Topic: Hmmm...clever gold farmers

[idolminds]

Hmmmm....

I was running around bored in the World of Warcraft today, tired of coding. I saw a guy (lets call him Bob) in the trade channel who said that he was selling this item for 10,000g:

http://www.wowhead.com/item=54860

This item, in case you don't know, is a passenger flying mount, the only one in the game. The way it is obtained is by recruiting a friend to World of Warcraft, having them buy the full game, and then paying for 2 months of subscription. All in all, this costs about $50. This is not to say that the mount itself costs $50, because ideally your friend was going to play the game anyway, so you essentially get it as a 'signing bonus' to get more people playing the game. It is brilliant marketing by Blizzard.

Back to Bob. Bob seemed shady at first, but I participated in his deal because he was promising to deliver the goods before the gold was exchanged, in this way it was impossible for what he was doing to be a scam. The deal worked like this:

1) I show Bob that I own at least 10,000g

2) He sends me an email address to be recruited

3) I log into the Recruit-A-Friend service on battle.net and 'recruit' the friend

4) This gives Bob a 10 day free trial, linked to my account

5) Bob then buys the game and prepays for 2 months of WoW, costing about $50

6) I claim my item which is mailed to me in game

7) I then give Bob the 10k gold

Now you may realize that this leaves Bob completely open to being scammed. People doing the advertising generally don't do this. Anyone could essentially, without the possibility of punishment, simply not pay Bob after the goods are given. There is no escrow trading service for this type of transaction.

Not only is he open to scam, but this is not economically viable to sustain. The cost of gold on the gold selling market is approximately $3 per 1,000, which means that 10k gold is worth about $30. This means he is paying $50 for $30, which also didn't make sense. This had me puzzled, and I wanted to get to the bottom of it. This guy was doing this ALL DAY, I knew of at least 7 people who bought from him, since this deal is extremely good, because there is a surplus of gold in the game at the moment (hence low gold prices, which were about $8 per 1000 during the summer).

So I got to thinking, and ended up coming up with my theory, which after much convincing Bob to spill the truth, he confirmed:

There are many companies set up in various parts of the world that essentially farm gold, hence the term you may have heard called gold farming. Huge computer labs employ people who are paid pennies an hour to do things in game to make money. This money is then sent to their employers, and the employers package and sell it online. It's a multi million dollar a year industry.

With this recruit a friend program, the gold farmers had realized a huge potential for more money. Since gold farming needs to operate on a huge scale to remain profitable, the farmers need hundreds if not thousands of accounts to keep going. These accounts often get banned or suspended due to their shady activities, so needless to say, they sign up for a lot of subscriptions. Bob was employed by one of these companies to do the following:

1) Sign up for a new email account on gmail or hotmail

2) Advertise that he was trying to get his friend into the game, and that he was selling a rocket mount for 10k

3) Give the buyer the email address to be recruited

4) Pay for the game with his boss's credit card, and buy the subscription, giving the buyer the reward

5) The buyer claims his reward, then chooses whether or not to uphold his end of the bargain (I did)

So the end result is, the gold farmers get 10,000 free gold with every account they were going to sign up for anyways. This cuts their spending from $50 to about $20 for a 2 month account, which is a HUGE savings in the long run. Even if people choose not to pay, they still have the account that they needed to create in the first place, so there is zero loss. Only profits.

Clever, clever gold farmers.

Who wants a ride on my rocket mount?

I know gold farming sucks, but I like the ingenious nature of it and its not actually scamming people.

[W7RE]

I too know a few people who've gotten their rocket mounts this way. Thinking back, maybe I should have gotten mine that way, instead of recruiting an actual friend, who as it turns out wanted to powerlevel 5 characters to 60 with the triple XP... yea, my 10 character slots are all full, with mostly level 60 characters that are just sitting there in level 1 starting gear, not being played.

[Ace_O_Spades]

As a criminologist, this activity fascinates me to no end.