[CashMoneyMillionare]

Gold farming is a general term for an MMORPG player who attempts to acquire ("farm") items of value within a game, usually by exploiting repetitive elements of the game's mechanics. This is usually accomplished by carrying out in-game actions (such as killing an important creature) repeatedly to maximize gains, sometimes by using a program such as a bot or automatic clicker. More broadly, the term could refer to a player of any type of game who repeats mundane actions over and over in order to collect in-game items. An organization which organizes farmers is known as a sweatshop.

According to estimates, around 100,000 people in China are employed as gold farmers, as of December 2005.[1] Chinese gold farmers typically work twelve hour shifts, and sometimes up to eighteen hour shifts. Wages depend heavily on location and the size of the gold-farming company. One gold-farming operation in Chongqing in central China with 23 gold farmers was reported to pay its employees the equivalent of about 120 U.S. dollars per month, while workers at a larger gold farm in Fuzhou earn the equivalent of about 250 U.S. dollars per month. The rising prevalence of gold farming has led to the creation of gold-farm brokerages.

There are gold farmers or gold farms in other countries as well, such as the Philippines, Indonesia, and Mexico. However, they do not approach the scope and scale of the Chinese farm industry.

Ge Jin, a 30-year-old Shanghai native, has made a documentary on "gold farms" in China as part of his doctoral research at the University of California, San Diego.[2] He is one of the many researchers who have investigated how farm owners manage their production and distribution of virtual commodities across the border between the virtual and the real as well as the borders between nations. His main aim in his research was also to delve into the background and lives of these workers: "I also tried to find out what this job, combining work and play, means to Chinese gold farmers and how it feels like to live at this peculiar intersection of the virtual and the real."

* World of Warcraft recently introduced "Guild Banks", where members of a guild can cooperate by donating useful items and extra money for each other to use. This reduces the demand for gold and reduces the value of gold purchased with cash.

* In the MMORPG RuneScape, unbalanced trades became limited for accounts on January 2nd, 2008. Jagex, the company that hosts RuneScape, also altered a few other parts of the game to cut down on possible Real-World Trading (RWT) attempts, requiring a balanced stake to be made when fighting a player or entering a tournament. At death, defined in RuneScape as having your HP (Hit Points) depleted, a gravestone will appear so that you can not complete an unbalanced trade by dying, unless skulled from the RuneScape Bounty Hunter, the reduced area of the Wilderness that still allows PK'ing. (Player Killing.). This change, while not very popular among the players, has caused a significant decrease in the number of gold farming activities within the game. Jagex's RuneScape development staff recently pulled ideas and suggestions from the official forums to get an idea of what might make players more satisfied, and eventually released that the original unbalanced trade limit of 3,000 GP (Gold Pieces, or the unit abbreviation for coins) can be increased depending upon how many QP (Quest Points) a player has.

* Star Wars Galaxies has recently added the "Warden Program" into the game. Instead of taking hours to file tickets against in-game farmers and spammers, players who were selected were given the power to mute suspected farmers and automatically mark them for later investigation by Game Masters.

As far as gamers farming items for themselves goes, in China, gamers under the age of 18 will have difficulty playing online for the long hours required to farm any significant amounts. According to a CNBC news report[30], a new mandate by the Chinese government requires online games to have monitoring software for users younger than 18 with built-in warnings to stop and exercise after three continuous hours of play, and to stop playing after five hours. Minors who violate this new mandate may be required to attend an Internet Addiction Clinic if they don't reform. Also, to play online, gamers will be required "to register with a real name and ID card number so that the system knows if they are under 18 or not.

[Torque1992]

locked.....

dont use other peoples work and claim as yours.

a.k.a.

dont copy and paste wikipedia