The Art of Gold Farming

I spent many hours on this after talking to a good friend about my past employment. It's for friends to understand more of my life and learn from my experiences.

I worked for a company Called IGE not too long ago for 4 months, before I went into college.

www.ige.com -- IGE, a diversified service provider and market maker, operates the world’s largest secure network of buying and selling sites for massively multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPGs) virtual currency and assets on the Internet. IGE currently offers exchange services for many of the world’s most popular MMOGs, including both direct buying and selling services as well as a trading platform.

Tomo worked with me.. Our job was simple, we were given 2 well written pdf files , each one with over 50-60 exploits in World of Warcraft's system. We used 2 computers , decent specs windowsxp home , they only had basic programs with windows xp ( internet explorer , notepad etc. ) and World of Warcraft in the system.

We ran on lowest quality everything we were given 2 accounts one for each of us. These accounts contained 1 horde rogue lvl60 and 1 alliance rogue lvl60 on one of the most popular PvP servers.

We both did everything from teleport exploits , instant zone ins , tracking exploits etc. Just basic stuff at first. Within our first month Tomo and I wrote up 4-6 different scripts for IGE which they passed to the "24/7" gold farmers we had not known much at the time the conditions those people were working in so we had not put much thought into what we were doing. Each script offered us around 200-400 USD each. It really did not take much programming knowledge to write them , they gave us a basic macro program and told us to specify a script for a different part of a certain zone ( namely everyones favorite "Tyrs Hand" ).

After working for them about 2 months making a decent amount of money for a part-time job, They "promoted" us to a different level of gold farming.

Since one of the main "managers" was a good friend of ours he had explained to us one of the biggest ways IGE makes gold is not by having a couple hundred chinese boys and girls farming 24/7 for pennies on the dollar, but beleive it or not was through "fixed" epic drops off certain mobs ESPECIALLY when the server had an established economy. Every week we were given a note with a fixed location / time / and mob name that would drop a certain epic item , one example which I remember is a Carrion Grub in Eastern Plaguelands dropping an epic Glowing brightwood staff 2 times in one day one for Tomo an Alliance rogue and one for me a Horde rogue .. basically one for each market.

Our friend never told us how this process worked , someone could have cracked the drop rate code / corrupt Blizzard employees etc. I won't go accusing Blizzard to be totally involved in the business but it is possible.

Tomo and I had met a $2000.00 quota in 2 weeks , I remember us both walking into the office to get the check but this day was the day that made us both quit.

As referenced here in my blog and as many of you already know , IGE is a slavedriving sweatshop business..But of course they don't admit it , They pay children (16 years ) China/Japan/Korea and other poor countries to sit in warehouses to play 12 hours a day for 1$ an hour. Tomo and I had walked by a room with over 20 over worked / tired and miserable adults and teenagers sitting in front of computers playing World of Warcraft. We were both sick , we had written scripts so that they could sit in front of computers all day to make no where near enough money to get by.

Yes it is their decision they are not slaves but they are being taken advantage of and everyone who buys gold ( I'm sure most of WoW's player base ) supports it. We walked into that office took the check , and reported the building to authorities. It was shut down and moved I am sure to a different place within a week.

Read this , all true as I have experienced it all myself.

http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.offset=0&cId=3141815

I hope everyone that has read this has learned something , think before you buy that 2k gold from IGE or e-bay sure your getting that uber-l33t EPIC MOUNT ! or that purple you have always wanted but your also supporting a corrupt business.

This is all my experience with IGE in a 4 month period make comments if you want but don't e-mail me about it.. and I did not link this on World of Warcrafts forums this was meant for my friends not for every single person who plays the game.

Ayuka, 10 December 2005

Source: Ayuka1337
Wage Slaves from 1up
Gold Farmers Talent Tree