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Role Playing (Games)

A Guide to Farmers In World of Warcraft 52

Posted by Zonk from the look-behind-the-curtain dept.
Trounce writes "Game Guides Online has a lengthy article exploring how farmers work in World of Warcraft, including their daily quotas, techniques, schedules, and how they hide their gold surplus from employers and possibly thieving partners. It has a section on how players can benefit from shift changes and score items at low prices (which can then be re-listed at a profit). From the article: 'Of course, farmers who stay on past the ends of their shifts, while their boss and/or partner breathe impatiently down there necks, are even more amenable to agreeing to ridiculously under-market offers; so keep looking for bargains after 6:00 as well.'"
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A Guide to Farmers In World of Warcraft More

A Guide to Farmers In World of Warcraft

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  • game guide. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JVert ( 578547 ) <corganbillyNO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Monday October 17, 2005 @02:14PM (#13811191) Journal
    Article is at best interesting.

    Anyone ever used the warcraft game guide? Can't belive its actually worth $75...
    • Its that much? I thought about picking it up when I got the game last december, but then realized that almost everything in it is going to eventually change in some way. so I didn't.
  • This article is organized like the worst piece of code ever written. Total chaos.
    • Not sure if its chaos.. More like stream of thought.

      Course my stream of thoughts can be chaotic so his might be too..

    • Re:Interesting, but tough to read. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Digital Vomit ( 891734 ) on Monday October 17, 2005 @03:11PM (#13811658) Homepage Journal
      Nothing wrong with the article

      I found that there was nothing wrong with the article.

      Very informative

      I found it pretty informative as to the nature of WoW farmers.

      Good article flow

      It flowed very well.

      Prodigious use of headers improved readibility

      The use of so many headers within the text really improved the readibility. It notified you when the writer was about to start talking about a new subject.

      • These aren't the droids you're looking for.

        These aren't the droids we're looking for.

        We can go about our business

        You can go about your business.

        Move along.

        Move along!
      • The thing is, good writing shouldn't need a header every 1-2 paragraphs. If I picked up a 300 page book and there was as much whitespace as content, I would probably burn it within 5 minutes. The layout of this article isn't that bad because it's not really that long. There aren't too many main ideas discussed.

        The problem here is that it doesn't flow naturally. It discusses one idea for a while, and then we get several headings with one-paragraph texts that scream at me: "oh hey, here's two or three sem

    • Re:Interesting, but tough to read. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I liked it. The author knew his limitations as a writer and worked out a way to convey the information he had accumulated. It wasn't as enjoyable to read as an article from a professional journalist but it also didn't bog the reader down with incomprehensible grammar, irrelevant points, and poorly conceived metaphors.
  • Ill agree with the Uldaman thing. At any one time on my server (Lightbringer) you will mysteriously see 10-20 Level 60 Rogues, many of which have interesting names, most of which are Chinese.

    Farming tends to bring a lot of items into the mix, however the problem is that those of us who play the games and then try to sell the items we find, find that we aren't getting anything near what we probably should because others who find a bunch of those same items sell them for much cheaper. So yeah it keeps price

    • Re:Planting the seeds... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Ayaress ( 662020 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @02:49PM (#13819986) Journal
      I have the same problem, and I have a solution that's actually quite productive. Take the hit and sell green drops on the cheap.

      The place to make your money is on consumable items. Cloth is the easiest one, because every profession uses it, plus the reputation turnins. It's easy to get 100 runecloth in a day or two and throw it up at 4g a stack depending on time of day and server. Mithril is another easy one that can pull 5g for a stack of 20 bars. Leather is decent, too, since most professions use at least a little bit of it.

      When you get those green drops, they tend to be harder to sell. I usually cut my price low, especially with off-class stuff (cloth with strength and agility, for example), so even if you can't get it sold for equipment, enchanters will snatch it up for reagents. You can even take up enchanting yourself and burn all those drops and sell reagents or enchants yourself.

      The farmers do this too, granted, but there's a catch: Equipment, you can't sell over and over to the same people. If you have 10 level 30 swords, you'll need 10 level 30 sword users to buy them all up. If you have 10 stacks of cloth, it's a good chance you'll sell them all at once to the same person buying it in bulk.
  • a game is a recreational activity that alleviates the player from stress and provides and escape from reality for a period of time.

    Does EQ, DOAC, WoW, AC, or any other MMO out there really fit that definition?

    • A game is a competition that a player enters either of their own personal entertainment or he entertainment of others. Now whether a person competes vs themself, another player or a npc it doesn't matter.

    • Mileage may vary (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MMaestro ( 585010 ) on Monday October 17, 2005 @04:20PM (#13812223)
      If you play a MMO to become the #1 uber-l33t player on your server/shard/realm/world, then no you're not going to find a MMO that fits that defination.

      If you play a MMO to play with your friends at your own pace, your own way, then most MMOs will fit that defination.

      Gold/credit/gil farmers cater to the first group. They're the ones who want the uber-l33t gear, the level 20/50/60/75 characters with all the skills, spells and special abilities unlocked. The second group generally cares more about the journey rather than the ending. The line between the two groups obviously cross, but for the most part its pretty distinct.

  • I love his take on sweat shops. Seems if you live in a thrid world country than 18 hours a day. seven days a week is perfectly ok from his point of view. (hence buying their stuff is morally ok)

    And they are forced to eat hot gravel....
    • 12 hours a day, 6 days a week from his description - and in an office building with sick time and paid leave.

      Did you even read the article?

      • I did actually.

        He is NOT a proper researcher or journalist and almost ALL his "facts" are his own estimates of what goes on and a few annecdotes from people he met online.

        Not exactly investigative journalism...

        • So you make a claim that's wildly at odds with the article's statements, and when called on it, claim that the article's author isn't a 'proper researcher' (as if there were credentials for niche journalism, I must have missed the major in college). Way to butress your claims, I'm sure people are finding you real credible.

          This is an odd place to suddenly become terribly worried about working conditions in the third world. Gold farming is pretty cushy by the standards of countries where the alternatives ca
          • What I meant, in my "short of time" reply, was that the quality of the research he has undergone is substandard, non-representative and quite obvioiusly biased by his own personal connections/experiences.

            Anyone, such as myself, can be a researcher (or investigative jouirnalist) of something, but this person seems to fall far short of this particular role.

            In other words: This article is little more than someone's annecdotal experiences. The same can be found on thousands, if not millions, of blogs.

            Is this sl
        • The author is quite up front about when he's using assumptions and anecdotes (most of the time) and when he's citing facts (here and there). What may be throwing you, is that this is written from a good model of a research paper, even though it isn't nearly as factual as just most papers written like this.

          What this is, is one person's opinion, very well presented. It may be anectdotal and commen-sense assumptions, but you can follow the flow of discussion almost too well :-) It is a bit much for the content
          • I totally agree with you.

            My point really is that this is not slashdotworthy. I am not rating this article in competition to other articles on the net, only to slashdot articles.

            I don't come here to read articles on conjecture and opinion...
        • No, it's not investigative journalism at all. But you say, "Seems if you live in a thrid world country than 18 hours a day. seven days a week is perfectly ok from his point of view." when in fact, he never said he believed that those hours are being worked. So you put words into his mouth and then made a claim about his moral judgement of the situation.

          A more accurate description would be that he believes it is acceptable and moral to buy from workers who have 12 hour shifts, 6 days a week with paid leave a

          • Maybe you should try reading the article:

            "My personal impression is that while perhaps a limited number of the farming operations Ive learned about may, in some regards, impose sweatshop conditions on their employees, many, perhaps most, dontespecially when local norms are taken into account."

            He leads onto this from saying that working conditions in 3rd world countries are not like ours, then goes on to say that he heard about bosses who keep raising levels of work.

            Sick leave whenever you want it in Indones
    • ""And they are forced to eat hot gravel...."" Forced?! They're provided with a hot, heavy meal everyday! And you think that's bad.... tsk tsk

  • Fair (Score:3, Informative)

    by adderofaspyre ( 800203 ) on Monday October 17, 2005 @03:05PM (#13811606) Homepage
    I found the article interesting as it does not try to judge farmers but try to bridge their world with that of the ordinary player. Worth reading.

  • At least it'll be legitimate (Score:4, Insightful)

    by faloi ( 738831 ) on Monday October 17, 2005 @03:09PM (#13811637)
    I wonder how information like this, assuming even half of it is true, plays into larger corporations attempts at legitimizing the behavior (like SOE recently did for EQ2)? I've always argued that if the game play is boring or tedious enough that someone would consider paying real money for some advancement, it's time to consider another game. As an avid MMORPG gamer at one point, I can say that I suffered through bad game play for the social aspect of it. Now that I'm sort of off that, I tend to get bored with more MMORPGs rather quickly. I don't need l337 items that badly, and I don't like playing an easy game forever to achieve some level or other bonus.

  • what about bots? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by slicer622 ( 579305 ) on Monday October 17, 2005 @03:12PM (#13811662)
    sure, chinese peasants are cheap, but you dont have to feed, clothe and shelter processor power.

    • Re:what about bots? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by HTL2001 ( 836298 )
      parent has a great point... for the MMO I play (Ragnarok Online) there is even an open source bot. In the past there were several, and well documented cases of people from everywhere running farm bots on trial accounts, gaining ~9mil per character in 2 weeks time (e-bay price was ~$6/mil at that time). And this was with paying no money for a subscription as well... if they had bought a subscription (which some had) they were able to make a lot more.

      the problem with bots is they can act realy dumb, (for in
      • I've played RO. WoW, though, is a bit more active. The gameplay is just too varied. Every class functions quite differently, and most of them have a number of variations in their talent builds that also effect their play a lot.

        Just for an example: My main is a rogue. He's assassination/subtlty, and uses daggers. With this, winning a fight is all about getting the jump, building a combo quickly, and getting a big finishing move. I do 80% of the damage in the first and last hits of a fight. However, my friend
        • In fact, there was a highly successful and widely used bot in WoW. I actually used it to level a Mage from 1 - 60, and a Priest from 1 - 54, found numerous rare and epic items, paid for my epic mounts, etc. However blizzard has continually updated their bot detection system, to the point where people were getting banned left and right for using the bot. Most people stopped using it a couple months ago, when the programmers of the bot gave up trying to get around Blizzard's detection.

          But all classes, i
  • ...is majorly flawed. No-one has argued that the selling of large amounts of items pushes up prices. What has been argued is that people buying larger amounts of gold than they could ever get in causal play gives them a big burning hole in their pocket. Why wander around collecting herbs if you can take a minor dent out of your supply (which you can just spend money to buy more) to get them instantly from the AH?

    It is exactly the same reason that the US can't solve its budgetary problems by "printing mor
    • > ...is majorly flawed. No-one has argued that the selling
      > of large amounts of items pushes up prices.

      The author did not claim that anyone so argued. He said, more or less, that there is a contention that farmers, being greedy, overcharge for their items and thus raise prices.

      > What has been argued is that people buying larger amounts
      > of gold than they could ever get in causal play gives
      > them a big burning hole in their pocket.

      Perhaps that argument has been advanced; but if so, it was adva
    • "If you ask me this article looks like it was written by someone from one of the gold selling companies, giving helpful hints such as when to be one of the farmers customers, in order to legitimise their business. It's a pity they have to ignore and argue against basic economic principles to do so."

      His helpful hints can let you screw the farmers over.
      Did you actually read the article?

    • Here are my own thoughts on the economic impact of gold farmers. Most players in the game, as they progress, will eventually replace a given item on that character, at which point it gets sold to an npc for gold, or disenchanted (the soulbound prevents the item from continuing to circulate among players). If it's vendored, the amount the item sells at is the amount of gold added to the world economy, if it's disenchanted, there is actually a zero gold addition (shards are consumed in an enchantment, canno
  • I'm not going to argue with the author's economics or his lenient attitude on farmers.

    My basic feeling is that I don't want to support farming because it subverts the spirit of the game and it supports a system by which workers do not end up having better lives. Even if it were likely that farming could become a "career," I don't think it adds up to a gratifying career. I think the bottom line is that it supports a fat cat who had the capital to buy the necessary hardware and network access but someone with

    • One of the author's suggestions on farmers - use your character as a sort of security deposit box for them- would actively support farmers themselves (by allowing them to 'steal' from their boss, if that's the word), and help eradicate farming (by pissing off their boss and making sure they only receive a minimal income). If I played these overpriced subscription games, I'd try that, and enjoy sticking it to someone else's man...

  • Another source of tutorials for WoW newbies is WoW-Camp [wow-camp.com]. It contains a fair amount of leveling info.
    --
    Barebones and SFF computer reviews [baremetalbits.com].
  • ... with this site and IGE. This is just propaganda.

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