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There is a culture of players in WOW that play the game not for fun, but for profit. To the citizens of Azeroth, these players are known as "Gold Farmers." Farmers spend their time killing monsters in out of the way places for the items they drop. A farmer hopes to get rare and valuable items for the hours spent mindlessly killing. They then hock all the items gathered to vendors or to other players via the Auction House. A majority of the gold farmers active in WOW are Chinese, and often speak little to no English. Though they are often the focus of ridicule by American players, and playing video games for money is something that most American kids would dream of, their lives are not easy as it may sound.
In near sweat-shop conditions, the accounts are manned in twelve to fourteen hour shifts, without holidays or vacations. It is rare for a WOW gold farming account to spend much time offline, as each account has two or three players assigned to it in these shifts. In tightly packed rooms, between ten to thirty computers can be running the game simultaneously. Each account has a quota, most commonly twenty gold an hour. So if the average price for an American player to purchase WOW gold is $85 for one thousand WOW gold. Using these figures, each hour of game play earns approximately $3.50. A pittance is paid to the gold farmer, between 45 to 55 cents an hour is the normal wage. With WOW’s subscription cost of $15 a month, the first 5 hours of the farmers first shift pays for that, everything else is profit for the company
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