10/23 I was reading a Chinese newspaper, and according to an article in
it, they now have 8000 people in rural villages in China working
to make virtual gold for World of Warcraft. The job for these
villagers in China is to play the game and do simple repetitive
tasks to earn gold. The virtual gold is then sold to US players.
The money they make doing this is better than what they get from
farming. The article also says that these people are causing
severe inflation in the WofW world, since what they do is like
printing money. Because of the inflation, they are making less
than before but it is still very profitable. It also quoted an
estimate that says China will make 100 million US dollars from this.
One guy doing this business says he makes US$10000 per month.
\_ Could you please post the url, or was this a physical paper?
\_ this is from the "weekly magazine" that comes with today's
(Sunday) copy of World Daily, a US newspaper owned by one
of 2 major newspapers of Taiwan.
(Sunday) copy of World Daily (US subsidiary of one of
2 major newspapers of Taiwan) which I get for free when
I buy $20 worth of groceries.
2 major newspapers of Taiwan).
\_ The Economist had some mention of this, but nothing on this scale.
\_ OMG WTF when did the world turn into a Neil Stephenson novel?!?!1!!
D0000D!!!!11!!
\_ Either PC Gamer or Computer Gaming World had an article about this
it's big business in asia, boiler rooms full of people running
scripts over and over again and selling the stuff. My question
always is: who are all these clowns spending real $$$ for this
stuff?
\_ You can spend 6 hours of time on tedious gold gathering
\_ You can spend 12 hours of time on tedious gold gathering
activities, or you can spend 2 bucks for the gold, and
head on off to exciting adventures with your buddies.
\_ what I dont understand is most of the stuff truly worth getting
in world of warcraft you can't buy from other players and have
to go and get yourself. There's not a lot of worthwhile stuff
that is buyable with gold alone. So who are these farmers'
customers and what the heck are they buying? -Avid WoW player
\_ I only played for a month and got bored and cancelled. If the
good stuff can't be bought with gold, then why is the person
above talking about spending 6 hours gathering it? What use
does it have? I never got above level 20 so I have no idea
about the high level game but I never found myself starving for
cash. I used the junk that dropped, sometimes nabbed something
cheap at the auction house, bought some trivial supplies a few
times, but never felt that "in only I had another 100,000 gold
I'd be set, I should farm it for 6 hours or spend real money
buying it". I just played the game, such as it was.
\_ I don't play, but don't you have to buy your "mount" with
gold? And maybe skills and stuff?
\_ the 'mount' and 'epic mount' are really the only major
thing you can get with gold alone. The basic mount is
100g, and usually you have enough gold for that accumulated
by the time you are high enough level to use it. The 'epic'
mount, at 1000g, certainly would take extensive farming. but
it is a one-time purchase, and not that great anyway.
I still dont see a $100M market out of gold just for mounts.
And skills aren't that significant an expense either, and
also, one-time purchase per character.
\_ I read a short story where rival "farming" gangs hired players
to knock off the others' farmers plus the added twist where some
person was trying to unionize them. Cute bit of fluff.
\_ I ran across an article that describes how these "sweatshop"
workers manage to smuggle some of the gold from their bosses
to make profit on the side. |
http://csua.com/feed/