A Farmboy’s Wages

A major nuisance in World of Warcraft as the community and the game matures is the stealth farmer — the professional that needs to group and raid, but can only do so if he hides his professional status.

Probably as a result of the various anti-farm measures (bans, loots nerfs, rogue stealth nerfs, spawn adjustments to instances), making a living as a Warcraft gold farmer isn’t the gravy train it once was. Hell, making a living as a legit player isn’t the same gravy train either. So thanks for that.

Accordingly, there’s some pressure on the professionals to appear legit: to avoid detection by the Blizzard Collective AND to sneak their way into your juicy loot raid and score a few pieces. You don’t want that. Number one, they are the worst players anywhere. And number two, they won’t be satisfied to walk away with one piece of green loot that’s won more than halfway through the raid.

Trust me on that — as soon as they score something to add to the Auction House, they will be walking away … midraid … the sooner the better. Join another hapless raid, repeat, it’s a living.

You finally fill out your raid with required classes + others, everyone finally arrives at the instance, buffs are passed around, mana water is passed around, the puller pulls, the tank tanks, the raid kills, loot is rolled on, then … where the fuck did that rogue go? He’s in Ironforge, WTF.

Ok, you just got burned by a pro.

Did I mention that most of the pros are rogues? There’s your first thing to watch for … keep an eye on the rogues. You do not want a pro rogue in the raid with access to the locked chests. Even if a rogue has passed my super-secret pre-raid test questions, I always halt the raid after chests to make sure the winner actually received his chest loot — that’s one of the professional’s favorite tactics: allow the confusion of the raid to cover a chest ninja.

The rogue gets exactly 30 seconds to turn over the chest contents or he gets a boot with the express port back to Ironforge. If they’ll steal a 1 gold piece of green loot, you can be damn sure they’ll steal the blue bind-on-equip loot.

(Disclaimer: There are many fine legit rogues on every server. Not every rogue is a pro. Oh yeah, watch the paladins, too. They’re all pros. I kid!)

Once the pros had to take their operations underground, as it were, they cooked up a few strategies to appear legit. Most players have noticed these. The pros formed these pseudo-guilds with ridiculous names like “Trucks”, “How This” or “Find Here” … random combinations of common English words. As if that fooled anyone. New alts they carted around with the original characters were usually named Y or X plus a lot of vowels (Xiaoufen, Yaoieyioa, etc.).

Silly farmers. Tricks are for hookers.

My observation, this second generation of pro characters is still alive and working. I believe they are now getting the third generation up to speed … raid-viable, that is … although I haven’t identified a typical naming scheme other than this team that works my server where all the toons are named Anglo Name+Last Initial K, i.e. JimK, LindaK, JasonK. Crazy.

My standards are: if they’re in the farm guild, no group. If they have a goofy ass name, I let them join because what the hell do I know.

I am friendly with a few pros on my server, we chat as best we can considering the language barrier, say hey and all that — pros are not inherently bad people. They just can’t group with me.

UPDATE: I noticed just today, the pro guild formerly named similar to “Trucks” above has changed their name to “T O P”. Because that will fool all of us. (honestly.)

Now despite your best efforts to screen any strangers in your loot romp, what if you’ve pulled a pro anyways? Let’s say you become suspicious because they random on absolutely everything as soon as the loot hits the dirt, maybe there’s a problem with a chest loot not being turned over, they don’t listen to any instructions and respond to questions after a 90 second pause with “go now ok”. WTF, I said to wait for casters’ mana.

Well. You’ll either get lucky and they’ll behave the entire raid, or their behavior will become so intolerable that you’ll have to kick ’em. If you’re considering a kick, you’re in salvage mode. My approach: I fire a warning shot (ex. Yaeiou, if you don’t stop running ahead, you’re out.). If they straighten out (never has happened, but COULD happen), then problem averted. If not, I announce to the raid that I’m kicking Yaeiou and why, then I do it.

Usually that announcement is met with cheers and BFTs.

I suppose if you’re really organized, you could /ignore them for future reference. I’m not that organized so I usually have to ask the guildmates if Xiiieaa is a farmer or not and didn’t we group with him before? No no, that ninja was named Xiieaaaa, this new guy is someone else. Maybe. Bah, who the hell knows.

So the lesson in all this is the best you can hope for is to identify the pros early, hopefully back in town before the 20-minute flight.

Another lesson could be that paranoid witchhunts take some planning and effort. Good thing we’re just talking about professional farmers and not witches.

4 thoughts on “A Farmboy’s Wages

  1. heh, like there isn’t any drama in big guilds. Who you kidding?

    The drama in pickups PALES in comparison to a big guild.

  2. We had this guy on our server named Wowvsmtg. Maybe he was trying to trick people by overloading on consonants instead of vowels, I’m not sure. He ended up in a scholo raid with me one day a few months ago, didn’t speak the entire time, had all green gear, and tanked with a dagger (I was the other tank). I was so positive this guy was a farmer that I was on edge the whole time, waiting for the inevitable cadaverous gloves ninja or something, but to my suprise the raid passed uneventfully. I made some inquiries and have had several people swear up and down that he’s not a farmer, just a really wierd guy with questionable taste in weaponry. Go figure.

  3. We had the rogue weird-guy/farmer last night (though his name didn’t fit in your naming convetions, Foton). Constantly ran ahead, saying “kill now” etc., while we were still drinking or summoning or whatever. Made the hunter dude who was on his first character pay for enchants. (Meanwhile I’m giving away healthstones and the alchemist is pouring potions down our throats faster than you can say jello shot.) Behaved on the first two chests, then ninjaed the third, grabbed the loot he clearly knew was going to be in it, then suddenly “I have to log” and he’s hearthstoned back to IF before we know it, not even bothering to leave the group so we have to all ditch and reform. (We weren’t in an instance, so that was fine.)

    This kind of thing popping up more often does seem to be a function of the community maturing (in the sense of getting larger and broader, not in the sense of becoming more adult and responsible). The problem is there’s no way to take your revenge. Perhaps one day there will be a blacklist service to subscribe to or something, an eBay like reputation system built by some ambitious modder. Still, alts might make that kind of useless. Interesting to think about.

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