Online: A Virtual Gold Rush

In recent months Blizzard has cracked down on Chinese gold farmers. Thousands of WOW accounts have been shut down because of suspected gold-farming, traced through their server locations, their gaming activity and what language their in-game avatars use. One mainland Netizen posted this complaint on a Chinese-language Web site: "Actually the gold buyers are all foreigners, so what is Blizzard's logic? Robbers are guilty but the dirty-money buyers are not?"

Li is more resigned, even though he claims gold-farming is useful because it boosts the enjoyment of players who don't have time to collect game gold on their own. "I know Blizzard bans real-money trade, so we have to accept it," he says of the clampdown. "But it's a little like real life, where the West is bigger and more powerful so it makes all the rules. It's kind of unfair." Since July, when Li first detected Blizzard's campaign against gold farming, over 90 percent of the WOW accounts used by his workshop have been shuttered. If only China's real-world mercantilism could be curbed so easily.

With Steven Levy in Irvine, California

© 2006