They are NOT bots!

http://www.secretlair.com/index.php?..._gold_farmers/

This site explains everything. So sad, so very, very sad.

damn that is sad...

That is sad but the Elona Reach thing are bots you can tell because it was not created very well with them running along the wall and all.

I do believe those chinese farmers in gw are bots, becasue if they know how the game is like they would do the gold farm by themselves and sell their own gold on ebay for much more profit. I think those chinese farmers are just playing a monitor role in case GM would catch them and they sell weapons in LA when the macro got the weapons for them.

"When playing a game is your job, is it still a game?"
those chinese farmers don't actually play the game, just monitor the game

Actually, many of them are in fact bots. However, even a bot needs a real person to sell items and keep the pesky Anet staff away, so they hire young people to sit by the computer making sure nothing goes wrong.

It's terribly ineffective to have people physically pressing the buttons and farming the game all day, when you can have bots do the dirty work. The "sweetshop"-gamers are supervisors.

On another note, isn't this like the 4th thread in a week about this?

It's probably the 4th thread because gamers are really getting fed up with this.....the companies really need to nail down these factories, and also pressure eBay and other such companies to ban the sale of gold, or the time spent collecting it, or any other crappy loophole they create, on their sites.

And...how do you know this?

I believe there have been several articles and interviews (posted here even, I think) with farmers where they talk about the process. They mention how their employer provides them with a bot program, and they have to manually sell items, and respond to anet GMs. Besides, as Rancour mentioned, it would be really inefficient not to operate that way.

Except - there are no in game "moderators" or GMs. There is no reason for chinese farmers to monitor anything.

The "bots" everyone talks about are just guys grinding out farming runs, nothing more, nothing less.

In FinalFantasy XI before fishing became interactive, the bots would fish, sell fish, buy bait and repeat. Since FFXI has GM support in game, they would try and chat anyone that fishes in a repative way to check for bots.

To get your fishing skill up you had to fish for hours and hours... or any other crafting in FFXI for that matter.

They would still have to sell manually, no?

Few weeks ago, I wrote a message to GW tech support about something. It was Sunday afternoon and I got a response from a person within few hours. To be honest, I'd rather receive a response a week later and have those people monitor (admin) the popular farming spots somehow. Like when I played Ultima Online, when I was training some skill, not moving, a message from admin would come up - "are you there" or something like that.

some games tp a char 2 jail and ask question or make them move in certain places bots cant do but not sure if this will work in this case since this game is global and not everyone knows english

This is ultra-sad

$250/month not bad i should look into this.

NOT BAD ?

If you already play GW 24/7 it's a nice bonus, but it's not much for a full-time job tho..

Not that i condone these activities bur isn't $250/month a lot of cash in China?

I wish I was a sweatshop owner! lol Even though it's wrong in many ways, you can't deny that it's smart to start up a business based on pixels! hmmm...


Take this post seriously or as a joke, I don't care!

I think the main issue is this:

• Most players make under $0.25 USD per hour
• The gold-farming industry generates $3.6B USD per year.

This means must of these people are HIGHLY underpaided and overworked, a 12 hour shift 7 days a week means they are working 84 Hours a week, they are working double the average most people work at.

It may as well be slave labour, and getting young kids to do this as well is sad.

Simply put, the only people who are profiting are the ones running the gold farming companies.

Ho my, I'm so buying one ! What do they eat ?