New York Times article on WoW Gold Farming in China
The New York Times has a great article about the commercial gold farming and leveling operations in China. It's really quite fascinating and you should definitely take a look at it. For example, did you know that many of the gold farmers who spend all their time in the game grinding for gold only make about 30 cents an hour? This roughly parallel to what many industries pay their workers in China, so the gold farming operations are hardly the only ones exploiting people, but it does give you pause if you're considering paying 35 dollars or more for a 100 gold to one of the online operations that sell it. They are making more than 10 times as much as workers get paid for playing.
One of the really interesting things, however, is the revelation that when many of these Chinese gold farmers end their 12 hour shifts, they log right back into WoW in order to play their own characters. Some of these players are so good that at one point one of the gold farming houses tried to put together a team to escort other players through the endgame for money. Fortunately, the business died due to lack of interest. I can't imagine paying someone else to basically guard me within WoW after spending all of my time finally getting to the endgame in the first place. What possible enjoyment does someone get out of that? Why even bother playing?
Video Games - China - Money - Online Games - New York Times
The polite name for these operations is youxi gongzuoshi, or gaming workshops, but to gamers throughout the world, they are better known as gold farms. While the Internet has produced some strange new job descriptions over the years, it is hard to think of any more surreal than that of the Chinese gold farmer.
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