Gold Farmers: Man or Machine?

As some of you may or may not know, I don’t live in any of the “cool” gamer places where I can buy all the new shit you and your friends have. Oh, I try. Dear Lord, I try. But, in the communist country known as China – there are no fair deals.

By living in China I miss the coolness factor of living in Japan with early release dates, while simultaneously missing the English dubs and “big bang” releases that the States usually garner.

Yes friends, what I usually get to enjoy is the toe jam underfoot of every wonderful gaming experience imaginable. Gold farmers, piracy, poor quality, cheap knock-offs and a small, dimly lit gaming store which hasn’t been cleaned or dusted in months, but a store which the owner assures me is top rate.

Normally when we think of gold farming, we think of little Asian machines that, when looked at from afar, might do some sort of strange idiosyncratic event like twitching or ticking every few moments while clicks of the mouse fill the room like some evil back-busting opera.

They all have such amazing lives, sitting there at their computer screen day after day for 12 hours a day playing video games. They’re probably all guys as well. Oh yes, not only do they bleed dry the experiences we cherish so much for us, and for themselves, but it’s also a sausage fest.

So imagine my surprise when my friend visits me in a little city called Yangshuo with his new girlfriend who he tells me was a freakin’ gold farmer. I must have blacked out when he told me because when I arose, I saw nothing but tequila shots sitting before me and it was 12 hours later.

“What kind of girl would gold farm?” I ask myself. Poor, miserable and ugly – no doubt. Probably scurvy chick, with a hump, who was thrown out of her home because of the one child policy who subsequently lived on rats and random garbage strewn about the streets.

When she finally grew old enough to crawl, she drug herself from her rubbish-infested home to the door step of an internet bar where the kindly old man running it drew upon the Christian favor (or lack thereof ) to put her into slave labor.

No. Heavens to Betsy, no.

What stood before me was a 5′2 smoking Asian bombshell who clung to my fat friend’s chubby fingers like it was going out of style. Who knew DDO’s (Dungeons & Dragons Online) gold farmers were so smoking hot? If we did, we wouldn’t have been treating them all like shit, would we? In fact, I’ve switched accounts already!

Not only are these Asian beauties human, but they sit alone in a dark cellar by themselves for 12 hours a day, then go to sleep on cots nearby until the next begins and they can do it all over again. The only other human interaction is the MMO’s nerdcore themselves.

So how did he get this little thing to prance around him daily like she was Tae-Bo’ing? The story goes like this:

My friend was playing DDO like he always does. Eventually, he received an advertisement for gold, like you always do. What makes him unique is that instead of ignoring the ad, he actually replied. He quoted some insane amount of gold like $1,000,000 worth.

The girl, who we’ll call Junebug was working as an English translator for the gold farming company/sweatshop. The other farmers would get a reply and she’d go around translating everything and speaking with the customers. She was better than most because she actually has a degree in Business English from one of the top universities in China.

Upon receiving the ridiculous request, she continued talking to him. Not because he was witty, like he might tell you, but because she was told to by her boss in hopes that he would shell out some cash. Now, you may think my friend had the idea to rope in the girl the entire time, but this is not so. He just felt like BS’ing with a gold farmer.

As time progressed, he would get a message from Farmer Bug every morning he logged in and he would continue to BS with them until he finally asked for ‘his’ (my friend thought every farmer was a guy, like we all do) MSN addy so that he could continue talking to ‘him’ out of game.

Sure enough, he added ‘his’ MSN and looked at the picture and then asked one of the most brilliant questions of our time: “Why do you have a picture of a (hot) chick as your icon?”

“Because I am.”

From then on, his brain exploded with possibilities and doubts, but he continued talking to her for an entire year on and off cam, thus proving that she is, indeed, either a chick, or one crafty son of a bitch.

A year later, he went to the Olympics and she quit her job to be his guide for two months. Thus, I find them sitting in front of me drinking genuine Jose Quervo. Or, I guess I could have blacked out and made it up.