Talk:Gold farming

multiplication error
This article used to say that the gold farming industry had been estimated at $3B in 2009. This figure is from Table 7 on page 15, which includes a row that claims that 30 * .22 * $369 = $578. It actually = $2435.4. Accounting for this makes the final sum $4.88B, and I've updated the article to reflect that. Personman (talk) 04:01, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

computerization
any mention of computerized gold farmers?Yincrash 10:31, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Seeing as this is framed as a question. I'm not sure, did you notice any computerised gold farming mentions203.35.135.136 (talk) 01:20, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

NPOV issue
See, now that I think about it, I can't figure out which version of this article is more neutral, the one that names the countries or the one that doesn't. Either way, the sentence reads perfectly fine and accurately, but I can't get over the fact that I feel the fact that gold farmers ARE usually considered Chinese needs to be mentioned, but under the context that it IS a stereotype. I wish I was at home, I could grab a third opinion via IRC. Mo0 [ talk ] 23:23, 9 November 2005 (UTC)


 * The reason I specifically mentioned China and Mexico were that China is the characteristic stereotype and Mexico was the location of the most famous gold farming operation to date (Lee Caldwell's BlackSnow Interactive). China and Mexico aren't the only locations that have gold farming operations, Thailand, Indonesia, and other countries (mostly in Southeast Asia or Eastern Europe) also have such things, they're just the two most prominent in my mind. - Flooey 04:26, 10 November 2005 (UTC)


 * The MMO that I play is World of Warcraft, and the prevalent stereotype there by far is that farmers are Chinese, even to the point where seeing guilds like CHINESE FARMERS UNITED, as a parody, is common. My issue with previous edits wasn't with the stereotype itself, but with the insertion during the factual statements at the beginning of the article of (who are mostly Chinese).  That's what I took issue with, since there's really no way to verify any of that. Mo0 [ talk ] 05:43, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I have merged in the Chinese Farmer article to this one. As the article already mentions that many of the farmers are chinese, I thought it was sufficient, but if you like, you can edit it up.  As "Gold farmer" beat "Chinese farmer" by a wide margin in a google fight and is the commodity term used by commentary sites such as penny arcade, it seems that it is the more accepted term. --DDG 22:44, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Ugh, you know something? This isn't neutral at all. It has links to online stores, and seems to actually favor gold farming (which I'm completely against, but beside the point), I think it's in need of some changes. Fr0 14:02, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Page with similar content
Chinese farmer

Proposed merge
Similar content with Chinese farmer and perhaps renaming the article to Farming (gaming) or similar title. čĥàñľōŕď 03:23, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

One merged article needed to address the issue
I agree that there are several articles here dealing with the same issue (real-money trading of MMORPG virtual property) that need to be merged into one. The other terms should point to the merged article. Ubikk (talk) 15:56, 8 February 2008 (UTC) Ubikk February, 2008

RMT
Can someone edit the related article Real-money trading? Atm its filled with citation request tags, and text itself doesnt read well, while this article is much better written.


 * While you have a point that the Real-money trading article is cluttered, and some sources are either out of date or unreliable, Farmer (gaming) has similar problems in it's discussions on the effect upon 'virtual economies' when it crosses over into 'real economics'.


 * The problem is that a case is being argued for legal trade in 'virtual property' where in most cases none is currently recognised by governments or the commercial entities (MMOs) who sustain the very elements that make up these 'virtual worlds'.


 * This means both articles run the risk of discussing what is a speculative but unauthorised trade in an asset, which has no legal status in real economies. If instead the logical separation between those few examples of 'virtual worlds' which do support legal trade were discussed, and the rest who do not support such trade, the articles would make much more sense.


 * These problems are highlighted by the fact that what reliable reference material is available is limited in it's scope, and a lot of the rest is opinion based articles (blogs, etc.) which offer up little in the way of researched & peer reviewed articles. While the speculative aspect of both articles is 'fun' ignoring the legal, regulatory, and illegitimate aspects of the majority of trade in MMO gaming companies virtual property, runs the risk of Wikipedia references supporting speculative and worse illegal trade in what is not recognised otherwise as 'real', else in reality it would attract tax.


 * So what is being discussed in both articles (separating out the limited examples of games where 'virtual' to 'real' exchange is supported in legal & real world sense) are only 'virtual assets' upon sale of which most is not legal tender.


 * An essential point that has failed to be raised previously in both articles is the majority of these unauthorised virtual exchanges are accompanied by a disclaimers that state it's not legal tender or is guaranteed as such, since if it were that would open such companies up to litigation. Even authorised exchanges of popular virtual currencies such as Tercents QQ Coin are careful to state their exchange is not legal tender, so treating 'virtual currency' as having a legitimate economic value in any discussions here should be avoided unless it can be referenced as such, a might be the case with Second Life or Sony's EverQuest_II (via Station_Exchange).


 * Witchita au 02:29, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Chineese association
Many people from world of warcraft think that chineese people are the main source of gold farmers. That is just racist omfg, whenever i see someone on wow that is chineese ppl make fun of him cus hes a "gold farmer" and they say "ping ti tong tow you buy gold now" and say he works in a sweat shop. This is a discriminitation!

It's certainly rude, I'll give it that. And even if all farmers were Chinese (which they are not), it certainly would not automatically mean that all Chinese were farmers. People using a valid statistical extrapolation to justify their own xenophobia make me sick. The Daedalus Project has very good coverage of that.

WOW is not the only online game that exists. I know in guild Wars, there are few farmers that even exist and people use bots, not sweat shop workers. It isn't racist when, at least in horribly unmoderated games like wow, most farmers are Chinese. --68.192.188.142 19:26, 15 September 2006 (UTC)


 * This page made no such comparisons. It simply stated a verifiable fact, that China is the country from which many gold farmers work.  It isn't up to Wikipedia to censor itself, simply stating facts isn't what drives racists.  Bigotry and prejudice do just fine.  207.154.101.37 (talk) 08:33, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Response 1
I agree. Even though many of the distribution companies are Chinese almost all of these companies buy gold over the internet from anyone and they pay for it using paypal. I've encountered obviously Western players who brag about how they level characters and sell accounts and gold. Therefore, entries which perpetuate these stereotypes need to be modified or marked for additional citation.

Ubikk (talk) 15:54, 8 February 2008 (UTC) Ubikk

"Ruins the economy"
In the first paragraph discussing how MMO's have a term in their EULA banning farming, I have removed the statement "as it negatively affects the game economy". This is definately POV. 100 man-hours of "gold farming" has the exact same impact as 100 man-hours of legitimate "self-farming", which is a staple of any MMO, and as stated throughout the rest of the article, it doesn't "negatively affect" as much as it merely "changes" the economy. Furthermore, I do not think it follows that the MMOs have that term in their EULA specifically because "it negatively affects the game economy". Sony's "Station Exchange" facilitates the transfer of item for cash, does it not? In other words, once MMOs can regulate the sale of in-game items (and thusly obtain their share of the proceeds) any statement about the "morality" of gold farming will look hypocritical at best.

There is an argument that "negatively affects" is accurate insofar as it leads prices and costs to be out of equilibrium. In a fully functioning market, costs would increase as the money supply increases (inflation), though in WoW, certain costs (in this case, from NPC vendors and travel) do not rise when this happens. The effects from this are multitudinous, though to suggest just one example, the relative value of expensive (epic) items decreases as compated to a broadly-defined basket of goods when income devoted to fixed costs becomes a smaller part of the (now inflated) money supply.


 * I'm not certain how badly this "ruins" the economy. That does not, however, mean that it is moral to farm gold or to buy farmed gold.  MMORPGs are games, after all, and selling/buying items is against the stated rules of the game, which means it is cheating.  It is no different than using a bot, or exploiting a bug.  You're either advancing your character through illicit means, or enabling someone else to do so.  To say that gold farming is harmless and moral is to say that all other forms of cheating are, which is ridiculous.  If I know that someone else has achieved something through paying a farmer that I had to work for, that makes the game less fun.  The fact that there is such a stigma in the gaming community about this (as evidenced by how commonly it is mocked) means that my opinion is not unusual.  When you also have PvP in an MMORPG, that makes it even worse.  While it is common to hear people claim that the economy is harmed through farming, the fact is that it is the advancement through cheating that it truly immoral. Atamasama 00:51, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Ok, so .. you have a virtual community of say 4,000 on a low population server. There is an exponential amount of gold that will be generated from loot and other drops from mobs, auction house profits etc. That's an economy. You have players that will farm mobs repeatedly, increasing the supply, and decreasing the demand (simple Supply_and_demand). Since there becomes an abundance of items, the value must now go down to compete with other sellers thus having a negative impact on the economy. Now, put money as a motive to farm items for gold in game and have not just one person doing this for the sake of making money to be used in game, but to profit in real life and we have a problem. You've now a worker on a lengthy shift, being paid to farm items for gold and selling it in real life. That, in my opinion ruins the in-game economy. Fr0 05:05, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Let's try putting it in non-game terms, so those who don't see the negative effects might understand better. Suppose in your home town there are three groups of people. There are people (call them "Earners") who work at regular jobs and receive a normal wage for their work. Then some other people move into town (call them "Printers") who have set up currency printing presses in their basements. Printing currency is time consuming work for them, but it's all they have to do. They're not supposed to be printing currency, but they do it anyway, and the result is indistinguishable from the currency that Earners receive for their work. And the Printers start offering the fake currency in exchange for Earner money at a 10 to 1 rate. Now lastly, you have some group of Earners who realize they can get the fake currency cheap, so they stop being Earners and become "Grubbers." Now the real currency is going to the Printers, the Grubbers have much more of the fake currency which is now flooding the economy, and the Earners are standing still. With all that extra currency around, your local merchants start raising prices. Suddenly a loaf of bread costs 4 currency units instead of 2, a good pair of shoes goes from 30 currency to 100, and a good car jumps from 10,000 currency to 90,000. Since the Printers have an unending supply of currency and the Grubbers are still getting things cheaper than before (in relative terms, as long as the inflation rate is lower than the exchange rate), it works out great for them. But the Earners now have to pay much more of their real currency to get the same items. Prices are being artificially inflated by Printers and Grubbers, and Earners find desirable goods to be prohibitively expensive, or completely unavailable. To keep up, an Earner must now start working longer and harder to acquire real currency, or else join the Grubbers. You could make the argument that it is the Earners' choice to stay behind the curve, since the Printers would gladly sell them fake currency, but since the fake currency is illegal and the Earners are honest, that argument doesn't work.

Now just replace "home town" with "server," and "Printer" with "gold farmer," and you'll see what the effect is in an MMOG. In fact, the real-world discrepancy is even larger, in one critical respect: In the hypothetical situation above, both Earners and Grubbers started out on an equal footing, and both had the choice as to whether to do business with the Printers. The only difference between them is honesty. In the real situation, for very good reasons, many do not even have the option of exchanging real money for in-game gold. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.19.38.23 (talk • contribs)


 * The obvious flaw with this analogy is that gold farmers have to 'work' for their gold like everyone else. They just concentrate on it to the exclusion of other activities. They cannot just "print" their gold coins via some magic virtual gold coin printing machine. The proper analogy would be something like if the people you refer to as "printers" worked their jobs like everyone else but then instead of spending it on goods for themselves they they traded their income to others for ... I dunno ... Euros, then go and spend it over in Europe. You can also flip this thing around. The very existence of gold farming tends to indicate that there's insufficient liquidity within the game which makes it worthwhile for many people to trade real dollars for game dollars. One could argue that coping with lack of liquidity is an internal "challenge" of the game and so buying gold online from farmers is "cheating" but obviously a lot of people don't feel that way. What does "gold farming is bad for the game" mean anyway? It means either of two things; 1) the game producer makes less money from sale of its product or 2) the game is less fun for everyone. Just because in game prices are lower or higher does not imply either one of these.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.22.13.88 (talk) 22:30, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


 * That's an interesting analysis, but still fundamentally a matter of opinion as to whether that is good, bad, or indifferent, and as such, it is not a suitable conclusion to place in a Wikipedia article. Wikipedia has a strict policy of neutral point of view, meaning that it is proper to mention criticism and analysis of farming if (and only if) it can be attributed to reliable sources. It would be improper for an editor to make such an argument or conclusion directly, hence such phrases as "ruins the economy" were correctly removed from the article. --MCB 17:10, 24 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I'll agree with you, that "ruins the economy" is a matter of opinion. The description/analogy shows how gold farming (a) leads to inflation, and (b) gives advantages to players who are willing and able to violate the game rules (license) to exchange real money for in-game funds. Whether or not that constitutes "ruining the economy" is probably editorializing.


 * It does seem a matter of opinion: players' opinion. The fact that this is an issue for players, and it they who pay and play the game on a regular basis. It's ultimately their that money sustains the MMO companies. It's these players who are raising the levels of complaints. The fact that some the companies are responding by taking action against rule-breaking accounts does indicate that this is a problem for MMOs.


 * Getting into the argument about whether such supplying the goods to 'cheat' is moral or not, or whether it's good or bad for what we theorise is the 'virtual economy' in each game, is beside the point. The bottom line for players will be that any MMO companies which are not seen to be acting in the interests of most players will be losing a large amount of player support. That simply isn't in the interest of MMOs, so it does seem 'gold farming' will continue to be an issue MMO companies will seek to stamp out.


 * Witchita au 14:28, 2 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I think a good phrase for future use would be something more like "unbalances the economy" or prehaps "unbalances the natural economy". Where there is a tendancy to think of "balanced" as "good" and "unbalanced" and "bad" it's certainly more neutral than other many other statements. I suppose a better statement might be "interferes with the natural development of the economy". I don't really know, IANAE --Technotaoist (talk) 05:46, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Please cite your sources
There are an awful lot of unsourced assertions in this article, many of which seem to be opinion or folklore. I have added a number of fact tags, and the citations missing template to the top of the article. Let's see if we can find verifiable, reliable sources for these assertions, and if not, remove them as per Wikipedia policy. --MCB 04:21, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but why is there 3 citations needed on the Public Opinion section?Cosmonaut3030 19:49, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

wenshen
I'm sorry, but "wenshen" is not the accepted common English-language term for... anything. Why does the article begin with it? Instead of "A yu wenshen is..." this should read "A gold farmer is...".

If you are going to use it in this article, please at least explain what it means, where it derives from, how widely used it is - I very much doubt that it's come into widespread usage among the majority of MMORPG players outside China. Not all gold farmers are Chinese, and it's just patently not a Chinese concept to begin with. LordAmeth 23:04, 19 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Lol, thats just vandalism. I've reverted it. Anything that looks really weird and is not explained is most likely vandalism. Shinhan 12:30, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

er, what?
At present, I don't think the article is clear enough soon enough on exactly WHY anyone would farm. It needs to be said more explicitly how farming is turned into real world money and made into a real world market. Right now, it just seems like people are getting paid to farm for no reason... and only much later in the article can you piece together the realization that players are paying real world money for items of value.

-I agree, I don't play MMO games and it took me a bit to wrap my head around this article. --75.54.121.241 19:47, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree as well. Coming from an external link to this page, I was completely puzzled as to how this could become a "real world" valuable source of income for anybody. Not knowing what the article was about, I couldn't bother to read all in detail and just scanned the page quickly. It's only the paragraph on eBay auctions and such that finally gave me an idea of what this is about. I'd like to rewrite a bit the intro to make it more clear, but as I don't really know what to say, I'd rather leave it to someone else... 80.194.194.190 (talk) 13:03, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

The difference between repetition and duping
It strikes me as odd (to say it lightly) that this article does not discriminate between farming by repeating high-gain parts of a game over and over again to get and sell ingame items/currency for out-of-game money and farming by use of dupes, bugs, exploits etcetera, since the first type has a much lower impact on the game than the latter. For more information, read this. You may find it enlighting. Mzyxptlk 18:12, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Numbers for estimates of Chinese gamers/farmers do not work
In the "Gold farming in China" section, I see three numbers that don't work out. It says that there are 100,000 gold farmers in China, which accounts for 0.4% of all online gamers in China. 100,000 / 0.004 = 25,000,000. So those two numbers indicate that there are 25 million online gamers in China. Further down in the same section, it states that there are about 30 million online gamers worldwide. So if we take those three numbers as accurate, 5/6 of the online gamers in the world are in China, and the remainder of the world has only a total of 5 million. Doesn't sound right. If we take the population of China to be 1.3 billion, then 25 million would be one in 52, or just under 2%. If we assume that that the proportions in the U.S. are the same as in China, then the U.S., with a population of 300 million, would have about 6 million online gamers. So that would mean that the U.S. must have a lower percentage of online gamers than China. I realize that these are all estimates, but there must be something wildly inaccurate about those figures. I would be much more inclined to believe that 100,000 is 4% of China's online gamers, or that there are 10,000 gold farmers accounting for 0.4%. Either way gives a figure of about 2.5 million online gamers in China, which is much more believable than 25 million. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.98.56.75 (talk • contribs) 16:45, 23 April 2007 (UTC).

NYT Magazine article "Life of a Chinese gold farmer"
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/17/magazine/17lootfarmers-t.html?pagewanted=1

A useful resource. --C S (Talk) 05:33, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Proposed Merge of Game sweatshop with Farmer (gaming)
If this merge goes ahead it will change the character of this article from just being about 'gamers who farm' to take on the more controversial role and will shift what's held to be a NPOV since this practice is viewed by many MMOs, some media organisations, and their communities as a damaging practice, and whose views are supported by many news agencies and the MMOs themselves.

See the following article for discussion on this controversy:
 * Taxing Virtual Earnings -- Seriously - Business Week : Gamedaily

This merge will mean great difficulties, more challenges and hopefully will be rewarding in terms of attention paid to this article and it's accuracy, and the quality as well as quantity of references.

See also I.T. News sources which have banned advertisting of 'gold-farming':
 * Why PC Gamer Kicked Out Gold Farmers - Ars Technica : Newsdesk
 * PC Gamer puts the smack down on gold farmers - www.next-gen.biz : Top Stories

While I agree it's important to keep NPOV this does not mean excluding the many references and discussions in the media and by the MMO companies themselves, that such activities do qualify as sweatshops due to low pay and unregulated working conditions according to ILO standards. While the term does have negative connotations a disambiguation page should still remain on the Game sweatshop stub while the majority of the content is merged here.

See Ars Technica for an example of what could be an NPOV on the issue of the sweatshop label:
 * Workers of the World of WarCraft unite - Ars Technica : Newsdesk

The above articles reference a personal blog in which a game user attempts to investigate the phenomenon online, wherein the personal opinion of the author: "My personal impression is that while perhaps a limited number of the farming operations I’ve learned about may, in some regards, impose sweatshop conditions on their employees, many, perhaps most, don’t—especially when local norms are taken into account."

While the above source is a personal one it does show that the Game sweatshop question is not an 'either/or' but is something that is still a part of this issue, and should be included, though the terms and references should be carefully vetted here. Yet I am doubtful as to whether the opinion that 'gold-farming' and it's 'effects on the gaming economy' can be NPOV. There are so many MMOs, and many positions from which these arguments can be made, and as demonstrated in the discussion above so far most a lot of views include original research. We need citations in the article page to support the points being made.

The main point of view that agreed upon about the 'virtual economy' in many games, is that it is either held to strongly hurt or help these economies. While specific examples are lacking any citations for points of view.

Some examples of points which would require game specific arguments: Citing game specific arguments of these affects may best be 'farmed' back to the specific portals or pages for each MMO rather than non-specific and un-cited arguments here.
 * access to highly contested resources results in crowding in some areas of games.
 * shifts in prices and amounts of 'virtual' items available.

What can't be contested is that it is gold farming's effects as perceived by players, that is at the core of controversy for many players of these games.

That 'gold-farming' has an affect on the 'virtual economy' is area of controversy which is significant. Since strong views held on this have had generated such a degree of customer complaint that arguably many MMOs are now taking it seriously. As the BBC reported recently players who actively sell gold are subject to harassment due to it being such an unpopular activity among other players who view it as harming their game: "...to say this is hugely controversial among the game's community is putting it mildly."
 * The business end of playing games - BBC Online : Technology

Pooling editorial resources to work on providing informative and referenced article on the many views given this is a controversial topic will require delicate work, but it's worthwhile attempting to provide evidence based material to ensure this article presents the economic, legal, governmental and social import of this practice on 'virtual worlds' and the MMO community.

See this article on the growing importance of providing an accurate reference here:
 * The growing value of virtual goods - Ars Technica : Newsdesk

As we will need to spruce up the accuracy of they eBay actions against most 'virtual property' sales
 * eBay bans the auction of in-game items - Ars Technica : Newsdesk

As a prelude to this I've expanded one section on 'Rules and enforcement' and added a section on how taxation, law enforcement and other legislative activities are being affected by, and will affect, 'virtual' to 'real' exchanges now and in the future. That section seems to have many more references could be added, since as profits grow so will the pressure for 'real' regulation.

Witchita au 09:32, 16 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I couldn't tell if you support or oppose a merge. Could you summarize your thoughts here? I agree with your first point, that there is a distinction between a game farmer and a business that earns it's income through game farming. Cheers Kevin 09:51, 16 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks Kevin. I'm was initially only interested in putting my efforts into providing 'food for thought' on the proposed merge, though I originally opposed it on the Talk:Game_sweatshop page. So I'm open to suggestions.


 * I wish to preserve the existing article, and merge it as a subpart of this article, which will hopefully allow us clean up the Talk:Game_sweatshop page. I feel the discussion about the merge seems to have gotten off track from the job of providing a good reference for all the possible issues.


 * Given there are many emerging real world matters regarding those issues, I would only vote to merge provided we preserve the existing material as a subsection of Farmer %28gaming%29] (for later editing) and so retain any quality references while at the same time cleaning away the Talk:Game_sweatshop page.


 * We do need maintain at least stub there (that point wasn't disputed) as it's been referenced in another article and is an issued that does have many references in the media.


 * Some advice on what categories to bring across would also be useful since you seem quite experienced in those matters.


 * Witchita au 10:58, 16 August 2007 (UTC)


 * It seems to me that there are 2 related subjects in these articles: individual game farmers; and organizations employing game farmers or game farming techniques. So we have a couple of choices here, to keep separate articles on individuals and organisations, or make one article such as Game farming, which would cover both. I don't have any strong feelings either way. The Game sweatshop article may need to be moved to a more neutral title if there is evidence of organisations using game farming without 'sweatshop' conditions.


 * If the article is merged, then the content of Game sweatshop would be moved here, thus preserving it. That article would become a redirect to this one.


 * Kevin 11:44, 16 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Hi Kevin.


 * There should be division along the lines of the term 'to farm' a resource in-game for personal use without the intention to on-sell for 'real world' currency as that is not violating any EULA or ToS. I feel any such discussion that doesn't violate any EULA or ToS should be in a separate article to avoid any confusion or ambiguity which seems to have bogged both of these articles down. Maybe a stub or disambiguation page would be helpful there. I suggest a title of Game farming (Virtual World Trading)


 * Game farming (Virtual World Trading) would then be for: any individual who 'farms' items for their own use or for sale in exchange for in-game currency and in-game items. That would cover the what is the legal use of the term in the eyes of many MMOs and players without any legal ambiguity. It would also then allow for discussion of the effects of in-game merchanting and discussion of such 'virtual economies' as models isolated from 'real economies'.


 * Whereas any organised attempt to conduct Real World Trading (RWT) is associated with the concept of 'gold farming' aka Game sweatshops needs to be gathered under a separate article Game farming (Real World Trading). Regardless of whether it's an individual on-selling items to another individual, for it to be indisputably legal in all countries there needs to be a recognised commercial agreement between the owner of the copyrights of the 'virtual world' which instantiates these objects and any intermediary for any individual 'farming' objects.


 * Anything involving RWT is a far more complex and potentially fraught definition of farming and so should not be confused with the legal game-play of players who 'farm' items.


 * While there is room for discussion of elements such as trade in 'Second Life' and 'EverQuest II ' (Sony) who have legalised RWT, that then raises other real world issues such as taxation, legal and among other issues. As this article evolves discussion of that legalised RWT, and the accompanying tax, ownership and other social issues may need to be put on a separate page to further remove any ambiguities. Even then these current few MMOs have legalised RWT still face many similar issues that come with bringing 'real money' and 'real ownership' of 'virtual property', as is faced by the kind that is not commercially legalised.


 * Separating the articles in this fashion will disambiguate Game farming (Real World Trading) from the legal practice of players who don't violate the ToS Game farming (Virtual World Trading). There are many sources clearly cite that most MMOs do not permit it, and many MMOs are clearly against it - it's that confusion that has caused problems in both these articles.


 * Witchita au 12:46, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

WoW guild banks
Pretty sure they just implemented them as other MMORPG's had them already, not because of some exclusive effect on gold farming. Although it may have an impact, it's not exactly exclusive. The more prominent and direct thing Blizzard did was take out a lawsuit against a gold farming website.Zelphi (talk) 11:27, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Game economy impact section should be deleted
The Game Economy Impact section is full of misinformation, misapplied economics terms, and shows very little understanding of economics in general. The use of quotes around bits of jargon and reference to "economic circles" are patronizing. The section should be deleted. Kevrhodes (talk) 18:47, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

two terms, farming and Chinese farming
Farming and gold farming is where a player of a game plays to generate virtual items / virtual currency. Chinese Gold Farming (CGF), sometimes just "gold farmers", when refering to a specific player, is where farming is done for the sole purpose of real world profit and deserves recognition here and also on it's own page with a definition of its own. It seems that a majority of this page is actual describing CGF and not the defined term in the opening section "gold farming," so maybe the latter section of this page should be cut and pasted into the CGF page. I'll start that page and leave this opinion here incase it's not the majority. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Xetxo (talk • contribs) 21:07, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Spam dot com
Deleted advertising spam.SunSw0rd (talk) 15:44, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

In China?
I thought the stereotype was Korea? Anyway, isn't this an encyclopedia? I think this article would look more professional if it said, "in some Asian countries gold farming..." Stereotypes don't belong in an encyclopedia, unless those stereotypes are examples in an article about stereotypes. (Yeah I know you're not supposed to use the same word in a sentence; I don't know how to rephrase it). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.204.193.48 (talk) 20:17, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Bias in the opening
The phrase "Rich, developed countries....etc etc....developing Countries." Is 1) unneeded and 2) Politically incorrect. One cannot make a generalized stereotype like that, even though it may be true. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.32.55.27 (talk) 16:59, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

"==History== What began as a cottage industry" Seems to be linked to the wrong place, I assume that http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cottage_industry is where the one who made it wanted it to be linked. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.232.83.215 (talk) 01:04, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

New Changes
Game companies have changed their stance on gold farming; recent example includes Blizzard, which has included a real money trade system in their new game Diablo 3. You guys might want to research this and incorporate it into the article. http://www.gamesradar.com/diablo-iii-real-money-auction-house-announced-gold-farmers-stunned/

Tim — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.194.70.57 (talk) 14:09, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

External links modified
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External links modified
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I have just modified one external link on Gold farming. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
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External links modified
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I have just modified 3 external links on Gold farming. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090715143758/http://english.vietnamnet.vn/tech/2006/07/589687/ to http://english.vietnamnet.vn/tech/2006/07/589687/
 * Added archive https://archive.is/20121216064952/http://moremoney.blogs.money.cnn.com/2010/01/22/play-money-is-real-money-says-high-court/ to http://moremoney.blogs.money.cnn.com/2010/01/22/play-money-is-real-money-says-high-court/
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WoW banned in China
As of two days ago or so, World of Warcraft can't be played in China. We should add some sort of info on how this has affected the gold farming industry, since Chinese gold farming constitutes a large portion of the gold farming market. Zeck (talk) 20:15, 24 January 2023 (UTC)