Spend some time in any of the great World of Warcraft capitals¡ªStormwind City, Ironforge, Orgrimmar, etc.¡ªand you¡¯ll soon see this message flood the Trade Channel: ¡°Need gold fast? You visit somesite.com, we have best gold prices on Internet!¡± To some players, myself included, it¡¯s nothing more than noisy spam. ¡°Shut up, jerkface, I¡¯m trying to find mats for this enchant I read about on Thottbot.¡± But while you and I, wow gold honest players just looking to whittle away a few hours, may see these unsolicited advertisements as nothing more than mere nuisances, the people behind them¡ªgold farmers¡ªsee them as pure profit. Minus the human costs, of course.

The $987 billion million [sue me] gold farming industry¡ªyes, it¡¯s a proper industry¡ªemploys some 400,000 people in Asia each year. Imagine every man, woman and child living in Miami, less 10,000, sitting in front of a computer monitor for ~12 hours per day looking for gold in all the wrong places, and you¡¯ll get an idea of just how many lives are affected by gold farming. The people doing the farming are called gold farmers, and they earn anywhere from $100-$200 per month. They¡¯re typically young, some with only a modest education, and play games like World of Warcraft for several hours per day looking for gold (the in-game currency used to buy weapons, power-ups, and so forth) or leveling other people¡¯s characters. (That¡¯s called power-leveling.) And while $100-$200 may not seem like much, gold farmers don¡¯t usually have to pay for room and board. Nope, one of the perks, as it were, of the job is that you¡¯re often provided with a roof over your head and a few grains of rice.

Working hours belie the job¡¯s computer-centric environment. Farmers can expect to put in 12-hour shifts, including weekends, since that¡¯s when most American players¡ªsurprise, Americans are gold farmers¡¯ biggest customer¡ªare running around Azeroth. Days off? Just one. Per month.

And while Blizzard officially forbids gold farming, the Chinese government is realistic about it: it happens, you can¡¯t stop, so let¡¯s make some money off it. To that end, wow gold it has recently imposed a ¡°gold farming tax.¡± Too bad it can¡¯t be bothered to regulate the industry.

As for the customers, it¡¯s like this: yeah, big deal, these gold farmers may have it rough, but I¡¯d rather take the money I earned after one hour of work, and pay them for the goods, than sit there and play the game for the 20 hours it would take to earn X-amount of gold.