I found these articles a while back and shared them with my previous guild. They are quite informative and on first read really opened my eyes to a lot of things that I had never really considered regarding the gold farmers, their methods and long term effects on the game.

I hope I picked the right place to post this and if it isn't please feel free to delete this thread.

"Wage Slaves" - http://egm.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3141815

"Overview on gold farming" - http://azeroth.metblogs.com/archives/2006/05/on_gold_and_gollums_an_overvie.phtml

"A chat with a World of Warcraft bot programmer (WoW glider)" - http://www.tgdaily.com/2005/12/06/wow-mercury-wowglider/

Naomee that was quite an eye opener. Most of the stuff in there I suspected but some of it was news to me. Thanks for sharing it!

I'm gonna keep reporting every bot I see.

That was facinating! Thanks Naomee!

I always get a little edgy when the subject of Chinese gold farmers and ninjas comes up. It's true that not all Chinese players are gold farmers. It's also true that not all gold farmers are Chinese. But neither of those points is what I always think about.

Have you ever played a game that was more or less dependent on interacting with other people whose language you didn't know? It's so easy to make assumptions; we do it all the time without thinking about it, and we get annoyed when people do what they're not 'supposed' to.

I was in a group in ZF some time ago, and a rogue joined us. She didn't talk much, but I didn't think anything of it. We agreed on standard loot rules -- greed on everything, pass on BoP. When the first BoP dropped, the rogue greed-rolled, and since everyone else passed, she got it; of course, the group was pissed. Since she hadn't said anything and didn't respond to the group yelling about it, I took a guess -- I sent her a tell and asked her, in Chinese, if she was Chinese. She was surprised, and said yes, she was. We talked a bit in Chinese, and it quickly became apparent to me that she didn't understand what the loot rules were.

We take for granted that everyone understands when we say 'Okay, pass on BoP.' But we say this in English, and if someone's in the group who doesn't understand English, it doesn't mean that person's a ninja if she screws up. It might mean she didn't know what the rules were.

I had a lot of fun with a gold farmer when I was just starting out. I was killing yeti and mining in the cave in Hillsbrad, and she came down in there too. We ended up trading kills and ores, and when we were done, she invited me to join her in SM. I don't know if she thought I was a farmer, too...but she knew I wasn't Chinese, because I told her I couldn't understand her well enough to do a whole instance with her. Still, she was nice enough to invite me.

We can look down our noses because these people aren't playing the game the same way we are, or because they manipulate the economy in a way we don't like, or because some of them are ninja-looters (but hell, most of the 12-year-old American asshats out there are ninja-looters too, so that's hardly endemic to Chinese players). But ultimately, they're not doing anything that really adversely affects any of the rest of us. Personally, I just play my own game, have fun, and try to keep in mind that they're all real honest-to-god people just like anyone else...and when I get the chance to communicate with someone who's not being a jackass, I'm glad to.

...Uh, soapbox mode off.

I agree with you there Stranger.

The whole term 'Chinese Farmer' came from numerous articles like those linked above. Sweatshops farming stuff in games like this for very little money. While the term is certainly not PC, it does go with the norm of those that are farming bots.

The same argument could be made about tech support or billing operations. US company, you call for help and 9 times out of 10, you get someone who barely speaks english.

I always liked the show 30 Days. They take a person who has one fairly firm set of beliefs, and expose him to an opposing culture for 30 days just to see what happens (for instance, they took a volunteer border minuteman-type and had him live with a family of illegal immigrants for a month). Recently, they had a guy whose company had canned him because they'd outsourced his entire department to India, and he couldn't get another decent-paying job, and his wife had just had a baby. They sent him to India for a month to get a look at what that culture was like.

It was pretty fascinating. I'm by no means supporting outsourcing, but it really offered a new perspective, at least for me. As much as we denigrate them for not being able to speak English, they attend regular seminars on how to speak with a more American accent, and how to use American colloquialisms, and how to develop better phone skills. Whereas we consider phone support and telemarketing the absolute bottom rung of the job market, they consider it a very elite, desirable career. Really interesting.

"They get paid dirt. But dirt is better than where they live." - that's amazing. While I understand there are people working hard in terrible conditions, the worst are the ones taking advantage of the whole thing.