truth. The ebay farmers that I see people trading with in AC Int D1 are x/Me with presear armor. Me secondary because it is the easiest to get cause all you have to do is kill the rogue bull and you can do that @ level 1. That is just even more evidence that the names on my list are ebaying cause in most of the cases I can remember they were all trading with Me secondaries. Of course they could be their "storage" characters, but that wouldn't explain why they are not in the same guild. Anyways no need to try to play the devils advocate here. These people ARE ebaying. There is no denying or downplaying it. I am not a stupid person and I myself have mule storage characters; 5 to be exact, but everyone knows you can create a pvp character and they can travel directly to their Guild Hall and open their storage without having to pay the 50gp. So this completely invalidates the storage character idea.

Damn straight! I really love pissing off Chinese/Korean Ebay farmers and making some gold at the same time. Good stuff. I recommend you all try this. It works about 1 out of 5 times. Sometimes they will just cancel the trade window, but there are times when they are in a hurry and don't notice that they are trading with the wrong person. I do not feel sorry for them in the slightest.

Anet bans these accounts quite often. Why would they waste 1.5million on a throw away account?

Just one question: has ANET ever banned clients for buying ebay gold (not selling)? I hear "rumors" about that when I ask but I don't remember an official annoucement about that, as they did with bots.

I AM that stupid I didn't know that (prolly because I dont use PvP characters, eh!).

PS: If you see me in Adcalon int 1 trading with lvl 2 x/Me I'll be trying your trick, so no need to add me to your black list

On a side-note, low level asian chars randomly opening trade windows are not uncommon in Droks int1 (and probably also in Ascalon)...

lol @ mad, sounds like fun.
hehe, trust u to make a PvE storage char

For about 3 seconds, I thought "Hey, that sounds like fun - maybe I should try it." Then I realized you can get banned for making trades like this. Remember, when ANet bans these people, they also ban the people they transact with - and that would be you - receiving a bunch of gold for nothing in exchange...

Unfortunately, I'll pass on what sounds like a lot of fun...

this is my dream job tbh.

I know what your saying but what I meant by 'storage character' is a character created solely to hoard weapons. The storage characters I mean are the ones that randomly trade you and show like, 6 bows if your a Ranger, random stuff if your a Necro, and a load of Shields and Axes if your a Warrior.

All I'm saying is, these low level hoarders do randomly trade people around the storage area, so, there is the possibility that they are just trading. However, I am not disagreeing with you, I am sure most of them are eBaying.

Good point, but like I keep saying, Anet has no actual proof what they are trading unless they have some sort of "Trade Reading Hackz0r Program" to see what's going between us. .

Me too, I'd work there for a few months and gain the trust. Then steal like gazillions of gold and run!

Damn thats true. Guys beware your account may get banned.

Old topic, same old story. I make enough in 1/6th of my work day to buy 1 million gold....or I could spend hours upon hours upon hours farming it. If you don't think farming is fun but you think having 1 million gold is 1-2 hours worth of fun and you make my kind of wages, why wouldn't you just buy the gold? ....well, assuming the risk of being banned is acceptable to you.

I don't like farming at all and (if I hadn't already made my million and if spending that million had really been all it was cracked up to be) I have to admit I would probably spend $50 rather than 50 hours for the gold.

Gold is meaningless in Guild Wars. It doesn't give you an advantage over people who just play through at all. I never felt like my gaming experience was truly lessened by the existance of this whole ebay gold commerce thing. I could care less what other people do to get rich.

So you scam the scammers, (sarcasm) you are such a wonderful person for doing so (sarcasm). All I have to say to that is you have a hypocritical allocation to the rest of us. It’s like your stating, “Some other people buy gold from Ebay and don’t work for it; so I steal from them making myself look like a hero, while assembling a huge profit”.

People in China and Korea are technically living up the past industrial era of the U.S. and I could blame them; instead I blame the extreme aristocrats controlling their countries; of course we are not going to do anything about, because we have to buy the cheap industrial crud that comes from them via our own extreme aristocrats. It’s our screwed up world, that’s what it amounts too. Finally every time I think about where they get that amassed GW gold; I think about the kids working for it, and every time they get corporal punishment (via physical and psychological torture techniques) and that clears my mind about the issue real fast.

I think when A-net bans these people its nothing against them, its against the chinese market, how ever, if A-net is so worried about that then maybe they should sent a letter explaining why they banned and what is the problem. That way after the acount gets unbanned the person isnt gonna buy gold again lol

In all honesty, I find it more then funny how people actually purchase it.. although I have honestly been tempted to. My warrior(my first and favorite character) has a full set of FoW, with 5 different helms. No I did not "EbaY HAXXORS" my ingame currency, I ran+farmed it some with a 55 monk, some green farming, some troll farming, some running, and some luck on gold drops. My warrior has 4.8 million experience points as of yesterday. I have been playing for 7 months and I almost have 8 characters one of each class with a protector of tyria title. Knowledge about the game is essential to make ingame currency, buy low-sell high, never overfarm an area, grab all your drops sell them to the merchants.

I have been so accused too many times that I have ebayed my money since I have a warrior with Obsidian armor. I'm so sick of it I made it my goal to raise the money for the armor, finally accomplished it, then get accused. I have learnt to deal with these people, but its still more then irritating to get criticized for playing the game fair deal, and accomplishing something someone else hasn't. @the point of only Anet being able to stop it, don't count on it they have the power, but do you know how extreme it would have to be? Investigating everyone's account history for trades? It's possible, but not this game. Not this generation, and I wouldn't do it if I were Anet either.. why? More copies of the game get sold for every chinese farmer.
Point and Conclusion.

Actually they don't, none of these gaming companies ban gold buyers. The reason is, banning a farmer just results in the farmer company spending another $50 on another copy of the game - no real loss for them, as they make that back fast. However, real players who buy gold won't come back -- you might think this is a good thing, but from the gaming company's perspective it isn't, because there is a chain reaction - these people also buddies of other players, and when players get banned (and make no mistake, gold buying is widespread in all mmorpgs where it is available), their buddies/guildmembers tend to leave also, as their little mini online community/leveling/group has been destroyed. And that is why gaming companies don't ban gold buyers.

Let's consider one prominent example; Blizzard in WoW. Every so often they will post an announcement on their front page saying "Over the past few months we have banned over 50,000 accounts". Are any of these gold buyers? Nope. Even on the most competitive PvP servers, where gold prices are 3x that of anywhere else (meaning lots of gold buying is taking place), players never "go missing", even when it's very likely they are buying gold. And unlike Guild Wars, WoW PvP servers have a fairly tight community; everyone knows who's who, so a scoop like that would get out fast. The fact is, you will never see or hear about anyone in the history of WoW being banned for gold buying, because it has never happened -- and this from a company that publicizes bot bannings on their web site. Meanwhile, people DO get banned for botting (even well known people in guilds who are trying to leech), and this always comes out.

Also think about it this way; if there was any realistic risk of being banned for buying gold, nobody would still be buying gold. Nobody wants to risk losing a character/account they invested a lot of time in. The fact that gold is still for sale, and that the prices are even going up (at least in WoW), indicates people are buying more than ever. After all, if 50,000 WoW bots got banned, it's not like they can't simply connect the dots and enumerate all the hundreds of thousands of accounts they traded gold to and ban them too. But they don't.

Since when are we marking sarcasm?

Especially in a game liek GW where Anet makes money the more games sold, having them banned and having them re-buy an account means more money for Anet.

Plus it would halt the gold buy/selling of that person for atleast a good 2-3 days (not much but if it was done on a more massive scale)

Since the highly intelligent population of GWG has recently failed to recognize sarcasm, marking it has now become a near necessity.

Am I the only one not bothered by this? Now I'm only talking about Guild Wars. GW is a game with no uber loot and most gold is spend on things that are strictly cosmetic, FOW armor, gold swords and ecetera, that are not statistically better than stuff you can get from collectors and crafters (I can see how this is a problem in WoW). The advantage you gain by buying gold, therefore, is small. (The only place where it is a big issue in game play is in buying skills. Yet now we can buy pvp skill unlocks from ANet, making this problem far less of a factor.)

So what does that leave us? It leaves us with people with lots of disposable income paying poor people in a poor country for a service. The only people hurt by this are those who are jealous of other players cosmetically better looking gear. As a libertarian I have to say, so what. Let the free market do it's thing. Who knows, maybe having more money in the hands of China's youth will help empower them to force politcal and human rights reforms. One thing that history has taught us since WWII is that wealth leads to good government (South Korea is the prime example of this; they were a dictatorship 18 years ago.) So while you're feeling but hurt about "I pwn n00bs" req 8 15>50 20/20 sunderring crystalline sword of fortitude +30, remember that he's helping free Tibet.*

* So I'm exaggerating, my general point stands. Also, I have never bought, and will never buy guild Wars gold. I am far too cheap for that nonsense.

you bad boy :P

gaming (gold farming) while earning a living is awesome. i can accumulate my earnings to invest on other businesses and in my workplace, i can set-up a gym to make myself fit. or if i wanna go out to party with buddies, go stroll in the park, i can set up an automation program running and still getting payments.

too bad, there is still stigma to gold farming and it's mostly prohibited by the game developers (but who knows :P)..

but yea, it is still my dream job.