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The Story of the Gold Farmer
The Deadalus Project has a massive update looking at Player Opinions of Gold Farmers. While farming activities are well documented, Mr. Yee opens up the dialogue about the topic by looking at player opinion in a larger context. From the piece: "Of course, the story of prejudice against the Chinese during the 1800s is far more complex and nuanced than stemming from just the laundry workers. And, of course, the parallel that I'm trying to draw isn't perfect. But the juxtaposition of this historical narrative with the much more recent narrative we typically tell about 'Chinese' gold farmers reveals its disturbing metaphors and framings. The contemporary narrative starts to feel too much like the historical one - Chinese immigrant workers being harassed and murdered by Westerners who feel they alone can arbitrate what constitutes acceptable labor."
...but I really don't like them wherever they're from - throwing race in as an issue in this seems cheap to me.
This has, actually, nothing at all to do with Chinese farmers except for the fact that the majority of sweatshop farmers are from China. Apologies to the writer if he doesn't want to admit it, but it's the truth. Thus, the birth of the Chinese farmer.
Add this: the "Chinese" part has nothing to do with it, either. The problem is farmers. They disrupt the economy in many online games and are generally harmful to the play of the game.
Conclusion: Farmers are bad. There's no getting around it, and pulling the race card on flimsy pretext isn't a defense. I could care less about their ethnicity or their race. I just want them to stop spamming my damn WoW mailbox with offers for cheap gold.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
"Systematic harassment and slaughter?" Get real. It's a game. Let's be honest: gold farmers are an annoyance. If you PK them, you're annoying them back, and you're doing it within the rule structure of whatever game you're playing. These people signed up for accounts on PVP servers, so they're going to have to deal with being PKed just like the rest of us. If they stopped being annoying, they wouldn't be PKed as much.
Also note that only one of the three comments is racist. The other two are just people having fun at the expense of other people who are being an annoyance and violating game rules.
The developers should just make it a non-viable option.
Somehow.
there is death in the hane
YOU come into a game, abuse the rules to make money, AND make the game less playable and less fun for the majority of the players.
Then YOU have the nerve to complain about it when they retaliate against you in manners that are well within the rules of the game?
Is that the 'waaaaaambulance' I hear?
People didn't start calling them Chinese farmers for no reason. This all began because of the evidence that the most prolific farmers were Chinese. Not only that, but these people set up a businesses in farming. Without a doubt there are farmers from countless other countries around the world, but the Chinese happened to be the most organized in this effort. If it had been German farmers doing this we'd be calling them German farmers right now.
To claim that there's a racist underpinning here is absurd. I mean, if they're Chinese, they're Chinese. Are we going to deny reality now for fear of offending someone? If it's established the majority of farmers are no longer from China, then it's time to drop the term. But while the majority of farmers are based in China the term is still justified.
This guy should be complaining about the scumbags making money off this and the deplorable working conditions their employees are subjected to.
...are the fucktards who BUY the gold.
All this finger pointing at the farmers. I remember a saying "Thou protest too much."
It's the losers that buy the gold that creates the demand for this service. I find farming annoying. But I would really like to find out who is buying the gold on the game that I play and have a chance to roll them. Repeatedly.
I love the excuse that they do it because it takes too much time to gather up said gold. Hello! It's an online game! Of course it's going to take time! Everything about this kind of game takes time! The game takes time!
-- What's this '-r *' file doing here? -- Oh well, a simple 'rm' should do the trick.
"But in disagreement with the Article, I've never been directly harassed by a farmer..."
World of Warcraft. Azshara. Any server with a medium or higher population.
95% of the time any day you come, you will find the same set of players killing the same mobs, looting the same resource nodes. If you attempt to pull a mob anywhere in the area they consider 'theirs' (which typically is MUCH LARGER than you think - re: the whole viewable area or larger), they will usually retaliate by using techniques which result in you being attacked by a large number of mobs.
Glad you haven't had the problem. Lots of us have.