Fri 4 Aug 2006
‘Wow Gold’: Search for, Sale of Video-Game Shortcuts a Booming Industry in China
Posted by Mark Baker under Assorted Fun , Fujian Province , Fuzhou1 Comment
Among the recurring Comment Spams I get on my China-related sites is this one (links removed:)
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I’m able to see that these Spam comments are posted from China, but I never gave them much thought.
The Best Alliance Guide For Getting To 60 Fast!
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At least I didn’t until I recently ran across the story “MODERN CHINESE SECRET: Thousands employed in search for, sale of video-game shortcuts.”
Here’s the short version:
Parked in front of computer screens, the players move through virtual dungeons to slay ogres and gather gold in online games. But this isn’t mere idleness. Many of these gamers are working. A vast shadow industry has mushroomed in rural China. Savvy entrepreneurs harness teams to play popular online games, gathering magic spells, battle hammers, armor and other virtual assets. They then provide the assets to brokers, who sell them to rich players in the United States and Europe who want shortcuts to gaming success.
At any given time, as many as half a million Chinese gamers toil in Internet cafes and makeshift computer labs, sometimes sleeping on cots in nearby dormitories in shifts.
And here I just pictured some bored but industrious high school or college students behind my Comment Spam. Nope. It’s part of a booming underground industry.
Yeah, “Wow,” indeed. I’m almost flattered that they feel my sites worth Spamming, even though I haven’t played a video game since “Quake I” way back when.
And from the pictures, it looks like their working conditions are better than those found in some iPod manufacturing plants in China.
UPDATE: And further fueling my suspicion that all of the MSM’s “feature” headlines are pulled from six-month old YouTube videos, here’s a digital tour and documentary in progress of some Chinese Gold Farms in China, called “Chinese Farmers in the Gamedom: A Work in Progress” by Jin Ge aka Jingle:
Update: A New York Times video article about the same topic.
August 22nd, 2006 at 7:16 pm
I really think maybe Blizzard is crazy. In the recent 3 months,Most of chinese wow gold farmer in US servers had suffered seriously from the Blizzard’s account banning actions.
Many ‘world of warcraft’ players may have realized that wow gold price is growing continuously in the whole market. The main reason, whether you know or not, is about Blizzard large-scale account closing. The official of Blizzard announced that they had closed 30000 accounts and eliminated 300 million wow gold which were hard-effort products made by many Chinese wow gamers. In the black July, the crazy closing-account behavior continues. As a result, thousands of farming accounts from China are closed and many game workshops in China are forced to close down. Is Blizzard crazy? Such closing-account behavior will lead to serious shortage of wow gold. Furthermore, many European and US wow players who are not willing to spend time on gold farming will lose much fun in the game because they fail to buy wow gold to purchase equipments in the game. In the end, Blizzard will lose a number of real gamers. Imagine what the Azeroth world would be like without Chinese wow gold farmers! Can a real wow gamer, take you as an example, continue to enjoy virtual life in world of warcraft?
[Editorial note: I've left this poster's Web site link intact, but removed several that were included in the body of the message. This is obviously "Comment Spam" too, but I'm leaving it here as an artifact of this wow gold commerce phenomenon, not as an authentic comment. And no, I'm not an example of a "real wow gamer."]