# Prisoners forced to farm gold in online games.. **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [May 26, 2011, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prisoners-forced-to-farm-gold-in-online-games/583364 "2011-05-26T21:59:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Jas09](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d07c76/32.png) [@Jas09](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jas09)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prisoners-forced-to-farm-gold-in-online-games/583364/41 "2011-06-02T19:49:40Z")
> [@Skammer](#): > > I still don’t get it. Who gets the gold, the other four players? Is there a loot master? I’d assume BoP items that no one needs are still only going to go for the vendor price - I guess it would work better if you bring an enchanter. Huh, interesting. This is for raids (he mentioned ZG, but I believe he meant from back when it was a raid). The money raised goes into the pot. The pot is divided at the end between all players in the raid (including those that bid and won items). This happened a lot even on Cairne during ICC, because the raid was easy enough, and some bad-ass loot dropped from early 25-man bosses, that you could make decent enough gold from it. If Deathbringer’s Will dropped you were gauranteed a decent return on the time invested. And if you had someone that could turn on Lootship Heroic, even better (this was not as common on Cairne, but on the other server I was on we would clear a good number of heroic bosses in gold pugs). In a 25-man raid it’s pretty unlikely that _nothing_ would be usable by someone in the full run. In today’s environment, with the shared 10/25 and heroic lockouts it’s not as common (especially since the raids are a good bit harder than ICC too). I wouldn’t be surprised at all for GPugs of the current raids to start up once Firelands comes out for gearing up alts or getting that one item you kept missing. ---
**Author:** ![Palooka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/palooka/32/2902_2.png) [@Palooka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Palooka)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prisoners-forced-to-farm-gold-in-online-games/583364/42 "2011-06-02T21:39:04Z")
The ZG run was originally a raid that a guild member had been paid to run for some level 60 twinks. 80 warrior, 80 priest, some others, the twinks and me at 70-something mostly to summon and sight-see. Once the raptor dropped, buddy just auctioned it off. Seems like people are always willing to give away their largely-worthless gold for someone to make things happen. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prisoners-forced-to-farm-gold-in-online-games/583364/43 "2011-06-02T22:04:45Z")
Quoth **Freudian Slit** : > [@](#): > > They were beating them here, though. Yeah, and like I said, that’s a problem. It’s not really a problem of the gold farming, though. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prisoners-forced-to-farm-gold-in-online-games/583364/44 "2011-06-02T23:07:20Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Y’know, I’m having a hard time getting worked up over this… Yeah, at the gold-farming level, it’s boring, monotonous, and not fun at all, but on the other hand, who said that prison should be fun? And unlike many other sorts of work prisoners might be forced to do, it’s not dangerous or physically painful. Now, if the guards are enforcing quotas by beating prisoners, _that’s_ a problem, but they’d probably do that for the mining work, too (which has all sorts of other occupational hazards). It sounds like they are doing their normal forced labor during the day, then being forced to log in and farm gold instead of being allowed to sleep or relax. I don’t know about you, but if I am doing heavy labor during the day, I would want to do _nothing_ or sleep when I am not forced to labor. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prisoners-forced-to-farm-gold-in-online-games/583364.md?page=2)