Omfg Chinese Gold Farmer, get a life!

S

Schuljunge

Still Mildly Glowing
Wtf are Chinese Gold Farmers?

Chinese Gold Farmers usually are some Teenager who live in China and work for a Company. Their Job is to get much gold as possible out of MMORPGs like World of Warcraft and so on.

They play 12 hours!! World of Warcraft every day!

The gold which they have acchieved in the game is sold per ebay to American or European Gamers.

Chinese Gold Farmers usually only get food like rice and so on. Nothing special, yeah you can call them the first "Gaming"-Slaves :D

Its very strange, though.

Here is a video on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho5Yxe6UVv4

Here more to read on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmer_(gaming)
(This link doesn´t work right, you need to add "(gaming)" manuell in your browser!)

Is THIS the future, what do you think about it?

EDIT: added a nice South Park meets WoW episode

http://www.zensiert.us/index.php?itemid=341

:D this totally rocks
 
"Get a live" is an inanely stupid remark since they're basically the same as desk-workers and typists, except that their job is more fun
 
i doubt their job is any fun Kharn.

in essense, manual farming has already died out. now you got a poor lil' hugely underpaid chinese or korean guy overseeing a fleet of bots that do the farming. the money simply goes to the bosses at IGE & consorts.

and Schuljunge, this is nothing new. almost all MMORPGs in the past have known farmers and bots. as long as there is money to be made, their will be people like this.
 
SuAside said:
almost all MMORPGs in the past have known farmers and bots. as long as there is money to be made, their will be people like this.
Click to expand...

That's why I stay away from MMORPG, and hope Fallout never goes this creepy way :roll:

Multiplayer is cool, as long it's LAN, between friends. But I really love computer controlled NPC's like in Fallout (if only their AI were better...)
 
@suaside

this was the first time i heard of those gold farmers, of course i knew that there is the ebay auctions, where you can change virtual money to real money, but this is more like ... slavery. okay i´m sure they love to play the game, but whats this for a dumbass job? after playing 3 months, 12 hours nonstop i would just become sick of this game. its better when those kids get some kind of education instead of doing this or at least they could give them proper food and stuff.

reminds me totally on this south park episode,
*added link in the first post.
you should watch it, its funny.
 
Makenshi, MMO's really aren't that bad. the big trap usually is that you start playing for the game, but continue playing for the friends you make. (because usually the game sucks after playing it too much ;) )

and Schuljunge, there are countless sites that are specialised in selling items and gold in almost all online games that feature an economy. hell, some MMO producers sell gold themselves (so you dont even have to go to chinese or koreans sometimes)!

also, i know a guy who was in a guild with people who started IGE.com. once upon a time, they were just gamers. now they're filthy rich after starting a business getting poor chinese mofos to work for them for a dollar a day & selling their shit on the web...
 
I remember reading an articular about it in a magazine just last month.

I've heard of selling characters, equipment, and gold, but what really hit me was how these werent just individuals, but in China groups of workers belonging to a business. The idea of bots doing it only makes it worse.

Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
 
SuAside said:
Makenshi, MMO's really aren't that bad. the big trap usually is that you start playing for the game, but continue playing for the friends you make. (because usually the game sucks after playing it too much ;) )
Click to expand...

You're right, they aren't. I've played Ragnarok (the friends-trap worked on this one) and Lineage 2. But I takes a LOT of time and effort, until the day you realise it meant absolutely nothing to your life (except bursts of hate if you're using dial-up internet).

It's not like playing Final Fantasy 7, Warcraft 3 or Fallout series; after playing these games, you feel that it was more than playing, it was a (maybe virtual) life experience, worth remembering for years. IMHO, that is :wink: .
 
Meh, if people are stupid enough to pay these people for their services, I'm all for it.

Good on 'em, at least they are semi-employed.
 
The_Vault_Dweller said:
I remember reading an articular about it in a magazine just last month.

I've heard of selling characters, equipment, and gold, but what really hit me was how these werent just individuals, but in China groups of workers belonging to a business. The idea of bots doing it only makes it worse.

Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
Click to expand...
well, there are many different services. if you look at WoW for instance, you have these:

1) buying a full epic char: this is usually a gamer that quit the game and either sold his char to a firm, which will then sell it or is selling it himself through forums or ebay-ish sites.
2) gold: usually this are the lil' bots at work. sometimes however real players sell their excess gold to pay for their addiction.
3) leveling: either you buy a fresh lvl60 or you hire a 'chinese' farmer to level for you on your own account (this can be dangerous though)
4) pvp honor: you hire a chinese farmer to get you pvp honor points to reach the highest pvp rank, which means pretty kickass gear. if you were to do it without the farmer at your side, it'd take you about 2 months of hardcore gaming at at least 12-15 hours a day of pvp on high population servers.
5) faction reputation: you hire a chinese farmer to grind up your reputation so that you can buy certain skills or items from a certain faction.

anyhow, the list goes on...

Note: chinese in this sense doesnt mean 'from china' ;)
 
I bought 3000g WoW gold a year ago. I think I paid around 180 usd. In the time I would have needed to farm that much gold myself I was able to make alts, quest for gear and have fun with the people in my guild. The financial cost allowed me to have fun, and was a cost of that convenience that I derived lost of pleasure from.

So yeah, until you play a mmorpg and get first hand experience in the topic, you may want to hold judgement.

Oh, and what's worse: the chinese farmer working in a factory sewing baseball mits of playing a computer game for his rice? There's really no difference, as the cost of labor in China is very cheap in any case.
 
180$ ? sjeez...

maybe due to being in a top 10 guild worldwide caused me to have less need to have hard cash (we pretty much did everything in the form of favors rather than paying eachother), but 180$?

what does a wow char need 3000G for? you don't need any money to level. you got enough money to buy a normal mount if you level in a normal fashion and arent an AH whore.

i can understand people buying an epic mount with rl money, but 3000G is a bit beyond that.
 
-shrug-

Mounts, faction rep. I still have 1800g of it.

'sides, 3000 was the best value; if you're gonna do it, do it right. And today the same 3000g isn't even offered as Blizz has gotten very good at nailing farmers.

I wouldn't pretend to think many would understand.
 
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