Funny yet profound:

a new trade association has been formed by Korean gold farmers and real-money trade sites to lobby the Korean government, which has been considering regulation of the sector.

2007-06-19: Should have read the nyt gold farmer story. Not just the obvious arbitrage angle, but farmers playing WoW in their spare time after 12h shifts clicking away in WoW, and 40-person guilds for hire by high-level players in need of backup for their campaigns.
2007-07-09: Creative protests

The farmers retaliated by slaying gnomes and arranging them on the ground to spell out the URLs of their gold-farms.

2008-05-08: AN explainer

Gold Farmers are young people who earn their living by playing MMORPG games. They acquire (“farm”) items of value within a game, usually by carrying out in-game actions repeatedly to maximize gains, sometimes by using a program such as a bot or automatic clicker.They sell the artificial gold coins and other virtual goods they’ve harvested to players and/or farming organizations and get “real” money in return. Players from around the world will then use the golden coins to buy better armor, magic spells and other equipments to climb to higher levels or create more powerful characters.

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