Gold Farmers

WoW (World of Warcraft), the best-selling MMORPG of all time has over 8 million players worldwide. And though it had been reported that the number of Chinese online gamers ballooned from just around 22.3 million less than a year ago, to 147 million today, to most Chinese, gold farming in WoW is a full-time job. They make like $150 to $250 a month for working 8 to 12 hours a day.

There's a huge demand for WoW gold, and players all over are willing to buy online gold for real cash. It's hard to level up without gold, you can't even get good weapons without enough gold. Most players would rather spend to get more gold quickly than spend time to farm for it themselves. As it is known, gold farming is the most boring part of the game.

Long ago, when the battle of online games in the Philippines was just between Ragnarok and MU Online, I had this teenager neighbor who's barely out of high school, working as a "farmer" in Manila. He worked in a three-story building owned by a Taiwanese. The first 2 storeys were packed with PCs and the third storey served as their quarters. He, together with kids his age, farm for adena (Lineage's currency). And it was the time when Lineage wasn't officially launched here yet (it was already Lineage II when AMDG bought a franchise). But unlike the Chinese who make like P11,000 a month, he only got P120 a day (or something like 3.6k a month).

Farm where the labor is cheap.

Labels: games, MMORPG, World of Warcraft