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Confessions of an Ultima Online Gold Farmer
petbath writes "A long time UO player who is moving on makes some interesting confessions on how he managed to earn over 100k in real world money by setting up a bot farm." Commentary available on Terra Nova. From the post: " Between the pressures of my competition, the required maintenance work and the impending doom of on-line game markets, I decided to retire my bot farm in favor of other possibilities that required less work to maintain. Last May I sold off the last of my game assets and today I have posted my bot army for sale on Ebay. I don't want to part with these beasts of burden, but I do have to close this final chapter in the gold farming adventure."
This should be compared to the hordes of Chinese sweatshop gold farmers which, in the opinion of many, ruined Lineage 2, and which are setting up shop in WoW.
According to WoW players who managed to find a farmer who spoke English (most don't, but will happily swear at you in Chinese if you hamper their gold farming), they run a pretty tight racket. Several people share one account (presumably to save on monthly fees, though they may be using stolen CC's anyway), leading to one character - generally the most apt race/class for farming whatever the current cash cow is, but usually a human paladin - being played 24/7. In some cases, the character is named the same across multiple servers (such as "Loly").
The farmers hand over all the cash and items they obtain to a boss, who auctions the items in the in-game auction house and stockpiles the cash. Using one of the various gold-for-money websites, they coordinate with their customers and hand out the purchased gold, often via in-game mail. The farmers must meet a gold quota each day in order to get paid their cut, which is why they often resort to unfriendly play practices.
Their weakness, however, is that they XP grinded to get to level 60, which means they haven't done any instance quests, so their gear is substandard. On PvP servers, many legit players have found that the farmers' PvP-fu is weak, in part due to the trans-Pacific lag, in part due to their gear, and in further part due to not having any experience in PvP combat.
In any case, there are numerous complaints about the gold farmers on the official WoW forums, though there has been no word from Blizzard on any account actions taken against the gold farmers for ToU violations. Many are concerned that if Blizzard takes too long to act, the in-game economy will be irreparably damaged.