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!