World Wide WoW: Upcoming "Gold Farmers" documentary
by David Bowers 
May 25th 2007 at 1:00PM
World Wide WoW is a new feature here at WoW Insider, in which David Bowers brings you everything related to World of Warcraft as an international phenomenon.A new documentary currently under development by Ge Jin explores all the different points of view people have towards gold farming, from those who farm to those who buy, and those who actively oppose it all.
Snippets from the synopsis at the "Gold Farmers" documentary website make you think about gold farming from various perspectives. This is perhaps the most striking of these:
"Changmao was a member of a gang in a small town called Lishui. Some residents in Lishui say that the town feels a lot safer even since the emergence of gold farms and there are less unemployed youngsters wondering around and looking for fights. He started working in a gold farm one year ago. Now he is persuading other gang members to join him to fight virtual enemies..."
Like one of the people interviewed in the "Gold Farmers" trailer, I had always imagined that "they're geeks sitting around somewhere and just playing all day," and I once had a conversation with a Chinese gold farmer which reinforced this thinking. He whispered to me something, I can't remember what, and in the whisper he dropped a Chinese word, which I understood from having lived for several years in China already. I took a chance and started talking to him in Chinese, but the conversation got increasingly depressing as it went on.
He told a sad tale of how his girlfriend left him brokenhearted, and since then, he found his new girlfriend in the female human rogue he played on my server. He said that he felt his life didn't have so much meaning, and all he was good for was running around playing this game and gathering up gold. I felt really sorry for him, and nothing I could say would make him change his mind or be a bit more positive. Eventually we lost touch (perhaps he was caught and his account got deleted), but he left me with a strong impression that most Chinese farmers would be like him: sad, confused, and lacking in spirit, as if somehow they couldn't fit in to the competitive society that China has become, and instead just wanted to go on living without having to actually live, in a sense.
But what is available of this documentary so far showed me that this is not always the case. I hadn't realized how the gold farmers see themselves as the good guys, just people trying to do something enjoyable for a living, totally unable to understand why others hate them for what they see as providing a valuable service.
Of course I would never condone gold farming and selling as a fair practice within the game, but reading about this upcoming documentary has helped me to realize even more than before that Chinese farmers are not evil criminal masterminds, or psychotic freaks bent on filling your chat box with spam, so much as misguided people who want to get paid to play. Let's put them out of business for sure, but let's not do it out of hateful anger. Instead let's wish them the best on their journey, and hope it involves something better.
[Thanks reader Alex, for letting us know about this documentary via Boing Boing]
Filed under: World Wide WoW, Analysis / Opinion
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
chewb' Dec 21st 2008 1:28PM
the gold farmers and the corporations are almost one and the same persons.
You imagine a developed system but in truth it's just kids wasting their life on computers, not caring about school or a job or the reality of life out there.
Gold farming does damage the economy. All the gold goes into the AH and you realize items there are a lot more expensive than you can afford.
I would never wish death on anybody though, I just don't feel bad for them. Gold farming is not the _only_ choice. It might be an easy one but it involves doing immoral things so it's the wrong one
chewb' Dec 21st 2008 1:30PM
oh yeah! and I cling to my fun because I pay a subscription to enjoy a game. If it were free to play, I would welcome our Asian brethren
draiken May 25th 2007 1:10PM
its hard to feel sympathy with 40 or so spam whispers every 10 minutes from them
personally, they can die - it's too bad their country is in such dire straits that this is considered a viable form of income
not much we can do about it either; the usa has enough problems internally without trying to fix the rest of the worlds
draiken May 25th 2007 1:14PM
PS:
"He told a sad tale of how his girlfriend left him brokenhearted, and since then, he found his new girlfriend in the female human rogue he played on my server"
cracks me up!
Sylvina May 25th 2007 1:28PM
Hmm... this inspired me to blog about something...
http://sealofblood.scvs4hire.com
cdb2000 May 25th 2007 1:21PM
Every economy creates a black market. Even "fake" ones. It's inevitable. I don't hate these people, I just don't involve myself.
navalpha May 25th 2007 1:23PM
As much as id like to feel sympathetic for them, this is hardly the right thing to do to get your life back on track. Especially with a gang background.
Bresh May 25th 2007 1:24PM
I love the caption to the first picture. "... we are very sensitive to this term". Trust me, you'd be a hell of a lot more offended if we called you what we really wanted to.
As for playing a sob story and drumming up pity? Go die in a fire. Guess what? Life's not easy. Life shits on all of us from time to time. Bottom line, they've failed at life, and they're failing at virtual life as well. Ruining other peoples gaming experience for fun and profit, and somehow they see themselves as these knights in shining armor. Yeah. Right. Die.
Savok May 25th 2007 1:27PM
Reasons for hate:
Spam
Ninjaing loot then hearthing
Spam
Exploiting other players
Spam
Account theft
Spam
Rooting the economy
Spam
I've "met" very few decent farmers, not a word of English but they understood etiquette and that stealing anything not nailed down is wrong.
Problem is, they're about one in a thousand, with the rest being scum sucking pricks. Your life sucks, fine, you can still act like a civilized person.
MedSchoolGeek May 25th 2007 1:30PM
"personally, they can die - it's too bad their country is in such dire straits that this is considered a viable form of income"
This is an incredibly assanine view of the problems that accompany globalization. The endless whispers aren't typically from the farmers themselves, but rather the result of "marketing efforts" by the companies they work for. Its easy to maintain the 'let them die' attitude, when you're 10,000 miles away. I bet you'd feel differently if your roles were reversed.
This is just a game. If they found a way to make a few extra dollars, then farm away. Just be prepared to face the wrath of Blizzard I say...
superbeef May 25th 2007 1:41PM
Ugh, some people are so thick headed.
Trust me, I'm coming from FFXI, a game that was made virtually unplayable by gold farmers, and where the economy was absolutely horrible.
It's easy for people to condemn gold selling practices. It's illegal, a general nuisance, and I think we all agree in general is a negative practice.
With that in mind, get off your high horse. It's easy for you to repremand them and thier practices from the comfort of you home. Bet you have food in the fridge, sitting in your computer chair, and hey... guessing from some setups I've seen on this site, you're not doing too bad.
It's their job people. They do it to provide sustence to themselves and their people.
To use an analogy, and I might get flack for this, think about soldiers in the military. That is their occupation, and granted it might be a more noble one. But that is what they do for a living. And when we send them off to a unfavorable war, we tend to sympathize with them. Bring our soldiers home.
In short, we don't hate the person, we hate the practice. But some people can't discern the two.
"As for playing a sob story and drumming up pity? Go die in a fire. Guess what? Life's not easy. Life shits on all of us from time to time. Bottom line, they've failed at life, and they're failing at virtual life as well. Ruining other peoples gaming experience for fun and profit, and somehow they see themselves as these knights in shining armor. Yeah. Right. Die."
You are an ignorant fool. Try leaving your state, or getting out of the coutnry, or caring about someone other than yourself for a while. They ruin your entertainment experience so that they can eat. Yeah, they must be the scum of the earth.
Honestly, people like you need to be slapped in the mouth and thrown on the streets.
David Bowers May 25th 2007 1:53PM
Hi everybody!
I'm very glad that you care so passionately about this subject and want to share your strong opinions about it. That's all very good, but keep in mind that the others you strongly disagree with (and everyone else reading your comments) are people too, with rights to their opinions, and don't deserve to be insulted horribly here.
If anyone's language gets out of control, we're going to have to delete that comment, and that would be a shame because then the idea would have to be deleted along with the offending language and no one would be able to read it.
Just a friendly reminder to watch those speedy fingers while typing, and don't get carried away!
Salty May 25th 2007 2:04PM
Gold farming presents several nasty problems to the game of WoW. Firstly, the gold spam, which was growing immeasurably out of proportion until this most recent patch (thanks), but it won’t stop there just because the patch fixes it. They have to advertise… these companies are 98% marketing firms. We’ll be seeing more mailbox spam, and they will eventually look to traditional vectors of spamming. Penis pills, mortgages and stock tips will soon be joined by WoW gold in our parents’ inboxes.
The second ugly effect is the auction house prices. Nobody can say for sure what prices would be like without gold buying, so it’s arguable that this actually has an effect. But it’s apparent that many people have no problem buying gold to finally outbid that bastard sniping them on their long-awaited auction (happened to me). In turn, the seller may go tell his guild that he got 3000g for some rare item, and now all of the sudden others are selling that item for 3000g. The item may fall in price, but probably never again to the value it had before the inflation and it will take a lot of time for it to fall.
As a personal opinion, I don’t think it’s a horrible crime to buy gold for a mount because you’re nullifying that money, not destabilizing prices on the auction house. I still wouldn’t do that because buying the gold supports the business model with every successful sale and I would be terribly depressed if my account was banned/deleted. Knowing transactional databases, it’s not hard for them to trace in-game gold sales and it’s not unrealistic to think that they have built or are building a list of buyers to ban at some future time, when the mechanism is in place to “permaban.”
This is the tip of the iceberg and it goes well beyond WoW in scope. It took hugely populous MMOs to create the phenomena, but the networked platform behind all MMOs will grow to accomodate business and creative applications, not just games. Think second life integrated with 3dsmax, mathematica, protools, massive (LoTR) and VMWare; the legal ground is the only unexplored territory. All of this means a virgin and largely ungoverned (except by the laws of nature) economy will arise. The day the government puts taxes on virtual property is the day when you can believe everything I’ve just said, as it means the impending rise that economy. WoW content is the primordial ooze and the catalyst for new life is virtual property sales.
ryan May 25th 2007 2:09PM
Don't hate the farmers, hate the players who buy their gold. If there's no Demand, there's no Supply, no Spam, no Farmers.
While I dislike the Spam, and farmers, I would never wish death on any of them. I think that's a bit of overkill, pardon the pun.
ryno106 May 25th 2007 2:17PM
@7 - Applause! You just said everything that needed to be said.
I think that there's a lot of hate towards this practice simply because the majority of gamers playing wow are suburban white kids who have no idea what life is. You've had a rough life? PLEASE. Unless there have been years of your life where you don't know if you're going to be able to have money to eat, you have no idea what a rough life is. Stop trying to 1-up people with your stories of woe. If you live in America or Western Europe, you've lived life in easy mode. Period.
The real problem is that we don't have a way to regulate this. Blizzard needs to step up to the plate and realize that people are always going to want gold and people with work, families, and responsibilities should be able to play the portions of the game that they want to play. Blizzard has done a great job of adding content to allow busy players a way to progress in the game without a full raiding guild, but I think they need to address this issue of gold farming.
Crack down on spam, but allow them to compete and actually advertise. Make there be an approval process where Blizzard visits the gold farming facilities and makes sure they have good working conditions, etc. It's not going to go away, so it's time Blizzard stopped assuming it can crack down on a black market and instead focusing on making it a legitimate off-shoot of the industries that are spawning from the WoW phenomenon.
Granted, many people still won't buy gold. Why would I? I know how to play. I can go out and farm or play the auction house. I think that people with less time on their hands should be able to keep up with everyone else though. Stop thinking you're special because you play WoW 40 hours a week and raid religiously. That doesn't give you any special right to say that people who are working hard to make a decent life because you think it interferes with your game. Playing 40 hours a week is your choice, and doesn't entitle you to [unpleasant-smelling product of a bowel movement].
[Edited! Watch that langauage! -DB]
Tridus May 25th 2007 2:22PM
Much like any business, the "workers" (the gold farmers themselves) are just doing a job to support themselves, for the most part. The "owners" (the people who run the gold selling operations) make a fair bit of money, market it using spam, and so on. And of course, the "consumers" (the people who buy gold) are the ones that make the whole thing work.
So long as people want to buy gold, someone will find a way to sell it. What we see from a lot of these comments is how much easier it is to direct our anger over the consequences caused by it at the workers, rather then the actual cause of the problem. Ever wondered how your guildie got 5000g for an epic flying mount in two days, but didn't say anything?
Flaming the gold farmers and accepting the gold buyers is part of the problem. Flame/ostracize the buyers and leave the farmers alone, and you'll get better results.
(Its funny how much this mirrors real life. Who gets more public scorn from the public: prostitutes, or their customers?)
Hookjaw May 25th 2007 2:40PM
I have to say I didn't know what to think about the issue until I saw the trailer for the video and read some of the stories.
Overall, I see it as a positive thing that gang members are off the streets, venting their aggression in a forum where it's non-permanent, having fun without actually physically hurting someone. (And I think it's great that disgruntled white north american kids are playing WoW instead of terrorizing old lades at the mall, too).
It's also great that WoW provides us the ability to actually meet and talk with these people. Wouldn't it be cool to find out about the life of the person who put your computer together? The person who sewed your clothes? These things don't just come out of the store - a person actually makes them, and they are a human being just like everyone else.
I hate the gold spam, though. I hate the brazen, uncouth marketing efforts that annoy the !#@@% out of me. I wish Blizzard would provide a legitimate gold for money mechanism, where individual farmers could sell stuff directly, rather than going through these middlemen who add no value but scrape money off each end of the transaction.
(I see this issue in a similar light to the one of "illegal immigrants" here in the US - do we punish the laborers, who are coming here to make a better living for themselves, or do we punish the people who are illegally profiting from them? I say we punish the employers, not the employees - drive down demand rather than try to drive down supply).
Cicero May 25th 2007 2:49PM
Its not farmers that are spamming, thats level ones specifically FOR spamming, these people are just doing the farming. I personally feel bad for them so if and when I see them i tend to not report them, just the spammers.
chief_wiggum May 25th 2007 2:45PM
To post #1 and #4: Nice attitude... I do not wish death on you two, like you wish death on gold farmers. Instead I wish knowledge and tolerance on you.
To post #3: Not to get into a debate about worldwide economy and politics, but what you propose those would be gang members do if not farm gold?
"Maybe go out and farm corn, you silly boy!"
Call me crazy but if I were a kid and I had a choice between working on a farm harvesting whatever and working in a shop where I play a videogame to farm virtual gold, I'd probably lean towards farming virtual gold. Given their situation, what would you all do truthfully?
To post #7: Couldn't have said
it better myself.
Concerning the constant spamming, it is only as annoying as you allow it to be. In the great scheme of the game, it really isn't a big deal. You can better expend all that hate energy on something that actually deserves it. Like gas prices, ninja looters, and Jeff Foxworthy.
Halicante May 25th 2007 2:48PM
I don't have a problem with the gold farmers. We used to have an alt guild called gold farmers that we would stick out alts in and any unguilded mage and hunter we'd see in tyr's hand or zg. They were pretty cool. They let us leech rep in zg more than once. Some of them spoke some english, some didn't. It was sad when most of them got banned last summer.
The gold spam is annoying, but it's not the poor people farming the gold that you need to blame for that one.