Interesting article.
For research purposes, of course.
www.pcgamer.com
During the first months of BFA I got a herb / alch reroll and I was kind of heavily (7-10 hours a day, everyday) farming herbs / crafting pots and selling them. Within a month of that I netted about 4-5m golds and I bought a lot of tokens aka gametime. I was recovering from a work injury therefore I had a lof of free time. Farming herbs was mindless, warmode OFF and any movie / tv show on the other screen (had a huge backlog). Also, whilst doing that, I was actively reporting other obvious bot / non EU herb gatherers, and my friends list was obviously showing they all got bans every 1-3 weeks.
What I've learned is that on EU servers there was some competition, mostly russian / ukrainian poor people / somewhat prisoners doing druid accounts with stolen credit cards / paypal accounts. I've talked to some and while I was doing that out of boredom, it was quite clear that for a lot of them it was their only income. When I went back from work, I just couldn't care about doing that on my free time since it was mathematically way more profitable to just show up to work and play WoW for fun, rather than gathering herbs.
What I've always wondered is that while there were people doing that because it was (for them) sheer distraction, if at all, I felt like for some of them it wasn't just a choice, they had to get some money. So last week I went back on my herb / alch reroll and found that "Vilizmiz" druid was still around. I was up to 4 whiskies and /w him "sup" and the fucker fucking recognized me from the old days so we had a chat. He had a thick accent, was talking about "hoops", maybe the trials he had to go along.
It may be bullshit but the guy told me he was russian from a hood called "Priladelsiav", got into prison because "stuff" and there it was like if you know how to run a computer they get you jacked on goldfarming. He said something like if you don't go to the "computer line" (broken english) during prison first day you just pave roads and do cement / carpentry stuff where hardcore russia criminal gangs rule everything and rape / murder is more frequent than hot meals. He said his life came to a rebound when he showed his jailors where he was from.
Then he went again about "Priladelsiav", like he down the line became an important person. I asked if it was some kind of famous location , he said "it's like a town, it's called Bil'Air" (that accent though). He was like, right after he got into goldfarming his everyday life prison went upside down; no more rape / murder stuff, he's just rocking druid accounts gathering herbs all day long in a nice place with weed, food "and a nice sofa" (again, erratic english). I therefore inquired "bro, are you sit tight?" And he answered me to just sit right there, and he'll tell me how I became the prince of a town called Bel Air.
