Chinese government makes inmates farm Warcraft gold

[ehra]

https://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/25/china-prisoners-internet-gaming-scam

As a prisoner at the Jixi labour camp, Liu Dali would slog through tough days breaking rocks and digging trenches in the open cast coalmines of north-east China. By night, he would slay demons, battle goblins and cast spells.

Liu says he was one of scores of prisoners forced to play online games to build up credits that prison guards would then trade for real money. The 54-year-old, a former prison guard who was jailed for three years in 2004 for "illegally petitioning" the central government about corruption in his hometown, reckons the operation was even more lucrative than the physical labour that prisoners were also forced to do.

"Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labour," Liu told the Guardian. "There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000-6,000rmb [£470-570] a day. We didn't see any of the money. The computers were never turned off."

Memories from his detention at Jixi re-education-through-labour camp in Heilongjiang province from 2004 still haunt Liu. As well as backbreaking mining toil, he carved chopsticks and toothpicks out of planks of wood until his hands were raw and assembled car seat covers that the prison exported to South Korea and Japan. He was also made to memorise communist literature to pay off his debt to society.

But it was the forced online gaming that was the most surreal part of his imprisonment. The hard slog may have been virtual, but the punishment for falling behind was real.

"If I couldn't complete my work quota, they would punish me physically. They would make me stand with my hands raised in the air and after I returned to my dormitory they would beat me with plastic pipes. We kept playing until we could barely see things," he said.

It is known as "gold farming", the practice of building up credits and online value through the monotonous repetition of basic tasks in online games such as World of Warcraft. The trade in virtual assets is very real, and outside the control of the games' makers. Millions of gamers around the world are prepared to pay real money for such online credits, which they can use to progress in the online games.

The trading of virtual currencies in multiplayer games has become so rampant in China that it is increasingly difficult to regulate. In April, the Sichuan provincial government in central China launched a court case against a gamer who stole credits online worth about 3000rmb.

The lack of regulations has meant that even prisoners can be exploited in this virtual world for profit.

According to figures from the China Internet Centre, nearly £1.2bn of make- believe currencies were traded in China in 2008 and the number of gamers who play to earn and trade credits are on the rise.

It is estimated that 80% of all gold farmers are in China and with the largest internet population in the world there are thought to be 100,000 full-time gold farmers in the country.

In 2009 the central government issued a directive defining how fictional currencies could be traded, making it illegal for businesses without licences to trade. But Liu, who was released from prison before 2009 believes that the practice of prisoners being forced to earn online currency in multiplayer games is still widespread.

"Many prisons across the north-east of China also forced inmates to play games. It must still be happening," he said.

"China is the factory of virtual goods," said Jin Ge, a researcher from the University of California San Diego who has been documenting the gold farming phenomenon in China. "You would see some exploitation where employers would make workers play 12 hours a day. They would have no rest through the year. These are not just problems for this industry but they are general social problems. The pay is better than what they would get for working in a factory. It's very different," said Jin.

"The buyers of virtual goods have mixed feelings … it saves them time buying online credits from China," said Jin.

The emergence of gold farming as a business in China – whether in prisons or sweatshops could raise new questions over the exporting of goods real or virtual from the country.

"Prison labour is still very widespread – it's just that goods travel a much more complex route to come to the US these days. And it is not illegal to export prison goods to Europe, said Nicole Kempton from the Laogai foundation, a Washington-based group which opposes the forced labour camp system in China.

Liu Dali's name has been changed

[Quadrochosis]

lolololol

[Kosmo]

That's..insane.

[mizzl]

Nah, to me it seems like a golden opportunity for prisons to make some money

[Gadough]

This isn't surprising at all. Every Warcraft player knows that this shit goes down.

[Chino]

Nah, to me it seems like a golden opportunity for prisons to make some money

[Gadough]

I'd also like to point out that it's very easy to earn gold in WoW. A casual player can rack up a small fortune for himself if he knows what he's doing. Most WoW players don't buy gold, and scorn those who do. Buying gold is shameful and carries with it a stigma, and rightly so: look where it comes from. The only people who buy gold are people who truly suck at the game. In my 3 years of playing WoW, I've only encountered one person who has admitted to doing it.

[Orbert]

I used to play a lot of Diablo II and hang out on D2 discussion boards, and guys would talk about doing "Baal Runs" and "Mephisto Runs" where you take your best character and repeatedly start up a game and kill an act boss to hopefully cop some good loot.  Over and over, for hours.  I like the game, and understand the attraction of collecting things, but this sounds incredibly boring and stupid.  It sounds like the type of thing you'd force prison inmates to do.

[Sigz]

repeatedly start up a game and kill an act boss to hopefully cop some good loot.  Over and over, for hours. 

Take this, turn it into an entire game, and you have WOW.

[ehra]

I never could get into boss or MF runs in Diablo. Similarly, I've never really been able to stick around in WoW long enough to get a character geared... I'll do all of the quests and run the 5 mans a few times, but I'll never be able to repeat them to the point that I can start raiding. And it doesn't help that the PvP is lol.

[LieLowTheWantedMan]

I used to play a lot of Diablo II and hang out on D2 discussion boards, and guys would talk about doing "Baal Runs" and "Mephisto Runs" where you take your best character and repeatedly start up a game and kill an act boss to hopefully cop some good loot.  Over and over, for hours.  I like the game, and understand the attraction of collecting things, but this sounds incredibly boring and stupid.  It sounds like the type of thing you'd force prison inmates to do.

I could do that forever! I was truly addicted to the game though.

[skydivingninja]

I'd also like to point out that it's very easy to earn gold in WoW. A casual player can rack up a small fortune for himself if he knows what he's doing. Most WoW players don't buy gold, and scorn those who do. Buying gold is shameful and carries with it a stigma, and rightly so: look where it comes from. The only people who buy gold are people who truly suck at the game.

This.  Its pretty easy to get gold in WoW, and most players know that most of it comes from China.

[Gadough]

WTF Matt, I didn't know you played. You never post in the Warcraft thread.

[skydivingninja]

I used to.  Time and money have been short.  Last I played was in summer 2009, I think.  So I know a lot about WoW.

[Gadough]

Ah ok. I've played off an on for about 3 years. I think I started in late Burning Crusade. I'll play for a few months, then I get bored and take a few months off. Then I have the itch and get back into it, and the cycle repeats. I'm currently on break.

[ehra]

I'm currently in the "I won't be subscribing again" phase which typically lasts until the release of the next expansion.

[El JoNNo]

WoW has only lasted for me because I have friends that play with me. I find it is easy to get gold but I never keep it for very long as I will buy something or give it to one of my friends. I have about 4k to my name.

[The Degenerate]

left game and joined Rift instead, do not regret.

World of Warcraft's lost 700,000-800,000 subscribers over the course of Cataclysm and more and more keep leaving. Hopefully the game becomes less profitable for them soon and this shit will happen less...

[Dr. DTVT]

You know what game I still love?  Asheron's Call.  Yeah, it's nearly 12 years old if you count beta so the graphics aren't up to snuff compared to newer games, but I recently resubscribed and it is still more fun than WoW ever was.  More challenging, more mature crowd, everyone gets rewarded on quests (no rolling for items and hoping you get them),  and I could go on and on.  They still offer a 15 day free trial.  PM me if you're interested.

[In The Wake Of Poseidon]

World of Warcraft's lost 700,000-800,000 subscribers over the course of Cataclysm

That's what happens when you make heroics not wrath easy.

[Gadough]

World of Warcraft's lost 700,000-800,000 subscribers over the course of Cataclysm

That's what happens when you make heroics not wrath easy.

Dude.

No.

People aren't leaving because the content is harder. People are leaving because this expansion has shortchanged us on content. Running the same 9 heroics over and over and doing the same Tol Barad dailies every day isn't any fun. There's just not enough to do once you hit 85. That's why people are quitting. It's become a monotonous grindfest. At least, back in BC and Wrath, it was a FUN grindfest. Now it's just dull, boring, and depressing.

[The Degenerate]

What Gadough said. I have no issues at all with the difficulty, I'm doing just fine. I was having more fun with the heroics before Blizzard nerfed everything and gave everyone automatic 15% stat/health buffs upon entry, actually, you can practically Wrath (yes it's a verb now) things now. But it got boring fast, there's not enough heroics, Tol Barad is lame as hell, the game has become excruciatingly dull and I can't even have fun just rolling another alt because the magic is gone and there's no "world" in World of Warcraft with everything so streamlined. Blame nostalgia or whatever, but the point is, I'm not enjoying myself anymore, and neither were my many, many friends who have quit (who were all very capable players).

Rift, though. Rift is amazing. Sure, it's a WoW clone, but it harks back to a time before WoW started to neuter itself. And there's much, much more customization in regards to classes, specializations and variety when compared to the watered down cookie cutter shit classes and talent trees that were handed to us in Cataclysm. The game took the best aspects of WoW, improved upon them where they could, and cut out most of the shit. I'm interested to see where Rift goes from here -- it's obvious to see that, unlike AION, Warhammer and the like, it hasn't immediately fallen flat on its face. It won't be the WoW killer -- I doubt anything will have that potential for a long, long time -- but it does have the potential to be very successful.

[Gadough]

That's another thing I forgot to mention. In my opinion, the dungeon finder tool has almost single-handedly destroyed WoW. Remember back in BC and early Wrath when you would have to find a group yourself if you wanted to do a dungeon? Sure, it may take an hour in trade chat advertising your group, but that was part of the fun. After finally getting five people together, you would have to gather everyone at the meeting stone, enter, COMMUNICATE, and take down the bosses as a team. If you enjoyed running with someone, you put them on your friends list, and it wasn't uncommon to run with them again a week later because you remembered "hey, that guy was really cool, I should invite him to this group!"

And then there were the days where you got a group together with the intention of only doing the daily heroic, and then you end up spending the whole day with the same group running chain heroics. God, that was fun. I have vivid memories of spending entire Saturdays playing with the same four people that I met just that morning. All day long. You could bond with people on your server and enjoy their company while playing.

Thus, massive friendship networks were created on your server. I remember walking around Shatt and Orgrimmar and recognizing a large number of players who I had grouped with at some point. Now, I don't know anybody. The dungeon finder has made what used to be one of the most interesting aspects of the game (that is: meeting, playing with, and developing friendships with other players) null and void. No one knows anybody anymore. You just zone in with four random strangers, mindlessly run the same heroic you've run 55 times before, zone out, and that's it. It's so unpersonal and...depressing.

The convenience factor of the dungeon finder is no excuse for what it's done to this game. It's sucked the very heart and soul out of it. The greatest thing about WoW was its ability to bring people together. The dungeon finder cripples a player's ability to meet and develop friendships with other players. If I'm not encouraged to do that, then what's the point of playing?

[ehra]

Rift was interesting. I liked the Rifts themselves, but it was pretty flow breaking when the Rifts near you ran out and you were back to the regular old quest grind. I'm hoping Guild Wars 2 will be able to avoid that disconnect, which I'm sure they will since they're getting rid of quests.

I do really like how newer MMOs are doing their best to get people to work together even when not grouped up. Any other MMO, if someone shows up near you then you just get worried that they're going to kill the mobs you need or take the crafting materials you want, or whatever. One of the reasons I started soloing so much in MMOs was because questing actually took longer in a group if you were doing quests where you need to get 10 of X drop off of a certain mob since, back then, only one person in the group typically got the drop (if it dropped). I'd gladly play with random people more often if it didn't hinder my progress.

I really do think this next wave of MMOs is going to start taking a decent number of people from WoW simply because of how outdated some of the mechanics are becoming. Seeing another player shouldn't be a bad thing, unless you're on a PvP server.

[The Degenerate]

*snip*

GODDAMN, THIS. This comes up on the forum often and people always reply with "you're underestimating the good it's done for the game, how much more people are seeing content, you'd be pissed and want it back when it's gone", etc....

Maybe so. But that's Blizzard's fault. They've socially engineered their playerbase to be selfish, lazy idiots who care only for the rewards, not the experience. And when you don't enjoy and take part in the experience, you don't feel like you've earned the rewards, and you stop caring about that too.

It's basically a single player game now with the other players being AI that never communicate with you, sometimes do something really stupid, or take the loot you wanted.