A lot of people are fascinated with the culture of Chinese gold farmers and power levelers in online gaming communities. Gamers are all a little bit jealous of people who have actually found a way to do nothing but play video games as their job, and non-gamers are blown away by the revelation that virtual goods actually have significant real world value! We are all captivated by seeing the bastards who spam us with annoying messages like "you buy" , open a trade window, and throw some piece of trash item into it; much like a hobo on a street corner in NYC trying to wash your window for a quarter.

Farming gold in WoW takes quite a bit of time, and many professional people have realized it's far more efficient and desirable to have someone else do it and pay them real world dollars for their time. In countries like China for example a person can apparently live off 30 cents per hour, which is what these gold farmers actually get paid to play. Since in the U.S. it's easily possible to make 10 dollars an hour, even while in High School, huge numbers of gamers would much rather work for one hour and end up getting 30 hours worth of gold farming paid for, rather than sit in game and "waste" 30 hours of their own valuable time.

People are astounded to learn this is a real practice that is flourishing around the world, and as a result many documentaries and journalistic stories are being done about the practice. One example of such a journalistic endeavor to explore the lives and working conditions of the people involved can be viewed Here

This individual named Julian Dibbell wrote a great New York Times magazine article on the topic. He just recently posted this Flickr photo gallery of the images he encountered durring the trip he took while writing the story. His guide during this process was man named Jin Ge. Jin Ge is directing a forthcoming documentary on the same subject entitled "Gold Farmers". More information regarding this movie will be posted as it is made available.