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Nick Ryan at Eurogamer tracked down gold farmers from all walks of life and has profiled them in his ongoing series "Gold Trading Exposed." In this second installment of four, Ryan speaks directly with four different gold farmers, each from different parts of the process.

He first introduces "Paul," a British farmer who began farming as a side business in Ultima Online, then moved to EVE and was eventually ran out by the Chinese farming industry. Ryan then moves on to "Mr. Li," a Chinese farmer who works toward the lower rungs of a large-scale operation spanning almost 10,000 World of Warcraft accounts. Finally, Ryan speaks to "Sophia," a marketer who works for SwagVault, a gold re-seller, and her colleague "Benjamin."

Benjamin in particular offers a poignant analysis of just how much money makes its way to Blizzard: "Each time Blizzard massively bans the farming accounts and trading accounts, the gold sellers and farmers suffer great losses. They have paid for the Classic CD-Key, the Burnfing Crusade CD-Key, Wrath of the Lich King CD-key and 60 days Time Cards. The total cost is over 100 USD. ... I estimate that Blizzard itself has got millions of US dollars from the farmers."

Ryan's investigative journalism is by far the most comprehensive since Julian Dibbell actually went to China for his book Play Money, which covered gold farming in great detail.
Article Source: www.massively.com.