What is Gold Farming?
A player in a MMORPG can collect assets, which are known as "virtual property". Currency, land, weapons, power, characters and other goods in the game worlds can be classified as virtual property.
In all of these MMORPG games, it takes a lot of this virtual local currency to buy the gear and other battle aids a player needs to even contemplate a run at the monsters worth fighting.
To get more currency, players have a range of virtual income-generating activities to choose from: they can collect loot from dead monsters, of course, but they can also make weapons, potions and similarly useful items to sell to other players or even gather the herbs and hides and other resources that are the crafters’ raw materials.
All these in-game items have "values" pegged to them, and therefore can be used, traded, exchanged or sold in the game. Complexities arise when these virtual goods also develop a value in the real world. Then, players would pay in real world currency to obtain the virtual property. This has become so common that a term has been coined for this practice: Real Money Trading (RMT).
How Much is Gold Trading Worth?
The worth of MMORPG currency trading was estimated to hit US$1 billion in 2005, according to the Korea Game Development and Promotion Institute.
In 2001, one economist calculated the value of an EverQuest platinum piece to be greater than that of the Japanese yen.
Farm, Farm, Farm
However, repercussions have been felt throughout the gaming world: Square Enix initially terminated 700 accounts that were involved in RMT within the game Final Fantasy XI. Since then they have made several follow-ups, most recently of which was the banning of 11,500 accounts as of 24th November, 2006.
During September, 2006, Blizzard Entertainment banned more than 76,000 accounts from WoW for using illegal third-party programs and "farming gold". 11 million gold was also removed from the game economy.
Gold Farming Companies
There are "professional" companies set up just to take advantage of this trend. These companies buy the gold (or other currency) from players, or even hire their own gold farmers to farm gold for them.
Thse companies maintain a very professional website, so you'd never imagine what's happening behind-the-scenes. Do visit some companies to see what I'm talking about.
Real-time Price of MMORPG Gold
Trading has become so commonplace that real-time currency exchanges and monitoring websites have been created to track the prices of in-game currency against real-world currency. 500 pieces of WoW gold can be exchanged for US$26.80, as of 11 March 2007.
