The Virtual Side of Gold Farming

xcfbfx: “www).wow4s.(net100m$25.99fastdelivery!powerfulpowerlevel1-20=$6.58.”

xcfbfx: “www).wow4s.(net100m$25.99fastdelivery!powerfulpowerlevel1-20=$6.58..”

xcfbfx: “www).wow4s.(net100m$25.99fastdelivery!powerfulpowerlevel1-20=$6.58…”

xcfbfx: “www).wow4s.(net100m$25.99fastdelivery!powerfulpowerlevel1-20=$6.58….”

                I can say from first-hand experience that gold farming is no easy task.  “Grinding,” or the act of completing a task over and over for some reward, is an unduly boring process.  The articles by Jin and Dibbell present pretty accurate pictures of the daily real world aspects of gold farming, but what does it actually entail online?  I thought it might be useful to provide some insight on the virtual tasks involved in gold farming.

                First, you need an account and a character.  But more importantly, you need a strong character that can defeat the strongest monsters which will inevitably drop the best “loot” (defined here as any in-game item that is sellable for gold).  An important remark to make here is that the main method of “gold farming” is not actually collecting the gold that monsters drops after you make a kill.  The standard amount of gold these monsters drop is almost always standardized to a very small amount.  Sure, it can add up over time, but the big bucks are earned from selling rare and powerful items.  These items drop from monster kills very infrequently, some with drop rates of <0.0001%, which produces incredible demand in the free trading market, and thus, high prices in gold.  In any case, depending on the game, leveling up your character to be able to kill monsters that drop substantial loot in-of-itself requires a tremendous amount of time, sometimes requiring months of real time. 

Next, you need cooperation between multiple accounts if you hope to fight bosses as briefly described by Dibbell.  This aspect restricts the gold income of many small gold farming groups and forces them to sell to middle men who have large assets, namely large gold websites, and can fund to the needs of a large populations of online games.  Of course, this leads to low wages for the gold farmers, and large profits for the website owners who don’t actually do any farming. 

You could, however, attempt to sell your gold separately, which is what the user “xcfbfx” is attempting to do above.  In this game, MapleStory, there are several spam filters which block certain phrases like “www.” or “power level” as well as repetitive sentences (which is why the endings are slightly different).  In his chat, he attempts to bypass these restrictions, but still list relevant information such as website, price, and special services.  However, these methods are often unreliable as the only potential customers you are reaching out to are those who are currently online on the same map as you.  Additionally, the account will most likely be banned by mods and while you can create a new account for free, the process of finishing the early level tutorials takes time. 

So, why would people go through all this trouble to farm gold?  Simple: People will buy.  I’ve told you how annoying it is to do it yourself.  I, for one, have bought gold from online sources.  Grinding is boring, and when that one item looks too difficult to get, why waste time?  After all, we are Gen Z – we want things now.  

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